Traditions, Superstitions and Folk-lore Part 18

"For the perjurer and the secret murderer Nastrond existed, a place of torment and punishment--the strand of the dead--filled with foulness, peopled with poisonous serpents, dark, cold, and gloomy; the kingdom of Hel was _Hades_, the invisible, the world of shadows; Nastrond was what we call h.e.l.l."

Kelly further contends that as "the heaven of the (Aryan) Pitris is often called 'the world of good deed, the world of the righteous,' and as they themselves were spirits of light and ministers of all good men, there is strong reason for inferring, although the fact is nowhere expressly stated, that the inhabitants of the opposite world became spirits of darkness, and confederates of all the evil powers." He adds,--"If this conjecture prove to be well founded, it will have brought to light another remarkable instance of the continuity of Aryan tradition."

The Rev. G. W. c.o.x, however, scarcely indorses this view of the Gothic h.e.l.l and Devil. He says,--"Hel had been like Persephone, the queen of the unseen land,--in the ideas of the northern tribes, a land of bitter cold and icy walls. She now became not the queen of Niflheim, but Niflheim itself, while her abode, though gloomy enough, was not wholly dest.i.tute of material comforts. It became the h.e.l.l where the old man hews wood for the Christmas fire, and where the Devil in his eagerness to buy the flitch of bacon yields up the marvellous quern which is 'good to grind almost anything.' It was not so pleasant, indeed, as Heaven, or the old Valhalla, but it was better to be there than shut out in the outer cold beyond its padlocked gates. But more particularly the Devil was a being who under pressure of hunger might be drawn into acting against his own interest, in other words he might be outwitted, and this character of a poor or stupid devil is almost the only one exhibited in Teutonic legends. In fact, as Professor Max Muller remarks, the Germans, when they had been 'indoctrinated with the idea of a real devil, the Semitic Satan or Diabolus, treated him in the most good-humoured manner;' nor is it easy to resist Dr. Dasent's conclusion that 'no greater proof can be given of the small hold which the Christian Devil has taken of the Norse mind than the heathen aspect under which he constantly appears, and the ludicrous way in which he is always outwitted.'" Mr. c.o.x adds, in a note, that it has "been said of Southey that he could never think of the devil without laughing. This is but saying that he had the genuine humour of our Teutonic ancestors."

Dasent, in his "Popular Tales from the Norse," says,--"The Christian notion of h.e.l.l is that of a place of heat, for in the East, whence Christianity came, heat is often an intolerable torment, and cold, on the other hand, everything that is pleasant and delightful. But to the dwellers in the North heat brings with it sensations of joy and comfort, and life without fire has a dreary outlook; so their Hel ruled in a cold region over those who were cowards by implication, while the mead-cup went round and huge logs blazed and crackled in Valhalla for the brave and beautiful who had dared to die on the field of battle. But under Christianity the extremes of heat and cold have met, and Hel, the cold, uncomfortable G.o.ddess, is now our h.e.l.l, where flames and fires abound, and where the devils abide in everlasting flame."

How grandly has Shakspere expressed the various traditionary forms respecting the lost soul's lodgment or condition after death, in "Measure for Measure." In act 3, scene 1, Claudio exclaims:--

Ay, but to die and go we know not where, To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts Imagine howling! 'tis too horrible!

The wearied and most loathed worldly life, That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To what we fear of death.

It is a common superst.i.tion yet that the ghosts of persons, murdered or otherwise, not buried in consecrated ground, cannot rest, but must wander about in search of the means of Christian sepulture. This superst.i.tion obtained amongst the Greeks and Latins. The ghosts of unburied bodies, not possessing the _obolus_ or fee due to Charon, the ferryman of the _Styx_ or _Acheron_, were unable to obtain a lodging or place of rest. They were, therefore, compelled to wander about the banks of the river for a hundred years, when the _Port.i.tor_ or "ferryman of h.e.l.l" pa.s.sed them over, _in forma pauperis_. Hence the sacred nature of the duty of surviving relatives and friends under the most trying circ.u.mstances. The celebrated tragedy of Antigone, by Sophocles, owes its chief interest and pathos to the popular faith on this subject.

