WITCHCRAFT AND NECROMANCY.
“To deny the possibility, nay actual existence of Witchcraft and Sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed Word of God, in various passages both of the Old and New Testament; and the thing itself is a truth to which every Nation in the World hath in its turn borne testimony, either by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory laws, which at least suppose the possibility of commerce with evil spirits.”—Blackstone’s “Commentaries,” book iv. chap. iv. p. 61.
WITCHCRAFT AND NECROMANCY.
itchcraft is the system of those persons who, through the direct agency of wicked spirits, perform certain acts and deeds beyond the natural and ordinary powers of mankind.[70] On the other hand, Necromancy, according to the definition of Cotgrave, is “divination by conference with dead bodies raised.” In its modern and wider acceptation, the latter is a formal summoning of the spirits of the dead out of the hidden place of their abode—“the desert where they glide,”—in order to consult with them as to the present or future by unlawful means, and to secure their active assistance in supernatural things and practices which are forbidden.
The invocation and consultation of evil spirits specially summoned to earth by certain recognized incantations, would be acts of Witchcraft and Necromancy. Of these cases, abundant examples occur both in sacred[71] and profane history.[72]
To the wizard or witch were freely given by the Devil or his angels divers powers at once supernatural and uncommon, by which, when sought for, both riches and sensual pleasures could for a while be secured, even to surfeiting. Occasionally the gift of predicting certain future events was bestowed; in other cases, the power of working evil and mischief upon the lives, limbs, and fortunes of neighbours or chosen subjects. This power, as was commonly believed, was bestowed by an express and definite compact, as some declare, formally made in writing by the Devil or his agents, and sealed with the wizard’s or witch’s own blood. By the unvarying terms of the bond, as an essential preliminary, the Sacrament of Holy Baptism was expressly renounced by the person accepting the Devil’s terms and conditions. Satan was formally worshipped, prayed to, and acknowledged as Ruler and Lord; and then, after a certain number of years, as a necessary consequence, the soul of the wizard or witch, without any chance of redemption, was irrevocably lost, and became absolutely the everlasting property of the Evil One.
The existence of this detail of the Supernatural, sometimes dimly and obscurely set forth, at others with undoubted and remarkable clearness, owns in its favour the almost universal consent of the human race[73] in all ages. Even the incredulity of the modern persons, who term themselves “philosophers” and “thinkers,” cannot be reasonably alleged in contravention of so broad and general a fact; for these “philosophers” themselves admit as much when, in their great wisdom, they proceed to characterize the opposite disposition—the readiness to accept such facts—as “vulgar” and “popular.”
It is impossible to point to any period when the belief in Witchcraft and Necromancy was perfectly obliterated, or to any nation which altogether repudiated it.[74] If one particular phase was removed, discredited, or discountenanced, some other form, substantially and inherently similar, eventually took its place. Holy Scripture[75] is full of references to Witchcraft and Necromancy. The dark rites and deeds involved in their practice are distinctly and unequivocally condemned. If such had not actively existed, why should their condemnation have been pronounced in the Sacred Books? Supernatural acts are there recorded, which are expressly said to have been performed by and through the system and power of Witchcraft, which is plainly declared to be a sin of a very dark dye. The practice, consequently, is directly and plainly forbidden, as being contrary to the Mind and Will of God; and laws were enacted and put on record by which those who, in the face of warnings, continued to practise such forbidden arts, were to be punished by death.
It is equally clear from certain of the Epistles of the Apostles of our Blessed Lord, that the fact of Witchcraft and Necromancy being commonly practised by Pagan nations was not only perfectly well known[76] to the guides and rulers of the Christian Church, but was again formally forbidden by those who were left to teach in the Name and on behalf of their Lord and Master. Nothing, in fact, can be more certain than that the Apostles condemned and prohibited the consultation of, or intercourse with, either the spirits of the departed or evil angels.
Here a few remarks defining and setting forth the principle on which such unlawful arts were authoritatively prohibited, may reasonably follow.
By the very act of his profession the Christian allows the co-existence in the World of two distinct and separable orders,—the Natural, which governs the physical and moral laws of the world, and the Supernatural, which, according to God’s Revelation, gradually unfolded and duly developed, governs the moral laws of man. The object of man’s faith is mystery, certain in itself, but above human intelligence. He yields the homage of his will not only to a God Who is the Great Creator and Preserver of the world and of all that therein is, but renders it to a God Who is the Repairer and Restorer of the human race by the Incarnation of the Eternal Word, and the Sanctifier of souls. This supernatural order, then, was not only known and established in the earth by other supernatural facts, but the visible testimony of Nature to the invisible order superior to and above Nature, was from time to time, and when necessary, abundantly made manifest. The Supernatural, then, exists in the World to lead men to God. Everything, therefore, that rises up in opposition to the Supernatural and mars the true idea of it, of necessity turns man away from God. The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, each and all (as Christian experience by temptation testifies,) effect this most successfully.
The World, which has been defined as “the rebellion of the reason against God,” scorns to accept miracles and mysteries, and boldly denies the existence both of angels and fallen spirits—scoffing at and repudiating the idea of Witchcraft or Necromancy, which it craftily characterizes as “the foolish and ignorant superstitions of a dark age.” Furthermore, the World admits of no truth superior to the human intellect, of no law which restricts what is called “human liberty” or the “rights of man;” and absolutely refuses to acknowledge in the domain of facts anything which oversteps those fixed rules which it alone chooses to recognize in the government of Nature.
The Flesh tends to degrade man to the level of the beasts, with whom he has in common notable tendencies and powerful passions. To the carnal man, who is at enmity with God, the very term “Supernatural” is a word void both of meaning and efficacy. His motto is, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die:” his conviction, as far as he may be said to have any, is that his own soul is nothing more than “a force which has its origin in matter itself,” and which, by consequence, shares its destruction; while his God is simply either “a stream of tendency, by which all things tend to fulfil the law of their being,” or “a substance immanent in the universe.”[77]
Thirdly, the Devil, through hatred both of God and man, strives in every way to substitute himself for God in this World. He is the Prince of the Powers of the air. He is stronger and more knowing than man. His intellect is clearer and finer. Moreover, his kingdom is powerful; his spiritual auxiliaries are numerous; his allies on earth, of all kinds, in the flesh, are multitudinous. The deeds which he delights that men should do are perfectly well known.[78] By counterfeiting genuine prodigies and true revelations, therefore, he draws men into the deadly meshes of a degrading and damnable superstition, by means of a delusive and lying supernaturalism. And the mischief resulting from such an active and successful policy is by no means on the wane, if they are not surely on the increase, in these dangerous latter days. True that in England the laws against Witchcraft are abolished,[79] but history, fairly consulted and faithfully read, tells us that not a century has elapsed since the commencement of the Christian era without its demoniacal apparitions and certain examples of Necromancy and Witchcraft. While this is so, of course no intention is entertained by the Editor of denying the common belief of the Universal Church, that by and through the Incarnation and Sacrifice of the Ever-Blessed Son of God the powers and influence of the Enemy of souls have been materially and efficiently crippled.[80]
Having thus digressed for an obvious purpose, it is now needful to return to the particular subject of this section, upon which some light will, in due course, be found to have been thrown, by the above brief expositions of principles; in the consideration and by the aid of which the strange facts and singular records which follow will appear in their proper place, when the important subject of the Supernatural, as brought out, incident upon incident, by historical records and authentic accounts, is under consideration.
That Witchcraft and Necromancy were publicly recognized as facts by the Fathers of the Christian Church is indisputable; while the existence of an order of ministers known as “exorcists,” acting from time to time, as occasion required or necessity demanded, in casting out evil spirits, is a sufficient proof of the watchful care and beneficent action of the Universal Church, at once authoritative, indefectible, and divine.[81]
In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII. issued a Bull against Witchcraft, upon the promulgation of which, treatises were drawn up for the guidance of local bishops, chancellors, and other ecclesiastical officials, in the necessary labour of bringing hardened offenders to justice. This Bull was renewed in the latter part of the fifteenth century, by Pope Alexander VI., so that the subject of Witchcraft gained unusual attention about that period.
As a matter of fact, it is computed that in the year 1515, no less than five hundred witches were burnt in Geneva alone, and the same was the case in other parts of Christendom,—a proof at once of the craft and power of Satan, and of the demoralization of those who had deliberately elected to become his servants and slaves. The earliest statute against Witchcraft enacted in England, was passed in the reign of King Henry VI.; and additional laws of great stringency and severity, sorely needed, were enacted under the Tudors, by Henry VIII., Queen Elizabeth, and James I. In the year 1604, the great Act of Parliament against Witchcraft, drawn up by Coke and Bacon, was passed; and it is asserted that no less than twelve bishops attended the Committee of the House of Lords when the Bill was under discussion. Sir Matthew Hale and Sir Thomas Browne, men of high legal and literary rank and mark, each gave evidence at the trials which speedily followed. In this particular, as in some others, England followed Geneva. Between the years 1565 and 1700, eleven wizards or sorcerers were burnt at the stake in the Carrefour du Bordage, in Guernsey, the square devoted by the city authorities of that island to this kind of punishment. The last case of death for Witchcraft there took place in 1747.
It may here be put on record that at the period of the Reformation, and during the succeeding century, the power of casting out devils was claimed exclusively by those who remained in visible communion with the See of Rome, and many Roman Catholic writers of those periods maintained that no such power belonged either to any teacher of heresy or to schismatics.[82] But many of the Puritans, knowing that the act of exorcism, like baptism, was not essentially a sacerdotal act (for if baptism may be validly confirmed by a deacon, it may, with equal validity, be bestowed by a layman), maintained the power to be inherent in any Christian man (with right disposition and following recognized and authorized rules) of casting out evil spirits; and, in consequence, declined altogether to repudiate the clear and plain records and statements of Holy Scripture concerning Witchcraft and Necromancy. They therefore made several attempts to secure the official authorization of a form for exorcism, framed after the old and customary rite, to be printed in the “Book of Common Prayer.” This, however, was never done. But in 1604 the subject was duly considered, and determined upon in the seventy-second Canon, which, as has been already pointed out, properly and stringently forbad to the clergy the practice of exorcism without a special license or faculty from the Bishop of the diocese.
As to the facts of Witchcraft and Necromancy, it is quite impossible to deny their existence. Records of the plainest character, legal evidence and literary testimony of undisputed authority,[83] may be discovered, which very luminously set forth what was believed on the subject; and this not alone by the ignorant, but by the learned and well-informed. The only difficulty is to make a suitable selection from that evidence which so abundantly exists; being careful that such selection shall not set forth merely one aspect of the subject, but several, and leaving each account to tell its own story. This it is now proposed briefly to attempt.
For example, in the year 1599, a girl named Martha Brossier, of Romorantin, in Berry, was reputed to be possessed, and excited a considerable sensation in Paris. At the suggestion of the then Bishop of Paris, the King ordered a Committee composed of the most eminent physicians, to examine and report on her case. The physicians appointed were Marescot, Ellain, Haulin, Riolan, and Duet; and their Report, which is exceedingly curious, will be found translated into English by Abraham Hartwell, and published towards the close of the sixteenth century.[84] The dedication to his Majesty proceeds thus:—
“Sire, by the commandment of Your Majestie, we have set down briefely and truly that which wee have found in our visiting of Martha Brossier.... We present the same unto Your Majestie without any art, without any painted show, without any flourish, but with a naked Simplicitie, the faithful companion of Truth, which you have desired from us in this matter and which you have always loved and curiously sought.” The Report then continues: “We the undersigned Doctors Regents in the facultie of physicke in the Universitie of Paris, touching the matter of Martha Brossier, a maide of the age of two-and-twenty yeres or thereabouts, born at Romorantin in Berry, who was brought unto us in the chappel of my Lord of Saint Genefue [Geneviève], and who we saw sometimes in constitution, countenance and speech as a person sounde of bodie and minde, ... do say in our consciences, and certify that which followeth: that all which is before set down (referring to the character of her fits) must be referred to one of these three causes—sicknesse, counterfeiting, or diabolicall possession. For the opinion that it proceedeth from sicknesse, we are clerely excluded from that, for the agitations and motions we observed therein doe retain nothing of the nature of sickness, nay not of those diseases whereunto of the first sight they might have resembled; it being neither an epilepsie or falling sickness, which always supposes the loss of sense and judgment, nor the passion which we call hysterica, ... nor any of the foure motions proceeding from diseases, that is to say, shivering, trembling, panting, and convulsion, or indeede if there doe appeare any convulsion; and that a man will so call the turning up of her eyes, the gnashing of her teeth, the writhing of her chaps (which are almost ordinarie with this maide while she is in her fittes); the confidence which the priest hath when he openeth her mouth, and holdeth it open with his finger within it, testifying sufficiently that they doe not proceede from, nor are caused by, any disease, considering that in diseases he that hath a convulsion is not master of that part or member wherein it is, having neither any power of election or command over it, and particularly which is in the convulsion of the jawes, which is most violent of all the rest, the finger of the priest should bee no more respected nor spared than the finger of any other man. Moreover, diseases, and the motions also of diseases (especially those that are violent), leave the body feeble, the visage pale, and the breath panting. This maide, at the end of her fittes, was found to be as little moved and changed in pulse, colour, countenance, and breath, as ever she was before; yea, which is the more to be noted, as little at the end of her exorcisme as at the beginning, at evening as in the morning, at the last day as at the first. Touching the point of counterfeiting, the insensibilitie of her bodie during her extasies and furies, tried by the deepe prickings of long pinnes, which were thrust into divers parts of her hands, and afterwards plucked out againe, without any show that ever she made of feeling the same, either in the putting in of them, or the taking out of them, a griefe which, without majicke and without speech, could not, in our opinion, be indured, without any countenance or show thereof, neither by the constancie of the most courageous, nor by the stoutnesse of the most wicked, nor by the stronge conceit of the most criminall malefactores, took from us almost the suspicion of it, but much more persuaded us from that opinion, the thin and slender foam that in her mad fits we saw issue out of her mouth, which she had no means to be abel to counterfeit. And yet more than all this, the very consideration before mentioned of the little or no change at all that was seene in her person after all these most sharpe and very long pangs, (a thing which nobody in the world did ever trie in their most moderate exercises,) we are driven, even till this houre, by all the lawes of discourse and knowledge, yea, and almost forced to beleeve that this maide is a demoniacke, and the Devill dwelling in her is the Author of these effects. If wee had seen that which my Lord of St. Genefue and many others doe report,—that this maide was lifted up into the ayre more than four foote above five or six strong persons that held her,—it would have been an argument to us of an extraordinarie power, over and beyond the common nature and condition of man. But not being presente at that wonder, we doe give a testamonie of our knowledge, which is as much or rather more admirable than that force and power was, viz., that being demanded, and in her exercising commanded, my Lord of Paris furnishing the priest with questions and interrogatories, this maide divers and sundrie times, by many persons of qualitie and worthie of credit, was seene and heard to obey and answere to purpose, not only in the Latin tongue, (wherein it had not been impertinent peradventure to have suspected some collusion,) but also in Greeke and in English, and that upon the sudden. She did, we say once againe, understande the Greeke and English languages, wherein we beleeve, as it is very likely that she was never studied, so that there was no collusion used with her, neither could she invent or imagine the interpretations thereof. It resteth, therefore, even in the judgment of Aristotle in the like case, that they were inspired unto her.” The Report then concludes with this solemn declaration: “By reason whereof, and considering also, under correction, that Saint Luke, who was both a physician and an evangelist, describing the persons out of whose bodies our Lord and his apostles did drive the devils left unto us, none other or any greater signes than those which wee think wee have seene in this case, wee are the more induced and almost confirmed to beleeve and to conclude as before, taking God for a Witness of our consciences in the matter. Made at Paris, this 3rd April, 1599.”
On this Report, as may be gathered from the tractate referred to, it is evident and notorious that the physicians Marescot, Ellain, Haulin, Riolan, and Duet, were all men of scientific attainments and unimpeachable moral integrity; the same facts were also witnessed and formally attested by the Bishop of Paris, the Abbot of Geneviève, and other competent observers.
