TRUTH IN THE MARVELLOUS.
Antiquarian research, conducted in the prosaic spirit of the present day, has dealt cruel blows at many time-honoured traditions. We are taught that the story of the siege of Troy was a mere romance—that Troy itself never existed; that Arthur’s Round Table was a myth; that the accidental appearance of a Countess’s garter at a ball was not responsible for the institution of the highest order of knighthood; that a certain other Countess never freed the citizens of Coventry by riding through their streets with innocence for her only dress; that the Maid of Orleans was never burned, but married, and lived happy ever afterwards. We hardly know what historic relation we are to be allowed to believe. While, however, historical inquiry has discredited many pleasant stories, hard science has come to the aid of romance, and has testified to the veracity of some narrators who have been accused of imposing on the credulity of the ignorant and superstitious by the relation of wonders unworthy of credence in enlightened times. The stories of the appearance in the heavens of blazing sceptres, fiery serpents, and swords of fire dipped in blood, when read in the light of the calm and unbiased observations of some meteors in recent times, are descriptions of physical phenomena sufficiently rare to be accounted supernatural by nations whose acquaintance with the heavenly bodies did not extend beyond the regular movements of the sun, moon, and planets. There is no doubt that the authors of these accounts related truthfully what they saw, employing the language which best conveyed their impressions.
With what awe the visit of a meteorite may be regarded, even in this nineteenth century, by unlearned country-folk, may be gathered from the account of one which fell at Juvenas, in Ardèche, on the 15th of June 1821, and which formed the subject of a curious procès verbal drawn up by the mayor of the commune. It was first seen at three P.M. as a fireball, in a clear sky, while the sun was shining brightly; and it sunk five feet into the ground. The inhabitants were so alarmed, that it was more than a week before they could make up their minds to search for this strange visitant. ‘They deliberated for a long time whether they should go armed to undertake this operation, which appeared so dangerous; but Claude Serre, the sexton, justly observed that if it was the Evil One, neither powder nor arms would prevail against him—that holy-water would be more effectual; and that he would undertake to make the evil spirit fly;’ after which reassuring speech, they set to work and dug up the aërolite, which weighed over two hundred pounds.
We read in the classic poets that on certain momentous occasions, statues have been so affected as to perspire, as if they were living human beings. These stories have been passed over as mere poetic fictions; but probably they rest on a substantial foundation. The phenomenon is doubtless that which is observed when a fire has been lighted for the first time in a room which has for a lengthened period been allowed to remain cold: the walls and other objects are seen to run down with moisture, which appears as if exuded from their surface. The same thing occurs when a long-continued frost is succeeded by mild weather. The appearance is familiar enough to us, who are accustomed to sudden variations of temperature; but in warmer and more equable climates, the requisite conditions are probably rare; and the appearance of copious moisture on statues composed of substances on which dew is not commonly found, may well have been accounted a prodigy.
We may not be disposed to admit that the fiery cross seen by Constantine was a miraculous intimation; but we cannot set aside the account as necessarily apocryphal; for a celestial cross was seen in Migné, near Poitiers, in December 1826. It was observed during a religious service, and the preacher in his sermon had referred to the cross of Constantine. The awe-struck congregation, on perceiving the visible cross in the sky, of shining silver, edged with red, immediately fell upon their knees, accepting the sign as a divine testimony to the truth of what had just been told them. The source of the phenomenon was afterwards found in a wooden cross which had been erected near the chapel, the shadow of which had been cast by the declining sun on a rising mist.
The Flying Dutchman was obviously another instance of atmospheric reflection, and similar phantom ships have been described by modern travellers. The Enchanted Island, or Isle of Ghosts, which had its place in old charts in the mid-Atlantic, and so perplexed the mariners of the middle ages by its varying appearance, defying all attempts to reach its shores, has since been recognised as a fogbank.
Among the wonders recorded in the reign of William Rufus, it is said that on a night in 1095, the stars seemed falling like a shower of rain from heaven to earth, or, according to the Chronicle of Reims, were driven like dust before the wind. A tradition is recorded as prevailing in Thessaly that on a certain night in August the heavens were opened and burning torches were seen through the aperture. These are clearly but highly coloured accounts, by persons of limited knowledge of natural phenomena, of specially brilliant displays of shooting-stars. The last corresponds with the August meteors.
Bartholin, in his History of Anatomy, speaks of a patrician lady of Verona, Catherine, wife of J. Franciscus Rambaldus, whose skin sparkled with fire when slightly touched. ‘This noble lady,’ he says, ‘the Creator endued with so stupendous a dignity and prerogative of nature, that as oft as her body was but lightly touched with linen, sparks flew out plentifully from her limbs, apparent to her domestic servants, as if they had been struck out of a flint, accompanied also with a noise that was to be heard by all. Oftentimes, when she rubbed her hands upon the sleeve of her smock that contained the sparks within it, she observed a flame with a tailed ray running about, as fired exhalations are wont to do.... This fire was not to be seen but in the dark or in the night, nor did it burn without itself, though combustible matter was applied to it.’ This description of electric sparks is such as would be given by a person who saw the phenomenon for the first time and was ignorant of its cause. The same appearance is sometimes seen by persons of the present generation when divesting themselves of tight-fitting underclothing, and especially when combing their hair with a vulcanite comb; but probably it shows itself only with persons of peculiar constitution.
