Part 3

We have here, undeniably, a well-recorded case, analogous to that of Mr. H. In a modern case of bell-ringing, heavy thumps, and movement of objects, the agent was “a young girl who had never been out to service before,” and who passed the night in a state of wildly agitated somnambulism, repeating the whole of the Service for the day.[14] Mather gives several other examples, in which motives for trickery are manifest, while we hear nothing of an epileptic or hysterical patient.

In the majority of instances, ancient or modern, children are the agents. Thus we have “Physical Phenomena obtained in a Family Circle,” that of Mr. and Mrs. Davis, with their children, at Rio Janeiro.[15] The time was 1888. Curiosity had been caused by “the notorious Henry Slade.” There were “touches and grasps of hands.” A table “ran after me” (Professor Alexander) “and attempted to hem me in,” when only C., a little girl, was in the room. “As far as I could see, she did not even touch the table.” The chair of Amy (aged thirteen months) was moved about, like that of Master Morse two hundred years earlier. A table jumped into the laps of the public. There were raps and thumps, which “seemed to shake the whole building.” Lights floated about. A slate, covered with flour, was placed on C.’s lap; her hands lay on the table. Marks of fingers came on the flour, and, in answer to request, the mark of “a naked baby foot.” The children present were wearing laced boots, and we are not told that little Amy was under the table. Bluish lights and the phantasm of a dog were seen.

All this answers to an ancient example—the disturbances in Mr. Wesley’s house at Epworth, December 1715 to January 1716.[16] The house was a new one, rebuilt in 1709. We have Mr. Samuel Wesley’s Journal, with many contemporary letters from members of the family, and later reminiscences. There were many lively girls in the house, and two servants—a maid and a man, recently engaged. The disturbances began with groanings; then came knockings, which flitted about the house. Mr. Wesley heard nothing till December 21. The knocks replied to those made by the family, but they never could imitate the sounds. Mrs. Wesley and Emily saw an object “like a badger” run from under a bed and vanish. The mastiff was much alarmed by the sounds. Mr. Wesley was “thrice pushed by invisible power.” The bogie was a Jacobite, as was Mrs. Wesley: Mr. Wesley was for King George. The knocks were violent when that usurper was prayed for. They did not try praying for King James. Robin, the servant, saw a hand-mill work violently. “Naught vexed me but that it was empty. I thought, had it but been full of malt, he might have ground his heart out for me.” But this was a jocose, not an industrious devil. Robin called it “old Jeffries,” after a gentleman lately dead; the family called it “Jeffrey,” unless one name is a mere misspelling. It “seemed to sweep after” Nancy Wesley, when she swept the chambers. “She thought he might have done it for her, and saved her the trouble.” Mrs. Wesley concealed the matter from her husband, “lest he should fancy it was against his own death” (Letter of January 12, 1716-17). This belief in noises foretelling death is very common; compare Scott’s nocturnal disturbances at Abbotsford when Bullock, his agent in building it, was dying in London. The racket occurred on April 28 and 29, 1818, and Scott examined the scene “with Beardie’s broadsword under my arm.”[17] Bullock died in Tenterden Street, in London, whether on April 28 or 29 is not easily to be ascertained. “The noise resembled half a dozen men putting up boards and furniture, and nothing can be more certain than that there was nobody on the premises at the time.”[18] The noises used to follow Hetty Wesley, and thump under her feet, as under those of C. in Professor Alexander’s narrative. Mr. Wesley’s plate “danced before him on the table a pretty while, without anybody’s stirring the table.”[19] The disturbances quieted down in January, but recurred on March 31. Similar phenomena had occurred “long before” in the family.[20] “The sound very often seemed in the air, in the middle of a room, nor could they ever make any such themselves by any contrivance.”[21] On February 16, 1740, twenty-three years later, Emily writes to Jack about “that _wonderful thing_ called by us _Jeffrey_.... That something calls on me against any extraordinary new affliction.”

Priestley styles this affair “the best-authenticated that is anywhere extant.” He supposes it to have been “a trick of the servants, for mere amusement.” The _modus operandi_ is difficult to explain. We hear nothing of bad health or hysterics in the household.[22] For our purpose it is enough that a few incidents of this kind, however produced, might originate and keep alive the belief in Brownies, and

“That shrewd and knavish sprite Called Robin Goodfellow,”

who

“Frights the maidens of the villagery, Skims milk, and sometimes labours in the quern.”

