Chapter IX (2)

"The appearance of this sprite is considered a certain death-sign, and has obtained the local names of 'Trash' or 'Skriker.' He generally appears to one of the family from which death is about to select his victim, and is more or less visible according to the distance of the event. I have met with persons to whom the barghaist has assumed the form of a white cow or a horse; but on most occasions 'Trash' is described as having the appearance of a large dog, with very broad feet, shaggy hair, drooping ears, and 'eyes as large as saucers.' When walking, his feet make a loud splashing noise, like old shoes in a miry road, and hence the name of 'Trash.' The appellation, 'Skriker,' has reference to the screams uttered by the sprite, which are frequently heard when the animal is invisible. When followed by any individual, he begins to walk backwards, with his eyes fixed full on his pursuer, and vanishes on the slightest momentary inattention. Occasionally he plunges into a pool of water, and at other times he sinks at the feet of the person to whom he appears with a loud splashing noise, as if a heavy stone was thrown into the miry road. Some are reported to have attempted to strike him with any weapon they had at hand, but there was no substance present to receive the blows, although the Skriker kept his ground. He is said to frequent the neighbourhood of Burnley at present, and is mostly seen in Godly Lane and about the Parochial Church; but he by no means confines his visits to the churchyard, as similar sprites are said to do in other parts of England and Wales."

Grose tells us that dogs have "the faculty of seeing spirits," and he instances the case of one David Hunter, a neatherd to the Bishop of Down and Connor, whose dog accompanied him _quietly_, when, from an impulse he was unable to restrain, he wandered after the apparition of an old woman by which he was haunted. "But," Grose adds, "they usually show signs of terror, by whining and creeping to their master for protection; and it is generally supposed that they often see things of this nature when their owner cannot; there being some persons, particularly those born on a Christmas-eve, who cannot see spirits."

Max Mueller etymologically identifies the classic Cerberus or Kerberos with the Vedic Sarvari, "the dog of night, watching the path to the lower world." Grimm says that the dog is an embodiment of the wind and an attendant of the dead both in the mythology of the Germans and the Aryans, and that both these attributes are conspicuous in the wild hunt superstitions. Dogs, he adds, see ghosts, as well as the goddess of death, Hel, although she is invisible to human eyes. Kuhn contends that the name of Yama's canine messengers, Sarameyas, was borne in Greek form, by the messenger of the Greek gods, Hermeias or Hermes, the conductor of the shades of the departed to the realm of Hades. With the aid of Athene, Hermes conducted Heracles in safety, with the dog Kerberos, out of Hades.

In the "Merry Devil of Edmonton" (1631) is the following reference to this superstition:--

I know thee well; I heare the watchfull dogs,
With hollow howling, tell of thy approach;
The lights burne dim, affrighted with thy presence;
And this distempered and tempestuous night
Tells me the ayre is troubled with some devill.

The superstition that the howling of a dog, especially in the night time, portends the death of some person in the immediate neighbourhood, is yet, at the present day, firmly believed in, even by the middle, and by no means uneducated, classes in Lancashire. I listened, not very long ago, to the serious recital of a story by one who heard the howling and knew well the party whose death immediately followed. He himself, being sick at the time, deemed his own end approaching, but was relieved of his terror on being informed that a well-known neighbour had just expired.

It is by no means improbable that the extremely delicate sense of smell possessed by some of the canine species or varieties, as especially exhibited in the scenting of game and carrion or putrid flesh, may have influenced the original personification of the dog as an attendant on the dead.

Charles Dickens, in a recent Christmas story, describes, with his usual felicity, a rather singular phase of this "howling hound" superstition. It appears that Dr. Marigold's dog, true to the instincts of his blustering race, could snuff an approaching storm of a "domestic" character with the most unerring precision. Certainly there are localities in which the blasts of old Boreas, and the storm songs of the Maruts, are infinitely more disagreeable than they are in certain others. To encounter them alone on the bleak mountain top, or in a wild gorge, like that of Cliviger, on an "old-fashioned Christmas" or New Year's-eve, is not productive of exactly the same kind of satisfaction as results from attentively listening to their wild harmonies when seated in a warm corner of one's own "snuggery," with plenty of good cheer, and a select few of tried old friends partaking of the hospitality characteristic of the season. Dr. Marigold, who is neither more nor less than the witty and loquacious "Cheap John," of mock-auction renown, thinks, very properly, that his peripatetic place of business was a very unsuitable locality for domestic hurricanes. He says:--"We might have had such a pleasant life. A roomy cart, with the large goods hung outside, and the bed slung underneath it when on the road, an iron pot and kettle, a fire-place for the cold weather, a chimney for the smoke, a hanging-shelf and a cupboard, a dog, and a horse. What more do you want? You draw off on a bit of turf in a green lane or by the roadside, you hobble your old horse and turn him grazing, you light your fire upon the ashes of the last visitors', you cook your stew, and you would not call the Emperor of France your father. But have a _temper_ in the cart, flinging language and the hardest goods in stock at you, and where are you then? Put a name to your feelings! My dog knew as well when she was on the turn as I did. Before she broke out, he would give a howl, and bolt. How he knew it was a mystery to me, but the sure and certain knowledge of it would wake him up out of his soundest sleep, and he would give a howl and bolt. At such times I wished I was him."

