“Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i’ the air; strange screams of death;
And prophesying, with accents terrible,
Of dire combustion, and confus’d events,
New hatch’d to the woful time.”
As in Shakespeare’s day, so, too, at the present time, there is perhaps no superstition so deeply rooted in the minds of many people as the belief in what are popularly termed “death-warnings.” Modern folk-lore holds either that a knocking or rumbling in the floor is an omen of a death about to happen, or that dying persons themselves announce their dissolution to their friends in such strange sounds.[728] Many families are supposed to have particular warnings, such as the appearance of a bird, the figure of a tall woman, etc. Such, moreover, are not confined to our own country, but in a variety of forms are found on the Continent. According to another belief, it was generally supposed that when a man was on his death-bed the devil or his agents tried to seize his soul, if it should happen that he died without receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist, or without confessing his sins. Hence, in “2 Henry VI.” (iii. 3), the king says:
“O, beat away the busy meddling fiend
That lays strong siege unto this wretch’s soul,
And from his bosom purge this black despair.”
In the old Office books of the Church, these “busy meddling fiends” are often represented with great anxiety besieging the dying man; but on the approach of the priest and his attendants, they are shown to display symptoms of despair at their impending discomfiture. Douce[729] quotes from an ancient manuscript book of devotion, written in the reign of Henry VI., the following prayer to St. George: “Judge for me whan the moste hedyous and damnable dragons of helle shall be redy to take my poore soule and engloute it in to theyr infernall belyes.”
Some think that the “passing-bell,” which was formerly tolled for a person who was dying, was intended to drive away the evil spirit that might be hovering about to seize the soul of the deceased. Its object, however, was probably to bespeak the prayers of the faithful, and to serve as a solemn warning to the living. Shakespeare has given several touching allusions to it. Thus, in Sonnet lxxi. he says:
“No longer mourn for me when I am dead,
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world.”
In “2 Henry IV.” (i. 1), Northumberland speaks in the same strain:
“Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news
Hath but a losing office: and his tongue
Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,
Remember’d knolling a departing friend.”
We may quote a further allusion in “Venus and Adonis” (l. 701):
“And now his grief may be compared well
To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell.”