Another case, that of a girl named Anne Millner, or Mylner, of Chester, about the year 1564, deserves consideration. The record here given is taken from a pamphlet of considerable interest.[85] Some curious facts connected with it are attested by Sir William Calverley, Sir William Sneyd, Lady Calverley, and other persons of distinction who then lived at Chester. The description of the paroxysm is extremely graphic:—“We went,” says the Report, which is signed by the above-named persons, “at about two of the clocke in the afternoone of the same 16th day of February and there found the mayden in her traunce, after her accustomed manner lying in a bed within the haule, her eyes half shut, half open, looking as she had been agast, never moving either eye or eyelid, her teeth something open, with her tongue doubling betweene, her face somewhat red, her head as heavy as leade to lift at; there she laid, still as a stone, and feeling her pulse it beat in as good measure as if she had been in perfect health.” The Report then describes her becoming violently convulsed: “She lifted herself up in her bed, bending backwards in such order that almost her head and fete met, falling down on the one side, then on the other.” A person of the name of Lane, who was reputed to possess great power over demoniacs, was then called in, who first, as the Report expresses it, “willed” that she should speak, and then “willed” that she should rise and dress herself, all which she did, to the astonishment of the bystanders; and a Certificate to that effect was signed by all present on March 8, 1564.
In Lancashire seven persons belonging to one family were reputed to be under the direct influence of evil spirits, or in a certain state of bewitchment, exhibiting signs of demoniacal possession. The pamphlet, the title of which is given below,[86] puts on record what in this case is reported to have occurred: “These possessed persons had every one something peculiar to herselfe which none of the rest did shew, and that so rare and straunge that all the people were obliged to confesse it was the worke of an evil spirit within them; so had they many things in common, and were handled for the most part in their fittes alike.... They had all every one very straunge visions, they heard hideous and fearful voices of spirits sundrie times and did make marveilous answers back againe ... they were in their fits ordinarilie holden in that captivity and bondage, that for an houre, two, or three, and longer time they should neither see, heare, nor taste, nor feel nothing but the divells, they employing them wholly for themselves, vexing and tormenting them so extreameley as that for the present they could feel no other paine or torture that could bee offered; no, though you should plucke an ear from the heade or an arm from the bodie. They had also a marveilous sore heaving as if their hearts would burst, so that with violent straining some of them vomitted bloude many times. They were all of them verry fierce, offering violence both to themselves and others, whereine they shewed verie greate and extraordinarie strength. They were out of their right mind, without the use of their senses, expecially voyd of feiling: as much sense in a stock as one of them, or as possible, in a manner, to quicken a dead man as to alter or chaunge them in their traunces in anything they either saide or did. They in their fittes had divers parts and members of their bodies so striffe and stretched out as were inflexible or very hard to be bended. They shewed very great and extraordinarie knowledge, as may appeare by the straunge things saide and done by them, according to that which we have already set down in the particulars. They ever after their fittes were as well as might be, and felt very little or no paine at all, although they had been never so sore tormented immediately before.”
The strange and singular violence of the convulsions in those who were under the influence of Witchcraft, is brought out in almost all the records of such cases, notably in those which occurred during the Great Rebellion,[87] and specially in the case of Anne Styles, who was executed at Salisbury in 1653.
The narrative states that she was so strong in her fits that six men or more could not hold her, but while suffering under most grievous hurrying and tortures of the body, the witch being only brought into the room, she fell asleep and slept for three hours, so fast that when they would have awakened her they could not.[88] The insensibility of the body in this state, we are informed by Increase Mather, led to a cruel test for demoniacal possession. There was a notorious Witchfinder, he observes, “in Scotland, who undertook by a pin to make an infallible discovery of suspected persons, whether they were witches or not. If, when the pin was run an inch or two into the body of the accused party no blood appeared nor any sense of pain, he declared them to be witches, by means of which no less than three hundred persons were condemned for witchcraft in that country.”[89]
In a small but curious tractate entitled “Daimonomagia,” the effects of Witchcraft are maintained to be a disease. The definition of it stands thus:—“A disease of witchcraft is a sickness that arises from strange and preternatural causes, and from diabolical power in the use of strange and ridiculous ceremonies by witches or necromancers, afflicting with strange and unaccustomed symptoms, and commonly preternaturally violent, very seldom, or not at all, curable by natural remedies.” Then follow the diagnostical signs, amongst which are insensibility, convulsions, together with a preternatural knowledge both of living and dead languages, and after these the causes of witchcraft. Biernannus and Wierius, two authorities on the subject, find that aspect and contact do not necessarily bewitch; but witches sometimes try to bewitch another of the same family. Lastly, as regards the cure, directions are provided by which the wizard, witch, or necromancer is to be compelled to use certain dark ceremonies for the cure of the bewitched.
In the year 1658, a woman named Jane Brookes was tried, condemned, and executed at Chard in Somersetshire. The indictment against her was that she had bewitched Richard the son of Henry Jones, of Shepton Mallet in that county. Numberless persons of all ranks and classes, including both clergymen and physicians, witnessed his sufferings and paroxysms; while the direct influence of the woman indicted was fully apparent and abundantly proved. “The boy,” as the Rev. Joseph Glanville,[90] one of the chaplains of King Charles II. writes, “fell into his fitts at the sight of Jane Brookes and lay in a man’s arms like a dead person; the woman was then willed to lay on her hand, which she did, and he thereupon started and sprung out in a very unusual manner. One of the justices, to prevent all possibilities of legerdemain, caused Gibson and the rest to stand off from the boy, and then that justice himself held him. The youth being blindfolded, the justice called as if Brookes should touch him, but winked to others to do it, which two or three successively did, but the boy appeared not concerned. The justice then called on the father to take him, but had privately before desired one Mr. Geoffrey Strode to bring Jane Brookes to touch him at such a time as he should call for his father, which was done, and the boy immediately sprang out after a very odd and violent fashion. He was afterwards touched by several persons and moved not, but Jane Brookes being again caused to put her hand upon him he started and sprung up twice as before. All this while he remained in his fit and some time after, and being then laid on a bed in the same room, the people present could not for a long time bow either of his arms or legs.”
It appears tolerably evident that the boy, when under the influence of his fits, owned a faculty not unlike that of clairvoyance. As regards Jane Brookes and her sister, he seems to have had the capacity to describe them accurately wherever they might have been. As the Report declares, “He would tell the clothes and habits they were in at the time, exactly as the constable and others have found them on repairing to them, although Brookes’ house was a good distance from Jones’: this they often tried, and always found the boy right in his description.”[91]
From the same volume, the main facts of which seem to be admitted by competent authority, a woman named Elizabeth Style of Bayford was indicted for bewitching a girl named Elizabeth Hill, thirteen years of age. In this case the formal deposition of three credible witnesses attests that “during her fits, her strength was encreased beyond the proportion of nature, and the force of divers men. Furthermore, in one fit she foretold when she would have the next, which happened accordingly.”
The case of the “Surey Demoniac,” as he was termed, which was set forth at length in a publication issued in London towards the close of the seventeenth century,[92] is certainly worthy of being noticed here. In the year 1697 a youth of nineteen years of age, named Richard Dugdale, excited great attention; it being generally believed that he was possessed by an evil spirit, as the direct consequence of Witchcraft. His paroxysms were witnessed by numerous clergymen, physicians, and persons of respectability and rank; and caused an amount of interest and excitement which can scarcely be realized.[93] His fits commenced with violent convulsions; his sight or eyeballs turned upward and backwards; he afterwards answered questions; predicted during one fit the period of accession and duration of another fit; spoke in foreign languages, of which at other times he was ignorant, and described events passing at a distance with singular and recognized accuracy. Here again the word of narration is quoted at length:—“At the end of one fit the demoniac told what hour of the night or day his next [fit] would begin, very precisely and punctually, as was constantly observed, though there was no equal or set distance of time between his fits; betwixt which there would be, sometimes a few hours, sometimes many, sometimes one day, sometimes many days.” “He would have told you,” one of the deponents asserts on oath, “when his fits would begin, when they were two or three in one day, or three or four days asunder, wherein he never was, that the deponent knoweth of, disappointed.” On one occasion, when the minister was addressing him, he exclaimed, “At ten o’clock my next fit comes on.” “Though he was never learned in the English tongue, and his natural and acquired abilities were very ordinary, yet, when the fit seized him, he often spake Latin, Greek, and other languages very well.... He often told of things in his fits done at a distance, whilst those things were a-doing,—as, for instance, a woman being afraid to go to the barn, though she was come within a bow’s length of it, was immediately sent for by the demoniac, who said, ‘Unless that weak-faithed jade come, my fits will last longer.’ Some said, ‘Let us send for Mr. G——.’ The demoniac answered, ‘He is now upon the hay-cart,’ which was found to be true.... On another occasion he told what great distress there was in Ireland, and that England must ‘pay the piper.’ Again, one going by him to a church meeting, was told by the demoniac in his fit, ‘Thou needest not go to the said meeting, for I can tell thee the sermon that will be preached there,’ upon which he told him the text and much of the sermon that was that day preached.” Lastly, it is certified by two of the deponents that “the demoniac could not certainly judge what the nature of his distemper was; because when he was out of his fits, he could not tell how it was with him when he was in his fits.”
From another publication[94] we gather that, in the case of Florence Newton, an Irishwoman, who was charged with bewitching Mary Longdon, when the sufferer and the accused were both in court, and the evidence against the person charged was being concluded, the prisoner at the bar simply looked at the woman reputed to be under her influence, and made certain motions of her hands towards her, upon which we are told that “the maid fell into most violent fits, so that all the people that could lay hands on her could scarcely hold her.”
Quaint as these records are, peculiar in their literary style, singularly simple and homely in their subject-matter as to details, and tinged, it may be, not infrequently with the exaggerated superstitions of the times, it is impossible that so many persons of all ranks and classes—the highest as well as the lowest—eye-witnesses of facts, could have been so utterly mistaken as to the Supernatural character of Witchcraft, or so deluded as to its true nature and import. Some writers have hastily and erroneously asserted that at the close of the seventeenth century the arraigning and trying of witches came to an end. But this is not so.[95] In 1712, Judge Parker (who succeeded Chief Justice Holt,) put a check upon the so-called “trial by water,” by his charge at the Essex Summer Assizes of that year. Three years later, however, in 1715, Elizabeth Treslar was hung and then burnt for Witchcraft on Northampton Heath.
The following account (extracted verbatim et literatim) is taken from a rare and curious tract[96] published early in the eighteenth century, containing an account of the trial, examination, and condemnation of two witches named Shaw and Phillips in the year 1705. One or two sentences of the old narrative are two coarse for quotation; but substantially the contemporary account is reprinted, following its old typographical form:—
“On Wednesday the 7th of this Instant March 1705, being the second day of the Assizes held at Northampton: One Ellinor Shaw and Mary Phillips[97] (two notorious Witches), were brought into court and there Arraign’d at the Bar upon several Indictments of Witchcraft; particularly for Bewitching and Tormenting in a Diabolical manner, the Wife of Robert Wise of Benefield in the said County, till she Dyed; as also for Killing by Witchcraft and wicked Facination one Elizabeth Gorham of Glapthorn, a Child of about four years of Age, in the said County of Northampton; as also for Bewitching to death one Charles Ireland of Southwick in the said County; to which Indictment the two said Prisoners pleaded not Guilty and there upon put themselves upon their Tryals as followeth:—
“The first Evidence against them was one Widdow Peak, who deposed that she with two other Women, undertook to Watch the same Prisoners after they had been Apprehended; and that about Midnight there appeared in the Room a little white Thing about the Bigness of a Cat, which sat upon Mary Phillips’ Lap, at which time she heard her, the said Mary Phillips, say, then pointing to Ellinor Shaw, that she was the Witch that Killed Mrs. Wise by Roasting her Effiges in Wax, sticking it full of Pinns, and till it was all wasted, and all this she affirm’d was done the same Night Mrs. Wise Dyed in a sad and languishing Condition. Mrs. Evans deposed that when Mrs. Wise first was taken Ill, that she saw Ellinor Shaw look out at the Window (it being opposite to her House), at Which time she heard her say, ‘I have done her Business now I am sure; this Night Ill send the old Devil a New Year’s Gift’ (next day being New year’s Day), and well knowing this Ellinor Shaw to be a reputed Witch, was so much concern’d at her Words that she went then to see how Mrs. Wise did, Where she found her Tormented with such Pains, as exceeding those of a Woman in Travel, which Encreased to such a terrible Degree that she Expired about 12 of the clock to the great amasement of all her Neighbours.
“Another Evidence made Oath that Ellinor Shaw and Mary Phillips being one day at her house they told her she was a Fool to live so Miserable as she did, and therefore if she was willing, they would send some thing that Night that would Relieve her, and being an ignorant Woman she consented; and accordingly the same Night two little black Things, almost like Moles came into her bed ... repeating the same for two or three Nights after, till she was almost frightened out of her Sences [sic] insomuch that she was forced to send for Mr. Danks the Minister, to Pray by her several nights before the said Imps would leave her: She also added that she heard the said Prisoners say that they would be Revenged on Mrs. Wise because she would not give them some Buttermilk.
“Mrs. Todd of Southwick deposed that Charles Ireland being a Boy of about 12 years of Age, was taken with Strange Fitts about Christmas last, continuing so by Intervals till twelf Day last, at which time he Barked like a Dogg, and when he was Recovered and come to himself, he would Distinctly describe Ellinor Shaw and Mary Phillips, affirming them two to be the Authors of his Misfortunes, though he never saw them in his Life; so that Mrs. Ireland, the Boy’s mother, was advised to Cork up some ... in a stone Bottle filled full of Pins and Needles, and to Bury it under the Fire Hearth; which being done accordingly, the two said Witches could not be quiet till they came to the same House and desired to have the said Bottle taken up, which was not granted, till they had confessed the Matter, and promised never to do so again; but for all this the Next night but one, the said Boy was so violently Handled, that he Dyed in two Hours time; and this Woman’s Testimoney was confirm’d by five or six other Evidences at the same time.
“The said Witches were Try’d a third time for Bewitching to Death Elizabeth Gorham of Glapthorne on the 10th of February last, as also for killing several Horses, Hogs, and Sheep, being the Goods of Matthew Gorham, Father of the said Child aforesaid. The Evidence against them to prove all this, was William Boss and John Southwel; who deposed that being Constables of the said Town, they were Charged with the said Prisoners in their Custody, who threatning them with Death if they did not Confess, and promising them to let them go if they would Confess; after some little Whineing and Hanging about one another’s Necks they both made this Confession:—
“‘That living in one house together they contracted with the Devil about a Year ago to sell their Souls to him, upon condition he would enable them to do what Mischief they desired against whom they pleased, either in Body, Goods, or Children; upon which the same Night they had each of them three Imps sent them as they were going to Bed, and at the same instant the Devil appeared to them in the shape of a tall black Man, and told them that these Imps would always be at their Service, either to kill Man, Woman, Child, Hog, Cow, Ship, [i.e. Sheep] or any other Creature, when they pleased to command them, provided ... which being agree’d to, the Devil came to Bed to them Both.... And that the next morning they sent four of their Imps to kill two Horses of one John Webb of the said Town of Glapthorne, because he openly said they were Witches; and accordingly the Horses were found dead in a Pond the same day; and two Days after this, they Kill’d four great Hoggs after the same manner, belonging to Matthew Gorham, because he said they both look’d like Witches, and not thinking this Revenge sufficient, the next day after, they sent two Imps a piece to destroy his Child, being a little Girle of about four years of Age, which was done accordingly in 24 Hours’ time, notwithstanding all the Skill and Endeavour of able Doctors to preserve it. They further confessed that if the said Imps were not constantly imploy’d to do Mischief they had not their Healths, but when they were imploy’d they were very Healthful and Well. They further added, that the said Imps did often tell them in the Night-time in a hollow whispering low voice, which they plainly understood, that they should never feel Hell Tormēts, and they had Kill’d a Horse and two Cows of one Widow Broughton because she deny’d them some Pea-cods last year, for which they had also struck her Daughter with Lameness, which would never be cured as long as either of them Liv’d, and accordingly she had continued so ever since.’
“The above said Evidence further deposed that having thus extorted the said Confession from the prisoners, they persuaded them to set their Hands to it, which was done accordingly, tho’ with very much difficulty, upon which the said Confession was produced in Court, and the Witness’s to it Examin’d, who all deposed upon Oath that the said Confession was made in their Hearing, and that they saw the said reputed Witches set their Marks to it in the presence of ten Witnesses.
