COINCIDENT POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.
(Continued from page 284.)
[Transcriber's note: See Mirror 486]
Such is the tale, which is either of itself the fragment of some popular superstition, or has given rise to many coincident legends. “I am sure,” says the kind friend who furnished us with the narrative, speaking of the Beresford from whom she received it, “that neither he, nor any of his relations, disbelieves the statements recorded.” Possibly not; nor dare we profess to be utterly sceptical—simply as Christians—to all narratives of this description; but, allowing the possibility, nay, the necessity in some cases, of supernatural agency, still, a spirit should have some just and striking reason for its permitted appearance; and we cannot exactly discover the object of Sir Tristram’s mission. Would it be unfair to hazard a conjecture that the lady, being a Catholic, married in Captain Georges a Protestant (a supposition which the double performance of the marriage ceremony with him seems to favour), whom, being anxious to convert to her own faith, she thought to deceive, by the “cunningly devised fable” of a spirit with a burning hand, into the Papistical tenet of purgatory? and, that by a confusion of real circumstances with her original fiction, is derived the remarkable family tradition recorded? Leaving this speculation for the private rumination of our readers, we proceed:
The stories of the young lady suffocated by accidentally enclosing herself in a chest with a spring lock[7]—of the girl frightened into complete idiotcy by those who placed a skeleton, or, as some say, a skull only, in her bed[8]—and of ladies, bishops, &c. obtaining their livelihoods privately by highway robbery[9], with similar narratives, rather romantic than superstitious, are general property, and to be met with under various modifications throughout England. The tale of the King of the Cats[10], a German tradition, has its exact counterpart in an Irish one, related to us as an original Hibernian legend, and published some time since in an excellent work, which having now disappeared, we may perhaps venture to give, as a novelty, the little tradition in these pages:
A man passing, late at night, a ruined house, observed that it was lighted, and heard a great mewing, as of a conclave of cats, within. As he marvelled at the circumstance, a cat jumped upon one of the broken walls, and said—“Tell Dildrum that Doldrum’s dead.” The man, little dreaming of these words being addressed to him, pursued his way home; where, when he arrived, a good, fire, an excellent supper, and his wife’s conversation, seem to have banished for a time from his recollection what he had seen and heard. At last, he began to laugh so heartily that he was nearly choked, and his wife pressed him to tell her the cause of his mirth. This he did; but no sooner had he uttered the words “Tell Dildrum that Doldrum’s dead,” when his own favourite grimalkin, who had lent an attentive ear to his narrative, whilst demurely basking before the fire, started upon his feet, and exclaiming, “O murder! and is Doldrum dead?” dashed up the chimney, and was never seen more.
A Scottish tradition concerning The Cat o’ the Craigs, as given by a correspondent in vol. iv. of the Mirror, p. 85, and which has a most fatal termination, is evidently but another version of the same story.
In a little work just published, on “Cambrian Superstitions,” by Mr. Howells, several are mentioned so exactly similar to those prevalent in Ireland, Scotland, and England, as to leave no doubt of their common origin. The Welsh coast has also its spectre-ships, like America and the seas of the Cape, ere shipwreck.
The Mirror’s able correspondent VYVYAN has, in vol. xii. p. 408, noticed the connexion between the German Peter Klaus and Emperor Barbarossa, with the oriental Seven Sleepers and the American Rip Von Winkle. We may add, that there is a similar Welsh superstition respecting the enchanted slumber of King Arthur, and his expected reappearance upon earth before the last day, to take part in the holy wars of the times. The Poles and Turks, if we mistake not, have among them a corresponding legend; and whilst Sir W. Scott has given us that of the purchase of horses by Thomas the Rhymour, and the magic slumbers of the gigantic men-at-arms appointed to ride them, in the subterranean mews, H. has rescued very happily from oblivion a coincident English superstition. The legendary lore of mountainous and mining countries, is, with little variation, the same; and whether America, Germany, Sweden, Scotland, Wales, or our own peculiar mining districts in England be the locale of such, still may be discovered, under different names indeed, and circumstances, the demons of the mines, the guardians of hidden treasures, the freakish dwarfs and fays, who delight in unexpectedly enriching the poor and virtuous, whilst they delude most miserably all idle and worthless treasure-seekers, &c. Nay, what, we may inquire, are the oriental genii of kings, and lamps, &c., but modifications of one and the same superstition? And what are the said Ginns—who erect splendid palaces in the course of a few brief hours, and transport them at pleasure from place to place—but the Evil Ones of more modern times and northern countries, who build, according to popular tradition, bridges, and mills, &c.?—who cleave mountains, excavate ditches, and fly away with monasteries and hermitages, in an incredibly short space of time?
However, we have finished; for less than a folio could not do that justice to our subject in its various bearings which it requires;—nor, indeed, would less than an intimate acquaintance with all the tongues and traditions of all nations that are, or ever have been, upon the face of the earth—so intermingled are divine revelations, corrupt mythologies, wild and palpable fictions, fantastic imaginings, exaggerated allegories, poetical machinery, and the very insanity of human hopes, fears, and wishes, &c. &c., in the great and never to be analyzed body of popular superstition!