University of Virginia Library

POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.

Bishop Corbet.

I have mentioned the Squire's fondness for
the marvellous, and his predilection for legends
and romances. His library contains a curious
collection of old works of this kind, which bear
evident marks of having been much read. In
his great love for all that is antiquated he cherishes
popular superstitions, and listens with very
grave attention to every tale however strange;
so that, through his countenance, the household,
and indeed the whole neighbourhood, is well

stocked with wonderful stories; and if ever a
doubt is expressed of any one of them, the narrator
will generally observe, that “the Squire
thinks there's something in it.”

The Hall of course comes in for its share, the
common people having always a propensity to
furnish a great superannuated building of the
kind with supernatural inhabitants. The gloomy
galleries of such old family mansions; the stately
chambers adorned with grotesque carvings and
faded paintings; the sounds that vaguely echo
about them; the moaning of the wind; the cries
of rooks and ravens from the trees and chimney
tops—all produce a state of mind favourable to
superstitious fancies.

In one chamber of the Hall, just opposite a
door which opens upon a dusky passage, there
is a full length portrait of a warrior in armour;
when, on suddenly turning into this passage,
I have caught a sight of the portrait, thrown into
strong relief by the dark pannelling against
which it hangs, I have more than once been
startled, as though it were a figure advancing

towards me. To superstitious minds, therefore,
predisposed by the strange and melancholy stories
that are often connected with family paintings,
it needs but little stretch of fancy, on a
moonlight night, or by the flickering light of a
candle, to set the old pictures on the walls in
motion, sweeping in their robes and trains about
the galleries.

To tell the truth, the Squire confesses that
he used to take a pleasure, in his younger days,
in setting marvellous stories afloat, and connecting
them with the lonely and peculiar places of
the neighbourhood. Whenever he read any
legend of a striking nature, he endeavoured to
transplant it, and give it a local habitation
among the scenes of his boyhood. Many of
these stories took root, and he says he is often
amused with the odd shapes in which they will
come back to him in some old woman's narrative,
after they have been circulating for years
among the peasantry, and undergoing rustic additions
and amendments. Among these may
doubtless be numbered that of the crusader's

ghost, which I have mentioned in the account of
my Christmas visit; and another, about the
hard-riding squire of yore, the family Nimrod,
who is sometimes heard, on stormy winter
nights, galloping, with hound and horn, over a
wild moor, a few miles distant from the Hall.
This I apprehend to have had its origin in the
famous story of the Wild Huntsman, the favourite
goblin in German tales; though by the
bye, as I was talking on the subject with Master
Simon the other evening, in the dark avenue, he
hinted that he had himself once or twice heard
strange sounds at night, very like a pack of
hounds in cry; and that once as he was returning
rather late from a hunting dinner, he had
seen a strange figure galloping along this same
moor; but as he was riding rather fast at the
time, and in a hurry to get home, he did not
stop to ascertain what it was.

Popular superstitions are fast fading away in
England, owing to the general diffusion of knowledge,
and the bustling intercourse kept up
throughout the country. Still, they have their

strong holds, and lingering places, and a retired
neighbourhood like this is apt to be one of them.
The parson tells me that he meets with many traditional
beliefs and notions among the common
people; which he has been able to draw from them
in the course of familiar conversation; though they
are rather shy of avowing them to strangers, and
particularly to “the gentry,” who are apt to
laugh at them. He says there are several of his
old parishoners who remember when the village
had its Bar-guest, or Bar-ghost, a spirit supposed
to belong to a town or village, and to predict any
impending misfortune, by midnight shrieks and
wailings. The last time it was heard was just
before the death of Mr. Bracebridge's father,
who was much beloved throughout the neighbourhood;
though there are not wanting some
obstinate unbelievers, who insist that it was nothing
but the howling of a watch dog.