Brand on the authority of Aubrey, states that, amongst the vulgar in Yorks.h.i.+re, it was believed, "and, perhaps, is in part still," that, after a person's death, the soul went over Whinney Moor; and till about 1624, at the funeral, a woman came (like a Praefica) and sung the following song:--

This ean night, this ean night, Every night and awle, Fire and fleet (_water_) and candle-light, And Christ receive thy sawle.

When thou from hence doest pa.s.s away, Every night and awle, To Whinny-Moor [silly poor] thou comest at last, And Christ receive thy sawle.

If ever thou gave hosen or shoon [shoes], Every night and awle, Sit thee down and put them on, And Christ receive thy sawle.

But if hosen and shoon thou never gave naen, Every night and awle, The whinnes shall p.r.i.c.k thee to the bare beane, And Christ receive thy sawle.

From Whinny-Moor that thou mayst pa.s.s, Every night and awle, To Brig of Dread thou comest at last, Christ receive thy sawle.

From Brig of Dread, na brader than a thread, Every night and awle, To purgatory fire thou com'st at last, And Christ receive thy sawle.

If ever thou give either milke or drink, Every night and awle, The fire shall never make thee shrink, And Christ receive thy sawle.

But if milk nor drink thou never gave naen, Every night and awle, The fire shall burn thee to the bare beane, And Christ receive thy sawle.

In the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," this song is printed with one or two slight variations, with the t.i.tle of a "Lyke-Wake Dirge."

Sir Walter Scott likewise quotes a pa.s.sage from a MS. in the Cotton Library, descriptive of Cleveland in the northern part of Yorks.h.i.+re, in Elizabeth's reign, which aptly ill.u.s.trates this custom. It is as follows:--

"When any dieth certaine women sing a song to the dead bodie, reciting the journey that the partye deceased must goe, and they are of beliefe (such is their fondnesse) that once in their lives it is good to give a pair of new shoes to a poor man, for as much as after this life they are to pa.s.s barefoote through a great launde, full of thorns and furzen, except by the meryte of the almes aforesaid they have redemed the forfeyte; for at the edge of the launde an olde man shall meet them with the same shoes that were given by the partie when he was lyving, and after he had shodde them, dismisseth them to go through thick and thin without scratch or scalle."

According to Mannhardt and Grimm a pair of shoes was deposited in the grave, in Scandinavia and Germany, for this very purpose. In the Henneberg district, on this account, the name _todtenschuh_, or "dead shoe" is applied to a funeral. In Scandinavia the shoe is named _helsko_ or "hel-shoe."

It is customary yet in some parts of the North of England to place a plate filled with salt on the stomach of a corpse soon after death.

Lighted candles too, are sometimes placed on or about the body. Reginald Scot says, in his "Discourse concerning Devils and Spirits," on the authority of Bodin, that "the devil loveth no salt in his meat, for that is a sign of eternity, and used by G.o.d's commandment in all sacrifices."

Douce, speaking of this practice, particularly in Leicesters.h.i.+re, says it is done with the view of preventing air from getting into the bowels and swelling the body. Herrick, in his "Hesperides," says:--

The Soul is the Salt.

The body's salt the soul is, which, when gone, The flesh soon sucks in putrifaction.

According to the learned Moresin the devil abhorreth salt, it being the emblem of eternity and immortality. It is not liable to corruption itself, and it preserves other substances from decay. Hence its superst.i.tious or emblematical import.

The screaming of certain birds, as we have already seen, foreboded disaster. In some districts the midnight flight of flocks of migratory seafowl are believed to be the cause of the noises in the atmosphere, which the peasant's imagination translates into the rush of the furious host. Mr. Yarrell, in "Notes and Queries," says that flocks of bean-geese, from Scandinavia and Scotland, when flying over various parts of England, select very dark nights for their migrations, and that their flight is accompanied by a very loud and very peculiar cry. The "seven whistlers," referred to by Wordsworth, and others already quoted, in some instances appear to be curlews, whose screams are believed by fishermen to announce the approach of a tempest.