“Upon which the said Prisoners were desired by the Court to declare wheather they own’d the said Confession and the Marks thereunto Affixed or not, to which they both answered in the Negative; and thereupon made such a Howling and lamentable Noise as never was heard before to the amusement of the Whole Court, and Deny’d every particular that was laid to their Charge: but the Court having heard the matter of Fact so positively asserted against them by several Evidences, and above all by their own Confessions, that after having given a Larned [sic] Charge to the Jury relating to every particular Circumstance, they brought them in both Guilty of wilful Murther and Witchcraft, and accordingly the next day the Court was pleased to pronounce sentence of Death upon them, that is to say, To be Hang’d till they are almost Dead, and then surrounded with Faggots Pitch and other Combustable matter, which being set on fire their Bodies are to be consumed to Ashes.”
In the month of March, 1711-12, another woman, Jane Wenham by name[98] (formally charged with bewitching Anne Thorne, Anne Street, and others), was tried at the Assizes at Hertford, and received sentence of death. The case was heard before Sir Henry Chauncey. Before the grand jury the depositions of sixteen witnesses were taken; one of whom deposed that Jane Wenham confessed to him that she had practised Witchcraft during sixteen years. On one occasion when the girl whom she had afflicted was in one of her paroxysms, we are informed that a very ingenious gentleman and able physician happened to be present, his curiosity bringing him a little out of his way to inquire into the truth of the story of this witch, which he had heard several ways told, as things of this nature generally are. When he saw her in a fit, which was one of the least she ever had, he tried whether he could bring her out of it without prayers. He took a great feather, which burning he held under the maid’s nose, and though the stink was so great that we were not able to bear it in the room, yet the maid received the strong steam into her nose without being the least affected by it and without perceiving it, as far as we could perceive. The physician then felt her pulse and assured them that “it was no natural disease under which the maid laboured, that it must be counterfeit or preternatural; but,” observes the author of this account, “that she should counterfeit even death itself one minute and restore herself to health the very next, and that she should put herself to all this trouble for no manner of pleasure or profit, is so very inconceivable and so wholly unaccountable, that I must needs say I shall never have faith enough to believe such a heap of absurdities.” (p. 33.)
The undoubted insensibility of the girl was tested in a very practical but remarkably barbarous manner. One of the members of the Family of Chauncey “ran a pin into her arm six or seven times, and finding she never winced for it, but held her arm as still as if nothing had been done to it, and seeing no blood come, he ran it in a great many times more; still no blood came; but she stood talking and never minded it. Then, again, he ran it in several times more. At last he left it in her arm that all the company might see it, run up to the head.” (p. 19.)
The record of these cases also contains the following:—
“There are also some things in which the fits of Mary Longdon and Anne Thorn agree, particularly the great strength of the afflicted when in a fit, so great that three or four men could hardly hold ’em down, but there is one very remarkable difference, which I doubt not my readers have already taken notice of, viz. that this Mary Longdon was always worse of her fits whenever Florence Newton came in the room; whereas Anne Thorn constantly recovered from hers at the touch of the witch. And yet I think these different appearances may be accounted for [in] different ways. It is not reasonable to suppose that either of those alterations in the afflicted came to pass by the consent or procurement of the witches themselves, who could not but perceive that they served as strong circumstances against them, but this was done by the overruling providence of Almighty God to convict these miserable creatures; and either of these ways might do as well as the other, since it is equally surprising to see one in perfect health fall into such terrible fits at the sight of any one person, as to see another recover out of such fits by the bare touch of the suspected witch, both of them tending only to the discovery of the criminal.” (pp. 17, 18.)
As to certain of the characteristics and evidences of Witchcraft, Increase Mather in his “Cases of Conscience” writes as follows. What he sets forth, and what is now to be quoted, serves to show not only the kind of evidence as to facts which was then forthcoming, but also to afford information as to the current sentiment of his own period: “As for that which concerns the bewitched persons being recovered out of their agonies by the touch of the suspected party, it is various and fallible; sometimes the afflicted person is made sick instead of being made whole by the touch of the accused; sometimes the power of imagination is such as that the touch of a person innocent and not accused shall have the same effect. Bodin relates that a witch who was tried at Nantes was commanded by the judges to touch a bewitched person, a thing often practised by the judges of Germany in the Imperial Chamber. The witch was extremely unwilling, but being compelled by the judges, she cried out, I am undone, and as soon as ever she touched the afflicted person the witch fell down dead. I think,” continues Mather, “that there is weight in Dr. Cottar’s argument, viz. that the power of healing the sick and possessed was a special grace and favour of God for the confirmation of the truth of the Gospel; but that such a gift should be annexed to the touch of wicked witches, as an infallible sign of their guilt is not easy to be believed. It is a thing well known, that if a person possessed by an evil spirit is (as oft it happens) never so outrageous whilst a good man is praying with and for the afflicted, let him lay his hand on them and the evil spirit is quiet.”
The cases already referred to took place in England. A brief reference may be here made to two examples which caused considerable sensation in Scotland,—a country where the belief in Witchcraft was in times past almost universal; and where, even still, the clear statements of Holy Scripture on the subject are neither explained away, scoffed at, nor disbelieved:—
In the year 1696 a commission was appointed in Scotland by the Lords of his Majesty’s Privy Council, to inquire into the case of Christian Shaw, daughter of John Shaw of Bargarran, and the accused persons confronted before Lord Blantyre, the rest of the commissioners, several others gentlemen of note and ministers, the accused and in particular Catherine Campbell were examined in the presence of the commissioners. “When they [the accused] severally touched the afflicted girl, says the Report, she was seized with grevious fits and cast into intolerable agonies; others then present did also touch her, but no such effects followed, and it is remarkable that when Catherine Campbell touched the girle she was immediately seized with more grevious fittes and cast into more intolerable torments than upon the touch of other accused persons, whereat Campbell herself being daunted and confounded, though she had formerly declined to bless her, uttered these words, ‘The Lord of heaven and earth bless thee and save thee both body and soul.’”[99]
During these trials we are informed that the “prisoners were called in, one by one, and placed about seven or eight feet from the justices and accusers; then, stood between the justices and them, the prisoners were ordered to stand right before the justices, with an officer appointed to hold each hand, lest they should herewith afflict them, and the prisoners’ eyes must be constantly on the justices, for if they looked on the afflicted they would either fall into fitts or cry out they were much hurt by them.”
“On the trial of Bridget Bishops,” it is further added that, “the indictment being drawn up according to form, it was testified at the examination of the prisoner before the magistrates that the bewitched were extremely tortured. If she did but cast her eye on them they were presently cast down, and this in such a manner that there could be no collusion in the business. But upon the touch of her hand upon them when they lay in their swoones they would immediately revive, and not upon the touch of anyone else. Moreover, upon the special actions of her body, as the shaking of her head or the turning up of her eyes, they presently fell into the same postures, and many of the like accidents fell out while she was at the bar.”[100]
Most curious are the various details of the trials thus far referred to. And certain of them may be regarded as trivial, if not absurd and ridiculous. Nevertheless it should be our careful aim to distinguish between those facts which were formally, regularly, and clearly established by positive evidence, and the personal fancies, superstitions, notions and wild ideas which may possibly accompany the reports of them. Of course exaggerations may have been made, and impositions not unfrequently practised; but in the forcible words of Joseph Glanville, we should remember that “frequency of deceit and fallacy will warrant a greater care and caution in examining, and a greater scrupulosity and shyness of assent to, things wherein fraud hath been practised, or may in the least degree be suspected; but to conclude that, because an old woman’s fancy hath abused her, or some knavish fellow hath put tricks on the ignorant and timorous, therefore whole assizes have been deceived in judgment upon matters of fact, and that numbers of persons have been forsworn in things wherein perjury could not advantage them, I say such inferences are as void of charity as of good manners.... In things of fact the people are as much to be believed as the most subtle philosophers and speculators, since their sense is the judge, but in matters of notion and theory they are not at all to be heeded, because Reason is to be the judge of these, and this they know not how to use.”[101]
It must be frankly admitted that these records of trials—of which there are such numerous examples in print—often contain principles and details of a most disagreeable and offensive nature. They have been quoted at some length, however, in order to point out exactly what for many years was currently believed with regard to Witchcraft; and whatever fanciful additions were made, or whatever superstitious garnishings were added to such accounts, by the ignorant or half-informed, there can be little doubt that, after all reasonable deductions had been made, there was a considerable substratum of truth underlying each of them, which ought not to be ignored, and which cannot, on any satisfactory theory, be reasonably explained away.
In certain cases the subject of Witchcraft had a somewhat wide and vague meaning. It not unfrequently covered the practices of all the so-called “occult sciences,” just as in the “Book of Daniel,” “the magicians, the astrologers,[102] the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers,” classed together, were together consulted; so it seems to have been in ancient times in places, and amongst people who practised Witchcraft and Necromancy. Invocations of the dead; the use of charms; watching the flight of birds; “reading the stars;” interpreting dreams, and foretelling future events by the aid of evil spirits, were all practices which, in a somewhat vague but popular phraseology, came under the class of sins of the nature of those directly condemned in Holy Scripture.
One or two further remarks may be added upon the general subject. From the amount of evidence which exists, it is impossible to deny that such a power as Witchcraft has been frequently exercised, and consequently may be put into practice again. It is idle to assert that it is a mere moral epidemic, at least for those who take up a Christian standing-point, and do not deny both the Inspiration of Holy Scripture and the Indefectibility and Infallibility of the Church Universal, as well as, and in addition to, well-authenticated historical facts. The practice of Witchcraft has, of course, been more ordinary in countries which are not Catholic;[103] for example in Scotland, Sweden, Germany, and North America; though, of necessity it prevailed very largely with many in England from the period of the Reformation until the beginning of the eighteenth century, as has been already sufficiently shown. Thus, many who refused to hear, and abide by, the message and guidance of Holy Church; who rejected the miracles and mercies of the Almighty, were sometimes too ready to accept as true, and participate in the weird works of necromancers, and sometimes to be duped by the Prince of darkness, through the active instrumentality of his human agents.[104]
Without, at this point of our general argument, trenching unduly on a detail of the subject in its most recent developments, which is carefully considered at some length in later chapters, it may be well to give a single example perfectly accurate and most satisfactorily authenticated.
Here it is:—The friend of a distinguished Scotch peer wished for certain important and valuable information, which in any ordinary, usual, and common modes he was, it appears, altogether unable to obtain. He therefore thought it right and proper to consult a “spiritual medium,” and so held a consultation, made an inquiry, and obtained a response. The following is the authenticated record of this action:—
“A friend of mine was very anxious to find the Will of his grandmother, who had been dead forty years, but could not even find the certificate of her death. I went with him to the Marshall’s[105] and we had a séance; we sat at a table, and soon the raps came; my friend then asked his questions mentally; he went over the alphabet himself, or sometimes I did so, not knowing the question. We were told [that] the Will had been drawn by a man named William Walter, who lived in Whitechapel; the name of the street and the number of the house were given. We went to Whitechapel, found the man, and subsequently, through his aid obtained a copy of the draft; he was quite unknown to us, and had not always lived in that locality, for he had once seen better days. The medium could not possibly have known anything about the matter, and even if she had, her knowledge would have been of no avail, as all the questions were mental ones.”[106]
The specific features of this account are so obvious and well defined, and the account itself is so remarkably clear in all its various parts, that nothing more needs to be added, than the simple remark, that if the old and false principles of Witchcraft and Necromancy are not here again present and energizing (only appropriately and properly draped in a nineteenth-century garment, and carefully adapted to the tastes of refined and educated people), it would be well to find some other principle by which this, and thousands of other similar cases may be rationally and openly explained and accounted for, and this from the standing-point of a firm belief in Historical Christianity.
From the point of view from which this book is written, it may be reasonably maintained that recent “spiritual manifestations,” as they are termed, are very possibly only another mode by which in an age of superior civilization the Prince of the Power of the air, adapting his delusions to the less coarse tastes and sentiments of his anxious clients and inquiring followers, produces “lying wonders,” false miracles, and delusive appearances; or unlawfully reveals secrets, affords information in the present, and gives, or pretends to give, revelations as to the future.
Many persons in the present day are ready enough (as well they may be,) to become eloquent on the trivial absurdities and vulgar (too often dark and obscene) contrivances of the Witchcraft of the seventeenth century. Be it so. But perhaps, after all, the system as then worked was both skilfully, intellectually, and well enough adapted for the purposes and aims which its author had in hand. If the coarse-minded and uneducated of those days so readily became its agents and workers, coarseness and ignorance were reasonably and suitably, and perhaps of necessity, used in its operations. Now, however, the persistent Enemy of mankind, “the Old Serpent,”[107] appears to have adopted quite another course of tactics, less coarse it may be, and less revolting (in some particulars) to the sentimental and shallow, but equally efficacious for his diabolical purposes and eventual success. Where Witchcraft was formerly practised by ten persons, its new and more attractive phase, it is to be feared, is now accepted by thousands. All this, and more, may be gathered later on, when the subject of “Modern Spiritualism” is duly considered.
DREAMS, OMENS, WARNINGS, PRESENTIMENTS,
AND SECOND SIGHT.
“And how will those modern wits, of which our age is so full, account for this, who allow no God or Providence, no invisible world, no angelic kind and waking spirits, who, by a secret correspondence with our embodied spirits, give merciful hints to us of approaching mischief and impending dangers; and that timely, so as to put the means into our hands to avoid and escape them?”—History and Reality of Apparitions, by Andrew Moreton, Esq., p. 218. London: 1735.
“The Soul’s dark cottage, batter’d and decay’d,
Lets in new light through chinks which Time hath made.”
Edmund Waller.
“All who read this, I exhort in the Name of the Most Sacred Majesty of our Most Blessed King, Jesus Christ, to be extremely suspicious of all such extraordinary appearances, presentiments, trances and predictions; to examine well and minutely everything; not to look upon those books, which even pious souls in such a state have written, unconditionally as a divine revelation; and not to believe their predictions, but to be persuaded, that though some things may be fulfilled, others may not.”—J. H. Jung-Stilling, On Forebodings. London: 1834.
DREAMS, OMENS, WARNINGS, PRESENTIMENTS, AND SECOND SIGHT.
he subjects here set forth for consideration (by which no slight progress will be made in exhibiting such facts as serve to unfold and make manifest more plainly the purpose of this treatise), are very wide in their scope. A large volume might with no great difficulty be compiled upon each separate subject; for the examples of remarkable dreams and supernatural omens which are already on record, are exceedingly numerous,[108] while the warnings and presentiments of danger and death, which are still often vouchsafed, have been so notably providential in their purport, that many of the mercifully-bestowed Glimpses of the Supernatural, brought before the Editor’s notice, can only be attributed generally to the goodness of Almighty God, and particularly either to the intercession of His Saints, the effectual fervent prayers of those still in the flesh, or the direct intervention of His Holy Angels, the guardians and guides of Christians.
Some dreams, especially those of an ordinary character, appear to consist of the mere revival of old memories and associations regarding persons and events which have long passed out of the mind, and seem to have been forgotten. It is often quite impossible to trace the manner in which, or the method by which, dreams arise; and certainly many of the facts connected with them do not appear referable to any coherent principle with which it may truly be said that man is perfectly acquainted. They are mysterious; they are strange; they are supernatural. At the same time it is impossible not to remember how frequently the sacred and divine writings record examples of dreams, by which the Will of God was directly made known of old to some of His favoured servants. The case of King Abimelech, warned against taking Abraham’s wife (whom he had untruly called his sister), is an early instance in point.[109] So, too, are the warnings and directions given by Almighty God to Jacob and Laban. The dreams of Joseph likewise illustrate the principle which may be readily discovered and comprehended by the help of Scripture, viz. that some dreams, whatever others may be, are certainly from God, and ought not to be disregarded. For the Almighty expressly pledged Himself to make known His Will to His prophets both by dreams and in visions.[110] And it was by the former that He appeared to Solomon, graciously and mercifully offering him a response to any request he might make. “Ask what I shall give thee.” The dreams and visions of Daniel, the Hebrew Prophet, likewise of S. Joseph of Nazareth, both with regard to the Blessed Virgin and the malice of Herod; the warning dreams of the Three Eastern Kings; that of Pilate’s wife, and others equally remarkable, are familiar to us all. So that, whatever theories may be excogitated by some, it is impossible for Christians to hold any novel and fantastic ideas, which would sweep away those links which in dreams and visions may still bind together the natural with the supernatural, and by which, from time to time, in the present day, warnings and necessary lessons may sometimes be mercifully vouchsafed and imparted.
