[34] “Notes and Queries,” vol. x. second series, Sept. 8, 1860, pp. 192-193, and Sept. 22, 1860, p. 236.
[35] Barby is a parish in the Hundred of Fawsley, in the county of Northampton, a little more than five miles from Daventry. It contains between six and seven hundred inhabitants.
[36] “Your account, as about to be printed, is true and exact, as to all the facts of the haunted house at ——, which came within my own personal knowledge. Don’t mention names, or we shall perhaps be damaging the property, and lay ourselves open to an action at law. I may add that the late Bishop of Chester [Dr. Graham] is said to have furnished a mutual friend, the late Master of Trinity, with similar accounts, which had taken place before I knew the place, verifying to an A B C the old and, no doubt, perfectly true tradition. It is strange enough I know, but it is true.—Yours, &c., H. S. B., November, 1874.”
[37] The wife of the clergyman above alluded to, wrote to the Editor as follows:—“Having read the account which you contemplate publishing, I can testify of my own personal knowledge that it is neither understated nor exaggerated, but is in all its details strictly true and accurate.—June, 1874.”
[38] Miss S. F. Caulfeild, author of “Avenele,” “Desmond,” &c.
[39] It seems that other places are reported to be haunted by appearances of Birds. A correspondent informs the Editor that this is the case with an old House in Dorsetshire, not far from Poole, where a wingless bird is sometimes seen. The same is said of a mansion in Essex, as another correspondent declares. In one room in an old house in Dean Street, Soho, likewise, several persons have seen a large raven, three times the size of an ordinary raven, perched on the tester of the old-fashioned bed. The inmates of the house, in 1854, whose family had had the lease for eighty years, are said to have been so accustomed to seeing it (though they knew it to be spectral) that they were undisturbed by its frequent appearance. Dr. Neale’s story as follows (not unlike the examples already given), is very singular. Regarding it he wrote:—“It comes to me with a weight of evidence, which, strange as is the tale, I cannot disbelieve. Three friends, not very much distinguished by piety, had been dining together at the residence of one of them in Norfolk. After dinner they went out and strolled through the churchyard. ‘Well,’ said a clergyman, one of the three, ‘I wonder, after all, if there is any future state or not?’ They agreed that whichever died first should appear to the others and inform them. ‘In what shape shall it be?’ asked one of the friends. At that moment a flight of crows arose from a neighbouring field. ‘A crow is as good a shape as any other,’ said the clergyman; ‘if I should be the first to die, I will appear in that.’ He did die first; and some time after his death, the other two had been dining together, and were walking in the garden afterwards. A crow settled on the head of one of them, stuck there pertinaciously, and could only be torn off by main force. And when this gentleman’s carriage came to take him home, the crow perched on it, and accompanied him back.”
[40] “Strange Things Amongst Us.” By Henry Spicer. 2nd ed., pp. 100-102. London: Chapman & Hall, 1864.
[41] The following is taken from a small volume which has been gratuitously circulated very widely amongst the clergy and laity. It bears a Christian title, but is altogether anti-Christian from end to end:—
“The unwise, idolatrous, early Christian priests, in their admiration of Christ, exalted him in their imagination to be God Himself, forgetting the Creator God, and exalting in their foolish imagination his Blessed Mother as the Mother of God—folly that has been widely perpetuated down to these days. Oh, foolish churches, how great has been your folly, how widely you have departed from the truth; therefore how little you have been able to cope with the wicked heart of man!
“In like manner as the Israelites, from the crucifixion down to these days, have erred in disbelieving the Messiah-ship of Christ, so the spurious churches have, during many ages, exalted Christ in their imagination to be God. The Israelites and the spurious churches being equal in their great error—the one refusing to acknowledge him as the long-promised Messiah, the other exalting him in their imagination as being the Messiah, the Holy Ghost, and God the Creator also; the Israelites refusing to give any glory to Christ, the spurious churches madly rushing, in their ancient antagonism towards the Jews, to the opposite extreme, by robbing, in their imagination, God the Creator of His Glory, and giving all glory to the Messiah, to the great grief of the Messiah.