But Defoe is lengthy, and it need only be said that all went well; the Deed was found without ado, and all—save the cousins—were satisfied.
“The wife of one of Johnson’s acquaintance,” Boswell says, “made a purse for herself out of her husband’s fortune. Feeling a proper compunction in her last moments, she confessed how much she had secreted; but before she could tell where it was placed, she was seized with a convulsive fit and expired.”
It is in tales of buried treasure that the subject of wills is, perhaps, most nearly connected with ghosts. As the water-finder feels the presence of water, so the sensitive sees in concrete form the presence of hidden wealth. There is a story of a field in Kent, where a ghostly old man was seen to boil his pot on stormy nights: upon that spot a hoard of coins was subsequently found. At Bryn yr Ellyllon, or Goblin Hill, in Wales, a woman saw a figure of superhuman height, clad in gold, disappear within the mound, where, on excavation, a skeleton was discovered in a corselet of Etruscan gold.
There was a strong probability, when men buried away their gold, that at death the hoard might be unknown, or its hiding-place undivulged, to the living. “Nothing,” says the historian of Apparitions, “has more fill’d the idle Heads of the old Women of these latter Ages than the Stories of Ghosts and Apparitions coming to People, to tell them where money was hidden, and how to find it; and ’tis wonderful to me that such Tales should make such Impressions, and that sometimes among wise and judicious People too, as we find they have done. How many old Houses have been almost pull’d down, and Pitts fruitlessly dug in the Earth, at the ridiculous Motion of pretended Apparitions?”
Primitive tales seem frequently to centre in this theme, and picturesque details are not lacking. This, from the folklore of Wales, may stand as a sample of its kind. “In a village near Cowbridge, in the vale of Glamorgan, a middle-aged bachelor and his two sisters lived. The eldest sister one night heard a voice calling her from under the bedroom window, but she did not answer it. Twice in succession this happened, and she told her brother and sister about it. They advised her to answer the voice if it called again. The third night another call came. She went to the lattice, opened it and looked out, but not a person was visible. ‘What dost thou want?’ she asked; and the voice answered: ‘Go down to the second arch of the gateway leading into St. Quintin’s Castle, Llanblethian, and there dig. Thou wilt find buried in a deep hole close to the inner arch a crock full of gold pieces. It is of no use to me now. Take it, and may the gold be a blessing to thee.’ The brother and sisters dug, and with very little trouble found the treasure.” So the ghostly will was not frustrated.
The story of Sykes Lumb Farm, again, is characteristic. This farm, situated between Preston and Blackburn, was haunted by the ghost of Mrs. Sykes. She and her husband seem to have had more money than they could safely keep above ground in the troubled times of their life, and buried it for safety beneath an apple-tree. They had no children, and no near relatives. The farmer first died, and then his wife, suddenly. The place was filled with claimants to her wealth, but the treasure was not forthcoming. In after-years the intestate Mrs. Sykes, in the guise of an old woman, wrinkled and dressed in the fashion of other days, haunted the scene of her earthly habitation, till she could deliver herself of the secret that weighed upon her spirit. At last the then farmer addressed her, and the spell was loosed. She led the way towards the stump of the apple-tree and pointed. There could be only one meaning, and search was made. As the last jar was lifted out, the ghost was for the last time seen, a smile of satisfaction brightening her face.
The entertaining Defoe, who has illustrated this chapter more than once, thus speaks of these narrations. “The notion of Spirits appearing to discover where money has been buried, to direct people to dig for it, has so universally prevailed with womankind, I might say and even with mankind too, that it is impossible to beat it out of their heads; and if they should see anything which they call an apparition, they would to this day follow it, in hope to hear it give a stamp on the ground, as with its foot, and then vanish; and did it really do so, they would not fail to dig to the Centre (if they were able) in hopes of finding a pot of money hid there, or some old urn with ashes and Roman medals; in short, or some considerable treasure.” He is contemptuous, in spite of the numbers of such tales and the strong belief attaching to them, and narrates one only to show how easy it is to beat it down to sober fact. His summing-up of the matter is too good not to quote. “From all which reasons I must conclude, that the departed spirits know nothing of these things, that it is not in their power to discover their old hoards of money, or to come hither to show us how we may come at it; but that in short, all the old women’s stories, which we have told us upon that subject, are indeed old women’s stories, and no more. I cannot quit this part of my subject without observing that, indeed, if we give up all the stories of ghosts and apparitions, and spirits walking, to discover money that is hid, we shall lose to the age half the good old tales which serve to make up winter evening conversation, and shall deprive the doctrine of souls departed coming back hither to talk with us about such things, of its principal support; for this indeed is one of the principal errands such apparitions come about. It is without doubt that fancy and imagination form a world of apparitions in the minds of men and women, (for we must not exclude the ladies in this part, whatever we do;) and people go away as thoroughly possessed with the reality of having seen the Devil, as if they conversed face to face with him; when in short the matter is no more than a vapour of the brain, a sick delirious fume of smoke in the hypochondria; forming itself in such and such a figure to the eye-sight of the mind, as well as of the head, which all looked upon with a calm revision, would appear, as it really is, nothing but a nothing, a skeleton of the brain, a whimsy, and no more.”
In a recent will the testator wrote: “I do not leave any legacies to institutions. To those I am interested in I have given money time and labour during many years, and to others I have subscribed sufficiently. But if my children, who benefit under this my will, would give £100 to the Bluecoat School, in memory of me, it would please me, if there be any intercourse between this world and the next.” Whether there be any such intercourse, whether the dead ever attempt to modify human affairs, this is not the place to dogmatise. But no one can study human nature without noting such narratives. They are rooted deep in the soil. St. Augustine says beautifully, though not convincingly: “If the dead could come in dreams, my pious mother would no night fail to visit me. Far be the thought that she should, by a happier life, have been made so cruel that, when aught vexes my heart, she should not even console in a dream the son whom she loved with an only love.” But the negative proves nothing save our ignorance. And it is time to quit this by-way in wills.
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, PRINTERS, WOKING AND LONDON.
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