The bellowing of cows at unseasonable hours was likewise regarded as an announcement of death, as well as the howling of the dog. Cows in the Aryan mythology represented the rain clouds. Odin and his host, nevertheless, seem to have fancied the earthly article. They were said to carry cows away, milk them dry, and, in about three days, generally return them, but not always. It was idle for the farmer to refuse complying, as when the furious host appeared, the fattest animals in the stalls became restive, and on being let loose suddenly disappeared.

The Lancas.h.i.+re peasant, in some districts, still believes the "Milky Way" to be the path by which departed souls enter Heaven. Mr. Benjamin Brierley, in one of his Lancas.h.i.+re stories, places in the mouth of one of his strongly marked provincial characters, the following expression,--"When tha goes up th' cow lone (lane) to th' better place,"

and he a.s.sures me that he has often heard the expression from the lips of the peasantry. The Germans entertain a similar belief in the "Milky Way" being the spirit path to heaven. In Friesland its name is _kaupat_, or cowpath. The giving of a cow to the poor, while on earth, was considered to confer upon the donor the power to pa.s.s with certainty the fearful Gjallar bridge; for, as in the Vedic superst.i.tion, a cow, (or cloud,) would be present to aid his soul to make the pa.s.sage in safety.

Mannhardt informs us that "hence it was of yore a funeral custom in Sweden, Denmark, England, Upper and Lower Germany, that a cow should follow the coffin to the churchyard. This custom was partially continued until recent times, being accounted for on the ground that the cow was a gift to the clergy for saying ma.s.ses for the dead man's soul or preaching his funeral sermon."

It is not improbable that the "mortuary" or "heriot" of the olden time, which rendered the gift of a cow to the church, on the death of a paris.h.i.+oner, as a condonement of possibly unpaid dues, a necessary condition of clerical favour, was based on some such superst.i.tion. It was customary, in some places, to drive the cow in the procession of the funeral _cortege_ to the place of sepulture. Mr. E. Baines, speaking of the manor of Ashton-under-Lyne, says:--"The obnoxious feudal _heriot_, consisting of the best beast on the farm, required to be given to the lord, on the death of the farmer, was a cruel and unmanly exaction, in ill.u.s.tration of which there are many traditionary stories in the manor of Ashton, and no doubt in other manors. The priest, as well as the lord of the manor, claimed his heriot, called a mortuary in these early times, on the death of his paris.h.i.+oners, as a kind of expiation for the personal t.i.thes, which the deceased in his lifetime had neglected to pay." He adds that the custom was in Ashton for "_holy kirk_" to take the _best_ beast, and the lord of the manor the _second_ best.

To those who treated Odin with proper respect when he and his hunters pa.s.sed by, he is said to have dropped a horse's leg or haunch, which turned to gold. Those who mocked him received a similar present, or "moss-wifekin's foot, with the green shoe upon it." But the limb in the latter case became ftid, and the horrible stench resulting therefrom defied all attempts to remove it.

All of these legends have been resolved into figurative and sometimes highly poetic descriptions of natural phenomena, and especially what is termed the "elemental strife." The horse's leg thrown down by Odin represents the crooked lightning's flash; the gold its brightness, and the stench its sulphurous odour. The wild boars which he hunts are stormy wind-clouds; the fair ladies the light white scudding vapours that seem to coquette with the squally wind. Odin's broad-brimmed hat is the dark cloud, and his mantle the starry heavens. Kelly says--"The moss-wifekins and wood-maidens are female elementary spirits brought down to the earth from the clouds to become genii of the forest, and when they are chased _in whole flocks_--or, in other words, when the leaves are blown off the trees--this is but a modification of the older conception of flying clouds.... The wild huntsman loves to ride through houses that have two outer doors directly opposite to each other; that is to say, in plain prose, a thorough draft, more or less strong, from one door to the other."

