and at another they aim to restore wrongfully-held treasure. Indeed, as it has been observed, ‘one of the most powerful as well as the most widely diffused of the people’s ghost stories is that which treats of the persecuted child whose mother comes out of the grave to succour him.’63 And there perhaps can be no more gracious privilege allotted to immortal spirits than that of beholding those beloved of them in mortal life:
I am still near,
Watching the smiles I prized on earth,
Your converse mild, your blameless mirth.64
As it has been observed, no oblivious draught has been given the departed soul, but the remembrance of its earthly doings cleaves to it, and this is why ghosts are always glad to see the places frequented by them while on earth. In Galicia, directly after a man’s burial, his spirit takes to wandering by nights about the old home, and watching that no evil befalls his heirs.65
Occasionally the spirit returns to fulfil a promise as in compacts, to which reference is made in another chapter. The reappearance of a lover, ‘in whose absence his beloved has died, is a subject that has been made use of by the folk-poets of every country, and nothing,’ it is added, ‘can be more characteristic of the nationalities to which they belong than the divergences which mark their treatment of it.’66 Another cause of ghosts wandering is founded upon a superstition as to the interchange of love-tokens, an illustration of which we find in the old ballad of ‘William’s Ghost’:
There came a ghost to Marjorie’s door,
Wi’ many a grievous maen,
And aye he tirl’d at the pin,
But answer made she nane.
‘Oh, sweet Marjorie! oh, dear Marjorie!
For faith and charitie,
Give me my faith and troth again,
That I gied once to thee.’
‘Thy faith and troth I’ll ne’er gie thee,
Nor yet shall our true love twin,
Till you tak’ me to your ain ha’ house,
And wed me wi’ a ring.’
‘My house is but yon lonesome grave,
Afar out o’er yon lee,
And it is but my spirit, Marjorie,
That’s speaking unto thee.’67
She followed the spirit to the grave, where it lay down and confessed that William had betrayed three maidens whom he had promised to marry, and in consequence of this misdemeanour he could not rest in his grave until she released him of his vows to marry her. On learning this, Marjorie at once released him.
Then she’d taen up her white, white hand,
And struck him on the breist,
Saying, ‘Have ye again your faith and troth,
And I wish your soul good rest.’
In another ballad, ‘Clerk Sanders,’ there is a further illustration of the same belief. The instances, says Mr. Napier, differ, but ‘the probability is that the ballad quoted above and “Clerk Sanders” are both founded on the same story. Clerk Sanders was the son of an earl, who courted the king’s daughter, Lady Margaret. They loved each other even in the modern sense of loving too well. Margaret had seven brothers, who suspected an intrigue, and they came upon them together in bed and killed Clerk Sanders, whose ghost soon after came to Margaret’s window. The ballad, which contains much curious folk-lore, runs thus:68
‘Oh! are ye sleeping, Margaret?’ he says,
‘Or are ye waking presentlie?
Give me my faith and troth again,
I wot, true love, I gied to thee.
‘I canna rest, Margaret,’ he says,
‘Down in the grave where I must be,
Till ye give me my faith and troth again,
I wot, true love, I gied to thee.’
‘Thy faith and troth thou shalt na get,
And our true love shall never twin,
Until ye tell what comes o’ women,
I wot, who die in strong travailing.
‘Their beds are made in the heavens high,
Down at the foot of our Lord’s knee,
Weel set about wi’ gilliflowers,
I trow sweet company for to see.
‘Oh, cocks are crowing a merry midnight,
I wot the wild fowls are boding day;
The psalms of heaven will soon be sung,
And I, ere now, will be missed away.’
Then she has ta’en a crystall wand,
And she has stroken her throth thereon;
She has given it him out of the shot-window,
Wi’ many a sigh and heavy goan.
‘I thank ye, Margaret; I thank ye, Margaret;
And aye, I thank ye heartilie;
Gin ever the dead come for the quick,
Be sure, Margaret, I’ll come for thee.’
Then up and crew the milk-white cock,
And up and crew the gray;
Her lover vanished in the air,
And she gaed weeping away.
Madness, again, during life, is said occasionally to produce restlessness after death. ‘Parson Digger, at Condover,’ remarked an old woman to Miss Jackson,69 ‘he came again. He wasn’t right in his head, and if you met him he couldn’t speak to you sensibly. But when he was up in the pulpit he’d preach, oh! beautiful!’ In Hungary, there are the spirits of brides who die on their wedding-day before consummation of marriage. They are to be seen at moonlight, where cross-roads meet. And it is a Danish tradition that a corpse cannot have peace in the grave when it is otherwise than on its back. According to a Scotch belief, excessive grief for a departed friend, ‘combined with a want of resignation to the will of Providence, had the effect of keeping the spirit from rest in the other world. Rest could be obtained only by the spirit coming back, and comforting the mourner by the assurance that it was in a state of blessedness.’70 The ghosts of those, again, who had some grievance or other in life are supposed to wander. The Droitwich Canal, in passing through Salwarpe, Worcestershire, is said to have cut off a slice of a large old half-timbered house, in revenge for which act of mutilation, the ghost of a former occupier revisited his old haunts, and affrighted the domestics.
Once more, according to another Animistic conception which holds a prominent place in the religion of uncultured tribes, the soul at death passes through some transitionary stages, finally developing into a demon. In China and India this theory is deeply rooted among the people, and hence it is customary to offer sacrifices to the souls of the departed by way of propitiation, as otherwise they are supposed to wander to and fro on the earth, and to exert a malignant influence on even their dearest friends and relatives. Diseases, too, are regarded as often being caused by the wandering souls of discontented relatives, who in some cases are said to re-appear as venomous snakes.
Ralston’s
Gregor’s
