He the seven birds hath seen that never part,
Seen the seven whistlers on their mighty rounds,
And counted them! And oftentimes will start,
For overhead are sweeping Gabriel's hounds,
Doomed with their impious lord the flying hart,
To chase for ever on äerial grounds.
Wordsworth.
"Amongst the most prominent of the demon superstitions prevalent in Lancashire," says Mr. T. T. Wilkinson, "we may first instance that of the Spectre Huntsman, which occupies so conspicuous a place in the folk-lore of Germany and the north. This superstition is still extant in the gorge of Cliviger, where he is believed to hunt a milk white doe round the Eagle's Crag, in the vale of Todmorden, on All Hallows Eve. His hounds are said to fly yelping through the air on many other occasions, and, under the local name of 'Gabriel Ratchets,' are supposed to predict death or misfortune to all who hear the sounds."
This superstition is known about Leeds, and other places in Yorkshire, as "Gabble Retchet," and refers more especially to the belief that the souls of unbaptised children are doomed to wander in this stormy fashion about the homes of their parents.
These peculiar superstitions appear to have nearly died out, or to have become merged into some other legends based on the action of the Aryan storm-gods, Indra, Rudra, and their attendant Maruts or Winds, both in Great Britain and Ireland. According to a writer in the Quarterly Review, of July, 1836, the wild huntsman still lingers in Devonshire. He says, "the spectre pack which hunts over Dartmoor is called the 'wish hounds,' and the black 'master' who follows the chase is no doubt the same who has left his mark on Wistman's Wood," a neighbouring forest of dwarf oaks.
The late Mr. Holland, of Sheffield, referring to this superstition, in 1861, says, "I can never forget the impression made upon my own mind when once arrested by the cry of these Gabriel hounds as I passed the parish church of Sheffield, one densely dark and very still night. The sound was exactly like the greeting of a dozen beagles on the foot of a race, but not so loud, and highly suggestive of ideas of the supernatural." Mr. Holland has embodied the local feeling on this subject in the following sonnet:—
Oft have I heard my honoured mother say,
How she has listened to the Gabriel hounds—
Those strange unearthly and mysterious sounds,
Which on the ear through murkiest darkness fell;
And how, entranced by superstitions spell,
The trembling villager not seldom heard,
In the quaint noise of the nocturnal bird
Of death premonished, some sick neighbour's knell.
I, too, remember once at midnight dark,
How these sky-yelpers startled me and stirred
My fancy so, I could have then averred
A mimic pack of beagles low did bark.
Nor wondered I that rustic fear should trace
A spectral huntsman doomed to that long moonless chase.
In classic mythology this wild hunt myth is parallelled by the career of Orion, the "mighty hunter, the cloud raging in wild freedom over hills and dales." Seeking to make the beautiful Aerô his bride, he is blinded by her father, who caught him asleep. After recovering his sight by a journey towards the rising sun, he vainly endeavours to seize upon and punish his enemy. In his wanderings he meets with and is beloved by Artemis (Diana), one of the dawn-goddesses. The Rev. G. W. Cox says, "It is but the story of the beautiful cloud left in darkness when the sun goes down, but recovering its brilliance when he rises again in the east." After his death, being so nearly akin to the powers of light, Asklêpios "seeks to raise him from the dead, and thus brings on his own doom from the thunderbolts of Zeus—a myth which points to the blotting out of the sun from the sky by the thundercloud, just as he was rekindling the faded vapours which lie motionless on the horizon." Orion's hound afterwards became the dog-star, Sirius. Hence our name dog days for parching weather.
This chasing of the white doe or the white hart by the spectre huntsman has assumed various forms. According to Aristotle a white hart was killed by Agathocles, king of Sicily, which a thousand years beforehand had been consecrated to Diana by Diomedes. Alexander the Great is said by Pliny to have caught a white stag, placed a collar of gold about its neck, and afterwards set it free. Succeeding heroes have, in after days, been announced as the capturers of this famous white hart. Julius Cæsar took the place of Alexander, and Charlemagne caught a white hart at both Magdebourg, and in the Holstein woods. In 1172, William the Lion is reported to have accomplished a similar feat, according to a Latin inscription on the walls of Lubeck Cathedral. Tradition says the white hart has been caught on Rothwell Hay Common, in Yorkshire, and in Windsor Forest.
Dean Stanley, in his "Historic Memorials of Westminster Abbey," informs us that the great northern entrance of that truly historic pile was erected in the reign of Richard II., and that once "it contained his well-known badge of the White Hart, which still remains, in colossal proportions, on the fragile partition which shuts off the Muniment Room from the southern triforium of the Nave." It appears that the badge was first adopted in honour of his mother, Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, at a tournament in 1396. It had, however, direct reference to the tradition which asserted that the famous white hart of Cæsar had been caught at Besastine, near Bagshot, in Windsor Forest. Its identity was said to have been proved by a collar of gold about its neck, which bore the following inscription:—"Nemo me tangat: Cæsaris sum." The badge was so popular amongst the friends of Richard, that Bolingbroke, when Henry IV., had much difficulty in suppressing it. Its frequent adoption as an inn sign is likewise attributed to this circumstance.
In early Greek art, the deities of the morning, Athena, Apollo and Artemis, are commonly, if not invariably, associated with a fawn with a gleam of light on its breast. The hart in these legends appears to typify the dawn, and, in conjunction with some other elements of the myth, implies the daily sequence of light and darkness.
The spectre huntsman, so very popular in Scandinavian and German tradition, is the Teutonic deity Odin or Woden, from whence our Wednesday. Woden is claimed by the early Angle and Saxon kings of the heptarchy as their common ancestor. This god had many names, each descriptive of some special quality or attribute. Amongst others he was styled Wunsch, from which we have the Anglo-Saxon wisk, and the modern English wish, in the sense in which it is used in the divining or wish-rod (German wünschelruthe). In Devonshire the term "wishtness" is still retained, and is employed to designate "all unearthly creatures and their doings." Indra and Rudra are regarded as the Aryan prototypes of Odin. Some of their chief characteristics are retained in the doings of the "wild huntsman" and his followers that form the dramatis personæ of the "furious host." Kelly describes the first phase of this legend as follows:
"Mounted on his white or dappled grey steed, the wild huntsman may always be recognised by his broad-brimmed hat, and his wide mantle, from which he is surnamed Hakelbärend or Hakelberg, an old word signifying mantle-wearer. The hooting owl, Tutursel, flies before him, and ravens, birds peculiarly sacred to Woden, accompany the chase. Whoever sees it approach must fall flat on the ground, or shelter himself under any odd number of boards, nine or eleven, otherwise he will be borne away through the air and set down hundreds of miles away from home, among people who speak a strange tongue. It is still more dangerous to look out of the window when Odin is sweeping by. The rash man is struck dead, or at least gets a box on the ear that makes his head swell as big as a bucket, and leaves a fiery mark on his cheek. In some instances the offender has been struck blind or mad. There are certain places where Woden is accustomed to feed his horse or let it graze, and in those places the wind is always blowing. He has also a preference for certain tracks, over which he hunts again and again at fixed seasons, from which circumstance districts and villages in the old Saxon land received the name of Woden's way. Houses and barns in which there are two or three doors opposite each other are very liable to be made thoroughfares by the wild hunt."
Mr. Baring-Gould, in his "Iceland, its Scenes and Sagas," describes this superstition, as he heard it from his guide Jón, who related it to him under the title of the "yule host." He says,—"Odin, or Wodin, is the wild huntsman who nightly tears on his white horse over the German and Norwegian forests and moor-sweeps, with his legion of hell-hounds. Some luckless woodcutter, on a still night, is returning through the pine woods; the air is sweet-scented with matchless pine fragrance. Overhead the sky is covered with grey vapour, but a mist is on all the land; not a sound among the fir tops; and the man starts at the click of a falling cone. Suddenly his ear catches a distant wail; a moan rolls through the interlacing branches; nearer and nearer comes the sound. There is the winding of a long horn waxing louder and louder, the baying of hounds, the rattle of hoofs and paws on the pine tree tops. A blast of wind rolls along, the firs bend as withes, and the woodcutter sees the wild huntsman and his rout reeling by in frantic haste.... The wild huntsman chases the wood spirits, and he is to be seen at cock-crow returning with the little Dryads hanging to his saddle-bow by their yellow locks."
The personification of the strife of the elements in stormy weather is here very apparent. As the name of Odin or other of his special appellations became lost or corrupted, mysterious personages, or heroes of another and more mortal stamp, became confounded with the spectre huntsman. Herod, the murderer of the Jewish children, is evidently referred to by the French peasants of Perigord, when they speak of "La chasse Herode." This seems to have resulted from the corruption of Hrôdso (the renowned), one of the titles applied to Odin.