A considerable difficulty has been experienced by the Editor, not only in testing recent examples which have been brought before him, but in inducing those who supplied him with them, to allow the use and support of their names.[111] In the cases to be given, he has spared no reasonable trouble in their investigation; and, where they are not matters of history (received and recognized by those who are satisfied with an application of the ordinary laws of evidence), the reader may rely on the fact that they have not been embodied in this volume without the most anxious inquiry and careful sifting of their truth and accuracy.
Thus much as to his purport and intent. Now let the examples of remarkable dreams be put on record; after a brief reference has been made to the belief and expressions of opinion of certain early Christian writers, obviously formulated upon the basis of scriptural assertions and sacred examples of old.
When the body sleeps, as Tertullian remarks,[112] it takes its own peculiar refreshment, but that refreshment not being adapted to the soul, which does not rest, she during the inactivity of the bodily members employs her own. Then in his treatise “On the Soul,”[113] he proceeds to distinguish between the hallucination of dreaming and insanity. Dreaming is agreeable to the course and order of Nature, he maintains; but he rejects the doctrine of Epicurus, in which dreams are disparaged as idle and fortuitous. He further expresses his conviction that future honours, dignities, medical remedies, thefts and treasure have been revealed by dreams—testimonies to which are both numerous and strong. Many dreams, specially those which are vain, frivolous, impure, and turbulent, may be attributed to demons. Others, again, proceed from God or holy angels, as one portion of prophecy.
Lactantius, in a short passage of his well-known “Tract,”[114] expresses his conviction of divine agency in dreams. He maintains that the undoubted testimony of History presents mankind with several most remarkable verifications of dreams; and he repeats what Tertullian had already maintained, viz. that part of the economy of prophecy depends upon them. He holds that Virgil’s evidence may be admitted, that dreams are neither always true nor always false.
Again, S. Cyprian states that he was divinely instructed in a dream to mix a little water with the wine for the Holy Eucharist.[115] On the general subject, S. Basil warns those who may be ready to attribute too great importance to dreams, to rest contented with the written revelation of Almighty God in Holy Scripture.[116] S. Bernard, the last of the Fathers, treats of dreams at great length in his remarkable sermon “On Sleep,” which is full of sage advice of the same nature as that set forth by S. Basil; and so does S. Thomas Aquinas, who discusses the subject with singular breadth, fulness, and system, arriving at the conclusion that it is unreasonable to deny anything—the truth of which is affirmed by general experience; and he adds that general experience affirms that dreams very frequently give indications of coming events; and therefore, concludes that it is lawful to interpret and endeavour to comprehend them.[117] But at this point, he goes on to maintain that only those dreams which are suggested by angels may be investigated and interpreted, those suggested by demons and evil spirits being left alone. But unfortunately he provides no criterion by which the one class may be safely and truly distinguished from the other; nor is it easy to supply the deficiency.
From another point of view, a thoughtful modern writer[118] has remarked that “dreams are uniformly the resuscitation or re-embodiment of thoughts which have formerly, in some shape or other, occupied the mind. They are old ideas revived, either in an entire state, or heterogeneously mingled together. I doubt if it be possible,” he continues, “for a person to have in a dream, any idea whose elements did not, in some form, strike him at a previous period. If these break loose from their connecting chain, and become jumbled together incoherently, as is often the case, they give rise to absurd combinations; but the elements still subsist, and only manifest themselves in a new and unconnected shape.”
This, and such as this, may be quite true; but yet whatever theories the scientific may propound which seem to oppose the facts of man’s experience, will not in the long run command that adhesion which for awhile they may possibly obtain. And now for examples:
The Dream of the so-called “Swaffham Tinker”[119] is singular, and may well be here reproduced, because it represents an example of the practical results of dreaming, which is quite worthy of consideration:—
“This Tinker, a hard-working, industrious man, one night dreamed that if he took a journey to London, and placed himself at a certain spot on London Bridge, he should meet one who would tell him something of great importance to his future prospects. The Tinker, on whom the dream made a deep impression, related it fully to his wife in the morning; who, however, half-laughed at him and half-scolded him for his folly in heeding such idle fancies. Next night he is said to have re-dreamed the dream; and again on the third night, when the impression was so powerful on his mind that he determined, in spite of the remonstrances of his wife and the ridicule of his neighbours, to go to London and see the upshot of it. Accordingly he set off for the metropolis on foot, reached it late on the third day (the distance was ninety miles), and, after the refreshment of a night’s rest, took his station next day on a part of the Bridge answering to the description in his dream. There he stood all day, and all the next, and all the third, without any communication as to the purpose of his journey; so that towards night, on the third day, he began to lose patience and confidence in his dream, inwardly cursed his folly in disregarding his wife’s counsel, and resolved next day to make the best of his way home. He still kept his station, however, till late in the evening, when, just as he was about to depart, a stranger who had noticed him standing stedfastly and with anxious look on the same spot for some days, accosted him, and asked him what he waited there for. After a little hesitation, the Tinker told his errand, though without acquainting him with the name of the place whence he came. The stranger enjoyed a smile at the rustic’s simplicity, and advised him to go home and for the future to pay no attention to dreams. ‘I myself,’ said he, ‘if I were disposed to put faith in such things, might now go a hundred miles into the country upon a similar errand. I dreamed three nights this week that if I went to a place called Swaffham in Norfolk, and dug under an apple-tree in a certain garden on the north side of the town I should find a box of money; but I have something else to do than run after such idle fancies! No, no, my friend; go home, and work well at your calling, and you will find there the riches you are seeking here.’ The astonished Tinker did not doubt that this was the communication he had been sent to London to receive, but he merely thanked the stranger for his advice, and went away avowing his intention to follow it. Next day he set out for home, and on his arrival there said little to his wife touching his journey; but next morning he rose betimes and began to dig on the spot he supposed to be pointed out by the stranger. When he had got a few feet down, the spade struck upon something hard, which turned out to be an iron chest. This he quickly carried to his house, and when he had with difficulty wrenched open the lid, found it, to his great joy, to be full of money. After securing his treasure, he observed on the lid of the box an inscription, which, unlearned as he was, he could not decipher. But by a stratagem he got the description read without any suspicion on the part of his neighbours by some of the Grammar School lads, and found it to be—
‘Where this stood
Is another twice as good.’
And in truth on digging again the lucky Tinker disinterred, below the place where the first chest had lain, a second twice as large, also full of gold and silver coin. It is stated that, become thus a wealthy man, the Tinker showed his thankfulness to Providence by building a new chancel to the church, the old one being out of repair. And whatever fiction the marvellous taste of those ages may have mixed up with the tale, certain it is that there is shown to this day a monument in Swaffham Church, having an effigy in marble, said to be that of the Tinker with his Dog at his side and his tools and implements of trade lying about him.”
Among the various histories of singular dreams and corresponding events, the following, which occurred in the early part of the eighteenth century, seems to merit being here placed on record. Its authenticity will appear from the relation; and it may surely be maintained that a more extraordinary concurrence of fortuitous and accidental circumstances can scarcely be produced or paralleled:—
“One Adam Rogers, a creditable and decent man of good sense and repute, who kept an inn at Portlaw, a small hamlet nine or ten miles from Waterford, in Ireland, dreamed one night that he saw two men at a particular green spot on the adjoining mountain; one of them a small, sickly-looking man, the other remarkably strong and large. He then saw the latter man murder the other, upon which he awoke in great agitation.
“The circumstances of the dream were so distinct and forcible that he continued much affected by them. He related them to his wife, and also to several neighbours next morning.
“In some time he went out coursing with greyhounds, accompanied amongst others by one Mr. Browne, the Roman Catholic priest of the parish. He soon stopped at the above-mentioned particular green spot on the mountain, and calling Mr. Browne, pointed it out to him, and told him what had happened there. During the remainder of the day he thought little more about it.
“Next morning he was extremely startled at seeing two strangers enter his house at about eleven o’clock in the forenoon. He immediately went into an inner room, and desired his wife to take particular notice, for they were precisely the two men he had seen in his dream.
“After the strangers had taken some refreshment, and were about to depart in order to prosecute their journey, Rogers earnestly entreated the little man at once to quit his fellow-traveller. He assured him that if he would remain with him that day he would accompany him to Carrick the next morning—that being the town to which the travellers were proceeding. He was unwilling and ashamed to tell the cause of his being so solicitous to separate him from his companion. But as he observed that Hickey (which was the name of the little man) seemed to be quiet and gentle in his deportment, and had money about him, and that the other had a ferocious, bad countenance, the dream still recurred to him. He dreaded that something fatal would happen, and wished at all events to keep them asunder.
“However, the humane precautions of Rogers proved ineffectual, for Caulfield (such was the other’s name) prevailed upon Hickey to continue with him on their way to Carrick, declaring that as they had long travelled together, they should not part, but remain together until he should see Hickey safely arrived at the habitation of his friends. The wife of Rogers was much dissatisfied when she heard they were gone, and blamed her husband exceedingly for not being absolutely peremptory in detaining Hickey.
“About an hour after they left Portlaw, in a lonely part of the mountain, just near the place observed by Rogers in his dream, Caulfield took the opportunity of murdering his companion. It appeared afterwards from his own account of the horrid transaction, that as they were getting over a ditch he struck Hickey on the back part of the head with a stone, and when he fell down into the trench in consequence of the blow, Caulfield gave him several stabs with a knife, and cut his throat so deeply that the head was observed to be almost severed from his body. He then rifled Hickey’s pockets of all the money in them, took part of his clothes and everything else of value about him, and afterwards proceeded on his way to Carrick. He had not been long gone when the body, still warm, was discovered by some labourers who were returning to their work from dinner.
“The report of the murder soon reached Portlaw. Rogers and his wife went to the place and instantly knew the body of him whom they had in vain endeavoured to dissuade from going on with his treacherous companion. They at once spoke out their suspicions that the murder was perpetrated by the fellow-traveller of the deceased. An immediate search was made, and Caulfield was apprehended at Waterford the second day after.
“He was brought to trial at the ensuing assizes and convicted of the fact. It appeared amongst other circumstances that when he went to Carrick he hired a horse and a boy to conduct him—not by the usual road, but by that which runs on the north side of the river Suir—to Waterford, intending to take his passage in the first ship from thence to Newfoundland. The boy took notice of some blood on his shirt, and Caulfield gave him a half-crown to promise not to speak of it.
“Rogers proved not only that Hickey was last seen in company with Caulfield, but that a pair of new shoes which Hickey wore had been found on the feet of Caulfield when he was apprehended; and that a pair of old shoes which he had on at Rogers’s house were upon Hickey’s feet when the body was found. He described with great exactness every article of their clothes. Caulfield on the cross-examination, shrewdly asked him from the dock whether it was not very extraordinary that he, who kept a public-house, should take such particular notice of the dress of a stranger accidentally calling there? Rogers in his answer said he had a very particular reason, but he was ashamed to mention it. The court and the prisoner insisted on his declaring it. He gave a circumstantial narrative of his dream, called upon Mr. Browne, the priest, then in court, to corroborate his testimony, and said that his wife had severely reproached him for permitting Hickey to leave their house, when he knew that in the short footway to Carrick they must necessarily pass by the green spot in the mountain which had appeared in his dream.
“A number of witnesses came forward, and the proofs were so strong that the jury without hesitation found the prisoner guilty.
“It was remarked as a singularity that he happened to be tried and sentenced by his namesake, Sir George Caulfeild, at that time Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, which office he resigned in the summer of the year 1760.
“After sentence Caulfield confessed the fact. It came that Hickey had been in the West Indies two and twenty years, but falling into a bad state of health, he was returning to his native country (Ireland) bringing with him some money his industry had acquired. The vessel on board which he took his passage was, by stress of weather, driven into Minehead. He there met with Frederick Caulfield, an Irish sailor, who was poor and much distressed for clothes and common necessaries. Hickey compassionating his poverty, and finding he was his countryman, relieved his wants, and an intimacy commenced between them. They agreed to go to Ireland together; and it was remarked on their passage that Caulfield spoke contemptuously, and often said it was a pity that such a puny fellow as Hickey should have money, and he himself without a shilling. They landed at Waterford, at which place they stayed some days, Caulfield being all the time supported by Hickey, who bought some clothes for him. The assizes being held in the town during that time, it was afterwards recollected that they were both at the Court-house, and attended the whole of a trial of a shoemaker who was convicted of the murder of his wife. But this made no impression on the hardened mind of Caulfield, for the very next day he perpetrated the same crime on the road between Waterford and Carrick-on-Suir, near which town Hickey’s relations lived.
“He walked to the gallows with firm step and undaunted countenance. He spoke to the multitude who surrounded him, and in the course of his address mentioned that he had been bred at a charter-school, from which he was taken as an apprenticed servant by William Izod, Esq., of the county of Kilkenny. From this position he ran away on being corrected for some faults, and had been absent from Ireland six years. He confessed also that he had several times intended to murder Hickey on the road from Waterford to Portlaw, which, though in general not a road much frequented, yet people at that time continually coming in sight, prevented him.
“Being frustrated in all his schemes, the sudden and total disappointment threw him probably into an indifference for life. Some tempers are so stubborn and rugged that nothing can affect them, but immediate sensation. If to this be united the darkest ignorance, death to such characters will hardly seem terrible, because they can form no conception of what it is, and still less of the consequences that may follow.”
The record of the following dream is certainly curious and interesting, and is perfectly well authenticated, coming as it does from the pen of the gentleman’s son more immediately concerned, who testified as to its literal fulfilment:—
“In the year 1768 my father, Matthew Talbot, Esq., of Castle Talbot, in the county of Wexford, was much surprised at the recurrence of a dream three several times during the same night, which caused him to repeat the whole circumstance to his lady the following morning. He dreamed that he had arisen as usual and descended to his library, the morning being hazy. He then seated himself at his secrétaire to write; when, happening to look up a long avenue of trees opposite the window, he perceived a man in a blue jacket mounted on a white horse coming towards the house. My father arose and opened the window. The man advancing, presented him with a roll of papers, and told him they were invoices of a vessel which had been wrecked and had drifted in during the night on his son-in-law’s, Lord Mountmorris’s, estate close by, and signed ‘Bell and Stephenson.’ My father’s attention was only called to the dream from its frequent recurrence: but, when he found himself seated at his desk on the misty morning, and beheld the identical person whom he had seen in his dream in the blue coat riding on the grey horse, he felt surprised, and opening the window waited the man’s approach. He immediately rode up, and drawing from his pocket a packet of papers, gave them to my father, stating they were invoices belonging to an American vessel which had been wrecked, and drifted in upon his lordship’s estate; that there was no person on board to lay claim to the wreck, but that the invoices were signed ‘Stephenson and Bell.’ I assure you that the above is most faithfully given by me as it actually occurred; but it is not more extraordinary than other examples of the prophetic powers of the mind or soul in sleep which I have frequently heard related.”[120]
Another remarkable dream, exceedingly well authenticated by an aunt of the Editor of this volume, is now set forth in detail and at some length:—
“On the night of the 11th of May, 1812, Mr. Williams, of Scorrier House, near Redruth, in Cornwall, awoke his wife, and exceedingly agitated, told her that he had dreamed that he was in the lobby of the House of Commons, and saw a man shoot with a pistol a gentleman who had just entered the lobby, who was said to be the Chancellor, to which Mrs. Williams naturally replied that it was only a dream, and recommended him to be composed, and go to sleep as soon as he could.
“He did so, but shortly after again woke her; and said that he had the second time had the same dream; whereupon she observed that he had been so much agitated with his former dream that she supposed it had dwelt on his mind, and begged of him to try to compose himself and go to sleep, which he did. A third time the same vision was repeated, on which, notwithstanding her entreaties that he would be quiet, and endeavour to forget it, he arose, being then between one and two o’clock, and dressed himself.
“At breakfast the dreams were the sole subject of conversation, and in the forenoon Mr. Williams went to Falmouth, where he related the particulars of them to all his acquaintance that he met.
“On the following day, Mr. Tucker, of Trematon Castle, accompanied by his wife, a daughter of Mr. Williams, went to Scorrier House about dusk. Immediately after the first salutation, on their entering the parlour, where were Mr., Mrs., and Miss Williams, Mr. Williams began to relate to Mr. Tucker the circumstances of his dream; and Mrs. Williams observed to her daughter, Mrs. Tucker, laughingly, that her father could not even suffer Mr. Tucker to be seated before he told him of his nocturnal visitation; on the statement of which Mr. Tucker observed that it would do very well for a dream to have the Chancellor in the lobby of the House of Commons, but that he would not be found there in reality; and Mr. Tucker then asked what sort of man he appeared to be, when Mr. Williams minutely described him; to which Mr. Tucker replied: ‘Your description is not at all that of the Chancellor, but is certainly very exactly that of Mr. Perceval, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and although he has been to me the greatest enemy I ever met with through life, for a supposed cause which had no foundation in truth (or words to that effect), I should be exceedingly sorry, indeed, to hear of his being assassinated, or of any injury of the kind happening to him.’
