In Devonshire, if a person sees four magpies, it is regarded as an omen of death in his family. If a pigeon is seen sitting on a tree, or comes into the house; or if a swarm of bees alight on a dead tree, or the dead bough of a living tree, it forebodes death in the family of the owner. In Derbyshire, if the sun shines through the boughs of the apple-trees on Christmas day, it is considered as a presage of a good crop the ensuing year.
Of all the superstitions entertained previous to the advent of Christ, none have, however, been more fully perpetuated among Christian nations than that of spectral apparitions,—the visible appearance of the deities worshipped, or of the disembodied spirits of the dead—ghosts.
This was due not only to the nature of the causes inducing spectral apparitions (causes which are inseparable from the physical constitution of man), but also to the confirmation which the belief was thought to receive from Holy Writ.
The character of the superstition, as it has been retained down to the verge of the present period in our own country, and as it is still entertained in many countries, is very similar to that which it bore in the remotest periods of antiquity.
The deities of those nations who had distinct and defined ideas respecting their gods, are reputed to have appeared from time to time to their votaries, assuming the form in which they were most commonly pourtrayed in the temples.
Thus the gods which Æneas bore from the destruction of Troy and carried into Crete, appeared to him in that island:
"'Twas night, when every creature, void of cares,
The common gift of balmy slumbers shares;
The statues of my gods (for such they seem'd),
Those gods whom I from flaming Troy redeem'd,
Before me stood, majestically bright,
Full in the beams of Phœbe's entering light.
Then thus they spoke and eased my troubled mind:
'What from the Delian god thou go'st to find,
He tells thee here, and sends us to relate.
Those powers are we, companions of thy fate,
Who from the burning town by thee were brought,
Thy fortune follow'd, and thy safety wrought.
Through seas and lands, as we thy steps attend,
So shall our care thy glorious race befriend.
An ample realm for thee thy fates ordain,
A town that o'er the conquer'd world shall reign.
Thou, mighty walls for mighty nations build;
Nor let thy weary mind to labours yield:
But change thy seat; for not the Delian god
Nor we have given thee Crete for our abode.
A land there is, Hesperia call'd of old,
(The soil is fruitful, and the natives bold—
Th' Œotrians held it once), by later fame
Now call'd Italia from the leader's name.
Iasius there, and Dardanus, were born;
From thence we came and thither must return.
Rise, and thy sire with these glad tidings greet:
Search Italy; for Jove denies thee Crete.'
Astonished at their voices and their sight,
(Nor were they dreams, but visions of the night;
I saw, I knew their faces, and descry'd,
In perfect view, their hair with fillets tied),
I started from my couch; a clammy sweat
On all my limbs, and shivering body, sate.
To heaven I lift my hands with pious haste,
And sacred incense in the flames I cast."[33]
Among Christian nations visions of this character have also been common; and the religious writings of every age of the Church contain numerous instances of apparitions of the Trinity, of our Lord, of the canonized, and the powers of evil.
But the most familiar phase of the ghost-belief is that of the visible manifestation of the spirits of the dead; and probably few, if any, races are without a superstition of this nature.