At Blois, the wild hunt is called the "chasse Maccabei," from the following supposed reference to it in the Bible:—"Then it happened that through all the city, for the space almost of forty days, there were seen horsemen running in the air, in cloth of gold, and armed with lances like a band of soldiers. And troops of horsemen in array, encountering and running one against another, with shaking of shields and multitudes of pikes, and drawing of swords, and casting of darts, and glittering of golden ornaments and harness of all sorts. Wherefore every man prayed that that apparition might turn to good." (II. Maccabeus, v. 2 to 4.)
In Brittany and Picardy the peasants, in the midst of sudden storms or whirlwinds, which throw down trees and steeples, are still in the habit of crossing themselves, and exclaiming "C'est le juif errant qui passe." This evidently demonstrates that the legendary story of the Wandering Jew, the spectre hunt of Odin, and the superstitions associated with the seven whistlers, have been confounded or "dovetailed," as it were, one into the other. Indeed, in its combined form, remnants may yet be found in Lancashire. Mr. James Pearson, in a contribution to "Notes and Queries," of September 30th, 1871, testifies to this in the following terms:—
"THE SEVEN WHISTLERS.—One evening a few years ago, when crossing one of our Lancashire moors, in company with an intelligent old man, we were suddenly startled by the whistling overhead of a covey of plovers. My companion remarked that when a boy the old people considered such a circumstance a bad omen, 'as the person who heard the Wandering Jews,' as he called the plovers, 'was sure to be overtaken with some ill luck.' On questioning my friend on the name given to the birds, he said, 'There is a tradition that they contain the souls of those Jews who assisted at the crucifixion, and in consequence were doomed to float in the air for ever.' When we arrived at the foot of the moor, a coach, by which I had hoped to complete my journey, had already left its station, thereby causing me to finish the distance on foot. The old man reminded me of the omen."
Another writer, "A. S.," in "Notes and Queries," October 21, 1871, says:—"During a thunderstorm which passed over this district" (Kettering, in Yorkshire), "on the evening of September 6, on which occasion the lightning was very vivid, an unusual spectacle was witnessed; immense flocks of birds were flying about, uttering doleful affrighted cries, as they passed over the locality, and for hours they kept up a continual whistling like that made by sea birds. There must have been great numbers of them, as they were also observed at the same time, as we learn by the public prints, in the counties of Northampton, Leicester, and Lincoln. The nest day, as my servant was driving me to a neighbouring village, this phenomenon of the flight of birds became the subject of conversation, and on asking him what birds he thought they were he told me they were what were called The Seven Whistlers, and that whenever they were heard it was considered a sign of some great calamity, and that the last time he heard them was the night before the great Hartley colliery explosion; he had also been told by soldiers that if they heard them they always expected a great slaughter would take place soon. Curiously enough, on taking up the newspaper the following morning, I saw headed in large letters—'Terrible Colliery Explosion at Wigan,' etc., etc. This I thought would confirm my man's belief in 'the Seven Whistlers.'"
I have heard it seriously asserted in discussion by geologists and mining engineers, that a low state of the barometer generally, if not invariably, accompanies a certain class of accidents in coal pits. Perhaps this peculiar atmospheric condition may explain the coincidences referred to.
Another contributor of the same date, "Viator," gives the following Eastern illustration of this superstition,—"It strikes me as curious that Mr. Pearson should hear on a Lancashire moor a tradition or superstition so similar to that which I have heard on the Bosphorus with reference to certain flocks of birds, about the size of a thrush, which fly up and down the channel, and are never seen to rest on the land or water. I was informed by the man who rowed the caique that they were the souls of the damned, and condemned to perpetual motion."
There is a legend of Odin wandering over the earth, accompanied by his two ravens, one of which represented Thought and the other Memory. Mr. Princeps had a picture in the Royal Academy Exhibition in 1871, illustrating this tradition.
The last time the Wandering Jew is said to have appeared in propriâ personâ was in the year 1604, when he was believed to have been seen three times in France. As his appearance was invariably accompanied with violent and destructive tempests, the peasantry concluded that his mode of locomotion was of a supernatural character, and that the fierce blasts of the storm-god (or fiend) hurled him from place to place. Since the French visits referred to, it seems that the Wandering Jew's advent has not been able to gain much credence. Several times, however, attempts in this direction have been made. Referring to the subject, Brand says:—"I remember to have seen one of these imposters some years ago in the north of England, who made a very hermit-like appearance, and went up and down the streets of Newcastle with a long train of boys at his heels, muttering, 'Poor John alone, alone!' I thought he pronounced his name in a manner singularly plaintive." In a note Brand adds that "Poor John alone" is "otherwise 'Poor Jew alone.'" He mentions a portrait of this man, painted for Sir William Musgrave, Bart., which was inscribed "Poor Joe alone!" which corresponds with the name of a then recent pretender of this class, as recorded by Matthew Paris, on the authority of an Armenian archbishop, who, in 1228, visited the monastery at St. Albans.
The earlier gods of the heathens were supposed, notwithstanding their immortality, to be occasionally subjected to a kind of temporary death. Baldr, the bright day-god, was slain by a stroke of a mistletoe branch, wielded by the hand of the blind Hodr; the Python overcame Apollo; and such is sometimes the strange inconsistency of early traditions and their after development, that the grave of Zeus was a sacred spot to the Ancient Greeks. The spectre huntsman appears to have been subjected to some such death, or protracted trance, periodically.
Odin rode on his dappled grey steed only in rough weather. His mortal enemy seems to have been the wild boar. This animal is also a favourite mythic form of expression in Merlin's famous prophesy. The Germans have a legend that in the form of Hackelberg, or the mantle-wearer, on one occasion he was heard to inquire for the "stumpy tail" that he knew from a vision was destined to overcome him. At a great hunt he killed the animal, and fancied that he had practically given the lie to his dream of the previous night. In his triumph he kicked the slain brute contemptuously; but the tusk of the dead animal (an Aryan personification of the lightning) piercing his leg, inflicted a wound, from the effects of which he died, or, in other words, fell into a deep trance. This evidently represents the season of calm weather, during which the spectre huntsman and his howling pack rest from their labours.
This wild boar legend has near mythological affinity to the Greek one, respecting Adonis, who, whilst hunting, was mortally wounded in the thigh by a wild boar. The waters of the river Adonis assume, at a certain season of the year, a deep red hue, which was said to be caused by the blood of Adonis. Modern investigation has attributed this phenomenon to periodical heavy rains, which bring large quantities of red earth into the river. In Syria, Thammuz, an older prototype or counterpart of Adonis, was worshipped, which worship was denounced by Ezekiel, six centuries before Christ, as amongst the abominations of Judah. Milton, in "Paradise Lost," says:—
Thammuz came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allur'd
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
In amorous ditties all a summer's day,
While smooth Adonis from his native rock
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood
Of Thammuz yearly wounded.
Adonis alternately abode with Aphroditê in heaven and Persephonê in hell. This has been held to be "typical of the burial of seed, which, in due season, rises above the ground for the propagation of its species," or of the "annual passage of the sun from the northern to the southern hemisphere."
Odin was surnamed the lord of the gallows, or the god of the hanged, because human sacrifices were offered to him in this fashion, and because he had hanged himself for nine days on the mighty tree Yggdrasil. Hence the superstition in Germany, and not unknown in England, that the act of committing suicide by hanging creates a storm.
The temporary death, or state of coma, of these weather-gods is very significant. When Indra or Odin hurled his spear, the weapon, with most commendable loyalty, as a rule, returned to the hand of its proprietor. Thor's hammer or lightning club, was, generally, equally accommodating. But at the conclusion of the autumnal storms, the implement remained buried in the earth, where, like some animals, it may be said to have hybernated. It was not until the return of spring that the potent weapon was restored to the grasp of the thundering deity.
The analogy of the weapons of these gods to the lightning is forcibly illustrated by the Scandinavian legend, which asserts that Odin lent his spear in the form of a reed to King Erich in order to ensure him the victory in a battle against Styrbjörn. The reed, in its flight, assumed the form of a spear, and struck with blindness the whole of the opposing army.