The large "saucer eyes" of Skriker, and his "_vanishing_ on the slightest momentary inattention," are suggestive of some connection with lightning or the ignis fatuus, or wild fire; and, singularly enough, I find Will-o'-whisp traditions bear considerable resemblance to those which appertain to the furious host. Mr. Thoms, in his "Shakspere Notelets," has some curious information on this subject. He says:--

"According to some these phantoms are believed to be the souls of children who have died unbaptised; while others again believe them to be the restless spirits of wicked and covetous men, who have not scrupled, for the sake of their own aggrandisement, to remove their neighbours' landmarks. In Brittany, we learn from Villemarque, the _Porte-brandon_ appears in the form of a child bearing a torch, which he turns like a burning wheel; and with this it is said he sets fire to the villages, which are sometimes suddenly in the middle of the night wrapped in flames. In Lusatia, where these wandering children are also supposed to be the souls of unbaptised children, they are believed to be perfectly harmless, and to be relieved from their destined wanderings as soon as any pious hand throws a handful of consecrated ground after them."

This form of superstition prevails yet to a considerable extent in the north of England and Scotland.

The Maruts or storm-winds of the Sanscrit myths, who rode on tawny-coloured horses, roared like lions, shook the mountains, and tore up trees, when their wild work was done, Max Mueller informs us, assumed again, "according to their wont, the form of new-born babes," a phrase which, as Mr. Cox justly observes, "exhibits the germ, and more than the germ, of the myth of Hermes returning like a child to his cradle after tearing up the forests." Hermes, as a personification of both the gentle breeze and the stormy wind, gives forth soothing as well as martial music, and his plaintive breath was supposed "to waft the spirits of the dead to their unseen home." Crantz says the Greenland Esquimaux "lay a dog's head by the grave of a child, for the soul of a dog can find its way everywhere, and will show the ignorant babe the way to the land of souls." The Parsees place a dog before the dying, from a similar superstitious belief.

There is much probability in the suggestion that Shakspere had some of these superstitions in view when he placed in the mouth of Macbeth, while contemplating the murder, and its consequences, of the "gracious Duncan," the following magnificent metaphors:--

And Pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or Heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind!

The furious host, in the German versions, is sometimes "a cavalcade of the dead," and not exactly a wild hunt, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. Kelly says:--"Sometimes it gallops through the stormy air as a herd of wild boars; but the spirits of which it consists generally appear in human form. They are of both sexes and of all ages, souls of unchristened babes being included among them; for Holda or Bertha often joins the hunt." When Odin rides at the head of a full field, he is believed to chase a horse or a wild boar; but when he alone appears at the heels of his yelping pack, it "is in pursuit of a woman with long snow-white breasts. Seven years he follows her; at last he runs her down, throws her across his horse, and carries her home." These seven years are regarded by commentators as having reference to the seven winter months of the year, during which "the spell bound" lightning and storm-god was unable, owing to the prevailing cold weather, to continue in active chase of his flying bride. This latter myth concerning the chased maiden seems to be the counterpart or prototype of the spectre huntsman, who "is believed to pursue a milk-white doe round the Eagle's Crag, in the Vale of Todmorden, on All-Hallow Eve," as related by Mr. Wilkinson. In Germany the wild hunt chases a whole flock of elfish beings, the moss-wifekins and wood-maidens, whose lives are bound up with those of the forest trees. Holda and Bertha are but local or characteristic appellations for the goddess Freyja (whence our Friday), the wife of Odin. In some parts of Germany the wild hunt is called the dead hunt (Heljagd), and, in others, the English hunt (_die Engelske jagd_), which are synonymous, England being but, at one period, "another name for the nether world." Hel or Hela, was the name of both the Scandinavian and German goddess of death. Kuhn, referring to the dispute whether the ancient locality of departed souls was Great Britain or Brittany, decides in favour of the former, and informs us that the German peasants to this day use such expressions as the following: "How the bells are ringing in England!" "How my children are crying in England!" when referring to the nether or lower regions.

The dismal realm of Hela, which was a journey of nine days' dreary descent from Heaven, was termed Niflheimr, the world of mists. It was said to be situated under one of the roots of the great world-tree, Yggdrasil, but it appears not to have been regarded, like the modern Hell, as a place of torment or punishment for sins committed on earth. It seems to have had more relationship to the Greek Hades. All departed souls, good and evil, dwelt in Hela's realm, with the exception of those of heroes slain in battle, which were conveyed at once to Valhalla, by Odin himself. Kelly says:--

"But the idea of retribution after death for crimes done in the body was not unknown to German paganism. It was part of the Aryan creed, and the Vedas speak of the goddess Nirriti, and her dreadful world Naraka, the destined abode of all guilty souls. It is not conceivable that such a tradition could have died out, even for a time, amongst any of the pagan Indo-Europeans."

In support of his position, Kelly cites the following passage from Kemble's "Saxons in England":--

"For the perjurer and the secret murderer Nastrond existed, a place of torment and punishment--the strand of the dead--filled with foulness, peopled with poisonous serpents, dark, cold, and gloomy; the kingdom of Hel was _Hades_, the invisible, the world of shadows; Nastrond was what we call Hell."

Kelly further contends that as "the heaven of the (Aryan) Pitris is often called 'the world of good deed, the world of the righteous,' and as they themselves were spirits of light and ministers of all good men, there is strong reason for inferring, although the fact is nowhere expressly stated, that the inhabitants of the opposite world became spirits of darkness, and confederates of all the evil powers." He adds,--"If this conjecture prove to be well founded, it will have brought to light another remarkable instance of the continuity of Aryan tradition."