“Mr. Tucker then inquired of Mr. Williams if he had ever seen Mr. Perceval, and was told that he never had seen him, nor had ever even written to him, either on public or private business; in short, that he never had had anything to do with him, nor had he ever been in the lobby of the House of Commons in his life.
“At this moment, whilst Mr. Williams and Mr. Tucker were still standing, they heard a horse gallop to the door of the House, and immediately after, Mr. Michael Williams of Trevince (son of Mr. Williams of Scorrier), entered the room and said that he had galloped out from Truro (from which Scorrier House is distant seven miles), having seen a gentleman there, who had come by that evening’s mail from London, who said that he was in the lobby of the House of Commons, on the evening of the 11th, when a man called Bellingham had shot Mr. Perceval, and that, as it might occasion some great ministerial changes, and might affect Mr. Tucker’s political friends, he had come out as fast as he could to make him acquainted with it, having heard at Truro that he had passed through that place in the afternoon on his way to Scorrier.
“After the astonishment which this intelligence had created had a little subsided, Mr. Williams described most particularly the appearance and dress of the man whom he had seen in his dream fire the pistol, as he had before done of Mr. Perceval.
“About six weeks after, Mr. Williams, having business in town, went accompanied by a friend to the House of Commons, where (as has been already observed) he had never before been. Immediately that he came to the steps at the entrance of the lobby, he said: ‘This place is as distinctly within my recollection in my dream, as any room in my house,’ and he made the same observation when he entered the lobby.
“He then pointed out the exact spot where Bellingham stood when he fired, and where Mr. Perceval had reached when he was struck by the ball, and where and how he fell. The dress, both of Mr. Perceval and Bellingham, agreed with the descriptions given by Mr. Williams, even to the most minute particular.”[121]
The number of records in which it is believed that dreams have been the means by which murder has been discovered are so considerable; and some are so well authenticated, that it is impossible, as it certainly would be presumptuous, to endeavour to set them aside. The murder of Maria Marten of Polstead in Suffolk, by William Corder, a farmer, in May of the year 1827, is a remarkable example:—
This unfortunate woman was induced to leave her home, and having accompanied the man who, under the promise of marriage, had betrayed her, to a certain barn, was there cruelly murdered and buried under the floor. For nearly twelve months the murder was undiscovered; for Corder, who remained away, but still communicated with her parents, maintained that she had married him; that circumstances prevented his bringing her back to his father’s home: but that in due course they would both come, though it was implied that they were both on the Continent.
The mother of the murdered woman, however, about ten months after her daughter’s death, dreamed that her daughter had been murdered, and buried under the floor of the barn. So strong and deep an impression did this make both on her relations and the people of the village, that the girl’s father and others on April 19, 1828, took up the floor of the barn, where they discovered the body of the murdered woman in a sack; and not so much decayed but that obvious marks of violence were perceptible. The body was successfully identified by the want of two teeth—one on the left side of the upper jaw, and the other on the right side of the lower. In the meantime Corder had married, and had gone to live in Essex, where he was apprehended, tried, and condemned on the strongest circumstantial evidence. He made a full confession of the murder when in prison, under sentence of death, and was executed in August, 1828.
The following sets forth how an impressive, vivid, and twice-repeated dream induced a sailor to go to the place dreamed of, and rescue three suffering fellow-creatures from a horrible death. It was related to a Cornish friend, as a matter of fact, by a native of the island of Alderney, and is quite worthy of being here recorded:—
“Some few years before the erection of those well-known lighthouses called the Caskets, near that island, an islander dreamed that a ship had been wrecked near those rocks, and that some part of the crew had saved themselves upon them. This dream he related on the quay; but the sailors (although the most superstitious people in the world) treated it as an idle fancy. Yet the next night produced the same dream, and the man would no longer be laughed out of it; so he prevailed upon a companion the next morning to take a boat and go with him to the rock, where they found three poor wretches half-starved with cold and hunger, and brought them on shore. This circumstance, and the supposed loss of the ‘Victory’ on this rock, the islanders give as a reason for erecting three lighthouses there.”
Still more remarkable perhaps is the following, which, telling its own story, and abundantly illustrating the reality of the Supernatural, needs no comment:—
“The Rev. Mr. Perring, Vicar of a parish which is now a component part of London, though, about forty-five years ago it had the appearance of a village at the outskirts, had to encounter the sad affliction of losing his eldest Son at an age when parents are encouraged to believe their children are to become their survivors; the youth dying in his seventeenth year. He was buried in the vaults of the church.
“Two nights subsequently to that interment, the father dreamed[122] that he saw his Son habited in a shroud spotted with blood, the expression of his countenance being that of a person enduring some paroxysm of acute pain: ‘Father, father! come and defend me!’ were the words he distinctly heard, as he gazed on this awe-inspiring apparition; ‘they will not let me rest quiet in my coffin.’
“The venerable man awoke with terror and trembling; but after a brief interval of painful reflection concluded himself to be labouring under the influence of his sad day-thoughts, and the depression of past sufferings; and with these rational assurances commended himself to the All-Merciful, and slumbered again and slept.
“He saw his Son again beseeching him to protect his remains from outrage, ‘For,’ said the apparently surviving dead one, ‘they are mangling my body at this moment.’ The unhappy Father rose at once, being now unable to banish the fearful image from his mind, and determined when day should dawn to satisfy himself of the delusiveness or verity of the revelation conveyed through this seeming voice from the grave.
“At an early hour, accordingly, he repaired to the Clerk’s house, where the keys of the church and of the vaults were kept. The Clerk after considerable delay, came down-stairs, saying it was very unfortunate he should want them just on that very day, as his son over the way had taken them to the smith’s for repair,—one of the largest of the bunch of keys having been broken off short in the main door of the vault, so as to render it impracticable for anybody to enter till the lock had been picked and taken off.
“Impelled by the worst misgivings, the Vicar loudly insisted on the Clerk’s accompanying him to the blacksmith’s—not for a key but for a crowbar, it being his resolute determination to enter the vault and see his Son’s coffin without a moment’s delay.
“The recollections of the dream were now becoming more and more vivid, and the scrutiny about to be made assumed a solemnity mingled with awe, which the agitation of the father rendered terrible to the agents in this forcible interruption into the resting-place of the dead. But the hinges were speedily wrenched asunder—the bar and bolts were beaten in and bent beneath the heavy hammer of the smith,—and at length with tottering and outstretched hands, the maddened parent stumbled and fell: his son’s coffin had been lifted from the recess at the vault’s side and deposited on the brick floor; the lid, released from every screw, lay loose at top, and the body, enveloped in its shroud, on which were several dark spots below the chin, lay exposed to view; the head had been raised, the broad riband had been removed from under the jaw, which now hung down with the most ghastly horror of expression, as if to tell with more terrific certainty the truth of the preceding night’s vision. Every tooth in the head had been drawn.
“The young man had when living a beautiful set of sound teeth. The Clerk’s Son, who was a barber, cupper, and dentist, had possessed himself of the keys, and eventually of the teeth, for the purpose of profitable employment of so excellent a set in his line of business. The feelings of the Rev. Mr. Perring can be easily conceived. The event affected his mind through the remaining term of his existence; but what became of the delinquent whose sacrilegious hand had thus rifled the tomb was never afterwards correctly ascertained. He decamped the same day, and was supposed to have enlisted as a soldier. The Clerk was ignominiously displaced, and did not long survive the transaction. Some years afterwards, his house was pulled down to afford room for extensive improvements and new buildings in the village.
“As regards the occurrence itself, few persons were apprised of it; as the Vicar—shunning public talk and excitement on the subject of any member of his family—exerted himself in concealing the circumstances as much as possible. The above facts, however, may be strictly relied on as accurate.”
A somewhat similar dream is recorded in the following statement, copied from the public prints, the fact of which has been authenticated by a correspondent in Scotland, who furnished the Editor with it. The paragraph, now to be quoted, appeared some years ago in the “Scotsman” newspaper, and was quoted in the “Times” of Tuesday, April 25, 1865:—
“The legal proceedings which lately took place in the Sheriff Court of Clackmannanshire, with regard to the violation of a grave in the churchyard at Alloa, and the unwarrantable exhumation of the body of James Quin, had their origin, it is stated, in a remarkable dream of the mother of the deceased. Young Quin died in September, 1863, and was buried in a lair in the churchyard, which was purchased by his father from William Donaldson, the Kirk Treasurer, it being agreed that the price was to be paid by instalments. About six months afterwards, Robert Blair, the sexton or grave-digger, took upon himself (without the authority, it would appear, of Donaldson) to sell the same lair to another person, and to inter therein a relative of the new purchaser, without, however, at the time exhuming the body of Quin, the former tenant. Some considerable time after this the mother of Quin being desirous of erecting a head-stone on the grave of her son, made some inquiries with that view, in the course of which she heard something of another person having been buried in his grave, this having, as she stated, been ‘cast up’ by Blair’s nephew to a younger son of hers on their way from Sunday-school. But the grave-digger denied the truth of this story, and managed to pacify her. Feeling, however, that he had got into a scrape by the lair having been resold, he, some weeks after Mrs. Quin had interrogated him on the subject, dug up the body of her son during the night of Thursday, the 23rd of March last, and reinterred it in the other ground. Now, on that very Thursday night, as sworn to by Mrs. Quin, at the trial, she had this remarkable dream:—
“She dreamt that her boy stood in his nightgown, at her bedside, and said to her, ‘Oh, mother, put me back to my own bed.’ She then awoke her husband, and forgetting in her half-dreaming state that her son was dead, said to him, ‘Jemmie is out of his bed; put him back into it;’ after which she fell asleep, and again had the same dream.
“A third time, during the same night, she dreamt that her son was standing beside her bed; but on this occasion remembering that he was dead, the figure of the grave-digger was mixed up with that of the boy, and he appeared to be shoving his spade into the body. Awakening in great trepidation, and feeling certain that her boy had been taken out of his grave, she went to the grave-digger and vehemently accused him of having dug up the body, which, after prevarication, he at last admitted. Hence arose the action of damages against Donaldson, the Kirk Treasurer, and Blair, the grave-digger, which being restricted to twelve pounds was brought in the Small Debt Court. The Sheriff, after a long proof, assoilzied Donaldson, and found Blair liable in damages, which, the parties not having settled the same extrajudicially, have since been assessed at five pounds.”
Another dream, equally remarkable, by which a warning was given, and in a measure attended to by the dreamer, now follows; although not so weirdly tragic as that relating to the Perring Family, yet it efficiently serves to shadow forth the proximity of the spiritual world; and, it may be, in this example, the direct intervention of a guardian-angel:—
“Some years ago a clergyman named W—— was visiting an old college friend, Canon Hutchinson of Blurton Vicarage, near Trentham, and being a good pedestrian, proposed to accomplish his journey home again from Trentham to Birmingham, which place he desired to reach by ten o’clock one morning, on foot. In order to do this he intended to leave Blurton at four o’clock a.m. on a certain day; and so retired to rest the previous evening at an unusually early hour. During the night he had a vivid and remarkable dream, which deeply impressed him. He dreamt that whilst he was on his walking journey between Tamworth and Sutton, upon a very lonely road enclosed by tall hedges, he heard a rough voice cry out, ‘Ah, Jack, are you there?’ and looking round saw two exceedingly ill-looking men jumping down from an elevated part of the bank under the hedge, and alighting close to him on the path below. Their countenances and suspicious bearing seemed to bespeak their evil intentions. Presently one of them all of a sudden presented a pistol at him. The clergyman imagined that he had only a moment or two in which to commend his soul to God, which he did with earnestness, when the pistol was fired and his life thus taken away. Here the dream ended and he awoke. It left an uneasy impression on his mind, but being naturally of an undaunted spirit, and a firm believer in the protection of Almighty God, he did not hesitate to leave his friend’s house at the early period determined on. After walking for about an hour and a half, and when a few miles from Sutton Coldfield, where all of a sudden, as regards locality, he realized the minutest details of the dream, two men coming through the hedge suddenly overtook him. One addressed the other in the words already set forth. They were in every particular, even to features, dress, and demeanour, identical with those whom he had seen in the dream. They accompanied him, keeping close to his side, and watched him with very mysterious looks. He was deeply startled and alarmed, but lifted up his heart to God for guidance, direction, and protection. Soon they all reached a broad and dreary common, upon the extreme distant edge of which stood a small inn, whither he resolved to go for refreshment in the hope of shaking off his companions. Here for awhile they separated; but, on entering the house and asking to be supplied with tea, he found that the two men had followed him, and were asking for refreshments likewise. After waiting for some time, he determined on leaving the inn by a path at its back entrance, which, from knowing something of the locality, he believed would take him by a nearer way to Sutton Coldfield. This turned out to be the case; for by his action he successfully avoided the two tramps, who were afterwards taken up and imprisoned for some marked offence against the laws of the land.”[123]
A warning of a very similar character may now be narrated, in which the curious point seems to be that it was given so many years before it was needed, though its efficiency was fully made manifest when the actual danger threatened:—
“The Housekeeper of a county family in Oxfordshire dreamt one night that she had been left alone in the house upon a Sunday evening, and that hearing a knock at the door of the chief entrance, she went to it, and there found an ill-looking tramp armed with a bludgeon, who insisted on forcing himself into the house. She thought that she struggled for some time to prevent him so doing, but quite ineffectually; and that being struck down by him and rendered insensible, he thereupon gained ingress to the mansion. On this she awoke.
“She at once mentioned her dream to some of her fellow-servants, and also, a few days later, to the Master of the House. The latter, smiling, pooh-poohed it; but remarked that ‘all the greater care should be taken by the servants to see that the fastenings were secure.’
“As nothing happened for a considerable period, the circumstance of the dream was soon forgotten; and, as she herself asserts, had altogether passed away from her mind. However, many years afterwards, this same Housekeeper was left with two other servants to take charge of an isolated mansion at Kensington (subsequently the town residence of the family), when, on a certain Sunday evening, her fellow-servants having gone out and left her alone, she was suddenly startled by a loud knock at the front door.
“All of a sudden the remembrance of her former dream returned to her with singular vividness and remarkable force, and she felt her lonely isolation greatly. Accordingly, having at once lighted a lamp on the hall table—during which act the loud knock was repeated with vigour—she took the precaution to go up to a landing on the stair, throw up the window, and there, to her intense terror, she saw in the flesh the very man whom years previously she had seen in her dream, armed with a bludgeon and demanding an entrance. With great presence of mind she went down to the chief entrance, made that and other doors and windows more secure, and then rang the various bells of the house violently, and placed lights in the upper rooms. It was concluded that by these acts the intruder was scared away. It turned out afterwards that the lodge-keeper, having left two children to guard the entrance, they had been terrified into admitting the tramp into the garden; and that the latter had fastened them into the lodge, where they were found in a considerable state of alarm by the two servants on their return home.”[124]
Another example of a warning attended to, which had been given in a dream, and acted upon immediately afterwards, comes to the Editor on conclusive evidence of its undoubted truth and authenticity:
A Scotch lady, a relation of the late J. R. Hope Scott, Esq., of Abbotsford, dreamt that her nephew, a promising young student of the University of Edinburgh, had been drowned with two companions with whom he had made an engagement to take an excursion by boat on the Frith of Forth. So much impressed was she by this dream, that she rose two hours earlier than usual in the morning, and sent off her man-servant at once to prevail upon her nephew to give up his engagement. On being pressed he did so. His companions (who had also been warned not to go,) went without him, and alone, that is, without an experienced sailor. The boat was capsized and they were both drowned.
In the case which is now to follow, the warning given, not having been acted upon at once, came too late. It was narrated to the Editor, vivâ voce, in 1866, by the late Dr. J. M. Neale:—
“In the autumn of the year 1845, one of the maid-servants of the then rector of Shepperton, a village on the Thames, near Chertsey, dreamed that her brother, a respectable and steady youth belonging to that place, was drowned. The dream was singularly vivid. In it she further imagined that she actually went to search for her brother’s body, and that, after seeking for some time, she found it at a certain part of the river, which she knew well, near the brink, and in a particular position. This dream took place on a Saturday night. When she awoke on the Sunday morning, she at once acquainted her fellow-servant (who saw how deep an impression the dream had evidently made), and remarked that she ought at once to obtain her master’s leave to go home on the morrow, and warn her brother, who was unable to swim, not to go out on to the river. The leave was given, and her home was soon reached, but alas! the warning had come too late. Her brother had gone rowing on the Sunday evening, the boat was accidentally upset, and he was drowned. The body was not recovered for some time; nor was it found near the spot where the accident had happened. But it was found by the poor youth’s sister, lower down the river, and exactly in the same place and position as had been so forcibly and clearly prefigured in her impressive dream.”