The peculiar form of this weapon of the gods has undergone many changes in mythical lore. It is the sword of Roland, "Durandal," which Mr. Cox says "is manifestly the sword of Chrysâôr." It is that of Theseus and that of Sigurd. It is Arthur's famous sword "Excalibur," as well as the one which no one could draw from the iron anvil sheath, embedded in stone, but himself. It is Odin's sword, "Gram," stuck in the roof tree of Volsung's hall. Mr. Cox says:—"Like all other sons of Helios, Arthur has his enemies, and King Rience demands as a sign of homage the beard of Arthur, which gleams with the splendour of the golden locks or rays of Phoibos Akersekomes. The demand is refused, but in the mediæval romance there is room for others who reflect the glory of Arthur, while his own splendour is for a time obscured. At Camelot they see a maiden with a sword attached to her body, which Arthur himself cannot draw. In the Knight Balin, who draws it, and who 'because he was poorly arrayed put him not far in the press,' we see not merely the humble Arthur, who gives his sword to Sir Kay, but Odysseus, who in his beggar's dress shrinks from the brilliant throng that crowds his ancestral hall." Campbell, in his "Tales of the West Highlands," says:—"The Manx hero, Olave, of Norway, had a sword with a Celtic name, Macabuin." It reappears in many of the fairy tales. In some popular stories it becomes an ordinary cudgel, with magical properties, leaps of its own accord out of the lad's bag who owned it, and severely punishes the rascally innkeeper who stole the buck-goat that spat gold, the hen that laid the golden eggs, and a table that covered itself with a sumptuous repast, without human aid. The stick, like Indra's spear, returned to its owner's hand on the completion of the innkeeper's castigation. Different versions of the legend are found in Yorkshire, Germany, and various other parts of Europe. Kelly says:—"The table, in this story, is the all-nourishing cloud. The buck-goat is another emblem of the clouds, and the gold it spits is the golden light of the sun that streams through the fleecy covering of the sky. The hen's golden egg is the sun itself. The demon of darkness has stolen these things; the cloud gives no rain, but hangs dusky in the sky, veiling the light of the sun. Then the lightning spear of the ancient storm-god, Odin, leaps out from the bag that concealed it (the cloud again), the robber falls, the rain patters down, the sun shines once more." In other words we have the Sanscrit Vritra, the dragon, or "dark thief," stealing the herds of Indra, and hiding them in the cave of the Panis (the dark cloud), and the weapon of the lightning-god effecting their liberation.
It is said that, in the "elevated and inland region of Arya, the winter was a rigorous season of seven months' duration, and it has been suggested that the dormant condition of the lightning, or the sun-god's weapon, is symbolical of the fact." Lyell and others contend that geological evidence indicates that the winters were long and severe during the period when the makers of the "palæoliths," or rude flint implements, which have recently attracted so much attention, lived on the banks of the Somme, near Amiens and Abbeville, and in other localities in England and Northern Europe. These implements are believed to furnish the most reliable evidence of the earliest existence of man yet discovered. If such was the condition of the country on the arrival of the Aryan emigrants, four different classes of facts—mythological, philological, geological, and archæological—seem to be in perfect harmony with each other.
Kelly says, "in some places local tradition makes Hackelberg a mere man; in others an enormous giant. At Rocklum, near Wolfenbuttel, the existence of a group of hills is accounted for by saying that they are composed of the gravel which Hackelberg once threw out of his shoe as he passed that way with the wild hunt." Similar traditions are not unknown in Lancashire and other parts of Britain. It is stated in Knight's "Old England" that "there were formerly three huge upright stones near Kennet, not far from Abury, the country people called them from time immemorial, 'The Devil's Coits.' They could be playthings, it might readily be imagined, for no other busy idler. But the good folks of Somersetshire, by a sort of refinement of such hacknied traditions, hold that a great stone, near Stanton Drew, now called 'Hackell's Coit,' and which formerly weighed thirty tons, was thrown from a hill about a mile off, by a mortal champion, Sir Jno. Hautville."
Dr. J. Collingwood Bruce, in his "Wallet-Book of the Roman Wall," relates the following Northumberland tradition:—"To the north of Sewingshields, two strata of sandstone crop out to the day; the highest points of each ledge are called the King and Queen's-crag, from the following legend. King Arthur, seated on the furthest rock, was talking with his queen, who, meanwhile, was engaged in arranging her 'back-hair.' Some expression of the queen's having offended his majesty, he seized a rock which lay near him, and, with an exertion of strength for which the Picts were proverbial, he threw it at her, a distance of about a quarter of a mile! The queen, with great dexterity, caught it upon her comb, and thus warded off the blow; the stone fell between them, where it lies to this very day, with the marks of the comb upon it, to attest the truth of the story. It probably weighs about twenty tons."[29]
This method of accounting for the deposition of the large boulders and other erratic rocks of the glacial drift period of modern geology is common in Lancashire and the North of England. Odin, or Hackelberg, is, of course, in these legends, converted into the devil, as in Kennet. He is supposed to have built a bridge over the Kent, a little above Kendal, and another over the Lune, at Kirkby Lonsdale; and it is said that in leaping from the hills on the Yorkshire side of the valley into Lancashire, his apron string broke, and a large mass of scattered rocks which lie in the valley fell to the earth in consequence. The present writer was once shown, near Hutton Roof, a hollow in the mountain limestone of which the hill is formed, which he was seriously told had been named, from time immemorial, the "Devil's Footprint," and was still held to be irrefragable evidence of the truth of the legend referred to. The hole in the rock did certainly bear some slight resemblance to the impression of a cow's hoof on some plastic substance; but it in reality is an ordinary limestone cavity, of a somewhat unusual form.
The removing of stones in the night by the devil on the occasion of the building of churches appears to have some remote connection with the ancient superstition now under consideration. Lancashire has many such stories. The wild boar, or demon pig, played some such pranks at Winwick. A rude sculpture, "resembling a hog fastened to a block by the collar," has been found amongst the carved stones which decorated the ancient church. In this, Mr. E. Baines says, "superstition sees the resemblance of a monster in former ages, which prowled over the neighbourhood, inflicting injury on man and beast, and which could only be restrained by the subduing power of the sacred edifice." Mr. T. T. Wilkinson says "The Goblin Builders" are "said to have removed the foundations of Rochdale Church from the banks of the river Roach up to their present elevated position. Samlesbury Church near Preston, possesses a similar tradition. The demon pig not only determined the site of St. Oswald's Church at Winwick, but gave a name to the parish.[30] The parochial church at Burnley, it is said, was originally intended to be built on the site of the old Saxon cross, in Godly-lane; but, however much the masons might have built during the day, both the stones and the scaffolding were invariably found where the church now stands, on their coming to work next morning. The local legend states that on this occasion also, the goblin took the form of a pig, and a rude sculpture of such an animal, on the south side of the steeple, lends its aid to perpetuate and confirm the story."
Miss Farington, in her paper on Leyland Church, read before the Lancashire and Cheshire Historic Society, refers to several carved stones which decorated the ancient structure, and amongst others to what was termed the "cat stone." She says—"To this relic appends the usual story of the stones being removed by night (in this case from Whittle to Leyland), and the devil, in the form of a cat, throttling a person who was bold enough to watch." This tradition I have often heard spoken of myself by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood.
The cat, as I have shown in a previous chapter, like the boar, was an Aryan personification of storm and tempest.
When the Hackelberg-Odin was killed by the boar's tusk, in accordance with his last request, he was interred at the spot to which his favourite steed unguided bore him. He is believed to have been buried in the "enchanted or cloud mountain," which the superstitious, however, still insist upon finding on the earth. He is supposed to lie in a secluded spot on some lone moorland side, the way to which no curious enquirer ever trod a second time. Hence the many traditions of heroes slumbering in caves, awaiting the signal for future battle, and their triumph over the enchantment that has held them for ages spell-bound. Frederic Barbarossa—he of the red beard like Odin—is yet believed by the German peasantry to rest in a cavern, surrounded by his knights, in the Kyffhäuser mountain, "leaning his head upon his arm, at a table through which his beard has grown, or around which, according to other accounts, it has grown twice. When it has thrice encircled the table he will awake up to battle. The cavern glitters with gold and jewels, and is as bright as the sunniest day. Thousands of horses stand at mangers filled with thorn bushes instead of hay, and make a prodigious noise as they stamp on the ground and rattle their chains. The old Kaiser sometimes wakes up for a moment and speaks to his visitors. He once asked a herdsman who had found his way into the Kyffhäuser, 'Are the ravens (Odin's birds) still flying about the mountain?' The man replied that they were. 'Then,' said Barbarossa, 'I must sleep a hundred years longer.'" From many details in this superstition, Mannhardt clearly identifies Frederic and his companions with Odin and his wild host.
Similar stories are told of the Emperor Henry the Fowler, who is said to be entranced in the Sudemerberg, near Goslar. Charlemagne and his enchanted army are believed to slumber in several different localities. In Britain, Armorica, Normandy, and other places, the caverned hero, who has superseded Odin, is the renowned Arthur, who is expected yet to reappear, and restore the glory of the ancient British race. Grimm shows that the mediæval Germans believed that "Arthur, too, the vanished King, whose return is expected by the Britons, and who rides at the head of the nightly host, is said to dwell with his men at arms in a mountain; Felicia, Sybilla's daughter, and the goddess Juno, live with him, and the whole army are well provided with food, drink, horses, and clothes."
