Out of her breast there sprang a rose,
And out of his a briar;
They grew till they grew to the church top,
And there they tied in a true lover’s knot.

It is to this time-honoured fancy that Laertes refers when he wishes that violets may spring from the grave of Ophelia,[322] and Lord Tennyson has borrowed the same idea:

And from his ashes may be made,
The violet of his native land.[323]

Some of the North-Western Indians believed that those who died a natural death would be compelled to dwell among the branches of tall trees, and the Brazilians have a mythological character called Mani[324]—a child who died and was buried in the house of her mother. Soon a plant—the Mandioca—sprang out of the grave, which grew, flourished, and bore fruit. According to the Iroquois, the spirits of certain trees are supposed to have the forms of beautiful females; recalling, writes Mr. Herbert Spencer,[325] ‘the dryads of classic mythology, who, similarly conceived as human-shaped female spirits, were sacrificed to in the same ways that human spirits in general were sacrificed to.’ ‘By the Santals,’ he adds, ‘these spirits or ghosts are individualised. At their festivals the separate families dance round the particular trees which they fancy their domestic lares chiefly haunt.’

In modern Greece certain trees are supposed to have their ‘stichios,’ a being variously described as a spectre, a wandering soul, a vague phantom, occasionally invisible, and sometimes assuming the most widely different forms. When a tree is ‘stichimonious,’ it is generally considered dangerous for anyone ‘to sleep beneath its shade, and the woodcutters employed to cut it down will lie upon the ground and hide themselves, motionless, and holding their breath, at the moment when it is about to fall, dreading lest the stichio at whose life the blow is aimed with each blow of the axe, should avenge itself at the precise moment when it is dislodged.’[326] This idea is abundantly illustrated in European folk-lore, and a Swedish legend tells how, when a man was on the point of cutting down a juniper tree, a voice was heard saying, ‘Friend, hew me not.’ But he gave another blow, when, to his horror and amazement, blood gushed from the root.

Such spirit-haunted trees have been supposed to give proof of their peculiar character by certain weird and mysterious signs. Thus the Australian bush-demons whistle in the branches, and Mr. Schoolcraft mentions an Indian tradition of a hollow tree, from the recesses of which there issued on a calm day a sound like the voice of a spirit. Hence it was considered to be inhabited by some powerful spirit, and was deemed sacred. The holes in trees have been supposed to be the doors through which the spirits pass, a belief which reappears in the German idea that the holes in the oak are the pathways for elves, and that various diseases may be cured by contact with these holes. It is not surprising, too, that the idea of spirit-haunted trees caused them to be regarded by the superstitious with feelings of awe. Mr. Dorman tells us[327] of certain West Indian tribes, that if any person going through a wood perceived a motion in the trees which he regarded as supernatural, frightened at the strange prodigy, he would address himself to that tree which shook the most. Similarly, when the wind blows the long grass or waving corn, the German peasant is wont to say that the ‘Grass-wolf,’ or the ‘Corn-wolf’ is abroad. Under a variety of forms this animistic conception is found in different parts of the world, and has been embodied in many a folk-tale—an Austrian Märchen relating, for instance, how there sits in a stately fir-tree a fairy maiden waited on by a dwarf, rewarding the innocent and plaguing the guilty; and there is the German song of the maiden in the pine, whose bark the boy split with a gold and silver horn.

CHAPTER XXIX
GHOSTS AND HIDDEN TREASURES

The presence of troubled phantoms in certain localities has long been attributed to their being interested in the whereabouts of certain secreted treasures, the disposal of which to the rightful owner having been frustrated through death having prematurely summoned them from their mortal existence. Traditions of the existence of large sums of hidden money are associated with many of our own country mansions. Such a legend was long connected with Hulme Castle, formerly a seat of a branch of the Prestwich family. The hoard was generally supposed to have been hidden either in the hall itself or in the grounds adjoining, and was said to be protected by spells and incantations. Many years ago the hall was pulled down, but, although considerable care was taken to search every spot, no money was discovered. Secreted treasure is associated with the apparition of Madame Beswick, who used to haunt Birchen Tower, Hollinwood;[328] and an eccentric spectre known as ‘Silky,’ which used to play all kinds of strange pranks in the village of Black Heddon, Northumberland, was commonly supposed to be the troubled phantom of a certain lady who had died before having an opportunity of disclosing the whereabouts of some hoarded money. With the discovery of the gold, this unhappy spirit is said to have disappeared. The story goes that one day, in a house at Black Heddon, a terrific noise was heard, which caused the servant to exclaim, ‘The deevil’s in the house! the deevil’s in the house! He’s come through the ceiling!’ But on the room being examined where the noise occurred, a great dog’s skin was found on the floor, filled with gold, after which time ‘Silky’ was neither seen nor heard.