It is hardly necessary to advert to the part which comets have played in the annals of supernatural manifestations. In classic times, however low the state of knowledge may have been in other departments of physical science, the celestial bodies were never without intelligent observers, and the ancient astronomers no doubt acknowledged comets as having their place in the planetary or sidereal economy. But this knowledge was confined to the learned; to the common people, comets were chariots of fire conveying departed heroes to the abode of demigods. A splendid comet luckily appeared after the death of Julius Cæsar, and confirmed his title to divine honours. In the dark ages, comets were celestial portents, presages of revolution or pestilence. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was accounted profane scepticism to attribute their appearance to natural causes; and even as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century, we find an intelligent writer on the natural curiosities of the world adopting the view that these bodies are not allowed to appear except with the special permission of Divine providence, for a specific purpose, in opposition to the theories of astronomers, who are twitted with assigning long periods to the orbits of comets in order that the predictions of their reappearance may not be falsified in the lifetime of the persons making them.
Whether it was owing to the improved means of spreading intelligence afforded by the invention of printing, or to the excitement of men’s minds consequent upon the political and social events of the time, the sixteenth century was prolific in stories of wonderful sights in the heavens and on the earth. Of the many marvellous accounts then circulated, we select the following, which forms the subject of a tract by Abraham Fleming, and purports to have been taken from the evidence of eye-witnesses. The account is titled, ‘A Straunge and Terrible Wunder wrought very late in the Parish Church of Bungay—namely, the fourth of this August in the yeere of Our Lord 1577 ... with the appearance of an horrible shaped thing sensibly perceived of the people then and there assembled.’ The account is couched in terms appropriate to the solemnity of a special manifestation from the spiritual world, and is interspersed with ejaculations expressive of the awe which filled the people’s minds at their witnessing the occurrences described; but the incidents, briefly told, are as follows: A storm of extraordinary fury was raging while the congregation were assembled at divine service; rain came down like a deluge, lightning flashed, and thunder pealed, so that not only dumb creatures were disquieted, but ‘senseless things void of all life and feeling shook and trembled;’ in other words, the fabric and furniture of the building were shaken by the violence of the storm. While the tempest was at its height, a visitor from the lower regions (as the narrator evidently believed) made his appearance in the midst of the congregation, in the form, ‘as they might discerne it,’ of a dog, of a black colour; ‘the sight whereof, together with the fearful flashes of fire which then were seene, moved such admiration in the mindes of the assemblie that they thought doome’s day was already come.’ The ‘Evil One in such a likenesse’ ran with extraordinary speed down the body of the church among the people. Passing between two persons who were on their knees apparently engaged in prayer, he wrung the necks of both of them in an instant, so that they died where they knelt. As he passed by another man he ‘gave him such a gripe on the back that therewithal he was presently drawen togither and shrunk up as it were a piece of lether scorched in a hot fire; or as the mouth of a purse or bag drawn togither with a string.’ This man, however, did not die. Meanwhile, the parish clerk, who was cleaning out the gutter of the church, also saw the ‘horrible shaped thing,’ and was struck to the ground with a violent clap of thunder, but beyond his fall, was not harmed. The stones of the church and the church door, on being afterwards examined, bore evidence of the power of the demon in the marks of his claws or talons; and all the wires, the wheels, and other things belonging to the clock, were wrung in sunder and broken in pieces.
A similar occurrence is stated to have been witnessed the same day at Blibery, a village seven miles from Bungay. In this case, the demon planted himself upon the rood-loft, from which he flung himself down into the church, and after killing two men and a lad, and burning the hand of another person, flew out of the church ‘in a hideous likeness.’
Before dismissing this story as a fable, bred of the imagination of people terror-stricken by the storm, let us compare it with the account of an occurrence which took place on Malvern Hills on the 1st of July 1826. A party had taken refuge in an iron-roofed hut from an impending storm, and were about to partake of refreshment when the storm came on. A gentleman who was standing at the eastern entrance—the storm had come from the west—saw what seemed to him to be a ball of fire moving along the surface of the ground. It came up and entered the hut, forcing him, as it did so, several paces forward from the doorway. An explosion followed, described by the inhabitants of the village at the foot of the hill (Great Malvern) as terrific. On going in, as soon as he had recovered from the shock, to look after his sisters, he found them on the floor, fainting, as he thought, from terror. Two of them had died instantly; and a third lady, with others of the party, were injured. An examination of the hut showed a large crack in the side opposite to that at which the fireball had entered, leading up to a window, and the iron roof above this was indented.