It appears that the earliest poetical writer in the English vernacular, at the commencement of the thirteenth century, Layamon, in his "Brut or Chronicle of Britain, a Poetical Semi-Saxon Paraphrase of the Brut of Wace," first engrafted this legend on the Arthurian romances. According to him, Arthur, when dying, addressed Constantine, his successor, as follows:—"I will fare to Avalun to the fairest of all maidens, to Argante, the Queen, an elf most fair, and she shall make my wounds all sound; make me all whole with healing draughts. And afterwards I will come again to my kingdom and dwell with the Britons with mickle joy." Layamon further adds:—"Even with the words there approached from the sea a little short boat floating with the waves, and two women therein wondrously formed; and they took Arthur anon, and bare him quickly, and laid him softly down, and forth they gan depart. Then was it accomplished that Merlin whilom said, that mickle care should come of Arthur's departure. The Britons believe yet that he is alive and dwelleth in Avalun with the fairest of all elves, and the Britons even yet expect when Arthur shall return." Amongst the Welsh bards, after the appearance of Geoffrey's History, fairy land was designated "Ynys yr Avallon," or the "Island of the Apple Trees."
Sir Walter Scott, in his "Demonology and Witchcraft," relates a tradition, in which he makes Thomas the Rhymer the hero, but this Kelly contends is a blunder, and cites the following passage, quoted by Sir Walter himself, from Leyden's "Scenes of Infancy," in proof of his view that the caverned warriors referred to were King Arthur's Knights:—
Say who is he with summons loud and long
Shall bid the charmed sleep of ages fly,
Roll the long sound through Eildon's caverns vast,
While each dark warrior kindles at the blast;
The horn, the falchion grasp with mighty hand,
And peal proud Arthur's march from Fairy land?
Sir Walter Scott's version of the legend is as follows:—"A daring horse-jockey sold a black horse to a man of venerable and antique appearance, who appointed the remarkable hillock upon Eildon Hills, called the Lucken Hare, as the place where, at twelve o'clock at night he should receive the price. He came, his money was paid in ancient coin, and he was invited by his customer to view his residence. The trader in horses followed his guide in the deepest astonishment through several long ranges of stalls, in each of which a horse stood motionless, while an armed warrior lay equally still at the charger's feet. 'All these men,' said the wizard in a whisper, 'will awaken at the battle of Sheriffmoor.' At the extremity of this extraordinary depôt hung a sword and a horn, which the prophet pointed out to the horse dealer as containing the means of dissolving the spell. The man, in confusion, took the horn and attempted to wind it. The horses instantly started in their stalls, stamped, and shook their bridles, the men arose and clashed their armour, and the mortal, terrified at the tumult he had excited, dropped the horn from his hand. A voice like that of a giant, louder even than the tumult around, pronounced these words:—
Woe to the coward that ever he was born,
That did not draw the sword before he blew the horn!
A whirlwind expelled the horse dealer from the cavern, the entrance to which he could never find again."
In the neighbourhood of Kirkoswald, on the Eden, in Cumberland, a district prolific in Arthurian legends, it is said that "a peculiar wind called the Helmwind, sometimes blows with great fury in this part of the country. It is believed by some persons to be an electrical phenomenon." Perhaps this fact may have some remote connection with the superstition under consideration.
Sir Walter remarks that although his legend refers to Sheriffmoor, and 1715, a similar story is related in the reign of Elizabeth by Reginald Scot. Indeed, it is told with some variations in several localities, both in the Highlands and in the northern counties of England. In Hodgson's "Northumberland" it is described in the following terms:—
"Immemorial tradition has asserted that King Arthur, his queen, Guenever, his court of lords and ladies, and his hounds, were enchanted in some cave of the crags, or in a hall below the castle of Sewingshields, and would continue entranced there till some one should first blow a bugle-horn, that lay on a table near the entrance of the hall, and then, with 'the sword of the stone,' cut a garter, also placed there beside it. But none had ever heard where the entrance to this enchanted hall was, till the farmer at Sewingshields, about fifty years since, was sitting knitting on the ruins of the castle, and his clew fell, and ran downwards through a rush of briers and nettles, as he supposed, into a deep subterranean passage. Full in the faith that the entrance into King Arthur's hall was now discovered, he cleared the briery portal of its weeds and rubbish, and, entering a vaulted passage, followed, in his darkling way, the thread of his clew. The floor was infested with toads and lizards; and the dark wings of bats, disturbed by his unhallowed intrusion, flitted fearfully around him. At length his sinking courage was strengthened by a dim, distant light, which, as he advanced, grew gradually brighter, till, all at once, he entered a vast and vaulted hall, in the centre of which, a fire without fuel, from a broad crevice in the floor, blazed with a high and lambent flame, that showed all the carved walls and fretted roof, and the monarch and his queen and court reposing around, in a theatre of thrones and costly couches. On the floor, beyond the fire, lay the faithful and deep-toned pack of thirty couple of hounds; and, on a table before it, the spell-dissolving horn, sword, and garter. The shepherd reverently, but firmly, grasped the sword, and as he drew it leisurely from its rusty scabbard, the eyes of the monarch and his courtiers began to open, and they rose till they sat upright. He cut the garter; and, as the sword was being slowly sheathed, the spell assumed its ancient power, and they all sank gradually to rest; but not before the monarch had lifted up his eyes and hands, and exclaimed:—
O woe betide that evil day
On which this witless wight was born,
Who drew the sword—the garter cut,
But never blew the bugle-horn.
Terror brought on loss of memory, and the shepherd was unable to give any correct account of his adventure, or to find again the entrance to the enchanted hall."
The Arthur legend is repeated, with some slight variations, by the country people about Alderley Edge, Cheshire. The sleeping warriors are said to repose in the recesses of a place called the "Wizard's Cave."
An old Cornish legend avers that King Arthur is still alive in the form of a raven; and certain superstitious people refuse to shoot these birds, from a fear that they might inadvertently destroy the mythic warrior.
King Arthur and his knights have been so popular in Lancashire, that the Rev. John Whitaker, the historian of Manchester, seriously relates the story of Sir Tarquin and Lancelot of the Lake as an historical event pertaining to this county. According to him, Tarquin's castle was at Manchester, and the lake from which Sir Lancelot derived his surname the now almost thoroughly drained Martin Mere. He contends that discovered remains demonstrate that three of the battles won by Arthur, and ascribed by tradition to the neighbourhood of the Douglas, were fought near Wigan and Blackrod. Geoffrey of Monmouth, however, only mentions one battle as being fought on the banks of the Douglas. He says:—
"The Saxons, under the command of Colgrin, were attempting to exterminate the whole of the British race. They had also entirely subdued all that part of the island which extends from the Humber to the sea of Caithness.... Hereupon he (Arthur) marched to (towards) York, of which, when Colgrin had intelligence, he met him with a very great army, composed of Saxons, Scots, and Picts, by the river Duglas, where a battle happened with the loss of the greater part of both armies. Notwithstanding, the victory fell to Arthur, who pursued Colgrin to York, and there besieged him."
The "historical" Arthur, however, has long been looked upon by the best historians as a mythical or fictitious personage, the representative, or impersonation as it were, of the national valour and superstition.[31] Dr. Kuhn and others regard all the stories of these caverned heroes as merely relatively modernised forms of Odin and his terrible host. They refer the weapon suspended in the cave to "that of Heimdallr, the Sverdâs or sword-god, and warder of Bifrost Bridge," to whom belongs the "Gjallar horn with which he will warn the gods that the frost giants are advancing to storm Valhalla." The mighty conflict in which they expect to be engaged "will be fought before the end of the world, when heaven and earth shall be destroyed, and the Æsir gods themselves shall perish, and their places shall be filled by a new creation and new and brighter gods." This dark myth is by some writers regarded as a foreshadowing of the downfall of paganism and the advent of a higher civilisation and purer religion under the Christian dispensation.
Tempests and the howling of the wind appear to have been regarded with superstitious reverence from the earliest times in the British islands. Plutarch speaks of the return to Delphos from Britain of a certain grammarian, named Demetrius, who related some curious stories with respect to the then but little known country. Amongst other things the travelled sage narrated to Plutarch and his friends the following story:—"There are many desert islands scattered about Britain, some of which have the name of being the islands of genii and heroes; that he had been sent by the emperor, for the sake of describing and viewing them, to that which lay nearest to the desert isles, and which had but few inhabitants; all of whom were esteemed by the Britons sacred and inviolable. Very soon after his arrival there was great turbulence in the air, and many portentous storms; the winds became tempestuous, and fiery whirlwinds rushed forth. When these ceased, the islanders said that the departure of some one of the superior genii had taken place. For, as a light when burning, say they, has nothing disagreeable, but when extinguished, is offensive to many; so likewise lofty spirits afford an illumination benignant and mild, but their extinction and destruction frequently, as at the present moment, excite winds and storms, and often infect the atmosphere with pestilential evils. Moreover, that there was one island there, where Saturn was confined by Briareus in sleep: for that sleep had been devised for his bonds; and that around him were many genii as his companions and attendants."
