A superstitious family, the Grays have a characteristic way of recounting their own traditions. Here is one of Eliza’s tales—
“Once we were stopping by a woodside. The back of our tent was nigh agen a dry ditch full of dead leaves, and one night we lay abed listening to sounds, a thing I can’t abide. Well, there was rummy folk about in them days, so when we hears a footstep in the wood just t’other side of that there ditch, I ups wi’ the kettle-prop and peeps outen the tent, and listens, but no, never a sound could I catch; all was still as the grave. Till long and by last there comes a rustling in the leaves, and the bushes parts like something trying to make a way through. Then I lifts up the kettle-prop, and I says to myself, if blows are to be struck, Liza had better be the first to strike, when there, straight afore me, stands a woman waving her poor thin arms about, but saying nothing. At that I drops the kettle-prop and screams, and my man Perun jumps straight up. ‘They’re killing my Liza, they are.’ But by that the muli (ghost) had gone like a flash of lightning. Next morning we ax’d at the keeper’s house down the lane, and the missis tell’d us as how a rawni (lady) was once maw’d (murdered) in that wood, so it would be her muli as I saw that night. Oh, yes, I believe in mulê, I do.”
During the telling of this tale two of Eliza’s sons, Yoben and Poley, sauntered up and stood listening behind their sister Lena. It was Yoben who now added his contribution of ghost-lore.
“Why, yes, of course, mother, there’s mulê (ghosts). Don’t you remember after Dolferus died, his voice used to speak in the tent to Delaia? She says it really was his voice as nat’ral as life, and it made her shiver to hear it. One day she went to a parson for advice. He told her the next time it spoke, to say: ‘I promise you nothing. Begone!’ Well, sure enough, the voice came again, and she remembered to say what the parson had told her, and she never heard the voice no more. My Uncle Ike asked Delaia one day—
“‘I say, my gal, did you really hear Dolferus’s voice?’
“‘Yes; it was his and no one else’s.’
“‘Is that the tatshipen (truth), my gal?’ Ike seemed anxious to know the truth of the matter.”
“Dreams is funny things,” put in Poley, “and I’ve had some wery queer ’uns in my time. Once I dreamt I was walking along a narrow shelf of rock, and on one side of me was a stony wall like a cliff, and on the other side the edge of the path hung over a terrible steep place. Right away below was a river of fiery red stuff pouring along. You could smell it. I thought this rocky road was the path to heaven, and I was trying to get there, but, ’pon my word, it was no easy matter. Now I see’d a tiger chained to the rocky wall on my left hand, and a bit furder on a big lion was tied up. These here critturs was hard to get past. I had to go wery near the dangerous edge what looked down on to the burning river. What a fright I was in; it made the sweat run off me. Sometimes I had to crawl on my hands and knees to get round a big rock in the middle of the path. I felt as if I never should get where I wanted to. Well, after a lot of scrambling and slithering, for my feet gave way sometimes—I had naily boots on—I got to the top of the path, and in the dazzling light, like the sun itself on a summer day, there sat a grey-haired, doubled-up man, a wery aged man, with his chin resting on his hand. It was the Duvel (God), and when he see’d me coming, he sat up and held up his hand, forbidding me to go any furder. He didn’t speak a word, but I knew that his uplifted hand meant ‘Go back.’ And just then I woke. That’s my dream of trying to get to heaven.”
“There’s a lot about heaven and hell in God’s Book, isn’t there, rashai?” said Old Eliza. “A rawni (lady) used to read all about them places to us on a Sunday, but that were years ago, and I used to like to hear her talk about the blessed Saviour riding on a maila (donkey) into the big town. She said they nailed him to a cross on Good Friday, and when we was young I remember we all used to fast on that day. We ate no flesh—nothing with blood in it—it would be a sin to do that. If we took anything to stay our hunger it was nothing but dry bread, and our drink was water. We didn’t tuv (smoke), and we didn’t tov our kokerê (wash ourselves) on that day. I don’t know whether there be such places as heaven and hell. I reckons we makes our own destiny. Heaven and hell’s inside us; that’s what I think.”
Lena, however, had her own ideas. “This life is everything there is, I reckons, and when we’re dead, that’s the end of us. Life is sweet, mind you, and we’s a right to be as happy as we can. Mother’s getting old, you see, and has had her fling. I mean to have a good time. Why, last Sunday me and Poley was going off to get some nuts in the woods, but mother stopped us—
“It’s Beng’s work getting nuts on the dear Lord’s day.”
“Yes,” says Yoben; “I’ve heard our old daddy say that the Beng likes nuts, and I’d sartinly scorn to go getting them onlucky things on a Sunday; I wouldn’t like to put myself in the Beng’s power, like poor Zuba Lovell.”
“What about Zuba?” asked my wife.