The Rev. G. W. Cox, however, scarcely indorses this view of the Gothic Hell and Devil. He says,--"Hel had been like Persephone, the queen of the unseen land,--in the ideas of the northern tribes, a land of bitter cold and icy walls. She now became not the queen of Niflheim, but Niflheim itself, while her abode, though gloomy enough, was not wholly destitute of material comforts. It became the Hell where the old man hews wood for the Christmas fire, and where the Devil in his eagerness to buy the flitch of bacon yields up the marvellous quern which is 'good to grind almost anything.' It was not so pleasant, indeed, as Heaven, or the old Valhalla, but it was better to be there than shut out in the outer cold beyond its padlocked gates. But more particularly the Devil was a being who under pressure of hunger might be drawn into acting against his own interest, in other words he might be outwitted, and this character of a poor or stupid devil is almost the only one exhibited in Teutonic legends. In fact, as Professor Max Mueller remarks, the Germans, when they had been 'indoctrinated with the idea of a real devil, the Semitic Satan or Diabolus, treated him in the most good-humoured manner;' nor is it easy to resist Dr. Dasent's conclusion that 'no greater proof can be given of the small hold which the Christian Devil has taken of the Norse mind than the heathen aspect under which he constantly appears, and the ludicrous way in which he is always outwitted.'" Mr. Cox adds, in a note, that it has "been said of Southey that he could never think of the devil without laughing. This is but saying that he had the genuine humour of our Teutonic ancestors."

Dasent, in his "Popular Tales from the Norse," says,--"The Christian notion of Hell is that of a place of heat, for in the East, whence Christianity came, heat is often an intolerable torment, and cold, on the other hand, everything that is pleasant and delightful. But to the dwellers in the North heat brings with it sensations of joy and comfort, and life without fire has a dreary outlook; so their Hel ruled in a cold region over those who were cowards by implication, while the mead-cup went round and huge logs blazed and crackled in Valhalla for the brave and beautiful who had dared to die on the field of battle. But under Christianity the extremes of heat and cold have met, and Hel, the cold, uncomfortable goddess, is now our Hell, where flames and fires abound, and where the devils abide in everlasting flame."

How grandly has Shakspere expressed the various traditionary forms respecting the lost soul's lodgment or condition after death, in "Measure for Measure." In act 3, scene 1, Claudio exclaims:--

Ay, but to die and go we know not where,
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling! 'tis too horrible!
The wearied and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

It is a common superstition yet that the ghosts of persons, murdered or otherwise, not buried in consecrated ground, cannot rest, but must wander about in search of the means of Christian sepulture. This superstition obtained amongst the Greeks and Latins. The ghosts of unburied bodies, not possessing the _obolus_ or fee due to Charon, the ferryman of the _Styx_ or _Acheron_, were unable to obtain a lodging or place of rest. They were, therefore, compelled to wander about the banks of the river for a hundred years, when the _Portitor_ or "ferryman of hell" passed them over, _in forma pauperis_. Hence the sacred nature of the duty of surviving relatives and friends under the most trying circumstances. The celebrated tragedy of Antigone, by Sophocles, owes its chief interest and pathos to the popular faith on this subject.

Brand on the authority of Aubrey, states that, amongst the vulgar in Yorkshire, it was believed, "and, perhaps, is in part still," that, after a person's death, the soul went over Whinney Moor; and till about 1624, at the funeral, a woman came (like a Praefica) and sung the following song:--

This ean night, this ean night,
Every night and awle,
Fire and fleet (_water_) and candle-light,
And Christ receive thy sawle.

When thou from hence doest pass away,
Every night and awle,
To Whinny-Moor [silly poor] thou comest at last,
And Christ receive thy sawle.

If ever thou gave hosen or shoon [shoes],
Every night and awle,
Sit thee down and put them on,
And Christ receive thy sawle.

But if hosen and shoon thou never gave naen,
Every night and awle,
The whinnes shall prick thee to the bare beane,
And Christ receive thy sawle.

From Whinny-Moor that thou mayst pass,
Every night and awle,
To Brig of Dread thou comest at last,
Christ receive thy sawle.

From Brig of Dread, na brader than a thread,
Every night and awle,
To purgatory fire thou com'st at last,
And Christ receive thy sawle.

If ever thou give either milke or drink,
Every night and awle,
The fire shall never make thee shrink,
And Christ receive thy sawle.

But if milk nor drink thou never gave naen,
Every night and awle,
The fire shall burn thee to the bare beane,
And Christ receive thy sawle.

In the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," this song is printed with one or two slight variations, with the title of a "Lyke-Wake Dirge." Sir Walter Scott likewise quotes a passage from a MS. in the Cotton Library, descriptive of Cleveland in the northern part of Yorkshire, in Elizabeth's reign, which aptly illustrates this custom. It is as follows:--

"When any dieth certaine women sing a song to the dead bodie, reciting the journey that the partye deceased must goe, and they are of beliefe (such is their fondnesse) that once in their lives it is good to give a pair of new shoes to a poor man, for as much as after this life they are to pass barefoote through a great launde, full of thorns and furzen, except by the meryte of the almes aforesaid they have redemed the forfeyte; for at the edge of the launde an olde man shall meet them with the same shoes that were given by the partie when he was lyving, and after he had shodde them, dismisseth them to go through thick and thin without scratch or scalle."