Singularly enough, M. Du Chaillu, in his "Journey to Ashango-land," found a similar superstition to obtain amongst the West Coast Equatorial Africans. They believe that the Oguisi or "spirit" brings the plague amongst them in the form of a whirlwind. An impression got abroad that the white man who was advancing into their territories was the veritable Oguisi, and consequently, owing to their fetich superstition, they expected disaster therefrom. He says:—"The King of the Niembouai, like most of the other monarchs of these regions, did not show himself on my arrival—he was absent until about noon to-day. I have been told that the reason why the chiefs keep away from the villages until I have been in them some time is, that they have a notion that I bring with me a whirlwind which may do them some great harm; so they wait until it has had time to blow away from the village before they make their appearance."
It is somewhat remarkable that the tradition of the "wild hunt," or the "furious host," has become obsolete, or nearly so, in Ireland, inasmuch as that country has preserved, with much minuteness, many other Aryan myths. What does remain in Ireland, however, is singularly in accordance with the properties assigned to the elder storm-gods, Indra and Rudra, and their followers, the Ribhus and the Maruts, in the Rig Veda.
A writer in the Athenæum, in 1847, makes the following observations:—"The ideas of the Irish peasantry respecting the state of departed souls are very singular. According to the tenets of the church to which the majority of them belong, the souls of the departed are either in paradise, hell, or purgatory. But popular belief assigns the air as a fourth place of suffering, where unquiet souls wander about until their period of penance is past. On a cold, or wet, or stormy night, the peasant will exclaim with real sympathy 'Musha! God help the poor souls that are in the shelter of the ditches, or under the eaves this way!' And the good 'chanathee' or mother of a family will sweep the hearth, that the poor souls may warm themselves when the family retires. The conviction that the spirits of the departed sweep along with the storm or shiver in the driving rain, is singularly wild and near akin to the Scandinavian myth." The identity of this superstition with some of the Aryan myths, is very easily perceived. Kelly says:—"Indra has for friends and followers the Maruts, or spirits of the winds, whose host consists, at least in part, of the souls of the pious dead; and the Ribhus, who are of similar origin, but whose element is rather that of the sunbeams or the lightning, though they too rule the winds, and sing like the Maruts the loud song of the storm."
The same writer gives the following graphic description of the popular feeling and action on the approach of this mythic cavalcade:—"The first token which the furious host gives of its approach is a low song that makes the hearer's flesh creep. The grass and the leaves of the forest wave and bow in the moonshine as often as the strain begins anew. Presently the sounds come nearer and nearer, and swell into the music of a thousand instruments. Then bursts the hurricane, and the oaks of the forest come crashing down. The spectral appearance often presents itself in the shape of a great black coach, on which sit hundreds of spirits singing a wonderfully sweet song. Before it goes a man, who loudly warns everybody to get out of the way. All who hear him must instantly drop down with their faces to the ground, as at the coming of the wild hunt, and hold fast by something, were it only a blade of grass; for the furious host has been known to force many a man into its coach and carry him hundreds of miles away through the air."
The black coach version of the legend of the furious host yet survives in the North of England. Mr. Henderson says:—"Night after night, too, when it is sufficiently dark, the headless coach whirls along the rough approach to Langley Hall, near Durham, drawn by black and fiery steeds." In a work entitled "Rambles in Northumberland," it is referred to in the following terms:—"When the death-hearse, drawn by headless horses, and driven by a headless driver, is seen about midnight, proceeding rapidly, but without noise, towards the churchyard, the death of some considerable person in the parish is sure to happen at no distant period." It is likewise referred to in Rees's Diary as a "vision of a coach drawn by six black swine, and driven by a black driver."
Grose says:—"We sometimes read of ghosts striking violent blows; and that, if not made way for, they overturn all impediment, like a furious whirlwind." Yet singularly enough in the same paragraph, speaking on the authority of Glanvil of the apparition of an old woman, he informs us that "if a tree stood in her walk," the spectator "observed her always to go through it." Notwithstanding this feat, the old lady must have had some materiality about her, for on being lifted from the ground by human hands at her request, her ghostship "felt just like a bag of feathers."
"The furious host" seems to have differed in some legends from the "wild hunt" of Odin and his followers, and yet in others they appear as it were in combination. Indeed, the name Woden, itself, signifies the "Furious One;" and hence, doubtless, we have the link which legitimately connects them together. "Wud" still signifies "mad" in some existing Scottish dialects. The hounds of the "spectre huntsman" are believed to be human souls transformed into air; which in their wild career strip the hedges of the linen placed there to dry; they eat up or scatter abroad meal and the ashes that lay on the peasant's hearth. The hound sometimes left behind in the household, through which the wild hunt has passed, is supposed to repose on the hearth for a whole year, during which time it lives upon ashes, and howls and whines, until the spectre horseman returns, when it jumps on its feet, wags its tail with joy, and rejoins its ancient comrades. Kelly says:—"There is only one way amongst the Germans of ridding the house sooner of the unwelcome guest, and that is to brew beer in eggshells. The hound watches the operation and exclaims
Though I am now as old as the old Bohemian wold,
Yet the like of this I ween, in my life I ne'er have seen.
And it goes, and is seen no more. On Christmas evenings especially, that is to say, at the season of the winter solstice, it is very unsafe to leave linen hanging out of doors, for the wild huntsman's hounds will tear it to pieces." The soughing of the wind through crevices, windows, or doorways in buildings, or narrow passages in the hills, like that at Cliviger, was believed to be the howling of Odin's hounds, and to indicate the passage of "the furious host."
This spectre hound or dog is a very common sprite in Lancashire. I remember well being terrified in my youth in Preston, by Christmas recitals of strange stories of its appearance, and the misfortune which its howling was said to forebode. The Preston black dog was without a head, which rendered the said howling still more mysterious to my youthful imagination. A gentleman recently related to me a story respecting this "dog-fiend," which he had direct from a Manchester tradesman's own lips, who thoroughly believed in the supernatural character of his nocturnal assailant. This tradesman, a Mr. Drabble, assured my friend that the celebrated black headless dog-fiend, on one occasion, about the year 1825, suddenly appeared before, or rather behind, him, not far from the then Collegiate Church; and, placing its fore paws upon his shoulders, actually ran him home at a rapid rate, in spite of his strenuous resistance. He was so terrified at the incident that he rushed into bed in his dirty clothes, much to the surprise and dismay of his family. This particular dog-boggart is believed yet by many to have been "laid" and buried under the dry arch of the old bridge across the Irwell, on the Salford side of the river; and that the spell to which it has been subjected will endure for 999 years, which, I suppose, in vulgar as well as legal parlance, is supposed to be nearly equivalent to the more comprehensive term—"for ever."
In Larwood and Hotten's "History of Signboards," I find the following:—"This Black Dog may have derived its name from the canine spectre that still frightens the ignorant and fearful in the rural districts, just as the terrible Dun Cow and the Lambton Worm were the terror of the people in olden times. Near Lyme Regis, Dorset, there is an alehouse which has this black fiend in all his ancient ugliness painted over the door. Its adoption there arose from a legend that the spectral black dog used to haunt at nights the kitchen fire of a neighbouring farm-house, formerly a Royalist mansion, destroyed by Cromwell's troops. The dog would sit opposite the farmer; but one night a little extra liquor gave the man additional courage, and he struck at the dog, intending to rid himself of the horrid thing. Away, however, flew the dog, and the farmer after him, from one room to another, until it sprang through the roof, and was seen no more that night. In mending the hole, a lot of money fell down, which, of course, was connected in some way or other with the dog's strange visit. Near the house is a lane still called Dog Lane, which is now the favourite walk of the black dog, and to this genius loci the sign is dedicated."