By a curious coincidence, we can show a case in which phenomena of the kind usually reported as occurring at _séances_, and in examples like that of William Morse, were actually accepted as manifestations of the _Sleagh Maith_, or Fairies. In his account of the disturbances in the Wesley family, Dr. Clarke, the author, averred that he had himself witnessed similar events. It thus became necessary to consult his _Life_ (London, 1833). “In the history of my own life,” says Dr. Clarke, “I have related this matter in sufficient detail.”[23] Unluckily, in his _Life_ (pp. 76, 77) he gives scarce any details. Previous to sudden deaths in a family called Church, the phenomena of falling plates, heavy tread, and other noises occurred. Mr. Clarke “sat up one whole night in the kitchen, and most distinctly heard the above noises.” He was a born mystic, and even in childhood a reader of Cornelius Agrippa, and, later, of the alchemists. But he records the instance of a woman, who solemnly declared to Mrs. Clarke that a number of the _gentle people_ (_Sleagh Maith_) “occasionally frequented her house; that they often conversed with her, one of them putting its hands on her eyes during the time, which hands she represented, from the sensation she had, to be about the size of those of a child of four or five years of age.” The family were “worn down” with these visits, and from the mention of touches of hands it is pretty plain that we have to do with the kind of sprite who paws people at _séances_. But these sprites are recognised (the scene is the North of Ireland) as “gentle people,” Folk of Peace. The amusing thing is, that Mr. Clarke, while he believes in Mr. Wesley’s Jeffrey, and in the supernatural origin of a noise in a kitchen, laughs at similar phenomena when assigned to Fairies. It is a mere difference of terminology.

Another old example may be given. It is Alexander Telfair’s “True Relation” of disturbances at Ringcroft, in the parish of Rerrick.[24] The story is attested by the signatures of Ewart, minister of Kells, in Galloway; Monteith, minister of Borg; Murdoch, minister of Crosmichael, on Loch Ken; Spalding, minister at Parton, also by Loch Ken; Falconer, minister at Keltown; Mr. M‘Lellan of Colline, Lennox of Milhouse, and a number of farmers. These were all neighbours, and all attested what they saw and heard. Robert Chambers says, “There never, perhaps, was any mystic history better attested. Few narrations of the kind have included occurrences and appearances which it was more difficult to reconcile with the theory of trick or imposture.” Mr. Telfair himself had been chaplain, in 1687, to Sir Thomas Kirkpatrick of Closeburn. He was then an Episcopalian.

Andrew Mackie was a stone-mason at Rerrick. On March 7 (1695?), and for long after, stones began to fly about in his house by night and day. “The stones which hit any person had not half their natural weight.” Mackie complained to Telfair, his minister, who entered the house and prayed: nothing odd occurred. As he stood outside, he “saw two little stones drop down on the croft;” then he was asked to return, and was pelted inside the cottage. This was March 11. For a week there was no more trouble, then the disturbances began again. Mr. Telfair was sent for, and was pelted, beaten with a staff, and heard loud knockings. “That night, as I was at prayer, leaning on a bedside, I felt something lifting up my arm. I, casting my eyes thither, perceived a little white hand and arm from the elbow down, but presently it evanished.” “There was never anything seen except that hand I saw,” and an apparition of a boy in grey clothes. Sometimes the stoning went on in the open air.[25] There were plenty of touchings, grippings, and scratchings. “The door-bar” (a long, heavy piece of squared wood) “would go thorow the house as if a person were carrying it in their hand, yet nothing seen doing it.” Here we compare, in _Proc. S. P. R._, February 1892, the story of a carpenter’s shop at Swanland, in Yorkshire, where pieces of wood were “levitated” into abnormal flight. No imposture was discovered, nor was the presence of any one person necessary.

