[25] This belief prevails extensively in Sweden, Germany, and Switzerland.
[26] The souls of the dead, or spirits of some sort, are constantly heard and not unfrequently seen in mines. A Shropshire miner informed the Editor that, of his own knowledge, he had heard supernatural sounds of moanings and mutterings underground, and had seemed to feel the passing spirits as they swept by. On one occasion, after the violent and sudden death of a comrade, the noises were unusually loud; while the horses employed underground would stand trembling and covered with perspiration whenever the spirits were heard.
[27] “The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., by Robert Southey, Esq.,” vol. ii. p. 370. London: 1858.
[28] In many places on the continent, especially in France and Spain, it was the custom to pray for departed souls, suffering (as their needful purification was incompleted) in any particular locality. Dr. Neale gives an example of this, occurring in a prayer which he saw printed and hung up in a church at Braganza in Spain, which ran thus:—“We pray, likewise, for the souls which are suffering in any place by the particular chastisement of God.” And the following is translated from a French Prayer-Book of the last century:—“Have mercy, O Lord God, good and pitiful, on the souls of those who are being chastised for their transgressions in the flesh, in those places where Thou willest them to suffer;” an evident reference in both cases to troubled spirits which haunt definite spots.
[29] When the tone of thought in Shakspeare’s day is compared with that in our own, the contrast between the accurate and explicit religious statements regarding the Supernatural, with the shallow and cynical scepticism of modern writers, can hardly be put down to the credit of the Modern. At all events those who claim to range themselves on the side of the Ancient and the True may be permitted to do so. Nothing could more forcibly set forth the current belief of the sixteenth century than the following well-known utterance of the Ghost in “Hamlet”:—
“I am thy Father’s spirit;
Doom’d for a certain time to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.”
“Hamlet,” pp. 22-23. Oxford: 1873.
[30] The Editor is indebted to the late Revs. W. Hastings Kelke and H. Roundell of Buckingham, for the above curious example. It was intended to have been published some years ago in “The Records of Bucks.”
[31] For an accurate account by the late Rev. W. Hastings Kelke of this curious and interesting old mansion, the property of Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, see “The Records of Bucks,” vol. i. pp. 255-267. Aylesbury, 1858.
[32] “Memoirs of Sir John Reresby,” p. 238.
[33] The Rev. Joseph Jefferson, M.A., Vicar of North Stainley, near Ripon, who sent me the above—unaltered, and printed just as it was written—on the 2nd of June, 1873.