The correspondence of the leading circumstances of this account with Fleming’s story is remarkable; and had the Malvern incident occurred in the superstitious sixteenth century instead of the scientific nineteenth, it would no doubt have been regarded as a supernatural visitation, and have furnished just such a marvellous story as that of Bungay. In both cases, something was seen to enter a building during a thunderstorm, killing two persons instantly and injuring others, disappearing with a noise described in the one case as a violent clap of thunder, and in the other as a terrific explosion, and leaving behind visible marks of its progress in the material of the building. In each instance, too, a person stationed outside saw something which drove him from his place, but otherwise did not harm him; and in both cases the body, whatever it was, which seemed to be the immediate source of the mischief had a progressive motion, which, though swift, could be followed by the eye. The chief point of difference is in the appearance presented by the vehicle of the destructive agent. In the one case it is likened to a black dog, and in the other to a ball of fire, and it may be said that no two things could be more unlike. As to the form of the so-called dog, little need be said. It is admitted that the church at the time was in such a state of ‘palpable darknesse’ that one person could not perceive another; and in the dark, any ill-defined object that can be perceived at all has a tendency to assume a fantastic shape. It was accompanied by ‘fearful flashes of fire,’ which seem to be distinguished from the lightning, and the effect on those who were touched by it was that of scorching or burning. Whether the vehicle which brought the destructive force into the church, and which was thought to be a fiend, was a mass of highly charged smoke or dust, or a miniature cloud of the kind which, on a grand scale, passed over Malta on the 29th of October 1757, the effects described correspond so entirely with those known to result from a particular kind of thunderstroke, that we cannot accuse the author of writing otherwise than in good faith. The supernatural colouring may fairly be ascribed to want of knowledge in regard to a subject which, even now, is but imperfectly understood. The Malta storm-cloud, which destroyed nearly two hundred lives, and laid in ruins almost everything in its way, is described by Brydone as being at first black, afterwards changing its colour till it became like a flame of fire mixed with black smoke; but he reports that despite the scientific explanations of this extraordinary storm-cloud, the people declared with one voice that it was a legion of demons let loose to punish them for their sins. There were, says he, a thousand people in Malta that were ready to take their oath that they saw the fiends within the cloud, ‘all as black as pitch, and breathing out fire and brimstone.’
Besides those mentioned above, many other strange stories might be instanced which, at the time, were accepted as true accounts of supernatural appearances; and afterwards, when the general belief in spiritual manifestations declined, were denounced as false, because contrary to nature, but have since been recognised as consistent with natural laws. By taking into account the surrounding circumstances, the state of knowledge at the time, the customary modes of expression, &c., we may, from many stories at first sight incredible, arrive at a substratum of truth which may form a valuable addition to the sum of human knowledge. Imbued with a sense of their own superior wisdom, learned men, and others who have thought themselves learned, have sometimes rashly pronounced as impossible, and therefore untrue, phenomena which have since been accepted as facts. In Arago’s Popular Astronomy is an account of a meteorite which struck the earth at Lucé, in the year 1769. It was perceived in the sky by several persons, who watched its progress until it reached the surface of the earth, when it was at once picked up and preserved; but the Academy of Sciences pronounced it impossible for a solid body to have fallen from the heavens. On the 24th of July 1790, a quantity of these stones fell at St Juliac—in the fields, on the roofs of the houses, and in the streets of the village. The fall was preceded by what is described as the passing of a great fire, after which was heard in the air a very loud and extraordinary noise. The facts were certified by the municipality of the place and by some hundreds of the inhabitants; but the affair was treated in the public journals as a ridiculous tale, calculated to excite the compassion not merely of savants, but of all reasonable persons.
Modern scientific research, while continually giving us fresh revelations of that order in nature which is its supreme law, is at the same time constantly narrowing the domain of the impossible. Even the wild dreams of the alchemist appear, to the chemist and physicist of to-day, less groundless than they did eighty or a hundred years ago. The present century, the age of the railway, the electric light, the telegraph and telephone, is certainly not less replete with marvels than any of its predecessors. Many of the achievements of applied science, to which we have now become habituated, if they could have been related to a person living in the middle ages, would make as great demands upon his credulity as the most wonderful stories of past times do upon ours, and problems which have baffled the genius of all past ages, and the insolvability of which had come to be regarded as a matter of faith, have been solved in our own time. And yet we have no ground for assuming that we have approached a limit in the field of discovery, or for claiming finality in our interpretations of nature. We have lifted a corner of the curtain, and are enabled to peep at some of the machinery by which her operations are effected, but much more remains concealed, and we know not what marvels may yet in course of time be made clear to us. There are doubtless more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of—even in our philosophy.