I am inclined to think that the "Trash" or "Skriker" described by Mr. Wilkinson, of Burnley, has some relationship to the strayed hound of Odin, and more especially so, as the spectre huntsman is well known in the neighbourhood of the Cliviger gorge. He says:—
"The appearance of this sprite is considered a certain death-sign, and has obtained the local names of 'Trash' or 'Skriker.' He generally appears to one of the family from which death is about to select his victim, and is more or less visible according to the distance of the event. I have met with persons to whom the barghaist has assumed the form of a white cow or a horse; but on most occasions 'Trash' is described as having the appearance of a large dog, with very broad feet, shaggy hair, drooping ears, and 'eyes as large as saucers.' When walking, his feet make a loud splashing noise, like old shoes in a miry road, and hence the name of 'Trash.' The appellation, 'Skriker,' has reference to the screams uttered by the sprite, which are frequently heard when the animal is invisible. When followed by any individual, he begins to walk backwards, with his eyes fixed full on his pursuer, and vanishes on the slightest momentary inattention. Occasionally he plunges into a pool of water, and at other times he sinks at the feet of the person to whom he appears with a loud splashing noise, as if a heavy stone was thrown into the miry road. Some are reported to have attempted to strike him with any weapon they had at hand, but there was no substance present to receive the blows, although the Skriker kept his ground. He is said to frequent the neighbourhood of Burnley at present, and is mostly seen in Godly Lane and about the Parochial Church; but he by no means confines his visits to the churchyard, as similar sprites are said to do in other parts of England and Wales."
Grose tells us that dogs have "the faculty of seeing spirits," and he instances the case of one David Hunter, a neatherd to the Bishop of Down and Connor, whose dog accompanied him quietly, when, from an impulse he was unable to restrain, he wandered after the apparition of an old woman by which he was haunted. "But," Grose adds, "they usually show signs of terror, by whining and creeping to their master for protection; and it is generally supposed that they often see things of this nature when their owner cannot; there being some persons, particularly those born on a Christmas-eve, who cannot see spirits."
Max Müller etymologically identifies the classic Cerberus or Kerberos with the Vedic Sarvari, "the dog of night, watching the path to the lower world." Grimm says that the dog is an embodiment of the wind and an attendant of the dead both in the mythology of the Germans and the Aryans, and that both these attributes are conspicuous in the wild hunt superstitions. Dogs, he adds, see ghosts, as well as the goddess of death, Hel, although she is invisible to human eyes. Kuhn contends that the name of Yama's canine messengers, Sârameyas, was borne in Greek form, by the messenger of the Greek gods, Hermeias or Hermes, the conductor of the shades of the departed to the realm of Hades. With the aid of Athenê, Hermes conducted Heracles in safety, with the dog Kerberos, out of Hades.
In the "Merry Devil of Edmonton" (1631) is the following reference to this superstition:—
I know thee well; I heare the watchfull dogs,
With hollow howling, tell of thy approach;
The lights burne dim, affrighted with thy presence;
And this distempered and tempestuous night
Tells me the ayre is troubled with some devill.
The superstition that the howling of a dog, especially in the night time, portends the death of some person in the immediate neighbourhood, is yet, at the present day, firmly believed in, even by the middle, and by no means uneducated, classes in Lancashire. I listened, not very long ago, to the serious recital of a story by one who heard the howling and knew well the party whose death immediately followed. He himself, being sick at the time, deemed his own end approaching, but was relieved of his terror on being informed that a well-known neighbour had just expired.
It is by no means improbable that the extremely delicate sense of smell possessed by some of the canine species or varieties, as especially exhibited in the scenting of game and carrion or putrid flesh, may have influenced the original personification of the dog as an attendant on the dead.
Charles Dickens, in a recent Christmas story, describes, with his usual felicity, a rather singular phase of this "howling hound" superstition. It appears that Dr. Marigold's dog, true to the instincts of his blustering race, could snuff an approaching storm of a "domestic" character with the most unerring precision. Certainly there are localities in which the blasts of old Boreas, and the storm songs of the Maruts, are infinitely more disagreeable than they are in certain others. To encounter them alone on the bleak mountain top, or in a wild gorge, like that of Cliviger, on an "old-fashioned Christmas" or New Year's-eve, is not productive of exactly the same kind of satisfaction as results from attentively listening to their wild harmonies when seated in a warm corner of one's own "snuggery," with plenty of good cheer, and a select few of tried old friends partaking of the hospitality characteristic of the season. Dr. Marigold, who is neither more nor less than the witty and loquacious "Cheap John," of mock-auction renown, thinks, very properly, that his peripatetic place of business was a very unsuitable locality for domestic hurricanes. He says:—"We might have had such a pleasant life. A roomy cart, with the large goods hung outside, and the bed slung underneath it when on the road, an iron pot and kettle, a fire-place for the cold weather, a chimney for the smoke, a hanging-shelf and a cupboard, a dog, and a horse. What more do you want? You draw off on a bit of turf in a green lane or by the roadside, you hobble your old horse and turn him grazing, you light your fire upon the ashes of the last visitors', you cook your stew, and you would not call the Emperor of France your father. But have a temper in the cart, flinging language and the hardest goods in stock at you, and where are you then? Put a name to your feelings! My dog knew as well when she was on the turn as I did. Before she broke out, he would give a howl, and bolt. How he knew it was a mystery to me, but the sure and certain knowledge of it would wake him up out of his soundest sleep, and he would give a howl and bolt. At such times I wished I was him."
The large "saucer eyes" of Skriker, and his "vanishing on the slightest momentary inattention," are suggestive of some connection with lightning or the ignis fatuus, or wild fire; and, singularly enough, I find Will-o'-whisp traditions bear considerable resemblance to those which appertain to the furious host. Mr. Thoms, in his "Shakspere Notelets," has some curious information on this subject. He says:—
"According to some these phantoms are believed to be the souls of children who have died unbaptised; while others again believe them to be the restless spirits of wicked and covetous men, who have not scrupled, for the sake of their own aggrandisement, to remove their neighbours' landmarks. In Brittany, we learn from Villemarqué, the Porte-brandon appears in the form of a child bearing a torch, which he turns like a burning wheel; and with this it is said he sets fire to the villages, which are sometimes suddenly in the middle of the night wrapped in flames. In Lusatia, where these wandering children are also supposed to be the souls of unbaptised children, they are believed to be perfectly harmless, and to be relieved from their destined wanderings as soon as any pious hand throws a handful of consecrated ground after them."
This form of superstition prevails yet to a considerable extent in the north of England and Scotland.
The Maruts or storm-winds of the Sanscrit myths, who rode on tawny-coloured horses, roared like lions, shook the mountains, and tore up trees, when their wild work was done, Max Müller informs us, assumed again, "according to their wont, the form of new-born babes," a phrase which, as Mr. Cox justly observes, "exhibits the germ, and more than the germ, of the myth of Hermes returning like a child to his cradle after tearing up the forests." Hermes, as a personification of both the gentle breeze and the stormy wind, gives forth soothing as well as martial music, and his plaintive breath was supposed "to waft the spirits of the dead to their unseen home." Crantz says the Greenland Esquimaux "lay a dog's head by the grave of a child, for the soul of a dog can find its way everywhere, and will show the ignorant babe the way to the land of souls." The Parsees place a dog before the dying, from a similar superstitious belief.
There is much probability in the suggestion that Shakspere had some of these superstitions in view when he placed in the mouth of Macbeth, while contemplating the murder, and its consequences, of the "gracious Duncan," the following magnificent metaphors:—
And Pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or Heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind!
The furious host, in the German versions, is sometimes "a cavalcade of the dead," and not exactly a wild hunt, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. Kelly says:—"Sometimes it gallops through the stormy air as a herd of wild boars; but the spirits of which it consists generally appear in human form. They are of both sexes and of all ages, souls of unchristened babes being included among them; for Holda or Bertha often joins the hunt." When Odin rides at the head of a full field, he is believed to chase a horse or a wild boar; but when he alone appears at the heels of his yelping pack, it "is in pursuit of a woman with long snow-white breasts. Seven years he follows her; at last he runs her down, throws her across his horse, and carries her home." These seven years are regarded by commentators as having reference to the seven winter months of the year, during which "the spell bound" lightning and storm-god was unable, owing to the prevailing cold weather, to continue in active chase of his flying bride. This latter myth concerning the chased maiden seems to be the counterpart or prototype of the spectre huntsman, who "is believed to pursue a milk-white doe round the Eagle's Crag, in the Vale of Todmorden, on All-Hallow Eve," as related by Mr. Wilkinson. In Germany the wild hunt chases a whole flock of elfish beings, the moss-wifekins and wood-maidens, whose lives are bound up with those of the forest trees. Holda and Bertha are but local or characteristic appellations for the goddess Freyja (whence our Friday), the wife of Odin. In some parts of Germany the wild hunt is called the dead hunt (Heljagd), and, in others, the English hunt (die Engelske jagd), which are synonymous, England being but, at one period, "another name for the nether world." Hel or Hela, was the name of both the Scandinavian and German goddess of death. Kuhn, referring to the dispute whether the ancient locality of departed souls was Great Britain or Brittany, decides in favour of the former, and informs us that the German peasants to this day use such expressions as the following: "How the bells are ringing in England!" "How my children are crying in England!" when referring to the nether or lower regions.