The following example of a dream which occurred about twenty years ago, by which the fact of a murder was made known, being likewise well authenticated and of considerable interest, is now set forth:—
“On Saturday, the 30th of July, 1853, the dead body of a young woman was discovered in a field at Littleport, in the isle of Ely. The body has not yet been identified, and there can be little doubt that the young woman was murdered. At the adjourned inquest, held on the 29th August before Mr. William Marshall, one of the coroners for the Isle, the following extraordinary evidence was given:—
“James Jessop, an elderly, respectable-looking labourer, with a face of the most perfect stolidity, and who possessed a most curiously-shaped skull, broad and flat on the top, and projecting greatly on each side over the ears, deposed—‘I live about a furlong and a half from where the body was found. I have seen the body of the deceased. I have never seen her before her death. On the night of Friday, the 29th of July, I dreamt three successive times that I heard the cry of murder issuing from near the bottom of a close called Little Ditchment Close (the place where the body was found). The first time I dreamt I heard the cry it awoke me. I fell asleep again and dreamt the same thing. I then awoke again and told my wife I could not rest, but I dreamt it again after that. I got up between four and five o’clock, but I did not go down to the close, the wheat and barley in which has been since cut.
“‘I dreamt once about twenty years ago that I saw a woman hanging in a barn, and on passing the next morning the barn which had appeared to me in my dream, I entered and did find a woman there hanging, and cut her down in time to save her life. I never told my wife that I heard cries of “murder,” but I have mentioned it to several persons since. I saw the body on the Saturday it was found. I did not mention my dream to any one till a day or two after that. I saw the field distinctly in my dream and the trees therein, but I saw no person in it. On the night of the murder the wind lay from that spot to my house.’
“Rhoda Jessop, wife of the last witness, stated that her husband related his dreams to her on the evening of the day that the body was found.”[125]
Another case, deeply interesting, and certainly more dramatic in the nature and importance of the very practical results which followed from the action taken upon it, than even that already recorded of the Perring family (for it greatly benefited the living), is now narrated. The interesting account, which, with the greatest simplicity, and in the actual words of the persons advantaged, records the plain facts, tells its own story with considerable power. Frivolous and pointless as are so many dreams, without intelligible purpose or sequence of action, this is one which it may be reasonably held can only be explained by a firm belief in a superintending Providence, in other words in Almighty God, Who, as an old writer asserts, “sometimes warneth and instructeth in dreams,” and Who mercifully uses the ministry both of angels and men for carrying out His Divine purpose:—
“A Gloucestershire gentleman in good circumstances, who for many years had lived a retired life, quite apart from his relations, some of whom in a previous year had been cast in a lawsuit with him for the recovery of certain properties, suddenly died, and, as was supposed, died intestate.
“He had long intended, at the advice of the Rector of the village in which he dwelt, and with whom alone he was on terms of intimacy, to make certain provisions by will on behalf of the relations in question, who had lost much by his successful lawsuit. However, this (as was believed by his family lawyer, residing in an adjacent country town, who proceeded to settle his affairs) had not been done; and the whole of his property consequently seemed likely to go to his heir-at-law, a man of property, almost unknown to him.
“Five months after his death, however, the Rector of the parish in which he had lived, had what he termed ‘a waking dream,’ in which he imagined that the deceased gentleman came to him in sorrow, and solemnly conjured him to obtain possession of a Will, which had been duly made by him in London a few months before his decease, and which was in the custody of a firm of attorneys there, which Will was so drawn as that the relations in question should greatly benefit by the just and righteous disposition therein of his property. Imagining the dream to be only a dream and nothing more, he took no notice of it, and regarded it as the mere result of his own imagination.
“In about a fortnight, however, the identical dream occurred again—with the simple difference that the deceased gentleman bore an expression of deeper grief, and appeared to urge him, in still stronger terms, to obtain the Will. The Rector was much impressed by this; but on careful reflection upon the following day, appeared indisposed, on such testimony, to interfere with arrangements which were then being made for the settlement of the deceased person’s affairs, on the supposition that he had left no Will. And consequently he did nothing.
“A third time, however, about eight days afterwards, he had the same dream, with certain additional details of import and moment. The deceased person, as the Rector imagined, appearing once again, urged him most vehemently and solemnly to do as he wished, and to go and obtain the Will. A conversation took place as it were in the dream, and the clergyman set forth many cogent arguments why he should not be called upon to undertake a work, which might not only be misunderstood, but might render him liable to misrepresentations, if not to trouble and annoyance.
“However, at last he consented, and, in his dream, accompanied the deceased person to a certain lawyer’s office at a certain number, on a certain floor in Staple Inn, on the south side of Holborn, where the drawer in a writing-table was opened, and he saw the packet containing the Will sealed in three places, with the deceased person’s armorial bearings. The whole room was before him vividly. It was panelled in oak, picked out with white and pale green, and over the mantel-piece hung an engraving of Lord Eldon.
“The Rector awoke, and resolved without delay to do as he was enjoined. Before proceeding, he mentioned the circumstance of the thrice-repeated dream to a clerical friend, who volunteered to accompany him to London on his important errand.
“They went together. Neither had ever been to Staple Inn before; nor did they know its exact whereabouts. On inquiry, however, it was soon found. And so was the room and office, with the furniture and print of Lord Eldon, which had been seen beforehand by the Rector in the dream, to his intense awe and wonderment. Even the peculiar handles of the writing-table, which were of brass and old-fashioned, were those which had been clearly apparent. The identical drawer was opened, and the Will, secured in an envelope of stout paper and sealed with three impressions, was found, just as it had been seen in the dream. The lawyer, who at once gave every facility for inquiry, was a junior partner in the firm which had drawn it up, and had only recently come to London, from a cathedral city, where the firm in question had a branch office, on the death of the chief partner. The Will was found to be good and valid, and was in due course proved. Under it the relations, who had so suffered by the loss of their law-suit as to have been almost reduced to penury, obtained their due. The whole of these facts are vouched for by a friend of the Editor of this book.”[126]
The following example of presentiment of death is also well authenticated. It occurred on board one of the ships of the Royal Navy at Portsmouth in the year 1850. From the MS. account, furnished by one thoroughly able to give an exact record, the following is taken:—
“The officers being one day at the Mess-table, a young Lieutenant R—— suddenly laid down his knife and fork, pushed away his plate, and turned extremely pale. He then rose from the table, covering his face with his hands, and retired from the room. The President of the mess, supposing him to be ill, sent one of the young men to inquire what was the matter. At first Mr. R—— was unwilling to speak; but, on being pressed, he confessed that he had been seized by a sudden and irresistible impression that a brother he had in India was dead. ‘He died,’ said he, ‘on the 12th of August at six o’clock, I am perfectly sure of it.’ No argument could overthrow this conviction, which, in due course of post, was verified to the letter. The young man had died at Cawnpore at the precise period mentioned.”
Under the heading of “Singular Prognostication,” “The Times” of April the 17th, 1865, copies from the “Cornish Telegraph” the narrative of a then recent dream of a young clergyman of the county of Cornwall, which was almost immediately followed by the accidental death of the dreamer:—
“On Wednesday last, the Rev. Stephen Barclay Drury, an unmarried clergyman of twenty-six, who has for about twelve months acted as the curate of Phillack and Gwithian, had a conversation with the brother of the Rector of those parishes,[127] Mr. Charles Hockin, and related a dream, which he described as a very singular one, and as having made a deep impression on him.
“His words were: ‘I dreamt I was to be buried, and I followed my coffin into the church, and thence to the tomb. I took no part in the service, and when we came to the tomb, I looked into it, and saw it was very nice. I then asked the undertaker who was to be buried, and he answered, “You.” I then said, “I am not to be buried, I am not dead.” The undertaker then said, “I must be paid for the coffin,” upon which I awoke.’
“On Sunday morning and afternoon Mr. Drury officiated at Gwithian, and after the second service remained with the children to practise singing.
“Returning to his lodgings in Gwithian at half-past four, he waited a little, took with him Thomas à Kempis’ ‘De Imitatione Christi,’ and set out for a walk, accompanied by a Newfoundland dog. He asked for a bit of cord, as he might give the dog a dip, and started in his usually cheerful and happy mood. In an hour and a half the dog returned with the cord around his neck.
“Mr. Drury was never again seen alive. His absence throughout the night occasioned no surprise, as he sometimes went to, and slept at Copperhouse, two miles off.
“On Monday morning a Gwinear miner, in quest of seaweed at low water, near the rocky shore of Godrevy, saw Mr. Drury’s body in a pool seventy or eighty yards from the sea.
“An inquest, under the county coroner, Mr. John Roscoria, was held on Tuesday at Gwithian, when these circumstances were elicited, and a verdict was returned of ‘Found Drowned.’
“From the facts, however, that Mr. Drury had never shown the least signs of depression, that he started with the expressed intention of giving the dog a dip, and that he was very near-sighted, the general inference is that the unfortunate gentleman slipped on the rocks, was stunned, fell into the water, and so casually and singularly fulfilled his strange dream of a few days previously.”
A somewhat similar prognostication was had in the case of Captain Speer, which may properly be put on record, for, as in the case already narrated, it turned out to be a true warning of impending death:
Captain Speer, an officer of the 3rd Surrey Militia, and a magistrate for the county of Surrey,[128] lately met his death under remarkable circumstances. The “Quebec Mercury” says:—“Captain W. D. Speer passed the last winter among us. During part of it, he had some fine sport on the north shore of the S. Lawrence, in company with Captain Knox and Lieutenant Duthie, of the 10th Royal Artillery. This spring he made a tour through the States and West Indies, with Major Leslie, R.A., returning only for a few days, to set out again on what has, alas! proved to be his last expedition.[129] Strange to say, he stated to several gentlemen, just before setting out, that he had had a dream in which he distinctly saw a coffin with the name of ‘W. D. Speer, died June 17th, 1867,’ on it; and in writing to a lady three weeks previously,[130] he said in a joke that one reason for addressing her was his own approaching end. The date of his death is not known,[131] but it must have been on the day he named, or very near it. It appears that he was going to his cabin on board the Mississippi steamer, which was at anchor, and somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Indian disturbances; when in the middle of the night he was shot dead by a sentry, who omitted to challenge him.”
On this remarkable incident a Letter was written, from which the following extract may fittingly be put on record here:
“It seems the account of the dream was true, as Major Terry told Mr. Kempson, that he had heard the letter read in which he [Captain Speer] related the circumstance. Singular, was it not? I trust it may have taken some little effect on his mind, but I fear he was not one to attach any importance to such a warning. However, I do hope he did, for it is so awful to think of anyone in pure health and spirits being ushered into Eternity without one moment’s preparation.” From a Letter, dated August 10th, 1867, signed “Anne M. Kempson, Richmond Hill, Surrey, S.W.”
Another example of a warning given in a dream (but neglected) may now be put on record:
A few years ago a serious accident occurred in the village of Bulmer, in Yorkshire, to a pic-nic party going to Castle Howard. The party made the journey in an omnibus, and it seems that the wife of one of the men hesitated to join the others, and tried to persuade her husband not to go, because she asserted that she had dreamt a week before that they were in an omnibus, and were upset on going through a village and greatly injured, the fright awakening her. The man and his wife however did go; but on reaching Bulmer, the woman became greatly excited. Not only, she remarked, was the omnibus that which she had seen in her dream, but the village was the one in which the accident she dreamt of appeared to happen. The words were scarcely uttered when the omnibus was upset and a scene of great confusion resulted. Those on the outside were thrown to the ground with great violence; one man was rendered insensible by the omnibus falling upon him, and several sustained rather serious injuries. The woman to whom the accident was revealed beforehand, was herself badly hurt; but her husband’s was the worst case, he sustaining a dislocation of an ankle. Medical aid was quickly procured, the sufferers were relieved, and afterwards conveyed to their homes. Every incident of the accident seems to have been pictured in the premonitory dream.
A remarkable presentiment by means of a dream is related in the second section of the first volume of the “Museum of Wonders,” and is to the following effect. Though not new, it is so exceptionally curious as to be quite worthy of reproduction here:—
“A short time before the Princess Natgotsky, of Warsaw, travelled to Paris, she had the following dream:—She dreamed that she found herself in an unknown apartment, when a man who was likewise unknown to her, came to her with a cup, and presented it to her to drink out of. She replied that she was not thirsty, and thanked him for his offer. The unknown individual repeated his request, and added that she ought not to refuse it any longer, for it would be the last she would ever drink in her life. At this she was greatly terrified and awoke.
“In October, 1720, the Princess arrived at Paris, in good health and spirits; and occupied a furnished hotel, where soon after her arrival she was seized with a violent fever. She immediately sent for the King’s celebrated physician, the father of Helvetius. The physician came, and the Princess showed striking marks of astonishment. She was asked the reason of it, and gave for answer that the physician perfectly resembled the man whom she had seen at Warsaw in a dream; but added she, ‘I shall not die this time, for this is not the same apartment which I saw on that occasion in my dream.’
“The Princess was soon after completely restored, and appeared to have altogether forgotten her dream, when a new incident reminded her of it in a most forcible manner. She was dissatisfied with her lodgings at the hotel, and therefore requested that a dwelling might be prepared for her in a convent at Paris, which was accordingly done. The Princess removed to the convent, but scarcely had she entered the apartment destined for her, than she began to exclaim aloud: ‘It is all over with me; I shall not come out of this room again alive, for it is the same that I saw at Warsaw in my dream!’ She died in reality not long afterward in the same room, in the beginning of the year 1721, of an ulcer in the throat, occasioned by the drawing of a tooth.”
“This dream,” observes Jung Stilling, from whose work the account of it is transcribed, “proceeded from a good angel, who wished to attract the attention of the Princess to her approaching end.”
A dignitary of the Church of England, of rank and reputation, courteously furnishes the Editor with the following remarkable Dream, which occurred to himself,—alas! so completely fulfilled. Another account of the same, almost identical in terms, was sent to him from another quarter. But he prefers putting on record the former:[132]—
“My brother had left London for the country to preach and speak on behalf of a certain Church Society, to which he was officially attached. He was in his usual health, and I was therefore in no special anxiety about him. One night my wife woke me, finding that I was sobbing in my sleep, and asked me what it was. I said, ‘I have been to a strange place in my dream. It was a small village, and I went up to the door of an inn, if so it might be called, though it really was a decent public-house. A stout woman came to the door. I said to her, ‘Is my brother here?’ She said, ‘No, sir, he is gone.’ ‘Is his wife here?’ I went on to enquire. ‘No, sir, but his widow is.’ Then the distressing thought rushed upon me that my brother was dead: and I awoke sobbing.
“A few days after, I was summoned suddenly into the country. My brother returning from Huntingdon had been attacked with angina pectoris; and the pain was so intense that they left him at Caxton (a small village in the diocese of Ely), to which place on the following day he summoned his wife: and the next day, while they were seated together, she heard a sigh and he was gone.
“When I reached Caxton, it was the very same village to which I had gone in my dream. I went to the same house, was met and let in by the same woman; and found my brother dead, and his widow there.”
One of the most striking and well-authenticated cases of a Warning given in a Dream and acted upon, by which a grave temporal danger was actually averted, remains to be put on record now. The case is related with great simplicity by one who has carefully investigated the circumstances of both the dreams; and nothing is required on the Editor’s part, either to enlarge on any detail of it or to point its moral:—
“Knowing as I do intimately,” writes the correspondent in question, “the Widow of an Irish clergyman who was warned by a dream of the railway accident which took place a few years ago at Abergele, in North Wales, I give you gladly the following particulars:—
“About a fortnight before the accident occurred, my friend, the lady in question, had a dream in which her husband, who had been dead for three years, appeared to her, as she thought. This occurred on the night which followed the day on which she had settled and arranged with some friends to make a journey by railway. She dreamed that her husband was still living, and that she and he were walking on the sea-shore of North Wales, close to which the railway to Holyhead passes, when they came to a tunnel,[133] from which, all of a sudden, volumes of the blackest smoke were pouring out, and which became so dense that the sky was quite overcast. Alarmed at this, they hastily went forward together towards its mouth, when it seemed to be all on fire; the crackling and roar of which was quite unusual. In a moment or two the sounds of frantic cries of men and women wildly shrieking seemed to come from out of the mouth of the tunnel; and then, as if to add to the horror of what had already appeared, another train, full of people and at express speed, came up and dashed through smoke and flame into the tunnel itself. Upon this the lady awoke, and so deep an impression had the dream made (for it unhinged her for some days), that she resolved to postpone her journey, which she did. Had she gone at the time appointed and arranged, she and her friends would have travelled by the very train—the passengers of which were burnt by the explosion of petroleum.
