Let warlocks grim, and wither'd hags,
Tell how wi' you, on ragweed nags,
They skim the moors an' dizzy crags,
Wi' wicked speed.
But this is rather corroborative than otherwise of the hypothesis of their common origin. I have previously shown that witches were descended from the Aryan storm-gods or their attendants. Shakspere appears to have been fully cognisant of their elemental origin, or, in other words, of their supposed power over "the elements," for he makes Macbeth, in his extremity, exclaim:—
I conjure you, by that which you profess
(Howe'er you came to know it), answer me:
Though you untie the winds, and let them fight
Against the churches: though the yesty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up;
Though bladed corn be lodg'd, and trees torn down;
Though castles topple on their warders' heads;
Though palaces and pyramids do slope
Their heads to their foundations; tho' the treasure
Of nature's germins tumble altogether,
Even till destruction sicken, answer me
To what I ask you.
The tradition that Dosmery Pool was bottomless, reminds me of a similar presumed phenomenon in the neighbourhood of Preston, which I have often heard referred to in my youth with implicit faith. It was confidently asserted that a large pit near the footpath leading from Moor Park to Cadley Mill was of the bottomless class. Doubtless it was, at that time, a very deep pit, though I believe now it is nearly if not entirely dry in the summer season. There was likewise a pit on Preston Moor which was supposed to be bottomless. A similar belief once obtained respecting the "Stone Delph," from which the material was quarried for the tower of the Parish Church, Preston, taken down in 1814. I can yet well remember being convinced of the absurdity of this legend by an older companion, a good swimmer and diver, bringing up some mud and a stone from the bottom. The stone delph referred to is situated in the present bed of the Ribble, at the foot of the steep brow in Avenham Park. The sinking of water into the caverns of limestone rocks, as in Derbyshire, and at Malham Cove, in Yorkshire, and other places, may have originated the notion of "bottomless pits;" but I am inclined to think that demonology has, likewise, had something to do with these legends.
The mother of the mythic monster Grendel, in the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf, lived in a pool or mere on which fire floated at night, and the depth of which was so great that the wisest living person knew not its bottom. This mere is supposed to be the sheet of water from which Hart-le-pool, in the county of Durham, takes its name.
Tregeagle was next employed on the shore near Padstow, to make "trusses of sand and ropes of sand with which to bind them." Of course, each recurring tide swept away the result of his toil, and, according to the tradition, "the ravings of the baffled soul were louder than the roarings of the winter tempest." He was afterwards removed, by the power of the priesthood, to the estuary of the Loo, and ordered to carry sand across to Porthleven. A fiend maliciously tripped him up, and the contents of his huge sack, it is said, furnished the material of the sandbank which forms the bar that destroyed the harbour of Ella's Town. Yet we learn that "the sea was raging with the irritation of a passing storm" at the time of the mishap, which clearly indicates the origin of the legend. Tregeagle's last location was at the Land's End, where Mr. Hunt says "he would find no harbour to destroy and few people to terrify. His task was to sweep the sands from Porthcurnow Cove round the headland called Tol-Peden-Penwith, into Nanjisal Cove. Those who know that rugged headland, with its cubical masses of granite, piled in Titanic grandeur one upon another, will appreciate the task; and when to all the difficulties are added the strong sweep of the Atlantic current,—that portion of the Gulf Stream which washes our southern shores,—it will be evident that the melancholy spirit has, indeed, a task which must endure to the world's end. Even until to-day is Tregeagle labouring at his task. In calms his wailing is heard; and those sounds which some call the 'soughing of the wind,' are known to be the moanings of Tregeagle; while the coming storms are predicted by the fearful roarings of this condemned mortal."
It is very certain that we have here a singularly curious variation of the popular legend of the "Wandering Jew," and the myth of the "spectre huntsman," or the "furious host." The yelping hounds of the latter are not wanting to complete the picture, for Mr. Hunt tells us that "the tradition of the Midnight Hunter and his headless hounds, always, in Cornwall, associated with Tregeagle, prevails everywhere. The Abbot's Way, on Dartmoor, an ancient road which extends into Cornwall, is said to be the favourite coursing ground of the 'wish or whisked hounds of Dartmoor,' called also the 'yell hounds.' The valley of the Dewerstone is also the place of their midnight meetings. Once I was told at Jump, that Sir Francis Drake drove a hearse into Plymouth at night with headless horses, and that he was followed by a pack of 'yelling hounds' without heads. If dogs hear the cry of the wish hounds they all die."
The performance attributed to Sir Francis Drake is unquestionably a relatively modernised version of the mythical black coach story previously referred to as one form of the furious host legend. The effect of the cry of the wish hounds on the canine race in Cornwall is similar to that attributed to their compeers in Lancashire, only the death resultant is always that of a human being in the northern locality.
Mr. Hunt seems to doubt Mr. Kemble's etymology of the term "wish," when he says:—"In Devonshire, to this day, all magical or supernatural dealings go under the common name of wishtness. Can this have any reference to Woden's name 'Wyse?'" Mr. Hunt, however, acknowledges that "Mr. Kemble's idea is supported by the fact that 'there are Wishanger (Wisehanger, or Woden's Meadow,) one about four miles south-west of Wanborough, in Surrey, and another near Gloucester.'" He acknowledges, likewise, on the authority of Jabez Allies, that there is a Wishmoor, which may have such an origin, in Ledstone, Delamere, Worcestershire. Mr. Hunt thinks that the word "wish" is intimately "connected with the west country word 'whist,' meaning more than ordinary melancholy, a sorrow which has something weird about it." Polwhele, in his "Wishful Swain of Devon," says it is "an expression used by the vulgar to express local melancholy;" and he adds,—"There is something sublime in this impersonation of wishness." It is not at all improbable that both these etymologies point to a common origin. The deeds of the spectre huntsman and the furious host, a "cavalcade of the dead," are not calculated to impress on the human imagination anything repugnant to the "melancholy sorrow with something weird surrounding it," to which Mr. Hunt refers.
This supposed sympathy of "the elements" with human joy, or sorrow, or suffering, is evidently a very ancient superstition. In Lancashire we have yet the saying—