According to Mannhardt and Grimm a pair of shoes was deposited in the grave, in Scandinavia and Germany, for this very purpose. In the Henneberg district, on this account, the name _todtenschuh_, or "dead shoe" is applied to a funeral. In Scandinavia the shoe is named _helskoe_ or "hel-shoe."

It is customary yet in some parts of the North of England to place a plate filled with salt on the stomach of a corpse soon after death. Lighted candles too, are sometimes placed on or about the body. Reginald Scot says, in his "Discourse concerning Devils and Spirits," on the authority of Bodin, that "the devil loveth no salt in his meat, for that is a sign of eternity, and used by God's commandment in all sacrifices." Douce, speaking of this practice, particularly in Leicestershire, says it is done with the view of preventing air from getting into the bowels and swelling the body. Herrick, in his "Hesperides," says:--

The Soul is the Salt.
The body's salt the soul is, which, when gone,
The flesh soon sucks in putrifaction.

According to the learned Moresin the devil abhorreth salt, it being the emblem of eternity and immortality. It is not liable to corruption itself, and it preserves other substances from decay. Hence its superstitious or emblematical import.

The screaming of certain birds, as we have already seen, foreboded disaster. In some districts the midnight flight of flocks of migratory seafowl are believed to be the cause of the noises in the atmosphere, which the peasant's imagination translates into the rush of the furious host. Mr. Yarrell, in "Notes and Queries," says that flocks of bean-geese, from Scandinavia and Scotland, when flying over various parts of England, select very dark nights for their migrations, and that their flight is accompanied by a very loud and very peculiar cry. The "seven whistlers," referred to by Wordsworth, and others already quoted, in some instances appear to be curlews, whose screams are believed by fishermen to announce the approach of a tempest.

The bellowing of cows at unseasonable hours was likewise regarded as an announcement of death, as well as the howling of the dog. Cows in the Aryan mythology represented the rain clouds. Odin and his host, nevertheless, seem to have fancied the earthly article. They were said to carry cows away, milk them dry, and, in about three days, generally return them, but not always. It was idle for the farmer to refuse complying, as when the furious host appeared, the fattest animals in the stalls became restive, and on being let loose suddenly disappeared.

The Lancashire peasant, in some districts, still believes the "Milky Way" to be the path by which departed souls enter Heaven. Mr. Benjamin Brierley, in one of his Lancashire stories, places in the mouth of one of his strongly marked provincial characters, the following expression,--"When tha goes up th' cow lone (lane) to th' better place," and he assures me that he has often heard the expression from the lips of the peasantry. The Germans entertain a similar belief in the "Milky Way" being the spirit path to heaven. In Friesland its name is _kaupat_, or cowpath. The giving of a cow to the poor, while on earth, was considered to confer upon the donor the power to pass with certainty the fearful Gjallar bridge; for, as in the Vedic superstition, a cow, (or cloud,) would be present to aid his soul to make the passage in safety. Mannhardt informs us that "hence it was of yore a funeral custom in Sweden, Denmark, England, Upper and Lower Germany, that a cow should follow the coffin to the churchyard. This custom was partially continued until recent times, being accounted for on the ground that the cow was a gift to the clergy for saying masses for the dead man's soul or preaching his funeral sermon."

It is not improbable that the "mortuary" or "heriot" of the olden time, which rendered the gift of a cow to the church, on the death of a parishioner, as a condonement of possibly unpaid dues, a necessary condition of clerical favour, was based on some such superstition. It was customary, in some places, to drive the cow in the procession of the funeral _cortege_ to the place of sepulture. Mr. E. Baines, speaking of the manor of Ashton-under-Lyne, says:--"The obnoxious feudal _heriot_, consisting of the best beast on the farm, required to be given to the lord, on the death of the farmer, was a cruel and unmanly exaction, in illustration of which there are many traditionary stories in the manor of Ashton, and no doubt in other manors. The priest, as well as the lord of the manor, claimed his heriot, called a mortuary in these early times, on the death of his parishioners, as a kind of expiation for the personal tithes, which the deceased in his lifetime had neglected to pay." He adds that the custom was in Ashton for "_holy kirk_" to take the _best_ beast, and the lord of the manor the _second_ best.

To those who treated Odin with proper respect when he and his hunters passed by, he is said to have dropped a horse's leg or haunch, which turned to gold. Those who mocked him received a similar present, or "moss-wifekin's foot, with the green shoe upon it." But the limb in the latter case became f[oe]tid, and the horrible stench resulting therefrom defied all attempts to remove it.

All of these legends have been resolved into figurative and sometimes highly poetic descriptions of natural phenomena, and especially what is termed the "elemental strife." The horse's leg thrown down by Odin represents the crooked lightning's flash; the gold its brightness, and the stench its sulphurous odour. The wild boars which he hunts are stormy wind-clouds; the fair ladies the light white scudding vapours that seem to coquette with the squally wind. Odin's broad-brimmed hat is the dark cloud, and his mantle the starry heavens. Kelly says--"The moss-wifekins and wood-maidens are female elementary spirits brought down to the earth from the clouds to become genii of the forest, and when they are chased _in whole flocks_--or, in other words, when the leaves are blown off the trees--this is but a modification of the older conception of flying clouds.... The wild huntsman loves to ride through houses that have two outer doors directly opposite to each other; that is to say, in plain prose, a thorough draft, more or less strong, from one door to the other."