The dismal realm of Hela, which was a journey of nine days' dreary descent from Heaven, was termed Niflheimr, the world of mists. It was said to be situated under one of the roots of the great world-tree, Yggdrasil, but it appears not to have been regarded, like the modern Hell, as a place of torment or punishment for sins committed on earth. It seems to have had more relationship to the Greek Hades. All departed souls, good and evil, dwelt in Hela's realm, with the exception of those of heroes slain in battle, which were conveyed at once to Valhalla, by Odin himself. Kelly says:—
"But the idea of retribution after death for crimes done in the body was not unknown to German paganism. It was part of the Aryan creed, and the Vedas speak of the goddess Nirriti, and her dreadful world Naraka, the destined abode of all guilty souls. It is not conceivable that such a tradition could have died out, even for a time, amongst any of the pagan Indo-Europeans."
In support of his position, Kelly cites the following passage from Kemble's "Saxons in England":—
"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 Hell."
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. Cox, however, scarcely indorses this view of the Gothic Hell and Devil. He says,—"Hel had been like Persephonê, 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 destitute of material comforts. It became the Hell 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 Müller 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. Cox 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 Hell 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 goddess, is now our Hell, 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 superstition 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 superstition 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 Portitor or "ferryman of hell" passed them over, in forma pauperis. Hence the sacred nature of the duty of surviving relatives and friends under the most trying circumstances. 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 Yorkshire, 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 Præfica) 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 pass 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 prick thee to the bare beane,
And Christ receive thy sawle.
From Whinny-Moor that thou mayst pass,
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 title of a "Lyke-Wake Dirge." Sir Walter Scott likewise quotes a passage from a MS. in the Cotton Library, descriptive of Cleveland in the northern part of Yorkshire, in Elizabeth's reign, which aptly illustrates 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 pass 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 helskö 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 God's commandment in all sacrifices." Douce, speaking of this practice, particularly in Leicestershire, 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 superstitious 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 Lancashire 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 Lancashire 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 assures 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 pass with certainty the fearful Gjallar bridge; for, as in the Vedic superstition, a cow, (or cloud,) would be present to aid his soul to make the passage 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 masses 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 parishioner, as a condonement of possibly unpaid dues, a necessary condition of clerical favour, was based on some such superstition. It was customary, in some places, to drive the cow in the procession of the funeral cortége 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 illustration 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 parishioners, as a kind of expiation for the personal tithes, 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 passed 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 f[oe]tid, 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 archæic period; the deities being yet thought of chiefly as physical powers in violent agency."
Max Müller 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 passed, 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 mârt or maur, as presented in the English word nightmare, and the French couchemar, which are evidently descended from the Maruts or wind-gods 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 assuming 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 superstition 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 superstition to the Gothic or Scandinavian Mara, "a spectre of the night."
In classical mythology Pan was regarded as the author of sudden frights or groundless alarms. Dr. Adam, in his "Roman Antiquities," says that Faunus and Sylvanus 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 passe.
But to us the tale is addle,
We can take off her saddle,
And turn out the night-mare to grasse.
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 mediæval 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-god 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 Assheton, 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 amusement 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 horsemanship. Bamford, in a note, says:—"He was an excellent bowman and a fearless rider, and tradition has handed down stories of feats of horsemanship analogous 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 Lancashire, 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 embellishing names of the wind" are "Hero of the World, Architect of Bad Weather, and Assaulter 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, entitled "Popular Romances of the West of England; or the Drolls, Traditions, and Superstitions 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-gods, 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 asserts, as in the case of the Ashton "Black Knight," to have been a relatively recent bonâ 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.
The first labour to which he was subjected was the emptying of Dosmery Pool, a mountain lake, some miles in circumference. This, in itself no slight task, was believed to be rendered more difficult from the supposed fact that the said pool was bottomless, inasmuch as tradition asserted that "once on a time" a thorn bush which had been sunk near its centre had reappeared in Falmouth harbour. One churchman, it is said, nevertheless thought the plan not sufficiently hopeless. He therefore suggested that the only lading or baling utensil employed by the miserable sinner should be a limpet shell with a sufficiently large hole in it to seriously augment the necessary labour. The demon kept his eye on Tregeagle, and endeavoured to divert his attention from his toil, in order that he might lay hold of him. But although he raised many tempests, still the doomed one continued to labour. On one occasion, however, the fiends were nearly "too many" for the eternal toiler. Mr. Hunt's description of this terrible struggle is so strikingly suggestive of one of the myths to which I have referred its origin, that I give it entire. He says:—
"Nature was at war with herself, the elements had lost their balance, and there was a terrific struggle to recover it. Lightnings flashed and coiled like fiery snakes around the rocks of Roughtor. Fire-balls fell on the desert moors and hissed in the accursed lake. Thunders pealed through the heavens, and echoed from hill to hill; an earthquake shook the solid earth, and terror was on all living. The winds rose and raged with a fury which was irresistible, and hail beat so mercilessly on all things that it spread death around. Long did Tregeagle stand the 'pelting of the pitiless storm,' but at length he yielded to its force and fled. The demons in crowds were at his heels. He doubled, however, on his pursuers and returned to the lake; but so rapid were they that he could not rest the required moment to dip his shell in the now seething waters. Three times he fled round the lake, and the evil ones pursued him. Then feeling that there was no safety for him near Dosmery Pool, he sprang swifter than the wind across it, shrieking with agony, and thus—since the devils cannot cross water, and were obliged to go round the lake—he gained on them and fled over the moor. Away, away went Tregeagle, faster and faster, the dark spirits pursuing, and they had nearly overtaken him, when he saw Roach Rock and its chapel before him. He rushed up the rocks, with giant power clambered to the eastern window, and dashed his head through it, thus securing the shelter of its sanctity. The defeated demons retired, and long and loud were their wild wailings in the air. The inhabitants of the moors and of the neighbouring towns slept not a wink that night."
This "wild hunt" is, in some respects, suggestive of Tam O'Shanter's narrow escape from the devil and the witches at Alloway Kirk.
In his "Address to the Deil," Burns associates both the devil and witches with stormy weather. He says, of the former:—
Whyles raging like a roaring lion,
For prey a' holes an' corners tryin;
Whyles on the strong-wing'd tempest flyin';
Tirlin the kirks.
And again:—
Let warlocks grim, and wither'd hags,
Tell how wi' you, on ragweed nags,
They skim the moors an' dizzy crags,
Wi' wicked speed.
But this is rather corroborative than otherwise of the hypothesis of their common origin. I have previously shown that witches were descended from the Aryan storm-gods or their attendants. Shakspere appears to have been fully cognisant of their elemental origin, or, in other words, of their supposed power over "the elements," for he makes Macbeth, in his extremity, exclaim:—
I conjure you, by that which you profess
(Howe'er you came to know it), answer me:
Though you untie the winds, and let them fight
Against the churches: though the yesty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up;
Though bladed corn be lodg'd, and trees torn down;
Though castles topple on their warders' heads;
Though palaces and pyramids do slope
Their heads to their foundations; tho' the treasure
Of nature's germins tumble altogether,
Even till destruction sicken, answer me
To what I ask you.
The tradition that Dosmery Pool was bottomless, reminds me of a similar presumed phenomenon in the neighbourhood of Preston, which I have often heard referred to in my youth with implicit faith. It was confidently asserted that a large pit near the footpath leading from Moor Park to Cadley Mill was of the bottomless class. Doubtless it was, at that time, a very deep pit, though I believe now it is nearly if not entirely dry in the summer season. There was likewise a pit on Preston Moor which was supposed to be bottomless. A similar belief once obtained respecting the "Stone Delph," from which the material was quarried for the tower of the Parish Church, Preston, taken down in 1814. I can yet well remember being convinced of the absurdity of this legend by an older companion, a good swimmer and diver, bringing up some mud and a stone from the bottom. The stone delph referred to is situated in the present bed of the Ribble, at the foot of the steep brow in Avenham Park. The sinking of water into the caverns of limestone rocks, as in Derbyshire, and at Malham Cove, in Yorkshire, and other places, may have originated the notion of "bottomless pits;" but I am inclined to think that demonology has, likewise, had something to do with these legends.
The mother of the mythic monster Grendel, in the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf, lived in a pool or mere on which fire floated at night, and the depth of which was so great that the wisest living person knew not its bottom. This mere is supposed to be the sheet of water from which Hart-le-pool, in the county of Durham, takes its name.