“The most curious part of this interesting record has yet to be told. On the same night upon which this lady had this dream-warning, her own daughter, a child of nine years of age, who was staying with some relations nearly sixty miles from home, had likewise a dream, in which she thought she saw two trains meeting each other on one line of railway, in one of which her mother was seated, and in the other one of her mother’s friends (who was to have travelled with her). The trains seemed to be going at a great rate, and when the collision actually took place, the child at once awoke. On the following morning she recounted her dream to her relations: but at the time they took no notice of it, though it formed the subject of a general conversation regarding dreams. It was only when (as was afterwards discovered) her mother had possibly escaped the frightful disaster of a railway accident, and probably a very painful death, that the fact of her child having had the dream on the night of her own warning and mentioned it, was specially remarked and noted down.”
A prognostication, or rather a personal Presentiment of impending death, and that death the result of an accident, will fittingly be recorded here:—
At the village of Bloxwich, in the diocese of Lichfield, a miner resided, well known to the person who communicated the following occurrence to the Editor of this volume:—“One morning in 1872, on his way to the pit’s mouth, the miner had a strong presentiment that he should be killed at his work. He returned home, communicated his impressions to his wife (who expostulated with him for being so fanciful and superstitious), and then insisted on seeing all his children. They were assembled. He took down his Prayer Book and Bible, read a chapter from the latter, and afterwards said some of his accustomed prayers. Then affectionately greeting wife and children, he went to his work, with the same strange but vivid presentiment of approaching death upon him; as his wife so clearly testifies. He had not been at work many minutes when he was suddenly crushed to death by the fall of a rock.”
These facts are duly authenticated by persons who obtained the account from the man’s widow on the day of his burial, and have supplied them directly to the Editor.
The following cases, equally remarkable, are taken from the “Standard” newspaper:—
“Sir,—I beg to acquaint you of a very singular event which occurred here yesterday. On Saturday night a villager named Andrew Scott dreamed of being along the coast on S. Cyrus’ Sands, and finding a man among the rocks under Whitson Houses. On Sabbath morning after breakfast he cleaned himself, and told his wife he would go and see if there was anything in his dream, taking another man with him to whom he made known his errand; and on arriving at the spot where he expected to find the man, sure enough there was the drowned man, washing amongst the rocks, just as seen in his dream. He was taken ashore, reported to the S. Cyrus’ authorities, and to-day he is to be interred. He is supposed to be one of the men belonging to the ‘Providence,’ wrecked on Dec. 19. I have the honour to be, sir, your most obedient servant,
“Daniel Hamilton.
“Johnshaven, Kincardineshire, Jan. 20.”
“At an inquest held on Monday afternoon at James Bridge, near Wolverhampton, on the body of a collier named Samuel Tinley, who had been killed in a pit there by a fall of rock strata, it transpired that during the previous night he awoke, saying he had a ton of rock on his head, though he had no headache. He was convinced it boded ill, and was reluctant to go to work. Upon being urged to go by his wife, he went to his child and saying, ‘Let me have my last kiss,’ went to the pit and was killed. It was further shown that a cousin of his, who is a close friend, was returning home from working a night-shift, when he said he saw the deceased standing before him in the road. Instead of going home to bed he went to the deceased’s house, to which place the news of the death had just been brought, but altogether unknown to the cousin.[134] At the inquest a yet more remarkable case, that had come before the same coroner in the same locality, was mentioned.”
So much as to examples and records of extraordinary Dreams, Warnings by Visions, and Presentiments. The subject of Omens may now be briefly touched upon. An “omen” has been defined to be “a token or sign of good or ill;” “a boding or foreboding;” “a prognostic.” Some of the following are of such a character as that they are very suitably considered both in connection with events already described and with those yet to be narrated.
It has been forcibly and appropriately remarked, though not perhaps in any marked or specific Christian spirit, that Omens constitute the poetry of history. They cause the series of events which they are supposed to declare to flow into epical unity, and the political catastrophe seems to be produced, not by prudence or by folly, but by the superintending destiny.
The case of the Tichborne Prophecy, in connection with the well-known ancient Dole of that family, is so curious (having been in part recently fulfilled), that it may not only be set forth in detail, but may reasonably find a place at this particular part of this book. For the following version the Editor is indebted to a near connection of the family:—
“The Tichbornes date their possession of the present patrimony, the manor of Tichborne, so far back as two hundred years before the Conquest. When the Lady Mabella,[135] worn out with age and infirmity, was lying on her deathbed, she besought her loving husband, Sir Roger Tichborne, as her last request, that he would grant her the means of leaving behind her a charitable bequest, in a Dole of Bread to be distributed to all who should apply for it annually on the Feast of Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Sir Roger, her husband, readily acceded to her request by promising the produce of as much land as she could go over in the vicinity of the Park while a certain brand or billet was burning, supposing that, from her long infirmity (for she had been bedridden some years), she would be able to go round a small portion only of his property. The venerable dame, however, ordered her attendants to convey her to the corner of the Park, where, being deposited on the ground, she seemed to regain a renovation of strength; and to the surprise of her anxious and admiring lord, who began to wonder where this pilgrimage might end, she crawled round several rich and goodly acres.
“The field which was the scene of Lady Mabella’s extraordinary feat retains the name of ‘The Crawls’ to this day. It is situated near the entrance to the Park, and contains an area of twenty-three acres.
“Her task being completed, she was re-conveyed to her chamber; and, summoning her family to her bedside, predicted its prosperity while the annual Dole existed, and left her solemn Curse, uttered in God’s most Holy Name, on any of her descendants who should be so mean or covetous as to discontinue or divert it, prophesying that when such should happen the old house should fall, and the family name would become extinct from the failure of heirs male; and that this would be foretold by a generation of seven sons being followed immediately after by a generation of seven daughters and no son.
“The custom thus founded in the reign of Henry II. continued to be observed for centuries; and our Lady’s Day, the 25th of March, became the annual festive-day of the family. It was not until the middle of the last century that the custom was abused; when, under the pretence of attending the Tichborne Dole, vagabonds, gipsies, and idlers of every description, assembled from all quarters, pilfering throughout the neighbourhood; and, at last, the gentry and magistrates complaining, it was discontinued in 1796. Singularly enough, the baronet of that day, Sir Henry Tichborne,[136] had seven sons, and, when he was succeeded by the eldest, there appeared a generation of seven daughters, while the apparent fulfilment of the prophecy was completed by the change of the name of the late baronet to Doughty, under the will of his kinswoman. (This allusion is to Sir Edward Doughty, ninth baronet, who inherited the ‘Doughty’ estate, then Mr. Edward Tichborne.)”
Here is the record of a weird and obvious Omen:—
“The Duke of Somerset, the great sacrilegious nobleman of Henry VIII.’s reign, who worked such mischief and perpetrated such robberies on God’s poor, is said to have been more than once warned of his coming death upon the scaffold, by the appearance of a Bloody Hand stretched out from the panelled wall of the corridor of his mansion; and it is also reported that the Hand was visible to his duchess as well as to himself.”
And here is the narrative of a remarkable Dream, as well as of a singular coincidence:—
“Sir Thomas White, Alderman of London, was a very rich man, charitable and public-spirited. He dreamed that he had founded a college at a place where three elms grew out of one root. He went to Oxford probably with that intention; and discovering some such tree near Gloucester Hall, he began to repair the building of that community, with a design to endow it. But walking afterwards by the convent where the Bernardines formerly lived, he plainly saw an elm tree with three large bodies rising out of the same root; he forthwith purchased the ground, and endowed his college there, as it is at this day; except the additions which Archbishop Laud made near the outside of the building, in the garden belonging to the President. The tree is still to be seen. He made this discovery about the year 1557.”
The numerous tokens of the death of Henry IV. of France, who reigned from 1589 until 1610, are finely tragical. Mary of Medicis, in her well-known dream, saw the brilliant gems of her crown change into pearls—the recognized symbols of tears and mourning. An owl is said to have hooted until sunrise at the window of the chamber to which the King and Queen retired at S. Denis on the night preceding her coronation. During the ceremony, it was observed with dread, that the dark portals leading to the royal sepulchre beneath the choir, were gaping and expanded. The flame of the sacred taper held by Her Majesty was suddenly extinguished, and it is said that her crown twice nearly fell to the ground.
An anecdote, which was current during the reign of King Charles I., and has the support both of Archbishop Laud and Lord Clarendon, is said to have thrown a sad gloom over the spirits of the royal friends, already saddened by the fearful pestilence which inaugurated his reign. At the coronation it was found that there was not in the whole of London, nor indeed in the whole of England, sufficient purple velvet with which to make the customary royal robes and the corresponding furniture of the chair of state and throne. What was to be done? Rigid custom, coming down no doubt for long generations, possibly from the time of S. Edward, required that old traditions should be scrupulously observed and carefully followed. What was needed could not in all probability be had nearer than Genoa. To obtain it would have caused a delay of several months: and it was agreed that the solemn anointing and coronation could not be properly postponed. So it was resolved to robe His Majesty in white velvet, from which he was known afterwards as “the White King.” But this was the colour in which victims were arrayed. So many persons maintained that the Council which had sanctioned such an innovation had unwittingly, perhaps, but efficiently established an agency of evil; and many more after the King’s martyrdom recalled the ominous change.
Another Warning, or supposed Warning, of approaching evil vouchsafed to the King was equally striking and peculiar. It happened a short time before the disastrous Battle of Newbury, and is thus recorded:—
The King being at Oxford, went one day to see the Public Library, where he was shown amongst other books, a Virgil, nobly printed and exquisitely bound. The Lord Falkland, to divert the King, would have his Majesty make a trial of his fortune by the Sortes Virgilianæ, which everybody knows was not an unusual kind of augury some ages past. Whereupon the King opening the book, the period which happened to come up was part of Dido’s imprecation against Æneas, which Mr. Dryden translated thus:—
“Yet let a race untamed, and haughty foes,
His peaceful entrance with dire arms oppose;
Oppress’d with numbers in th’ unequal field,
His men discouraged and himself expelled,
Let him for succour sue from place to place,
Torn from his subjects and his son’s embrace;
First let him see his friends in battle slain,
And then untimely fate lament in vain;
And when at length the cruel war shall cease,
On hard conditions may he buy his peace;
Nor let him then enjoy supreme command,
But fall untimely by some hostile hand,
And lie unburied on the barren sand.”
“Æneid,” Book iv. 88.
It is said that King Charles seemed concerned at this accident, and that Lord Falkland observing it, would likewise try his fortune in the same manner, hoping he might fall upon some passage that could have no relation to his case, and thereby divert the King’s thoughts from any impression the other might have upon him. But the place that Falkland stumbled upon was yet more suited to his destiny than the other had been to the King’s; being the following expressions of Evander upon the untimely death of his son Pallas, as they are translated by the same hand:—
“O Pallas! thou hast fail’d thy plighted word,
To fight with caution, not to tempt the sword;
I warn’d thee but in vain; for well I knew
What perils youthful ardour would pursue,
That boiling blood would carry thee too far,
Young as thou wert in dangers—raw in war!
O cursed essay in arms—disastrous doom,
Prelude of bloody fields and fights to come.”
“Æneid,” Book xi. 230.
Again, as regards the King’s bust, the following record was current and commonly discussed:—
“Vandyke, having painted the King’s head, in three different attitudes, a profile, a three-quarters, and a full face, the picture was sent to Rome for Bernini, the celebrated sculptor, to make a bust from it. This artist, being exceedingly dilatory over his work, and having had complaints made to him on the subject, said that there was something so unusually sad and melancholy in the royal features, that if any stress might be laid on physiognomy, he was sure that the person whom the picture represented was destined for a violent end. When the bust arrived in England, the King being anxious to see it, it was taken immediately to Chelsea and placed on a table in the garden, whither the King, attended by many, went to inspect it. While so doing a hawk, with a wounded and bleeding partridge in its talons, flew over the King’s head, and some of the blood fell upon the marble neck of the bust, where it remained without being wiped off. The omen is said to have been marked by many.”
On the day of the King’s burial, when the coffin was borne to S. George’s Chapel, Windsor, by tried and trusted subjects and servants, it was carried through a severe snow-storm, and the purple pall was covered with the whitest snow, thus adding a fresh reason for the title by which His Majesty had been known.
There were also some remarkable Warnings in the life of the great Archbishop Laud, some of which were noted down in his “Diary.” For example, he was elected Head of S. John’s College, Oxford, on the Feast of the Beheading of S. John the Baptist; and of course, when he as Head of that college perished by a similar death, this more than remarkable coincidence was noticed and remembered. Another likewise is certainly curious. Not long before his martyrdom, on entering his study one day, he is said to have found his own portrait, by Vandyke, at full length on the floor, the cord which fastened it to the wall having snapped. The sight of this warning, as it was regarded, is said not only to have deeply impressed that great man, whose obvious belief in the Supernatural was considerable; but also to have brought back to his memory the fact of a great disaster which occurred to one of his barges, on the very day of his translation to the See of Canterbury, which boat sank with his coaches and horses into the Thames.
There was an Omen attached to the ancient Ferrers family, of Chartley Park in Staffordshire. The large possessions of this family were forfeited by the attainder of Earl Ferrers, after his defeat at Burton Bridge, where he led the rebellious barons against Henry III. The Chartley estate having been settled in dower was alone reserved and handed down. In the Park is said to be preserved an indigenous Staffordshire cow, small in stature, of sand-white colour, with black ears, muzzle, and tips at the hoofs. In the year of the Battle of Burton Bridge a black calf was born; the downfall of the house of Ferrers happening at the same period gave rise to the tradition, which to this day is said to be commonly current through observation of past events, viz., that the birth of a parti-coloured calf from the wild herd in Chartley Park is a sure omen of death within the same year to a member of Lord Ferrers’ family. By a noticeable coincidence a calf of this description has been born whenever a death has happened of late years in this noble family.[137] The decease of the late Earl and Countess, of his son Lord Tamworth, and of his daughter, Mrs. William Joliffe, as well as the deaths of the son and heir of the present nobleman, and his daughter, Lady Frances Shirley, has each been preceded by the birth of an ominous calf. In the spring of the year 1835 an animal perfectly black was calved by one of this weird tribe; and it was soon followed by the death of the amiable Countess.
The Omen connected with the ancient gentle family of Oxenham, co. Devon,[138] may now be suitably referred to. The following, describing it, is copied from a rare and ancient pamphlet:[139]—“In the parish called Sale Monachorum, in the county of Devon, there lives one James Oxenham, a gentleman of good worth and quality, who had many children, one whereof was called John Oxenham, a young man in the vigour, beauty, and flower of his age, about 22, who was of stature comely and tall, being in height of body sixe foote and a half, a very proper person.... This young gentleman fell sicke, who being visited by many of the neighbours during the time of his sickness, departed this transitory life on the 5th day of September 1635, to whom, two days before he yielded up his soul to God, there appeared the likeness of a Bird with a white breast hovering over him.” The pamphlet in question states that the White Bird also appeared previously to the deaths of Thomasine, Rebecca and Thomasine the younger,[140] facts formally testified to, on the oaths of divers eyewitnesses before the Lord Bishop of Exeter (Dr. Joseph Hall).
In Howell’s “Familiar Letters,” a communication dated “July 3, 1632,” states that the writer saw, at a stonecutter’s shop in London, a marble monument commemorating several examples of this curious omen; and gives the following as the inscriptions:—
“Here lies John Oxenham, a goodly young man, in whose chamber as he was struggling with the pangs of death, a Bird with a White Breast was seen fluttering about his bed, and so vanished.
“Here lies also Mary Oxenham, the sister of the said John, who died the next day, and the same apparition was seen in the room.