Mr. Ruskin, in his recent lectures at Oxford, as "Slade Professor of Fine Art," gives an admirable example from paintings on an ancient vase, of the manner in which Greek artistic genius gradually evolved from out of natural phenomena, their mythological personifications. He says,--

"First you have Apollo ascending from the sea; thought of as the _physical sunrise_: only a circle of light for his head; his chariot horses seen foreshortened, black against the day-break, their feet not yet risen above the horizon. Underneath is the painting from the opposite side of the same vase: Athena as the morning breeze, and Hermes as the morning cloud, flying across the waves before sunrise. At the distance I now hold them from you, it is scarcely possible for you to see that they are figures at all, so like are they to broken fragments of flying mist; and when you look close you will see that as Apollo's face is invisible in the circle of light, Mercury's is invisible in the broken form of cloud; but I can tell you that it is conceived as reverted, looking back to Athena; the grotesque appearance of feature in the front is the outline of his hair. These two paintings are exceedingly rude, and of the archaeic period; the deities being yet thought of chiefly as physical powers in violent agency."

Max Mueller contends that the earlier Aryan name for the Ribhus, namely Arbhus, is identical with the Greek Orpheus. Philologists, by the aid of the earlier Sanscrit writings, have been enabled to get at the roots of many Greek names, which formerly defied investigation. We see in the musical influence of Orpheus over trees, rocks, and mountain torrents, but a highly artistic development of the original Aryan storm-wind myth. By certain well understood philological steps, the term Arbhus has passed, in its Teutonic descent, into Albs, Alb, or Alp, which in the plural yields Elbe and Elfen, the equivalents of our English Elf and Elves.

Another remnant of the Aryan nomenclature of the train of Odin, the wild huntsman, may be found in the word mart or maur, as presented in the English word nightmare, and the French couchemar, which are evidently descended from the Maruts or wind-gods of the Vedas. The nightmare is known to result chiefly from that form of dyspepsia termed flatulent. The corruption of the word in English to mare has given rise to some singular blunders, and none greater or more absurd than that perpetrated by Fuseli, the Royal Academician, in his celebrated picture of "The Nightmare," in which he represents the fiend in equine form bestraddling his unhappy victim. Kelly says he can find accounts of the nightmare assuming the forms of a mouse, a weasel, a toad, and even a cat, but never that of a horse or a mare, except in the picture referred to. The fact is, the genuine nightmare is the rider who plies his spurs and grips the reins, and not a mare that has usurped the function of a jockey. Aubrey, in his "Miscellanies," describes one phase of the superstition as a remnant of witchcraft. "To hinder the nightmare, they hang in a string a flint with a hole in it. It is to prevent the nightmare, viz., the hag, from riding their horses, who will sometimes sweat at night. The flint thus hung does hinder it." Brand observes that "ephialtes, or nightmare, is called by common people _witch-riding_." He traces the superstition to the Gothic or Scandinavian Mara, "a spectre of the night."

In classical mythology Pan was regarded as the author of sudden frights or groundless alarms. Dr. Adam, in his "Roman Antiquities," says that Faunus and Sylvanus were "supposed to be the same with Pan." He further adds,--"There were several rural deities called Fauni, who were believed to occasion the nightmare."

It is not improbable that the modern equine form of the hag may have resulted from ordinary punning. Lluellin (1679) has the following stanza, which refers to the power of coral over the nightmare. Hence the prejudice in favour of coral beads for children which obtains to this day:--

Some the night-mare hath prest
With that weight on their breast,
No returnes of their breath can passe.
But to us the tale is addle,
We can take off her saddle,
And turn out the night-mare to grasse.

Another old writer, Holiday, in his "Marriage of the Arts," deprecates the practice of relying on charms, "that your stables may bee alwies free from the queene of the goblins." He, however, makes the night-hag equestrian or jockey, and not equine. Herrick, too, in his "Hesperides," is both correct and explicit on the subject. He says:--

Hang up hooks and shears to scare
Hence the hag that rides the mare
Till they be all over wet
With the mire and the sweat;
This observed, the manes shall be
Of your horses all knot free.

The term "nightmare," in some instances, may have been applied to a witch transformed into a mare by means of a magic bridle, and ridden with great violence by the very party at whose bedside she had previously metamorphosed into a steed, on the back of which she had galloped to the witches' revel. If the man-horse contrived to slip off the bridle, and throw it over the witch's head, she immediately became transformed into a mare, and was frequently, according to popular belief, subjected to much harsh usage. There appears, however, to be little doubt that the night-mares are legitimately descended from the Aryan Maruts, the "couriers of the air," who rode the winds in the "wild hunt," or "furious host," headed by Odin, or the renowned spectre horseman of mediaeval legends. Kelly says, "these riders, in all other respects identical with the Maruts, are in some parts of Germany called Wabriderske, _i.e._, Valkyrs. In some of the tales that are told of them they still retain their old divine nature; in others they are brought down to the level of mere earthly witches. If they ride now in stables, without locomotion, it is because they swept of old through the air on their divine coursers. Now they steal by night to the beds of hinds and churls; but there was a time when they descended from Valhalla to conceive, in the embrace of a mortal, the demi-god whom they afterwards accompanied to the battle-field, to bear him thence to the hall of Odin."

