Some say that they are a judgment on the original founders of the chapel, who, as it is believed and reported, after having collected ample subscriptions towards the building, pretended that the funds were insufficient, and defrauded the workmen whom they had employed of their just dues. Others say that the original proprietor of the land on which the chapel is built, was importuned by his wife to make a free gift of the site, but, being strongly averse to dissent in all forms, could never be brought by her to consent to the alienation; but that immediately on the death of the old man, the widow, who, after a youth spent in frivolity and pleasure, had turned wonderfully pious in her declining years, took measures to make over the ground to the dissenters, and, not content with this, squandered on them large sums of money which ought rightly to have been reserved for her late husband’s children by a former marriage. The spirit of the departed could not brook such disregard of his wishes, and such disrespect for his memory, and manifests his displeasure by haunting the spot of which his children ought never to have been deprived.
Editor’s Note.—When in Sark in 1896 I was told by one of the old Sark men, how a Sark fisherman defeated the Devil. This fisherman was supposed to be given to witchcraft, and one day he succeeded in raising the Devil, when Satan appeared and asked him what commands he had for him. The fisherman had nothing to say. Finally he said, “You must carry me where I tell you.” They were then on the far end of Little Sark. So the Devil consented, but on the understanding that when they reached their destination, the man, in his turn, should do what Satan commanded. So the man mounted on Satan’s back, and first was carried across the Coupée. “Allez plus loin,” (Go farther) said the man. Then they went on to the Carrefour, near where the Bel Air Hotel now is. “Allez plus loin,” said the man when Satan stopped for a rest. Then they reached the Port du Moulin, where the fisherman’s cottage stood. “Au nom du Grand Dieu—Arrêtez!” (In God’s name—Stop!) At that the Devil had to put him down and fly away shrieking, “for,” as the old man concluded his story, “he is powerless when God’s name is said.”
CHAPTER IX.
Prophetic Warnings and Ghosts.
“Now there spreaden a rumour that everich night
The rooms ihaunted been by many a Sprite,
The Miller avoucheth, and all thereabout