Now, this was a pure case of spectral illusion, and precisely similar to that detailed so philosophically by Nicolai the German bookseller, and to others mentioned by Hibbert. The image of M’Kenna not only appeared to her in daylight at her own house, but subsequently followed her wherever she went; and what proved this to have been the result of diseased organization, produced at first by a heated and excited imagination, was, that, as the story went, she could see him with her eyes shut. Whilst this state of mental and physical feeling lasted, she was the subject of the most intense curiosity. No matter where she went, whether to chapel, to fair, or to market, she was followed by crowds, every one feeling eager to get a glimpse of the girl who had actually seen, and what was more, spoken to a ghost—a live ghost.
Now, here was a young girl of an excitable temperament and large imagination, leading an almost solitary life amidst scenery of a lonely and desolate character, who, happening to be strongly impressed with an image of horror—for surely such was the body of a dead man seen in association with such peculiarly frightful circumstances as filial disobedience and a father’s curse were calculated to give it—cannot shake it off, but on the contrary becomes a victim to the disease which it generates. There is not an image which we see in a fever, or a face whether of angel or devil, or an uncouth shape of any kind, that is not occasioned by cerebral excitement, or derangement of the nervous system, analogous to that under which Daly’s daughter laboured. I saw her several times, and remember clearly that her pale face, dark eye, and very intellectual forehead, gave indications of such a temperament as under her circumstances would be apt to receive strong and fearful impressions from images calculated to excite terror, especially of the supernatural. It only now remains for me to mention the simple method of her cure, which was effected without either priest or doctor. It depended upon a word or two of advice given to her father by a very sensible man, who was in the habit of thinking on these matters somewhat above the superstitious absurdities of the people.
“If you wish your daughter to be cured,” said he to her father, “leave the house you are now living in. Take her to some part of the country where she can have companions of her own class and state of life to mingle with; bring her away from the place altogether; for you may rest assured that so long as there are objects before her eyes to remind her of what happened, she will not mend on your hands.”
The father, although he sat rent free, took this excellent advice, even at a sacrifice of some comfort: for nothing short of the temptation of easy circumstances could have induced any man to reside in so wild and remote a solitude. In the course of a few days he removed from it with his family, and came to reside amidst the cheerful aspect and enlivening intercourse of human life. The consequences were precisely as the man had told him. In the course of a few weeks the little girl began to find that the visits of the spectre were like those of angels, few and far between. She was sent to school, and what with the confidence derived from human society, and the substitution of new objects and images, she soon perfectly recovered, and ere long was thoroughly set free from the fearful creation of her own brain.
Now, there is scarcely one of the people in my native parish who does not believe that the spirit of this man came back to the world, and actually appeared to this little girl. The time, however, is fast coming when these empty bugbears will altogether disappear, and we shall entertain more reverend and becoming notions of God than to suppose such senseless pranks could be played by the soul of a departed being under his permission. We might as well assert that the imaginary beings which surround the couch of the madman or hypochondriac have a real existence, as those that are conjured up by terror, weak nerves, or impure blood.
The spot where the body of M’Kenna was found is now marked by a little heap of stones, which has been collected since the melancholy event of his death. Every person who passes it throws a stone upon the heap; but why this old custom is practised, or what it means, I do not know, unless it be simply to mark the spot as a visible means of preserving the memory of the occurrence.
Daly’s house, the scene of the supposed apparition, is now a shapeless ruin, which could scarcely be seen were it not for the green spot that was once a garden, and which now shines at a distance like an emerald, but with no agreeable or pleasing associations. It is a spot which no solitary schoolboy will ever visit, nor indeed would the unflinching believer in the popular nonsense of ghosts wish to pass it without a companion. It is under any circumstances a gloomy and barren place, but when looked upon in connection with what we have just recited, it is lonely, desolate, and awful.
Un Ghrain̄eog.—(THE HEDGEHOG.)