I entertain a strong impression that the singular ceremony practised at Ashton-under-Lyne, at Easter, styled "_Riding the Black Lad_," contains some remnant of the tradition of the spectre huntsman. Its origin is confessed on all hands to be extremely doubtful. The severities of a Sir Ralph Assheton, in the reign of Henry VI., may have had something to do with it, but they alone could scarcely have perpetuated the legend and its accessories. The custom of perambulating the parish boundaries, still in use in many parts of England, and which, in my own youth, was performed with much solemnity by the Corporation of Preston, may likewise have had some influence upon the practice. At the close of the Preston perambulation, it was customary for the younger spirits "to leap the colt-hole," as it was termed, the said "colt-hole" being a ditch or fosse on Preston Marsh. Some unlucky wights occasionally fell into the said ditch, to the infinite amusement of the graver dignitaries, as well as to the merriment of the holiday schoolboys attendant. Dr. Hibbert Ware, referring to the Ashton custom, says:--"An effigy is made of a man in armour, and the image is deridingly emblazoned with some emblems of the occupation of the first couple that are linked together in the course of the year." The story of the enforcing of the weeding of "Carr gulds" (an obnoxious plant) from the land by Sir Ralph's rough riding, may have had some foundation in fact; but it is rather strange a successor should have "abolished the usage for ever, and reserved from the estate a small sum of money, for the purpose of perpetuating, in an annual ceremony, the memory of the dreaded visits of the Black Knight."

Spelman, in his "Icenia," referring to the Tilney legend concerning Tom Hickathrift and his giant-slaying, clearly shows that the "monstrous giant," slain by Tom, armed with his axle and wheel, like the Cornish Tom the Tinkheard, and his followers, was none other than the tyrant lord of the manor who sought by violence to rob his copy-hold tenants out of their right of pasture in the common field.

Samuel Bamford, in his poem of the "Wild Rider," relates a legend not uncommon in various parts of the country, about a Sir Ashton Lever, a lover of a descendant of the Black Knight, who seems to have rivalled him in horsemanship. Bamford, in a note, says:--"He was an excellent bowman and a fearless rider, and tradition has handed down stories of feats of horsemanship analogous to those recited in the ballad, accompanied with sage intimations that _no horse could have carried him save one of more than earthly breed or human training_." The narrow valley of the Tame, in the neighbourhood of Ashton, is as likely as the gorge at Cliviger to be haunted by the storm-rider or the wild hunt. Singularly enough, Mr. Baines, in his History of Lancashire, relates minutely the particulars of two tremendous storms which devastated the locality, one in 1817, and the other 26 years previously. They both created much dismay, and the latter, he says, caused "an involuntary expression of horror throughout the whole place." A neighbouring exposed hill is named the "Wild Bank." Around it storms often rage with great fury. In one of the Welsh triads, we find that the "three embellishing names of the wind" are "Hero of the World, Architect of Bad Weather, and Assaulter of the Hills." It has been previously shown the spectre huntsman of Dartmoor is styled the "_Black_ Master," which lends further probability to the hypothesis advanced.

Since the bulk of the preceding pages in this chapter were written, I obtained a copy of Mr. R. Hunt's recently published work, entitled "Popular Romances of the West of England; or the Drolls, Traditions, and Superstitions of Old Cornwall." In it I find several curious and highly interesting variations of the legend or myth of the spectre huntsman, or the furious host, which exhibit not only the connection of the Wandering Jew tradition with that of the hunt of Odin and his followers, but which I conceive throw much light upon, and, to a large extent, countenance the hypothesis I have submitted, that the legend of the celebrated black knight, or "black lad," of Ashton-under-Lyne, retains, along with more modern additions, something of the original Aryan personification of the "elemental strife" previously described. Speaking of the "demon Tregeagle," a well-known legendary hero of "Old Cornwall," he says:--

"Who has not heard of the wild spirit of Tregeagle? He haunts equally the moor, the rocky coasts, and the blown sandhills of Cornwall. From north to south, from east to west, this doomed spirit is heard of, _and to the day of judgment he is doomed to wander_, pursued by avenging fiends. For ever endeavouring to perform some task by which he hopes to secure repose, and being for ever defeated. Who has not heard of the _howling_ of Tregeagle? When the storms come with all their strength from the Atlantic, and urge themselves upon the rocks around Land's End, _the howls of the spirit are louder than the roaring of the winds_. When calms rest upon the ocean, and the waves can scarcely form upon the resting waters, _low wailings creep along the coast. These are the wailings of this wandering soul._ When midnight is on the Moor or on the mountains, and the night winds whistle amidst the rugged cairns, _the shrieks of_ Tregeagle are distinctly heard. We know that he is _pursued by the demon dogs_, and that till day-break he must fly with all speed before them. The voice of Tregeagle is everywhere, and yet he is unseen by human eye. Every reader will at once perceive that Tregeagle _belongs to the mythologies of the oldest nations_, and that _the traditions of this wandering spirit_ in Cornwall, _which centre upon_ ONE TYRANNICAL MAGISTRATE, _are but the appropriation of stories which belong to every age and country_."

Here we have clearly a combination of the doings of the Teutonic spectre huntsman, Odin, and of his prototypes the Aryan storm-gods, Indra and Rudra, and their attendant Maruts and the Ribhus; the wailings of the homeless souls of the Irish and other legends; the interminable toil of the Wandering Jew; and the more modern tradition of the hard-hearted lord of the soil, whose deeds have rendered his name odious to the commonalty. The latter worthy modern tradition asserts, as in the case of the Ashton "Black Knight," to have been a relatively recent _bona fide_ "tyrannical magistrate," and a "rapacious and unscrupulous landlord," and "one of the Tregeagles who once owned Trevorder near Bodmin." At his death the fiends were anxious to get immediate possession of the soul of this "gigantic sinner;" but the hardened murderer, terrified at his fate, "gave to the priesthood wealth, that they might fight with them, and save his soul from eternal fire." On one occasion it is said that his wandering spirit actually gave evidence in a court of justice, when the fiends in vain endeavoured to carry him off. The power of the priesthood prevailed, but only with the condition attached that the wretched sinner should undertake "some task difficult beyond the power of human nature, which might be extended far into eternity," with the view that the power of repentance might gradually exert its ameliorating influence. His only hope for ultimate salvation was perpetual toil. The demons could not molest him so long as he continued his labour.

