chapter v

. of the "Fair Maid of Perth," that this bleeding of a corpse was urged as an evidence of guilt in the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh as late as the year 1668. An interesting survival of this curious notion exists in Durham, where, says Mr. Henderson,[960] "touching of the corpse by those who come to look at it is still expected by the poor on the part of those who come to their house while a dead body is lying in it, in token that they wished no ill to the departed, and were in peace and amity with him."

[959] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. pp. 229-231.

[960] "Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," 1849, p. 57.

We may also compare the following passage, where Macbeth (iii. 4), speaking of the Ghost, says:

"It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood: Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak; Augurs and understood relations have By magot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth The secret'st man of blood."

Shakespeare perhaps alludes to some story in which the stones covering the corpse of a murdered man were said to have moved of themselves, and so revealed the secret. The idea of trees speaking probably refers to the story of the tree which revealed to Æneas the murder of Polydorus (Verg., "Æneid," iii. 22, 599). Indeed, in days gone by, this superstition was carried to such an extent that we are told, in D'Israeli's "Curiosities of Literature," "by the side of the bier, if the slightest change was observable in the eyes, the mouth, feet, or hands of the corpse, the murderer was conjectured to be present, and many an innocent spectator must have suffered death. This practice forms a rich picture in the imagination of our old writers; and their histories and ballads are labored into pathos by dwelling on this phenomenon."

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