Some twenty years ago it was not unusual in the south of Ireland to see boys assembled about a fire of straw, loudly exulting over a flame-surrounded victim, whose attempts to escape, rendered nugatory by a timid retraction as it were into himself, served but to call forth louder shouts of triumph from his persecutors, who thought they justified their savage deed by proclaiming its hapless object as a witch, a robber of orchards, and a sucker of cows. Leaving to our antiquarian friends to discover whether the cruel act in question was not a holocaust originating in the mystic rites of Pagan times, it is for us to vindicate the wronged, and show the absurdity of the charges by which wrong has been maintained, and at the same time to indicate such matter as may serve to direct kindness to that innocent victim of ignorance, the inoffensive Hedgehog. That it is not a witch according to the old law, may be proved in a court of justice spite of the popular opinion and in defiance of the authority of Shakspeare, whose witches in Macbeth are warned that the proper time had come to commence their infernal incantations by “thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.” We have no witness that a hedgehog ever rode a broomstick or vomited knives, skewers, coals of fire, or any such like legal proofs of witchcraft; neither, perhaps you exclaim, is the writer of so much nonsense a witch. True it is that the creature so named has its place nowhere in the classification of a zoologist, yet still an undefined idea of its existence floats in the imagination of the most ignorant, and it is not extraordinary that an opinion once universal should still linger in unenlightened minds. In no way do we consider superstitious prejudices can better be extinguished than by inducing accuracy of observation of natural phenomena, which shows that nothing supernatural exists. The second charge, that the hedgehog is a robber of orchards, is a very old one. Pliny, as translated by Holland, states—“Hedgehogs make their provision beforehand of meat for winter in this wise: they wallow and roll themselves upon apples and such fruit lying under foot, and so catch them up with their prickles, and one more besides they take in their mouth, and so carry them into hollow trees.”
Now, this has no foundation in fact. True it is that the hedgehog is very often found in the neighbourhood of orchards; but then this may be accounted for by the fact that the fences of such places are usually of exactly the thick and unfrequented kind the animal best likes to inhabit. Our repeated experience has never enabled us to discover that a hedgehog will eat apples; on the contrary, in early youth, when imbued with the general belief that this fruit was their diet, we have in more than one or two instances (most cruelly as we now believe) starved to death unfortunate specimens, which we shut up in a box with an ample supply of apples, not one of which they ever ate. That a magpie will steal and hide silver spoons, or a raven silk stockings, we know, and may use it as an argument that animals steal what they do not want; but that a hedgehog steals apples in the way stated, experiment will at once prove to be untrue, for, from the varied position of the points of the spines when fixed, it is impossible to fasten an apple upon them; and when they are not fixed, they yield at once to the pressure made in the attempt. Though domesticated hedgehogs can easily be brought to feed on bread and milk or dressed vegetables, yet all our observation goes to prove that in a state of nature, or when permitted to stray in a garden, they never eat any but animal food. This is at variance with the generally received opinion, which is supported by the authority of White, who, in his admirable History of Selborne, complains that hedgehogs injured his garden by boring with their long snouts under the plantain that grew in his grass walks, eating off the root upwards, leaving the tufts of leaves untouched, and defacing his grounds by making unsightly holes. He then immediately goes on to prove that these identical animals used beetles as no inconsiderable portion of their food. Now, it strikes us that his previous observation was not made with his usual accuracy, and that the hedgehogs did not eat the roots of plantain, but dug up where they had been to catch the larvæ of beetles that had just devoured them. Thus rooks have been charged with wantonly plucking up grass, while the truth is, that they only pull up plants attacked at the root by the larvæ of the cockchaffer or some other of the Phytophagous coleoptera (as vegetable-eating beetles are called), catch in the fact the destructive insect, and so stop its ravages; thus rendering important services to those who, for lack of accurate observation, falsely accuse and mischievously shoot them. Trusting we have satisfied you that the hedgehog does not steal apples, we come to the next charge, that he sucks cows. To refute this we have the best possible evidence in the animal’s mouth, the structure of which is completely unsuited to the accomplishment of such an object. That he will drink milk with avidity when domesticated, is certain, but this is only a taste he acquires in common with hundreds of other animals: there is scarcely one that may not be induced to relish such diet. Having thus cleared our hero (a name he fully deserves, as he wins battles by passive resistance) from the charges brought against him, we proceed to give some anecdotes of our personal knowledge, and shall finish with a few interesting facts in his history, for the information of those who take pleasure in accurate acquaintance with nature’s works.