The first labour to which he was subjected was the emptying of Dosmery Pool, a mountain lake, some miles in circumference. This, in itself no slight task, was believed to be rendered more difficult from the supposed fact that the said pool was bottomless, inasmuch as tradition asserted that "once on a time" a thorn bush which had been sunk near its centre had reappeared in Falmouth harbour. One churchman, it is said, nevertheless thought the plan not sufficiently hopeless. He therefore suggested that the only lading or baling utensil employed by the miserable sinner should be a limpet shell with a sufficiently large hole in it to seriously augment the necessary labour. The demon kept his eye on Tregeagle, and endeavoured to divert his attention from his toil, in order that he might lay hold of him. But although he _raised many tempests_, still the doomed one continued to labour. On one occasion, however, the fiends were nearly "too many" for the eternal toiler. Mr. Hunt's description of this terrible struggle is so strikingly suggestive of one of the myths to which I have referred its origin, that I give it entire. He says:--

"Nature was at war with herself, the elements had lost their balance, and there was a terrific struggle to recover it. Lightnings flashed and coiled like fiery snakes around the rocks of Roughtor. Fire-balls fell on the desert moors and hissed in the accursed lake. Thunders pealed through the heavens, and echoed from hill to hill; an earthquake shook the solid earth, and terror was on all living. The winds rose and raged with a fury which was irresistible, and hail beat so mercilessly on all things that it spread death around. Long did Tregeagle stand the 'pelting of the pitiless storm,' but at length he yielded to its force and fled. The demons in crowds were at his heels. He doubled, however, on his pursuers and returned to the lake; but so rapid were they that he could not rest the required moment to dip his shell in the now seething waters. Three times he fled round the lake, and the evil ones pursued him. Then feeling that there was no safety for him near Dosmery Pool, he sprang swifter than the wind across it, shrieking with agony, and thus--since the devils cannot cross water, and were obliged to go round the lake--he gained on them and fled over the moor. Away, away went Tregeagle, faster and faster, the dark spirits pursuing, and they had nearly overtaken him, when he saw Roach Rock and its chapel before him. He rushed up the rocks, with giant power clambered to the eastern window, and dashed his head through it, thus securing the shelter of its sanctity. The defeated demons retired, and long and loud were their wild wailings in the air. The inhabitants of the moors and of the neighbouring towns slept not a wink that night."

This "wild hunt" is, in some respects, suggestive of Tam O'Shanter's narrow escape from the devil and the witches at Alloway Kirk.

In his "Address to the Deil," Burns associates both the devil and witches with stormy weather. He says, of the former:--

Whyles raging like a roaring lion,
For prey a' holes an' corners tryin;
Whyles on the strong-wing'd tempest flyin';
Tirlin the kirks.

And again:--

Let warlocks grim, and wither'd hags,
Tell how wi' you, on ragweed nags,
They skim the moors an' dizzy crags,
Wi' wicked speed.

But this is rather corroborative than otherwise of the hypothesis of their common origin. I have previously shown that witches were descended from the Aryan storm-gods or their attendants. Shakspere appears to have been fully cognisant of their elemental origin, or, in other words, of their supposed power over "the elements," for he makes Macbeth, in his extremity, exclaim:--

I conjure you, by that which you profess
(Howe'er you came to know it), answer me:
Though you untie the winds, and let them fight
Against the churches: though the yesty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up;
Though bladed corn be lodg'd, and trees torn down;
Though castles topple on their warders' heads;
Though palaces and pyramids do slope
Their heads to their foundations; tho' the treasure
Of nature's germins tumble altogether,
Even till destruction sicken, answer me
To what I ask you.

The tradition that Dosmery Pool was bottomless, reminds me of a similar presumed phenomenon in the neighbourhood of Preston, which I have often heard referred to in my youth with implicit faith. It was confidently asserted that a large pit near the footpath leading from Moor Park to Cadley Mill was of the bottomless class. Doubtless it was, at that time, a very deep pit, though I believe now it is nearly if not entirely dry in the summer season. There was likewise a pit on Preston Moor which was supposed to be bottomless. A similar belief once obtained respecting the "Stone Delph," from which the material was quarried for the tower of the Parish Church, Preston, taken down in 1814. I can yet well remember being convinced of the absurdity of this legend by an older companion, a good swimmer and diver, bringing up some mud and a stone from the bottom. The stone delph referred to is situated in the present bed of the Ribble, at the foot of the steep brow in Avenham Park. The sinking of water into the caverns of limestone rocks, as in Derbyshire, and at Malham Cove, in Yorkshire, and other places, may have originated the notion of "bottomless pits;" but I am inclined to think that demonology has, likewise, had something to do with these legends.

The mother of the mythic monster Grendel, in the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf, lived in a pool or mere on which fire floated at night, and the depth of which was so great that the wisest living person knew not its bottom. This mere is supposed to be the sheet of water from which Hart-le-pool, in the county of Durham, takes its name.

