Strange Survivals: Some Chapters in the History of Man

by S. Baring-Gould

In Norse mythology a similar tale is found. The Norns wandered over the earth, and were one night given shelter by the father of Nornagest; the child lay in a cradle, with two candles burning at the head. The first two of the Norns bestowed luck and wealth on the child; but the third and youngest, having been thrust from her stool in the crush, uttered the curse, “The child shall live no longer than these candles burn.” Instantly the eldest of the fateful sisters snatched the candles up, extinguished them, and gave them to the mother, with a warning to take good heed of them.

A story found in Ireland, and Cornwall, and elsewhere, is to this effect. A man has sold himself to the devil. When the time comes for him to die, he is in great alarm; then his wife, or a priest, persuades the devil to let him live as long as a candle is unconsumed. At once the candle is extinguished, and hidden where it can never be found. It is said that a candle is immured in the chancel wall of Bridgerule Church, no one knows exactly where. A few years ago, in a tower of St. Osyth’s Priory, Essex, a tallow candle was discovered built in.

As the ancients associated shadow and soul, so does the superstitious mind nowadays connect soul with flame. The corpse-candle which comes from a churchyard and goes to the house where one is to die, and hovers on the doorstep, is one form of this idea. In a family in the West of England the elder of two children had died. On the night of the funeral the parents saw a little flame come in through the key-hole and run up to the side of the cradle where the baby lay. It hovered about it, and presently two little flames went back through the key-hole. The baby was then found to be dead.

In the Arabic metaphysical romance of “Yokkdan,” the hero, who is brought up by a she-goat on a solitary island, seeks to discover the principle of life. He finds that the soul is a whitish luminous vapour in one of the cavities of the heart, and it burns his finger when he touches it.

In the German household tale of “Godfather Death,” a daring man enters a cave, where he finds a number of candles burning; each represents a man, and when the light expires, that man whom it represents dies. “Jack o’ lanterns” are the spirits of men who have removed landmarks. One of Hebel’s charming Allemanic poems has reference to this superstition.

The extinguished torch represents the departed life, and in Yorkshire it was at one time customary to bury a candle in a coffin, the modern explanation being that the deceased needed it to light him on his road to Paradise; but in reality it represented an extinguished life, and probably was a substitute for the human sacrifice which in Pagan times accompanied a burial. In almost all the old vaults opened in Woodbury Church, Devon, candles have been found affixed to the walls. The lamps set in graves in Italy and Greece were due to the same idea. The candle took the place of a life, as a dog or sow in other places was killed instead of a child.

It is curious and significant that great works of art and architecture should be associated with tragedies. The Roslyn pillar, the Amiens rose window, the Strassburg clock, many spires, and churches. The architect of Cologne sold himself to the devil to obtain the plan. A master and an apprentice carve pillars or construct windows, and because the apprentice’s work is best, his master murders him. The mechanician of a clock is blinded, some say killed, to prevent him from making another like it. Perdix, for inventing the compass, was cast down a tower by Daedalus.

It will be remembered that the architect of Cologne Cathedral, according to the legend, sold himself to the devil for the plan, and forfeited his life when the building was in progress. This really means that the man voluntarily gave himself up to death, probably to be laid under the tower or at the foundation of the choir, to ensure the stability of the enormous superstructure, which he supposed could not be held up in any other way.

An inspector of dams on the Elbe, in 1813, in his “Praxis,” relates that, as he was engaged on a peculiarly difficult dyke, an old peasant advised him to get a child, and sink it under the foundations.

As an instance of even later date to which the belief in the necessity of a sacrifice lingered, I may mention that, in 1843, a new bridge was about to be built at Halle, in Germany. The people insisted to the architect and masons that their attempt to make the piers secure was useless, unless they first immured a living child in the basement. We may be very confident that if only fifty years ago people could be found so ignorant and so superstitious as to desire to commit such an atrocious crime, they would not have been restrained in the Middle Ages from carrying their purpose into execution.