According to Mr. Ralston, the Lusatian Wends place water between themselves and the dead as they return from a burial, even, if necessary, breaking ice for the purpose. And ‘in many parts of Germany, in modern Greece, and in Cyprus, water is poured out behind the corpse when it is carried from the house, in the belief that if the ghost returns he will not be able to cross it.’[181] A Danish tradition says, ‘If a person dies who, it is feared, will reappear, as a preventive let a basinful of water be thrown after the corpse when it is carried out’[182] and there will be no further cause of alarm. In Bohemia, after a death, the water-butt is turned upside down, for if the ghost bathe in it, and anyone should happen to drink of it afterwards, he would be a dead man within the year. In Pomerania, after a funeral, no washing is done for some time, lest the dead man should be wet in his grave.
Drake, in his legends of New England, alludes to a story of a wreck at Ipswich, and says that, when the storms come, the howling of the wind is ‘Harry Main’—a legend which has thus been versified by A. Morgan:
He blasphemed God, so they put him down,
With his iron shovel at Ipswich Bar,
They chained him there for a thousand years,
And the sea rolls up, to shovel it back.
So when the sea cries, the good wives say,
‘Harry Main growls at his work to-day.’
Similarly the Chibchas in their mythology had a great river that souls had to pass over on floats made of cobwebs. On this account they never killed spiders. The Araucanian soul is borne across the Stygian flood by a whale, and the Potawatomis think ‘the souls of the dead cross a large stream over a log, which rolls so that many slip off into the water. One of their ancestors went to the edge of the stream, but, not liking to venture on the log, he came back two days after his death. He reported that he heard the sounds of the drum on the other side of the river, to the beat of which the souls of the dead were dancing.’[183] The Ojibways speak of a similar stream, across which lies a serpent, over whose body the soul must cross.
A favourite mode of capturing a ghost in days gone by was to entice it into something small, such as a bottle, and as a decoy, to doubt its power to do so—a mode of exorcism which would seem to have suggested our ‘bottle-imps.’ An amusing story of laying a ghost by this means, and which illustrates the popular belief, is recorded in the ‘Folk-lore Record’ (ii. 176), on the authority of the late Thomas Wright. ‘There lived in the town of ——, in that part of England which lies towards the borders of Wales, a very curious simple kind of a man, though all said he knew a good deal more than other people did not know. There was in the same town a very old house, one of the rooms of which was haunted by a ghost, which prevented people making use of it. The man above mentioned was reported to be very clever at dealing with ghosts, and so the owner of the haunted house sent for him, and asked him if he could undertake to make the ghost quit the house. Tommy, for that was the name he generally went by, agreed to do this, on condition that three things were provided him—an empty bottle, a bottle of brandy with a tumbler, and a pitcher of water. So Tommy locked the door safely inside, and sat down to pass the night drinking brandy and water.
‘Just as the clock struck twelve, he was roused by a slight noise, and lo! there was the ghost standing before him. Says the ghost, “Well, Tommy, how are ye?” “Pretty well, thank ye,” says he, “but pray, how do you know my name?” “Oh, very well indeed,” said the ghost. “And how did you get in?” “Oh, very easily.” “Not through the door, I’m sure.” “No, not at all, but through the keyhole.” “D’ye say so? None of your tricks upon me; I won’t believe you came through the keyhole.” “Won’t ye? but I did.” “Well, then,” says Tommy, pointing to the empty bottle, which he pretended to have emptied, “if you can come through the keyhole you can get into this bottle, but I won’t believe you can do either.” Now the ghost began to be very angry that Tommy should doubt his power of getting into the bottle, so he asserted most confidently that the thing was easy to be done. “No,” said Tommy, “I won’t believe it till I have seen you get in.” “Here goes then,” said the ghost, and sure enough into the bottle he went, and Tommy corked him up quite tight, so that he could not get out, and he took the bottle to the bridge where the river was wide and deep, and he threw the bottle exactly over the keystone of the middle arch into the river, and the ghost was never heard after.’
This cunning mode of laying a ghost is very old, and reminds us of the amusing story of the fisherman and the genie in the Arabian Nights. The tale tells how, one day, a fisherman drew a brazen bottle out of the sea, sealed with the magic seal of Suleyman Ben Daood, out of which there issued an enormous genie, who threatened the fisherman with death. The latter, feeling his life was at stake, bethought him of doubting the genie’s ability to enter so small a vessel, whereupon the affronted genie returned thither to vindicate his character, and so placed himself in the fisherman’s power. In the same way a Bulgarian sorcerer armed with a saint’s picture will hunt a vampire into a bottle containing some of the food that the demon loves; as soon as he is fairly inside, he is corked down, the bottle is thrown into the fire, and the vampire disappears for ever.
Miss Jackson[184] quotes a story from Montgomeryshire, of how the spirit of Lady Jeffreys, who for some reason could not rest in peace, and ‘troubled people dreadfully,’ was ‘persuaded to contract her dimensions and enter a bottle. She did so, after appearing in a good many hideous forms; but when once in the bottle it was corked down securely, and the bottle was thrown into the pool underneath the Short Bridge, over the Severn, in Llanidloes; and in the bottle she was to remain until the ivy that crept along the buttresses overgrew the sides of the bridge and reached the top of the parapet; then when this took place she should be released from her bottle prison.’ In the ‘Collectanea Archæologica’ (vol. i. part 1) we are told on the authority of one Sarah Mason, of Baschurch, that ‘there was a woman hanged on a tree at Cutberry, and she came again so badly that nine clergymen had to be fetched to lay her. So they read and read until they got her into a bottle, and they buried it under a flat sandstone in the road. We used to go past the stone every time we went to church, and I’ve often wondered if she was still there, and what would happen if anyone was to pull the stone up.’ And as a further safeguard a correspondent of ‘Notes and Queries,’ writing from Ecclesfield, says it is best in laying ghosts to cheat them to consent to being laid while hollies are green, for hollies being evergreen, the ghost can reappear no more.
In Wales, the objectionable spectre must be conjured in the name of Heaven to depart, and return no more, the strength of the exorcism being doubled by employing the Latin language to deliver it, which, to be perfectly effectual, must be done by three clergymen. The exorcism is usually for a stated time, seven years is the favourite period, and one hundred years the limit. Instances are recorded where a ghost which had been laid a hundred years returned at the end of the time to its old haunts. According to Mr. Wirt Sikes,[185] ‘in all cases it is necessary the ghost should agree to be exorcised; no power can lay it if it be possessed of an evil demon. In such cases the terrors of Heaven must be rigorously invoked, but the result is only temporary. Properly constituted family ghosts, however, will lend a reasonable ear to entreaty backed by prayer.’