Tregeagle was next employed on the shore near Padstow, to make "trusses of sand and ropes of sand with which to bind them." Of course, each recurring tide swept away the result of his toil, and, according to the tradition, "the ravings of the baffled soul were louder than the roarings of the winter tempest." He was afterwards removed, by the power of the priesthood, to the estuary of the Loo, and ordered to carry sand across to Porthleven. A fiend maliciously tripped him up, and the contents of his huge sack, it is said, furnished the material of the sandbank which forms the bar that destroyed the harbour of Ella's Town. Yet we learn that "the sea was raging with the irritation of a passing storm" at the time of the mishap, which clearly indicates the origin of the legend. Tregeagle's last location was at the Land's End, where Mr. Hunt says "he would find no harbour to destroy and few people to terrify. His task was to sweep the sands from Porthcurnow Cove round the headland called Tol-Peden-Penwith, into Nanjisal Cove. Those who know that rugged headland, with its cubical masses of granite, piled in Titanic grandeur one upon another, will appreciate the task; and when to all the difficulties are added the strong sweep of the Atlantic current,—that portion of the Gulf Stream which washes our southern shores,—it will be evident that the melancholy spirit has, indeed, a task which must endure to the world's end. Even until to-day is Tregeagle labouring at his task. In calms his wailing is heard; and those sounds which some call the 'soughing of the wind,' are known to be the moanings of Tregeagle; while the coming storms are predicted by the fearful roarings of this condemned mortal."
It is very certain that we have here a singularly curious variation of the popular legend of the "Wandering Jew," and the myth of the "spectre huntsman," or the "furious host." The yelping hounds of the latter are not wanting to complete the picture, for Mr. Hunt tells us that "the tradition of the Midnight Hunter and his headless hounds, always, in Cornwall, associated with Tregeagle, prevails everywhere. The Abbot's Way, on Dartmoor, an ancient road which extends into Cornwall, is said to be the favourite coursing ground of the 'wish or whisked hounds of Dartmoor,' called also the 'yell hounds.' The valley of the Dewerstone is also the place of their midnight meetings. Once I was told at Jump, that Sir Francis Drake drove a hearse into Plymouth at night with headless horses, and that he was followed by a pack of 'yelling hounds' without heads. If dogs hear the cry of the wish hounds they all die."
The performance attributed to Sir Francis Drake is unquestionably a relatively modernised version of the mythical black coach story previously referred to as one form of the furious host legend. The effect of the cry of the wish hounds on the canine race in Cornwall is similar to that attributed to their compeers in Lancashire, only the death resultant is always that of a human being in the northern locality.
Mr. Hunt seems to doubt Mr. Kemble's etymology of the term "wish," when he says:—"In Devonshire, to this day, all magical or supernatural dealings go under the common name of wishtness. Can this have any reference to Woden's name 'Wyse?'" Mr. Hunt, however, acknowledges that "Mr. Kemble's idea is supported by the fact that 'there are Wishanger (Wisehanger, or Woden's Meadow,) one about four miles south-west of Wanborough, in Surrey, and another near Gloucester.'" He acknowledges, likewise, on the authority of Jabez Allies, that there is a Wishmoor, which may have such an origin, in Ledstone, Delamere, Worcestershire. Mr. Hunt thinks that the word "wish" is intimately "connected with the west country word 'whist,' meaning more than ordinary melancholy, a sorrow which has something weird about it." Polwhele, in his "Wishful Swain of Devon," says it is "an expression used by the vulgar to express local melancholy;" and he adds,—"There is something sublime in this impersonation of wishness." It is not at all improbable that both these etymologies point to a common origin. The deeds of the spectre huntsman and the furious host, a "cavalcade of the dead," are not calculated to impress on the human imagination anything repugnant to the "melancholy sorrow with something weird surrounding it," to which Mr. Hunt refers.
This supposed sympathy of "the elements" with human joy, or sorrow, or suffering, is evidently a very ancient superstition. In Lancashire we have yet the saying—
Happy is the bride that the sun shines on;
Happy is the corpse that the rain rains on.
Shakspere has beautifully illustrated this presumed sensitiveness, not only of "the elements," but of animated nature, to the perpetration of deeds of darkness and blood by perverted humanity, in the following lines, which he places in the mouth of Lennox, on the morning after the murder of Duncan, by his host, Macbeth:—
The night has been unruly; where we lay,
Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i'the air; strange screams of death;
And prophesying, with accents terrible,
Of dire combustion and confused events,
New hatched to the woeful time. The obscure bird
Clamoured the live-long night; some say the earth
Was feverous, and did shake.
The sentiment is still further illustrated, with singular felicity, in the dialogue which follows, between Rosse and an old man:—
Old Man. Three score and ten I can remember well;
Within the volume of which time I have seen
Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night
Hath trifled former knowings.
Rosse. Ah! good father,
Thou see'st the heavens, as troubled with man's act,
Threaten his bloody stage. By the clock 'tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.
Is it night's predominance, or the day's shame,
That darkness does the face of earth entomb,
When living light should kiss it?
Old Man. 'Tis unnatural,
Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last,
A falcon, towering in her pride of place,
Was, by a mousing owl, hawked at and killed.
Rosse. And Duncan's horses, (a thing most strange and certain),
Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,
Turned wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,
Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make
War with mankind.
Old Man. 'Tis said, they eat each other!
Rosse. They did so; to the amazement of mine eyes,
That looked upon't.
The Ashton "Black Knight" traditions, doubtless, to some extent, influenced the colouring of Bamford's poem, "The Wild Rider." Mr. Hunt quotes from a somewhat similar modern ballad, entitled "Tregeagle or Dozmare Poole; an Anciente Cornish Legend," by John Penwarne, in which, however, he states the author has taken considerable liberties with the tradition. Tregeagle is transformed into a kind of Faust, and the black hunter, whose "dread voyce they hearde in wynde," is no other than the arch-fiend himself.
They heard hys curste hell houndes runn yelping behynde,
And hys steede loude on the eare!
Although, in compliance with his contract with the demon, "the rede bolte of vengeaunce shot forth wyth a glare, and strooke him a corpse to the grounde,"
Stylle as the traveller pursues hys lone waye
In horroure at nighte o'er the waste,
He hears Syr Tregeagle with shrieks rushe awaye,
He hears the Black Hunter pursuing his preye,
And shrynkes at his bugle's dread blasts.
Here we find Odin (the spectre huntsman), by successive degrees, transformed into Sir Tregeagle, with a black knight attendant. The pair does not inaptly represent the Sir Ashton, of Bamford's poem, and the "Black Lad" of the Ashton Legend. The term "Th' Owd Lad" is a common expression in several parts of Lancashire, and means literally "Old Nick," or the devil.[32]
Both knights were baffled in affairs of the heart, and the doom of the one resembles that of the other. Bamford concludes his poem with the following stanzas:—
But strangest of all, on that woe-wedding night,
A black horse was stabled where erst stood the white;
The grooms, when they found him, in terror quick fled,
His breath was hot smoke, and his eyes burning red;
He beat down a strong wall of mortar and crag,
He tore his oak stall as a dog would a rag,
And no one durst put forth a hand near that steed
Till a priest had read Ave, and pater, and creed.
And then he came forth, the strange beautiful thing,
With speed that could lead a wild eagle on wing;
And raven had never spread plume on the air
Whose lustrous darkness with his might compare.
He bore the young Ashton—none else could him ride—
O'er flood and o'er fell, and o'er quarry pit wide;
The housewife, she blest her, and held fast her child,
And the men swore both horse and his rider were wild.
And then when the knight to the hunting field came,
He rode as he sought rather death than his game.
He halloo'd through woods where he wandered of yore,
But the lost Lady Mary he never saw more!
And no one durst ride in the track where he led,
So fearful his leaps, and so madly he sped;
And in his wild phrenzy he gallop'd one day
Down the church steps at Rochdale, and up the same way.
The practice of giving a local name and local significance to this tradition and its hero has been previously shown to be by no means unusual. At Fontainebleau Odin is transformed into Hugh Capet; the ancient British king, Hegla, rode at the head of the hunt on the banks of the Wye, in the reign of Henry II.; King Arthur, in Normandy, Scotland, and other places, is elevated to the post of honour; in Sleswig it is the Duke Abel; and at Danzig it is Theordoric the Great. Wordsworth, in the lines quoted at the head of this chapter, designates the personage who hunts with Gabriel's hounds as an "impious lord."
The mythical connection between unwearied but unwilling toil and arrogance and presumption is referred to by the Rev. G. W. Cox in the following terms:—"The myth of Ixîôn exhibits the sun as bound to the four-spoked wheel which is whirled round everlastingly in the sky.[33] In that of Sisyphos we see the same being condemned to the daily toil of heaving a stone to the summit of a hill from which it immediately rolls down. This idea of tasks unwillingly done, or of natural operations as accomplished by means of punishment, is found also in the myth of Atlas, a name which like that of Tantalos denotes endurance and suffering, and so passes into the notion of arrogance and presumption." In a note he adds,—"The Hellenic Atlas is simply the Vedic Skambha."
The story of the "spectre huntsman," under various modifications, is found in different parts of the country. They seem invariably to suggest the common origin to which I have referred, however much it may be obscured by relatively modern additions or poetic embellishments.