Mr. Ruskin, in his recent lectures at Oxford, as "Slade Professor of Fine Art," gives an admirable example from paintings on an ancient vase, of the manner in which Greek artistic genius gradually evolved from out of natural phenomena, their mythological personifications. He says,--

"First you have Apollo ascending from the sea; thought of as the _physical sunrise_: only a circle of light for his head; his chariot horses seen foreshortened, black against the day-break, their feet not yet risen above the horizon. Underneath is the painting from the opposite side of the same vase: Athena as the morning breeze, and Hermes as the morning cloud, flying across the waves before sunrise. At the distance I now hold them from you, it is scarcely possible for you to see that they are figures at all, so like are they to broken fragments of flying mist; and when you look close you will see that as Apollo's face is invisible in the circle of light, Mercury's is invisible in the broken form of cloud; but I can tell you that it is conceived as reverted, looking back to Athena; the grotesque appearance of feature in the front is the outline of his hair. These two paintings are exceedingly rude, and of the archaeic period; the deities being yet thought of chiefly as physical powers in violent agency."

Max Muller contends that the earlier Aryan name for the Ribhus, namely Arbhus, is identical with the Greek Orpheus. Philologists, by the aid of the earlier Sanscrit writings, have been enabled to get at the roots of many Greek names, which formerly defied investigation. We see in the musical influence of Orpheus over trees, rocks, and mountain torrents, but a highly artistic development of the original Aryan storm-wind myth.

By certain well understood philological steps, the term Arbhus has pa.s.sed, in its Teutonic descent, into Albs, Alb, or Alp, which in the plural yields Elbe and Elfen, the equivalents of our English Elf and Elves.

Another remnant of the Aryan nomenclature of the train of Odin, the wild huntsman, may be found in the word mart or maur, as presented in the English word nightmare, and the French couchemar, which are evidently descended from the Maruts or wind-G.o.ds of the Vedas. The nightmare is known to result chiefly from that form of dyspepsia termed flatulent.

The corruption of the word in English to mare has given rise to some singular blunders, and none greater or more absurd than that perpetrated by Fuseli, the Royal Academician, in his celebrated picture of "The Nightmare," in which he represents the fiend in equine form bestraddling his unhappy victim. Kelly says he can find accounts of the nightmare a.s.suming the forms of a mouse, a weasel, a toad, and even a cat, but never that of a horse or a mare, except in the picture referred to. The fact is, the genuine nightmare is the rider who plies his spurs and grips the reins, and not a mare that has usurped the function of a jockey. Aubrey, in his "Miscellanies," describes one phase of the superst.i.tion as a remnant of witchcraft. "To hinder the nightmare, they hang in a string a flint with a hole in it. It is to prevent the nightmare, viz., the hag, from riding their horses, who will sometimes sweat at night. The flint thus hung does hinder it." Brand observes that "ephialtes, or nightmare, is called by common people _witch-riding_." He traces the superst.i.tion to the Gothic or Scandinavian Mara, "a spectre of the night."

In cla.s.sical mythology Pan was regarded as the author of sudden frights or groundless alarms. Dr. Adam, in his "Roman Antiquities," says that Faunus and Sylva.n.u.s were "supposed to be the same with Pan." He further adds,--"There were several rural deities called Fauni, who were believed to occasion the nightmare."

It is not improbable that the modern equine form of the hag may have resulted from ordinary punning. Lluellin (1679) has the following stanza, which refers to the power of coral over the nightmare. Hence the prejudice in favour of coral beads for children which obtains to this day:--

Some the night-mare hath prest With that weight on their breast, No returnes of their breath can pa.s.se.

But to us the tale is addle, We can take off her saddle, And turn out the night-mare to gra.s.se.

Another old writer, Holiday, in his "Marriage of the Arts," deprecates the practice of relying on charms, "that your stables may bee alwies free from the queene of the goblins." He, however, makes the night-hag equestrian or jockey, and not equine. Herrick, too, in his "Hesperides,"

is both correct and explicit on the subject. He says:--

Hang up hooks and shears to scare Hence the hag that rides the mare Till they be all over wet With the mire and the sweat; This observed, the manes shall be Of your horses all knot free.

