Thus, in Norway, bullets, gunpowder, and weapons have no influence on ghosts, but at the sight of a cross, and from exorcisms, they must retire. The same belief prevails in Denmark, where all kinds of checks to ghostly influence are resorted to. It is said, for instance, to be dangerous to shoot at a spectre, as the bullet will return on him who shot it. But if the piece be loaded with a silver button, that will infallibly take effect. A Danish tradition tells how once there was a horrible spectre which caused great fear and disquietude, as everyone who saw it died immediately afterwards. In this predicament, a young fellow offered to encounter the apparition, and to endeavour to drive it away. For this purpose he went at midnight to the church path, through which the spectre was in the habit of passing, having previously provided himself with steel in various shapes. When the apparition approached, he fearlessly threw steel before its feet, so that it was obliged instantly to turn back, and it appeared no more.[304] A common superstition, equally popular in England as on the Continent, is that when a horseshoe is nailed over the doorway no spirit can enter. It is also said that ‘if anyone is afraid of spectres, let him strew flax seed before the door; then no spirit can cross the threshold. A preventive equally efficacious is to place one’s slippers by the bedside with the heels towards the bed. Spectres may be driven away by smoking the room with the snuff of a tallow candle; while wax-lights attract them.’ And at the present day various devices are adopted by our English peasantry for warding off from their dwellings ghosts, and other uncanny intruders.[305]
CHAPTER XXVI
WRAITH-SEEING
Closely allied to ‘second sight’ is the doctrine of ‘wraiths’ or ‘fetches,’ sometimes designated ‘doubles’—an apparition exactly like a living person, its appearance, whether to that person or to another, being considered an omen of death. The ‘Fetch’ is a well-known superstition in Ireland, and is supposed to be a mere shadow, ‘resembling in stature, features, and dress, a living person, and often mysteriously or suddenly seen by a very particular friend.’ Spiritlike, it flits before the sight, seeming to walk leisurely through the fields, often disappearing through a gap or lane. The person it resembles is usually known at the time to be labouring under some mortal illness, and unable to leave his or her bed. When the ‘fetch’ appears agitated, or eccentric in its motions, a violent or painful death is indicated for the doomed prototype. Such a phantom, too, is said to make its appearance at the same time, and in the same place, to more than one person.[306] Should it be seen in the morning, a happy longevity for the original is confidently expected; but if it be seen in the evening, immediate dissolution of the living prototype is anticipated. It is thought, too, that individuals may behold their own ‘fetches.’ Queen Elizabeth is said to have been warned of her death by the apparition of her own double, and Miss Strickland thus describes her last illness: ‘As her mortal illness drew towards a close, the superstitious fears of her simple ladies were excited almost to mania, even to conjuring up a spectral apparition of the Queen while she was yet alive. Lady Guilford, who was then in waiting on the Queen, leaving her in an almost breathless sleep in her privy chamber, went out to take a little air, and met her Majesty, as she thought, three or four chambers off. Alarmed at the thought of being discovered in the act of leaving the royal patient alone, she hurried forward in some trepidation in order to excuse herself, when the apparition vanished away. She returned terrified to the chamber, but there lay the Queen in the same lethargic slumber in which she left her.’
Shelley, shortly before his death, believed he had seen his wraith. ‘On June 23,’ says one of his biographers, ‘he was heard screaming at midnight in the saloon. The Williamses ran in and found him staring on vacancy. He had had a vision of a cloaked figure which came to his bedside and beckoned him to follow. He did so, and when they had reached the sitting-room, the figure lifted the hood of his cloak and disclosed Shelley’s own features, and saying “Siete soddisfatto?” vanished. This vision is accounted for on the ground that Shelley had been reading a drama attributed to Calderon, named ‘El Embozado, ó el Encapotado,’ in which a mysterious personage who had been haunting and thwarting the hero all his life, and is at last about to give him satisfaction in a duel, unmasks and proves to be the hero’s own wraith. He also asks, “Art thou satisfied?” and the haunted man dies of horror.’ Sir Robert Napier is supposed to have seen his double, and Aubrey quaintly relates how ‘the beautiful Lady Diana Rich, daughter to the Earl of Holland, as she was walking in her father’s garden at Kensington to take the air before dinner, about 11 o’clock, being then very well, met her own apparition, habit and everything, as in a looking-glass. About a month after, she died of small-pox. And it is said that her sister, the Lady Isabella Thynne, saw the like of herself also before she died. This account I had from a person of honour. A third sister, Mary, was married to the Earl of Breadalbane, and it has been recorded that she also, not long after her marriage, had some such warning of her approaching dissolution.’
The Irish novelist, John Banim, has written both a novel and a ballad on this subject, one which has also largely entered into many a tradition and folk-tale.[307] In Cumberland this apparition is known by the peasantry as a ‘swarth,’ and in Yorkshire by the name of a ‘waff.’ The gift of wraith-seeing still flourishes on the Continent, and examples abound in Silesia and the Tyrol.
‘With regard to bilocation, or double personality,’ writes a Catholic priest,[308] ‘there is a great deal of very interesting matter in St. Thomas of Aquin, and also in Cardinal Cajetan’s “Commentaries of St. Thomas.” The substance of the principles is this: Bilocation, properly so called, is defined by the scholastics as the perfect and simultaneous existence of one and the same individual in two distinct places at the same time. This never does and never can happen. But bilocation, improperly so called, and which St. Thomas terms raptus, does occur, and is identical with the double, as you call it, in the cases of St. Gennadius, St. Ignatius, &c.
‘St. Thomas quotes as illustrations or instances, St. Paul being taken up to the Third Heaven. Ezekiel, the prophet, was taken by God and shown Jerusalem, whilst at the same time he was sitting in the room with the ancients of the tribe of Judah before him (Ezekiel viii.), &c. In which the soul of man is not wholly detached from the body, being necessary for the purpose of giving life, but is detached from the senses of the body. St. Thomas gives three causes for this phenomenon: (1) Divine power; (2) the power of the Devil; and (3), disease of the body when very violent sometimes.’ Bardinus tells how Marsilius Ficinus appeared at the hour of his death on a white horse to Michael Mercatus, and rode away crying, ‘O Michael, Michael, vera, vera sunt illa,’ that is, the doctrine of a future life is true. Instances of this kind of phenomenon have been common in all ages of the world, and Lucretius suggested the strange fancy that the superficial surfaces of all bodies were continually flying off like the coats of an onion, which accounted for the appearance of apparitions; whilst Jacques Gaffarel suggested that corrupting bodies send forth vapours which, being compressed by the cold night air, appear visible to the eye in the forms of men.[309]
In one of the notes to ‘Les Imaginations Extravagantes de Monsieur Oufle,’ by the Abbé Bordélon, it is said that the monks and nuns, a short time before their death, have seen the images of themselves seated in their chairs or stalls. Catharine of Russia, after retiring to her bedroom, was told that she had been seen just before to enter the State Chamber. On hearing this she went thither, and saw the exact similitude of herself seated upon the throne. She ordered her guards to fire upon it.