The ministers of Kells and Crosmichael were pelted with stones of eight pounds weight. On April 6, fire-balls floated through the cottage. When five ministers were present, “it made all the house shake, brake a hole through the thatch, and poured in great stones.” “It handled the legs of some as with a man’s hand;” it hoisted Mr. Telfair, Lennox of Millhouse, and others off the ground! A sieve flew through the house; Mackie caught it; a force gripped it, and pulled the interior part out of the rim. A day of humiliation was solemnly kept in the parish, which only excited the emulation of the disturbing agent; “it continued in a most fearful manner without intermission.” Voices were heard, which talked nonsense of a semi-scriptural kind; finally the thing died out early in May. By the way, on April 28, “it pulled down the end of the house, all the stone-work thereof.”

This is a very odd case, as no suspicion is thrown on the children. The attestations of several witnesses are given, not only at the close, but for almost every separate incident. The vision of the white hand is agreeable.

_The Devil of Glen Luce_, in Galloway, was published by Sinclair in his _Hydrostaticks_, of all places, in 1672, and again in _Satan’s Invisible World_, and by Glanvil in _Sadducismus Triumphatus_. In this affair a boy called Thomas, a son of the unlucky householder, was clearly the agent. The phenomena were stone-throwing, beating with sticks, levitation of a plate, and a great deal of voices, probably uttered by the aforesaid Thomas. The Synod ordered a day of humiliation (1655-56).

The affair of the Drummer of Tedworth (1661) is, or ought to be, too well known for quotation. The troubles began after Mr. Mompesson seized the drum of a vagrant musician. In the presence of a clergyman, chairs walked about the room of themselves, “a bed-staff was thrown at the minister, but so favourably that a lock of wool could not have fallen more softly.” The children, as usual, were especially haunted. A jingling of money was common, as it also was at Epworth. Lights wandered about the house, “blue and glimmering.” The noise was persistent in the woodwork of the children’s beds, while their hands were outside. The knocks answered knocks made by visitors. There were divers other marvels. The Drummer was suspected, but, consciously or not, the children were probably the agents. They seem to have been in their usual health.[26] In Galashiels (date not given), loud knocks on the floor accompanied a hystero-epileptic girl wherever she sat. In bed, “her body was so lifted up that many strong men were not able to keep it down.” The minister, who could make nothing of her, was Mr. Wilkie; the girl was Margaret Wilson (Sinclair, p. 200).

This little parcel of strange stories may suffice to show that part of the Fairy belief is based on such incidents as still occur, or are reported to occur, just in the old fashion. It is for psychologists and physicians to ascertain how far, if at all, the incidents are produced by hysterical, or epileptic, or somnambulistic patients. Common forthright trickery is usually detected in paid mediums. But the trickery simulates real events, or continues an old traditional form of imposture. The moral that parents should not allow their children to be present at _séances_ hardly needs enforcing. Some of them may escape unharmed, but frightful injuries may be inflicted on health and on character.[27]

VI. SECOND SIGHT AND “TELEPATHY.”

We have already hinted that events of an ordinary kind—illusions, cases of mistaken identity, or hallucination—are probably the ground-work in part of the Highland belief in second sight. Of course, if a certain proportion of hallucinations were or could be taken for “veridical,” attention would be given to these alone: the others would be neglected. The Psychical Society has collected and examined hundreds of these cases in modern life.

The Society may find out, experimentally, whether second sight can be acquired in the manner described by Mr. Kirk—whether by the hair tether, or by merely putting the foot under that of a seer. Thus contact is used in thought reading, as, in second sight, the seer by contact communicates his hallucination. Second sight itself is now called telepathy, which, however, does not essentially advance our knowledge of the subject. It is either very common, or people who choose to claim the possession of it are very common. In our society it is mere matter for idle tales; in the Highlands the second sight was a belief and a system. Mr. Pepys and Dr. Johnson investigated the matter, and Dr. Johnson came away open to conviction, but unconvinced. The Psychical Society is now examining second sight in the Highlands. It is interesting to learn that the Presbyterian seers justified their visions out of the Bible, which also justified the burning of these gifted men on occasion. Mr. Kirk is tolerant enough to ascribe their visions to a “bounty of Providence.” This may have passed, north of the Highland line, but in Fife and the south the seers would speedily have been accommodated with a stake and tar-barrel. The writings of Wodrow and Mr. Robert Blair of St. Andrews (1650-60) prove that if a savoury preacher wrought marvels, he was inspired, but if an amateur did the very same things,—prophesied, healed diseases, and so forth,—he, or she, was likely to be haled before the Presbytery, and possibly dragged to the stake. In the Highlands these invidious distinctions were less forcibly drawn. Mr. Kirk treats the whole question in his curiously cold scientific way. If these things occur, they are in the realm of Nature, and are results of causes which may be variously conjectured. They may be providential, or a sport of evolution, derived from “a complexionall Quality of the first acquirer,” which often becomes hereditary in his lineage.