The term "nightmare," in some instances, may have been applied to a witch transformed into a mare by means of a magic bridle, and ridden with great violence by the very party at whose bedside she had previously metamorphosed into a steed, on the back of which she had galloped to the witches' revel. If the man-horse contrived to slip off the bridle, and throw it over the witch's head, she immediately became transformed into a mare, and was frequently, according to popular belief, subjected to much harsh usage. There appears, however, to be little doubt that the night-mares are legitimately descended from the Aryan Maruts, the "couriers of the air," who rode the winds in the "wild hunt," or "furious host," headed by Odin, or the renowned spectre horseman of mediaeval legends. Kelly says, "these riders, in all other respects identical with the Maruts, are in some parts of Germany called Wabriderske, _i.e._, Valkyrs. In some of the tales that are told of them they still retain their old divine nature; in others they are brought down to the level of mere earthly witches. If they ride now in stables, without locomotion, it is because they swept of old through the air on their divine coursers. Now they steal by night to the beds of hinds and churls; but there was a time when they descended from Valhalla to conceive, in the embrace of a mortal, the demi-G.o.d whom they afterwards accompanied to the battle-field, to bear him thence to the hall of Odin."

I entertain a strong impression that the singular ceremony practised at Ashton-under-Lyne, at Easter, styled "_Riding the Black Lad_," contains some remnant of the tradition of the spectre huntsman. Its origin is confessed on all hands to be extremely doubtful. The severities of a Sir Ralph a.s.sheton, in the reign of Henry VI., may have had something to do with it, but they alone could scarcely have perpetuated the legend and its accessories. The custom of perambulating the parish boundaries, still in use in many parts of England, and which, in my own youth, was performed with much solemnity by the Corporation of Preston, may likewise have had some influence upon the practice. At the close of the Preston perambulation, it was customary for the younger spirits "to leap the colt-hole," as it was termed, the said "colt-hole" being a ditch or fosse on Preston Marsh. Some unlucky wights occasionally fell into the said ditch, to the infinite amus.e.m.e.nt of the graver dignitaries, as well as to the merriment of the holiday schoolboys attendant. Dr. Hibbert Ware, referring to the Ashton custom, says:--"An effigy is made of a man in armour, and the image is deridingly emblazoned with some emblems of the occupation of the first couple that are linked together in the course of the year." The story of the enforcing of the weeding of "Carr gulds" (an obnoxious plant) from the land by Sir Ralph's rough riding, may have had some foundation in fact; but it is rather strange a successor should have "abolished the usage for ever, and reserved from the estate a small sum of money, for the purpose of perpetuating, in an annual ceremony, the memory of the dreaded visits of the Black Knight."

Spelman, in his "Icenia," referring to the Tilney legend concerning Tom Hickathrift and his giant-slaying, clearly shows that the "monstrous giant," slain by Tom, armed with his axle and wheel, like the Cornish Tom the Tinkheard, and his followers, was none other than the tyrant lord of the manor who sought by violence to rob his copy-hold tenants out of their right of pasture in the common field.

Samuel Bamford, in his poem of the "Wild Rider," relates a legend not uncommon in various parts of the country, about a Sir Ashton Lever, a lover of a descendant of the Black Knight, who seems to have rivalled him in horsemans.h.i.+p. Bamford, in a note, says:--"He was an excellent bowman and a fearless rider, and tradition has handed down stories of feats of horsemans.h.i.+p a.n.a.logous to those recited in the ballad, accompanied with sage intimations that _no horse could have carried him save one of more than earthly breed or human training_." The narrow valley of the Tame, in the neighbourhood of Ashton, is as likely as the gorge at Cliviger to be haunted by the storm-rider or the wild hunt.

