As for divinations and charms, to doubt their faith in them would be to discredit the evidence of our senses. A poor washerwoman, but a few years since, who possessed more honesty than wisdom, happened to lose some linen belonging to one of her employers.
Suspecting it to have been stolen, she repaired to a wise man, who, of course, succeeded in convincing her, upon the payment of half-a-crown, that her surmise was correct; but as it helped her no further towards its recovery, it only added to the expense her honesty prompted her to go to, to replace it, which she secretly contrived to do, and offered it to her employer, with a statement of the facts.
These are but faint specimens of the “vulgar errors” that are every day to be met with among the citizens, oftentimes attested more by deeds than words; for many will in secret consult the wise people, and pay them well, who would still shrink from openly acknowledging faith in their revelations or predictions.
Though haunted houses are rare, there still are some known to exist;—one respectable, elderly maiden, yet amongst us, has veritable tales of refractory spirits, that took twelve clergymen to read them down, and of one who haunted some particular closet, where at last he submitted to priestly authority, a cable and a hook being firmly fixed in the floor of the closet to bind him. We rather fancy some of the other legends that we have heard from the same authority, are but variations of the story of Heard’s spirit, that haunted the Alder Carr Fen Broad, which assumed the appearance of a Jack-o’-Lantern, and refused to be “laid!” the gentlemen who attempted it failing, because he always kept a verse
ahead of them, until a boy brought a couple of pigeons, and laid down before the Will-o’-the-wisp, who, looking at them, lost his verse, and then they succeeded in binding his spirit.
This, and many other tales, have been collected by the rector of the parish of Irstead, from an old woman living there; and they contain so much that is amusing, that we cannot forbear repeating them for the benefit of those who have not had the opportunity of seeing the papers of the Archæological Society. Mrs. Lubbock is an old washerwoman, who, left a widow with several children, has maintained herself “independently” up to her eightieth year, without applying even for out-door parish relief, until the cold winter of 1846 made her, as she expresses it, sick for crumbs like the birds. Education she has had none, that is, of book learning, but she seems to have had a father, given to anecdote, from whom she professes to have heard most of the “saws” and tales of which she has such a profusion. She mentions the practice, among her acquaintance, of watching the church porch on St. Mark’s eve, when, at midnight, the watcher may see all his acquaintance enter the church: those who were to die remained, those who were to marry went in couples and came out again. This, one Staff had seen; but he would not tell the names of those who were to die or be married.
On Christmas-eve, she says, at midnight the cows and cattle rise and turn to the east; and the horses in the stable, as far as their halters permit. She says that a farmer once observing the reverent demeanour of the horse, who will leisurely stay some time upon his knees moving his head about and blowing over the manger, remarked, “Ah, they have more wit than we;” which brings to mind an anecdote, related by an ear witness, of a controversy that took place in this city among some cattle-drovers, when an Irishman and Roman Catholic supported the claims of his religion by commenting upon the invariable practice amongst those of his own class, of saying their prayers before retiring to rest; whereas, added he, “among you Protestants the horse is the only real Christian that I ever met with, who kneels before he goes to sleep and when he gets up.” That there is too much ground for the satire no one can doubt.
The Rosemary is said to flower on old Christmas-day, and Mrs. Lubbock says that she recollects, on one occasion, a great argument about which was the real Christmas-day, and to settle the point three men agreed to decide by watching that plant. They gathered a bunch at eleven o’clock at night of the old Christmas-day; it was then in bud. They threw it upon the table, and did not look at it until after midnight, when they went in, and found the bloom just dropping off.
Concerning the weather, she says, when a sundog (or two black spots to be seen by the naked eye) comes on the south side of the sun, there will be fair weather; when on the north, there will be foul. “The sun then fares to be right muddled and crammed down by the dog.”
Of the moon, she says—