Lord Tarbott’s letter to an inquirer, Robert Boyle, is added by Mr. Kirk to his little treatise, with his own annotations. His belief that the Fairy sights could only be seen while the eyes are kept steady without twinkling, is attested by a well-known anecdote. On the afternoon of Culloden, a little girl, staying with Lord Lovat at Gortuleg, was reading in a window-seat. Chancing to look out, she saw a company of headlong riders hastening to the castle. Believing them to be the _Sleagh Maith_, she tried hard to keep her eyes from twinkling, that she might not lose the vision. But these, alas! were no Fairies, they were Prince Charles and his men flying from the victorious English. The tale proves that the belief long survived the day of the minister of Aberfoyle. Lord Tarbott mentions, also, the vision of the shroud on the breast of a man about to die, which seems to be alluded to in the prophecy of Theoclymenus in the _Odyssey_. Lord Tarbott’s tales are of the familiar kind, there are dozens of such in _Theophilus Insulanus_. Mr. Kirk’s notes are chiefly remarkable for his citation of Walter Grahame’s “evil eye,” which killed what he praised,—a world-wide superstition, too common to need supporting by foreign and classical examples.

Unluckily, at this point Mr. Kirk abandons what we may call his scientific attitude. He has accounted for his “supernatural” affairs as not supernatural at all, but phenomena in Nature, and subject, like other phenomena, to laws. But now it occurs to him to explain the conduct of his _Sleagh Maith_ as the result of missionary zeal on their part: “they endeavour to convince us of a Deity;” though, on the face of his argument, a Co-walker no more proves a Deity than does an ordinary “walker.” He may have been reading “the learned Dr. Mor” (More the Platonist), and may have altered his ideas. His account of a girl who learned, or rather composed, a long poem by aid of “our nimble and courteous spirits,” affords an early example of what is called “an inspirational medium.” It is unlucky that Mr. Kirk did not publish this work, of which he had a copy. The ordinary “spiritual” poetry may be written, as Dr. Johnson said of _Ossian_, “by any one who would abandon his mind to it.” When Mr. Kirk maintains that Neolithic arrow-heads could not have been executed “by all the Airt of man,” he relapses from his usual odd common-sense. He also believes in men who are magically shot-proof, like Claverhouse, who had to be shot by a silver bullet; like Archbishop Sharp, on whom his pious assassins erroneously held that their bullets took no effect; and like certain soldiers mentioned by Dugald Dalgetty of Drumthwacket. This absurd belief was very generally held by the Covenanters. Where his local superstitions and those of his generation are not concerned, Mr. Kirk recovers his clearness of intellect. In Purgatory he finds only the pre-Christian Hades, “our Secret Republick,” with an ecclesiastical colouring—“additional Fictions of Monks’ doting and crazied Heads.” Mr. Kirk did not perceive the danger involved in his own argument. If a Highland second-sighted man answers to a Hebrew prophet in his visions and trances, a Hebrew prophet is in danger of being no more considered than a Highland second-sighted man. However, it is to Mr. Kirk’s praise that he shows no persecuting disposition as far as witches are concerned (though he has seen them pricked), and that he argues very fairly from his premisses, and within his limits.[28] He recognises the unity of spiritual phenomena and of popular beliefs, whether it springs from a common well-head of delusion in our nature, or whether it really has a source in the observation of peculiar and rather rare phenomena.

To the Edinburgh edition of 1815 (probably the only one) the editor added the work of Theophilus Insulanus on Second Sight. This is not rare nor expensive, and we do not reproduce it. One case of “telepathy” may be quoted from Theophilus.