Singularly enough, Mr. Baines, in his History of Lancas.h.i.+re, relates minutely the particulars of two tremendous storms which devastated the locality, one in 1817, and the other 26 years previously. They both created much dismay, and the latter, he says, caused "an involuntary expression of horror throughout the whole place." A neighbouring exposed hill is named the "Wild Bank." Around it storms often rage with great fury. In one of the Welsh triads, we find that the "three embellis.h.i.+ng names of the wind" are "Hero of the World, Architect of Bad Weather, and a.s.saulter of the Hills." It has been previously shown the spectre huntsman of Dartmoor is styled the "_Black_ Master," which lends further probability to the hypothesis advanced.

Since the bulk of the preceding pages in this chapter were written, I obtained a copy of Mr. R. Hunt's recently published work, ent.i.tled "Popular Romances of the West of England; or the Drolls, Traditions, and Superst.i.tions of Old Cornwall." In it I find several curious and highly interesting variations of the legend or myth of the spectre huntsman, or the furious host, which exhibit not only the connection of the Wandering Jew tradition with that of the hunt of Odin and his followers, but which I conceive throw much light upon, and, to a large extent, countenance the hypothesis I have submitted, that the legend of the celebrated black knight, or "black lad," of Ashton-under-Lyne, retains, along with more modern additions, something of the original Aryan personification of the "elemental strife" previously described. Speaking of the "demon Tregeagle," a well-known legendary hero of "Old Cornwall," he says:--

"Who has not heard of the wild spirit of Tregeagle? He haunts equally the moor, the rocky coasts, and the blown sandhills of Cornwall. From north to south, from east to west, this doomed spirit is heard of, _and to the day of judgment he is doomed to wander_, pursued by avenging fiends. For ever endeavouring to perform some task by which he hopes to secure repose, and being for ever defeated. Who has not heard of the _howling_ of Tregeagle? When the storms come with all their strength from the Atlantic, and urge themselves upon the rocks around Land's End, _the howls of the spirit are louder than the roaring of the winds_. When calms rest upon the ocean, and the waves can scarcely form upon the resting waters, _low wailings creep along the coast. These are the wailings of this wandering soul._ When midnight is on the Moor or on the mountains, and the night winds whistle amidst the rugged cairns, _the shrieks of_ Tregeagle are distinctly heard. We know that he is _pursued by the demon dogs_, and that till day-break he must fly with all speed before them. The voice of Tregeagle is everywhere, and yet he is unseen by human eye. Every reader will at once perceive that Tregeagle _belongs to the mythologies of the oldest nations_, and that _the traditions of this wandering spirit_ in Cornwall, _which centre upon_ ONE TYRANNICAL MAGISTRATE, _are but the appropriation of stories which belong to every age and country_."

Here we have clearly a combination of the doings of the Teutonic spectre huntsman, Odin, and of his prototypes the Aryan storm-G.o.ds, Indra and Rudra, and their attendant Maruts and the Ribhus; the wailings of the homeless souls of the Irish and other legends; the interminable toil of the Wandering Jew; and the more modern tradition of the hard-hearted lord of the soil, whose deeds have rendered his name odious to the commonalty. The latter worthy modern tradition a.s.serts, as in the case of the Ashton "Black Knight," to have been a relatively recent _bona fide_ "tyrannical magistrate," and a "rapacious and unscrupulous landlord," and "one of the Tregeagles who once owned Trevorder near Bodmin." At his death the fiends were anxious to get immediate possession of the soul of this "gigantic sinner;" but the hardened murderer, terrified at his fate, "gave to the priesthood wealth, that they might fight with them, and save his soul from eternal fire." On one occasion it is said that his wandering spirit actually gave evidence in a court of justice, when the fiends in vain endeavoured to carry him off. The power of the priesthood prevailed, but only with the condition attached that the wretched sinner should undertake "some task difficult beyond the power of human nature, which might be extended far into eternity," with the view that the power of repentance might gradually exert its ameliorating influence. His only hope for ultimate salvation was perpetual toil. The demons could not molest him so long as he continued his labour.