Tregeagle was next employed on the shore near Padstow, to make "trusses of sand and ropes of sand with which to bind them." Of course, each recurring tide swept away the result of his toil, and, according to the tradition, "the ravings of the baffled soul were louder than the roarings of the winter tempest." He was afterwards removed, by the power of the priesthood, to the estuary of the Loo, and ordered to carry sand across to Porthleven. A fiend maliciously tripped him up, and the contents of his huge sack, it is said, furnished the material of the sandbank which forms the bar that destroyed the harbour of Ella's Town. Yet we learn that "the sea was raging with the irritation of a passing storm" at the time of the mishap, which clearly indicates the origin of the legend. Tregeagle's last location was at the Land's End, where Mr. Hunt says "he would find no harbour to destroy and few people to terrify. His task was to sweep the sands from Porthcurnow Cove round the headland called Tol-Peden-Penwith, into Nanjisal Cove. Those who know that rugged headland, with its cubical masses of granite, piled in Titanic grandeur one upon another, will appreciate the task; and when to all the difficulties are added the strong sweep of the Atlantic current,--that portion of the Gulf Stream which washes our southern shores,--it will be evident that the melancholy spirit has, indeed, a task which must endure to the world's end. Even until to-day is Tregeagle labouring at his task. In calms his wailing is heard; and those sounds which some call the 'soughing of the wind,' are known to be the moanings of Tregeagle; while the coming storms are predicted by the fearful roarings of this condemned mortal."

It is very certain that we have here a singularly curious variation of the popular legend of the "Wandering Jew," and the myth of the "spectre huntsman," or the "furious host." The yelping hounds of the latter are not wanting to complete the picture, for Mr. Hunt tells us that "the tradition of the Midnight Hunter and his headless hounds, _always, in Cornwall, associated with Tregeagle_, prevails everywhere. The Abbot's Way, on Dartmoor, an ancient road which extends into Cornwall, is said to be the favourite coursing ground of the 'wish or whisked hounds of Dartmoor,' called also the 'yell hounds.' The valley of the Dewerstone is also the place of their midnight meetings. Once I was told at Jump, that Sir Francis Drake drove a hearse into Plymouth at night with headless horses, and that he was followed by a pack of 'yelling hounds' without heads. If dogs hear the cry of the wish hounds they all die."

The performance attributed to Sir Francis Drake is unquestionably a relatively modernised version of the mythical black coach story previously referred to as one form of the furious host legend. The effect of the cry of the wish hounds on the canine race in Cornwall is similar to that attributed to their compeers in Lancashire, only the death resultant is always that of a human being in the northern locality.

Mr. Hunt seems to doubt Mr. Kemble's etymology of the term "wish," when he says:--"In Devonshire, to this day, all magical or supernatural dealings go under the common name of wishtness. Can this have any reference to Woden's name 'Wyse?'" Mr. Hunt, however, acknowledges that "Mr. Kemble's idea is supported by the fact that 'there are _Wishanger_ (Wisehanger, or Woden's Meadow,) one about four miles south-west of Wanborough, in Surrey, and another near Gloucester.'" He acknowledges, likewise, on the authority of Jabez Allies, that there is a _Wishmoor_, which may have such an origin, in Ledstone, Delamere, Worcestershire. Mr. Hunt thinks that the word "wish" is intimately "connected with the west country word 'whist,' meaning more than ordinary melancholy, a sorrow which has something weird about it." Polwhele, in his "Wishful Swain of Devon," says it is "an expression used by the vulgar to express local melancholy;" and he adds,--"There is something sublime in this impersonation of _wishness_." It is not at all improbable that both these etymologies point to a common origin. The deeds of the spectre huntsman and the furious host, a "cavalcade of the dead," are not calculated to impress on the human imagination anything repugnant to the "melancholy sorrow with something weird surrounding it," to which Mr. Hunt refers.

This supposed sympathy of "the elements" with human joy, or sorrow, or suffering, is evidently a very ancient superstition. In Lancashire we have yet the saying--

Happy is the bride that the sun shines on;
Happy is the corpse that the rain rains on.

Shakspere has beautifully illustrated this presumed sensitiveness, not only of "the elements," but of animated nature, to the perpetration of deeds of darkness and blood by perverted humanity, in the following lines, which he places in the mouth of Lennox, on the morning after the murder of Duncan, by his host, Macbeth:--

The night has been unruly; where we lay,
Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i'the air; strange screams of death;
And prophesying, with accents terrible,
Of dire combustion and confused events,
New hatched to the woeful time. The obscure bird
Clamoured the live-long night; some say the earth
Was feverous, and did shake.

The sentiment is still further illustrated, with singular felicity, in the dialogue which follows, between Rosse and an old man:--

_Old Man._ Three score and ten I can remember well;
Within the volume of which time I have seen
Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night
Hath trifled former knowings.

_Rosse._ Ah! good father,
Thou see'st the heavens, as troubled with man's act,
Threaten his bloody stage. By the clock 'tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.
Is it night's predominance, or the day's shame,
That darkness does the face of earth entomb,
When living light should kiss it?

_Old Man._ 'Tis unnatural,
Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last,
A falcon, towering in her pride of place,
Was, by a mousing owl, hawked at and killed.

_Rosse._ And Duncan's horses, (a thing most strange and certain),
Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,
Turned wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,
Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make
War with mankind.

_Old Man._ 'Tis said, they eat each other!

_Rosse._ They did so; to the amazement of mine eyes,
That looked upon't.