“Donald Beaton, residenter in Hammir, related that, in his passage from Glasgow to the Isle of Sky, he stopped at Tippermory, a known harbour in the Isle of Mull.” Here some one gave him a loin of venison. Donald, whose wife’s mother was a seer, to try her powers, wished that piece of venison in her hands. “The same night the seer, who lived with her daughter, his wife, apprehended she saw him enter the house with a shapeless lump in his hands—she knew not what, but it resembled flesh, which gave herself and her daughter great joy, as they had despaired of him by his long absence.” This is “telepathy,” if telepathy there be.

Another picturesque tale shows how, on the night before the Rout of Moy, Patrick M‘Caskill met the famed M‘Rimmon (_sic_), M‘Leod’s piper, in the town of Inverness, and saw him contract into the size of a boy of five or six, and expand again into his athletic proportions. M‘Rimmon was killed in the Rout of Moy—an attempt to surprise and seize Prince Charles. Before leaving Skye he had prophesied—

“M‘Leod shall come back, But M‘Rimmon shall never.”

The editor is acquainted with a splendid case of second sight in Kensington. The seer was an accomplished English gentleman, and mentioned his vision at the moment to a witness who remembers and corroborates the statement. Thus the Hebrides and Highlands have no monopoly of second sight.

The researches of M. Charcot, M. Richet, and other psychologists do not at present help us much in the matter of veridical second sight. It is not a hallucination “suggested” to a hypnotised subject, but an impression produced by a remote person or event on a subject who has not been hypnotised at all. For example, Dr. Adam Clarke, in his _Life_ (vol. ii. p. 16) tells us of Mr. Tracy Clarke, who, being in the Isle of Man with his son, dreamed that he had visited his wife in Liverpool. He told his son that Mrs. Clarke was looking very well, but, contrary to her habit, was sleeping in the best bedroom. On the day when Mr. Clarke said this, Mrs. Clarke, who had been sleeping in her best bedroom, told the little son who lay in her room that she had heard his father ride up to the house, stable his horse, open the door, come upstairs, and walk round her bed, but that she could not see him. This is a case at least of second hearing, and has no hypnotic explanation.

We end in the candid spirit of Dr. Johnson, as far as the Polter-Geist and second sight are concerned—willing to be convinced, but far indeed from conviction. As to the Fairy belief, we conceive it to be a complex matter, from which tradition, with its memory of earth-dwellers, is not wholly absent, while more is due to a survival of the pre-Christian Hades, and to the belief in local spirits—the Vuis of Melanesia, the Nereids of ancient and modern Greece, the Lares of Rome, the fateful Mœræ and Hathors—old imaginings of a world not yet “dispeopled of its dreams.”[29]

[Illustration: Puss-in-Boots smells a rat.]

AN ESSAY

OF

The Nature and Actions of the Subterranean (and, for the most Part,) Invisible People, heretofoir going under the name of ELVES, FAUNES, and FAIRIES, or the lyke, among the Low-Country Scots, as they are described by those who have the SECOND SIGHT; and now, to occasion further Inquiry, collected and compared, by a Circumspect Inquirer residing among the Scottish-Irish in Scotland.

Secret Commonwealth,

OR,

A Treatise displayeing the Chiefe Curiosities as they are in Use among diverse of the People of Scotland to this Day; SINGULARITIES for the most Part peculiar to that Nation.

A Subject not heretofore discoursed of by any of our Writters; and yet ventured on in an Essay to suppress the impudent and growing Atheisme of this Age, and to satisfie the desire of some choice Freinds.

_Then a Spirit passed before my Face, the Hair of my Flesh stood up; it stood still, but I could not discerne the Forme thereof; ane Image was before mine Eyes._—Job, 4. 15, 16.

_This is a_ REBELLIOUS PEOPLE, _which say to the Siers, sie not; and to the Prophets, prophesie not unto us right Things, bot speak unto us smoothe Things._—Isaiah, 30. 9, 10.

_And the Man whose Eyes were open hath said._—Numbers, 24. 15.

_For now we sie thorough a Glass darkly, but then Face to Face._—1 Corinth. 13. 12.