“Here lies hard by, James Oxenham, the son of the said John, who dyed a child in his cradle a little after, and such a Bird was seen fluttering about his head a little before he expir’d, which vanish’d afterwards.”
At the bottom of the stone there is:—
“Here lies Elizabeth Oxenham, the mother of the said John, who died sixteen years since, when such a bird with a white breast was seen about her bed before her death.”[141]
Then come the following remarks:—
“To all these there be divers witnesses both squires and ladies, whose names are engraven upon the stone. This stone is to be sent to a town hard by Exeter where this happen’d. Were you here, I could raise a choice discours with you hereupon. So hoping to see you the next tirm, I rest, etc.”
From an old MS. letter of the eighteenth century, written on the fly-leaf of a copy of Howell’s book already referred to, it seems that the appearance of the omen was regarded as a fact at that period. The Letter dated “December 29th, 1741,” contains the following statement:—
“I have received an answer from the country in relation to the strange Bird which appeared to Mr. Oxenham just before his death, and the account which Dr. Bertie gave to Lord Abingdon of it, is certainly true. It first was seen outside the window, and soon afterwards by Mrs. Oxenham in the room, which she mentioned to Mr. Oxenham, and asked him if he knew what bird it was. ‘Yes,’ says he, ‘it has been on my face and head, and is recorded in history as always appearing to our family before their deaths; but I shall cheat the Bird.’ Nothing more was said about it, nor was the Bird taken notice of from that time: but he died soon afterwards. However odd this affair may seem, it is certainly true; for the account was given of it by Mrs. Oxenham herself: but she never mentions it to anyone unless particularly asked about it; and as it was seen by several persons at the same time, I cannot attribute it to imagination, but must leave it as a phenomenon unaccounted for.”
My friend, the Rev. H. N. Oxenham, of this family, writes to me A.D. October, 1874, as follows:
“The tradition about the White Bird has certainly existed for so long a time—I believe for centuries—in our family, that I have every reason to believe there are well-authenticated accounts of its appearance before the death of the head of the family; and that certainly a white Bird was seen at the window a few days before my late uncle’s death (who was the head of the family) last Christmas” [i.e. in 1873].
Here a singular account of the possession of a charm, or amulet, and of a Curse connected with it, may be fittingly set forth:—
“The family of Graham of Inchbrachie, county Perth, are said to possess a small blue, uncut stone, set in an antique ring, of which the following story is told. Some two centuries ago, as the Head of the Family was passing by a hill near or at Crieff, he discovered a large crowd, presided over by one of the Campbells of ——, preparing to execute a witch. On approaching the crowd, he found that the unhappy victim (who had for some years lived in a rocky cave, still known by her name), was none other than his old nurse, Katherine Nivens. Charged with witchcraft, she had been condemned and was about to be executed. Graham, addressing the mob, urged them to prevent Campbell from carrying out his purpose. In acknowledgment of his generous help on her behalf, the poor creature threw him a small blue stone like a bead, which she had kept in her mouth, and desired him to keep it for her sake; adding that as long as it was preserved in his family good fortune should ever attend them; while to the Campbells of —— (whom she solemnly cursed), she predicted that there never should be born an heir male, and cited him to appear before God’s judgment-bar, where justice should be done.[142] The strange feature in the story is that (as a correspondent avers) both promise and prediction have turned out to be true. The stone is said to be an uncut sapphire. Other Scotch families possess similar amulets or charms: amongst these the Macdonald-Lockharts of Lee in the county of Lanark.
The sound of the Beating of a Drum is said to betoken death to a noble Scotch family—one which has been a staunch, good old loyalist clan for centuries, and suffered sorely for having been “leal and true” to their Royal House and their own consciences. Some years ago the then head of it was paying a visit in England, when, one day, sitting outside in the garden with the lady of the house, his lordship exclaimed suddenly, “Listen! here comes a band of music.”
“Music!” she replied, “oh, impossible.”
“Oh, don’t you hear it? it is coming this way.”
“No, I hear nothing.”
“Listen!” he retorted; “don’t you hear the Drum?”
She assured him that there was nothing, that it was a fancy, and that no band of music could come near enough to the house to be heard, on account of the unusual extent of the grounds and park.
On this the nobleman turned pale, and becoming much agitated, remarked that he felt sure it must be the sound of the family “Drum,”—an omen that always preceded death, and feared that something had happened to one of his relations.
The next post brought him the sad and melancholy news of his wife’s unlooked-for death, through giving birth prematurely to a child.
The origin of this omen, as far as the Editor can discover, appears to be unknown.
In another family of rank a female figure, dressed in brown clothes, appears as a warning of death. To the members of an old knightly family in the West of England there always comes, before the death of its chief, the sound of a heavy carriage with many horses driven round the paved courtyard of the Elizabethan mansion.
It is equally notorious that in a certain noble English family, the form of a spectral head appears as a sign of death to any member of it, and invariably so, when the chief of it dies,—a fact which the Editor has been assured of in writing (A.D. 1872) from a member of a junior branch of the same.
To another family, living in the East of England (of the rank of gentle people), appears an Omen, equally, if not more disagreeable. The appearance of a spectral Black Dog is also a portent of death. About twenty years ago, A.D. 1853, the then head of the family married, and though he himself (by no means superstitious) could not reject the tradition of the unpleasant omen, having heard so much about it on its previous appearance, he said nothing to his wife. Some years afterwards, in 1861, their eldest child was taken ill. The illness, however, (as the physician asserted,) was slight, and not at all likely to prove dangerous; so little, in truth, was this anticipated that there were several persons staying in the house at the time. Just before dinner was announced one evening, the wife of the head of the family asked to be excused for a moment or two, while she looked into the night nursery to see how the sick child was. She went, but returned almost immediately, saying, “Darling —— is fast asleep; but there’s a large black dog lying under the bed; go and drive it out.” The father, at once calling to mind the omen, was sorely terrified. He went at once to the sick room. Neither under nor near the bed, nor (as was afterwards discovered) on the premises, was there, or had there been, any dog, but the poor child’s sleep was found to be the sleep of death.
To revert to Omens in general. There is a widely-spread and singular prejudice, (which with many is deeply rooted,) that if thirteen people sit down to dinner one of them, at least, shall die within a year.[143] It seems to have originated from the fact of Judas having been the thirteenth at the Paschal Feast, when our Lord instituted the Holy Sacrament.
Again, Friday has from time immemorial been considered an unlucky day;[144] because the Crucifixion of our Blessed Saviour took place on that day—a day of fear and trembling, of darkness and of earthquakes—a day of awe, when even some of the Pagan oracles were silent, and indications of the decay and weakening of their powers were by their impotence made manifest. Plutarch in his book on the “Cessation of Oracles,” makes mention of the voice which, near Paxos, the pilot of a vessel heard in the spring of the nineteenth year of the Emperor Tiberius, crying out, “Great Pan is dead.” Now we know that in the spring of that year, and possibly on the afternoon of that very day, our Divine Lord overcame death by dying, conquered Satan, and opened the gates of everlasting life to mankind. Can we be surprised that after that victory on the first Good Friday, the power of the Evil One was largely and surely curbed?
Second Sight, indications of the existence of which have already been given, appears to be a power or property of seeing beforehand events which are still in the future, and such sight claimed by several[145] is said to belong to many persons in Scotland. In a “Description of the Western Isles,” a popular writer of the last century somewhat amplified the definition. He maintained as follows: “The Second Sight is a singular faculty of seeing an otherwise invisible object, without any previous means used by the person that sees it for that end; the vision makes such a lively impression upon the seers, that they neither see nor think of anything else, except the vision, as long as it continues; and then they appear pensive or jovial, according to the object which was represented to them.” He further points out generally that when persons gifted with Second Sight “actually behold something unusual, the eyelids of the person are erected, and the eyes continue staring until the object vanish.” In the case of a certain person in the Island of Skye, “when he sees a vision, the inner part of his eyelids turns so far upwards, that after the object disappears, he must draw them down again with his fingers.” The same writer maintains that the property of Second Sight does not necessarily descend in a family, as some persons hold and assert. “I know several parents,” he writes, “who are endowed with it, but their children not, and vice versa; neither is it acquired by any previous compact. And, after a strict inquiry, I could never learn from any among them that this faculty was communicable any way whatsoever.”
Several volumes have been written on the subject, and examples almost without number provided.
In John Aubrey’s “Miscellanies”[146] is recorded a remarkable escape from death of Dr. William Harvey, the celebrated discoverer of the circulation of the blood through Second Sight:—“When Dr. Harvey, one of the Physicians’ College in London, being a young man (in 1695), went to travel towards Padua, he went to Dover with several others, and showed his pass as the rest to the Governor there. The Governor told him that he must not go, but he must keep him prisoner. The Doctor desired to know ‘for what reason? how he had transgressed?’ ‘Well, it was his will to have it so.’ The pacquet boat hoisted sail in the evening, which was very clear, and the doctor’s companions in it. There ensued a terrible storm, and the pacquet boat and all the passengers were drowned. The next day the sad news was brought to Dover. The Doctor was unknown to the Governor both by name and face; but the night before the Governor had a perfect vision of Dr. Harvey in a dream, who came to pass over to Calais, and that he had a warning to stop him. This the Governor told the Doctor the next day. The Doctor was a pious, good man, and has several times directed this story to some of my acquaintance.”
The following, from a rare and curious volume of the last century,[147] containing nearly two hundred cases, authenticated mainly by ministers of the Scotch Establishment, is a good example:—
“Alexander Macdonald, of Kingsborough (when living in the possession of Aird, in the remote end of Trotternish), dreamed that he saw a reverend old man come to him, desiring him to get out of bed, and get his servants together, and make haste to save his fields of corn, as his whole cattle, and his tenants’ cattle also, had got out of the fold, and were in the middle of a large field behind the house. He awaked and told his wife, with whom he consulted whether he would rise or not; and she telling him it was but a dream, and not worth noticing, advised him to lie still, which he obeyed; but no sooner fell asleep, than the former old man appeared to him, and seemed angry, by telling Mr. Macdonald (then of Aird), he the old man was very idle, in acquainting him of the loss he would or had by this time sustained by his cattle, and seemed not to heed what he said, and so went off. Mr. Macdonald awaking the second time, told his wife, but she would not allow him, and ridiculed him for noticing the folly of a confused dream; so that, after attempting to get up, he was, at his wife’s persuasion, prevailed upon to lie down again; and falling asleep, it being now near break of day, the old gentleman appeared to him a third time, with a frowning countenance, and told him he might now lie still, for that the cattle were now surfeited of his corn, and were lying in it; and that it was for his welfare that he came to acquaint him so often, as he was his grand-uncle by his father; and so went off. He awaking in about an hour thereafter, arose and went out, and actually found his own and his tenants’ cattle lying in his corn, after being tired of eating thereof; which corn, when comprised, the loss amounted to eight bolls of meal.”
Two quite recent cases of Second Sight are here given, and are each somewhat remarkable. Both have been furnished to the Editor by those who knew the cases, and the accuracy of each has been vouched for by trusty and courteous correspondents.
The first has reference to the murder of a policeman at Cardiff:—“An inquest was formally opened on the body of William Perry, a constable of the Cardiff police force, who was fatally stabbed on Tuesday by a butcher, named Jones. The medical evidence went to show that the murderer was in a very excited state at the time, but was neither insane nor suffering from delirium tremens. The further hearing was adjourned. The ‘Western Mail’ says:—The deceased man Perry was a well-known and very efficient officer. He joined the borough police force on the 5th of July, 1865, and from that time had always conducted himself in a praiseworthy manner, having attained to the position of a first-class constable some time ago. Previous to 1865 he was employed in the Merthyr division of the county police. He was 36 years of age. The superstitious will probably feel interested in the following story, which our reporter heard last night from the lips of the widow herself. Strange as it may seem, it is no less strange than true; and mournful as the circumstance is in itself, those who believe in the efficacy of dreams as prognosticators of future events, will perhaps derive some gratification from it. On Sunday night Mrs. Perry (who resides at Melrose-cottage, Heath-street, Canton), had a dream, which but too faithfully predicted the sad tragedy of yesterday. In the midst of her sleep she saw, to use her own words, a large crowd following her husband down the Cowbridge-road, in the direction of the Westgate hotel, where the murder was committed. She saw, in the horror of her dream, a knife plunged into the breast of her husband, and drawn out again, blood-stained and grimy, by some cruel but unknown hand. She saw, too, the murdered form of her husband borne away, and little thought, when brooding over her awful dream, that it was a ‘dark presage,’ and the precursor of what was soon to be a terrible reality. The dream occasioned her great uneasiness, but she mentioned it to no one until the dreadful tidings of her husband’s death reached her yesterday morning, when the circumstance forced itself vividly upon her recollection.” (A.D. 1873.)
The second example is equally remarkable:—“A singular case of Second Sight is reported from the neighbourhood of Marlborough. A labourer named Duck, employed by Mr. Dixon, of Mildenhall Warren Farm, was in charge of a horse and water-cart on the farm, when the animal took fright and knocked him down. The wheel went over his chest, and the injuries he received were such that his death occurred shortly afterwards. However, the singular part of the story remains to be told. Duck resided at Ramsbury, and immediately after the accident Mr. Dixon despatched a woman to acquaint his wife of the fact. On arriving at her home the messenger found her out gathering wood; but shortly afterwards a girl who was her companion arrived, and, without being told of what had occurred, volunteered the statement that ’Ria (Mrs. Duck) was unable to do much that morning, that she had been very much frightened, having seen her husband in the wood. Shortly afterwards Mrs. Duck returned, without any wood, and, being informed by a neighbour that a woman from Mildenhall Woodlands wished to see her, ejaculated immediately, ‘My David’s dead, then.’ Inquiry has since been made by Mr. Dixon of the woman, and she positively asserts that she saw her husband in the wood, and said, ‘Holloa, David, what wind blows you here, then?’ and that he made no reply. Mr. Dixon inquired what time this occurred, and she replied about 10 o’clock, the hour at which the fatal accident took place.” (A.D. 1874.)
Before this chapter is closed, the following account, which created the deepest impression in the town and neighbourhood of Devizes, is embodied in terms which plainly enough set forth its point and purpose. It is an awful example of God’s summary judgment, recorded by the local authorities both as a memorial of the Supernatural and as a warning to all:—
“The Mayor and Corporation of Devizes avail themselves of the stability of this building [the Market Cross,] to transmit to future times the record of an awful event which occurred in the Market Place in the year 1753, hoping that such record may serve as a salutary warning against the danger of impiously invoking Divine vengeance, or of calling on the Holy Name of God to conceal the devices of falsehood and fraud:
“On Thursday, the 25th of January, 1753, Ruth Pierce, of Potterne in this county, agreed with three other women to buy a sack of wheat in the market, each paying her due proportion towards the same. One of these women, in collecting the several quotas of money, discovered a deficiency, and demanded of Ruth Pierce the sum which was wanting to make good the amount. Ruth Pierce protested that she had paid her share, and said: She wished she might drop down dead if she had not. She rashly repeated the awful wish; when, to the consternation and terror of the surrounding multitude, she instantly fell down and expired, having the money concealed in her hand.”
The narrative of this solemn event was by order of the authorities recorded on a tablet and hung up in the Market house (a row of sheds near the Cross). When the building was taken down, Mr. Halcombe, who kept the Bear Inn, in order that the remembrance might not be lost, caused it to be inscribed on the pediment of a couple of pillars which stood opposite his inn, supporting the sign of the Bear.
The sign was removed in 1801, and a few years after Lord Sidmouth having presented to the town the New Cross, which forms the central ornament of the Market Place, the Mayor and Corporation “availed themselves,” to use their own language, “of the stability of the new structure to transmit to future time a record of the awful death of Ruth Pierce in hope that it might serve as a salutary warning against the practice of invoking the Sacred Name to conceal the devices of falsehood and fraud.”
And now to conclude this portion of the subject. Each example already recorded has, no doubt, told its own story sufficiently well. Some cases may appear to certain minds to be as trivial as they certainly are, to others, marvellous and inexplicable; other examples, again, cannot fail to leave a deep impression on the reader, as well from the remarkable character of the presentiments and dreams themselves, as from the reasonable testimony by which their truth is supported by persons of repute and credibility. The Editor has intentionally avoided the making of comments, either prolix or the reverse, preferring to present to the reader each recorded narrative, as received or obtained by himself, without dissertations, theories, or explanations.
END OF VOL. I.
CHISWICK PRESS:—PRINTED BY WHITTINGHAM AND WILKINS,
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.