I have been greatly delighted, however, at
meeting with some traces of my old favourite,
Robin Good Fellow, though under a different
appellation from any of those by which I have

heretofore heard him called. The parson assures
me that many of the peasantry believe in
household goblins called Dobbies, which live
about particular farms and houses, in the same
way that Robin Good Fellow did of old. Sometimes
they haunt the barns and outhouses; and
now and then will assist the farmer wonderfully,
by getting in all his hay or corn in a single night.
In general, however, they prefer to live within
doors, and are fond of keeping about the great
hearths, and basking at night, after the family
have gone to bed, by the glowing embers. When
put into particular good humour by the warmth
of their lodgings, and the tidiness of the house-maids,
they will overcome their natural laziness,
and do a vast deal of household work before
morning; churning the cream; brewing the
beer, or spinning all the good dame's flax. All
this is precisely the conduct of Robin Good
Fellow; described so charmingly by Milton:

But, beside these household Dobbies, there are
others of a more gloomy and unsocial nature;
that keep about lonely barns, at a distance from
any dwelling house; or about ruins, and old
bridges. These are full of mischievous and
often malignant tricks; and are fond of playing
pranks upon benighted travellers. There
is a story among the old people of one that
haunted a ruined mill, just by a bridge that
crosses a small stream; how that late one night,
as a traveller was passing on horseback, the
Dobbie jumped up behind him, and grasped him
so close round the body, that he had no power
to help himself, but expected to be squeezed to
death; luckily his heels were loose, with which
he plied the sides of his steed, and was carried,
with the wonderful instinct of a traveller's
horse, straight to the village inn. Had the inn

been at any greater distance, there is no doubt
but he would have been strangled to death; as
it was, the good people were a long time in
bringing him to his senses; and it was remarked
that the first sign he showed of returning consciousness
was to call for a bottom of brandy.

The only instance of one of the household
Dobbies that the parson has met with, is one
that was said to keep about the old farm house
of Ready Money Jack. It has long been traditional,
I am told, that one of these good natured
goblins is attached to the Tibbets' family, and
came with them when they moved into this part
of the country, for it is remarked that they keep
with certain families, and follow them wherever
they remove. There is a large old fashioned
fireplace in the farm house, which affords fine
quarters for a chimney corner sprite of the kind,
that likes to lie warm; especially as Ready
Money Jack keeps up rousing fires in the winter
time. The old people of the village recollect
many stories that were told about this goblin in

their young days. It was thought to have
brought good luck to the house, and to be the
reason why the Tibbets were always before-hand
in the world; why their farm was always
in better order; their hay got in sooner;
and their corn better stacked than that of their
neighbours. The present Mrs. Tibbets, at the
time of her courtship, had a number of these
stories told her by the country gossips, and when
married was a little fearful about living in a
house where such a hobgoblin was said to haunt.
Jack, however, who has always treated this story
with great contempt, assured her that there was
no spirit kept about his house that he could not
at any time lay in the Red Sea with one flourish
of his cudgel. Still, his wife has never got completely
over her notions on the subject; she
has had a horse-shoe nailed on the threshold,
and keeps a branch of rauntry, or mountain ash,
with its red berries, suspended from one of the
great beams in the parlour—sure protections from
all evil spirits.

These stories, however, as I before observed,
are fast fading away, and in another generation
or two will probably be completely forgotten.
There is something, however, about these rural
superstitions that is extremely pleasing to the
imagination. I allude to those concerning the
good humoured race of household demons, and,
indeed, to the whole fairy mythology. The
English have given an inexpressible charm to
these superstitious, by the manner in which they
have associated them with whatever is most
home-felt and delightful in rustic life, or refreshing
and beautiful in nature. I do not know a
more fascinating race of beings than these little
fabled people that haunted the southern sides of
hills and mountains; lurked in flowers and about
fountain heads; glided through keyholes into ancient
halls; watched over farm houses and dairies;
danced on the green by summer moonlight, and on
the kitchen hearth in winter. They seem to me to
accord with the nature of English housekeeping
and English scenery. I always have them in mind
when I see a fine old English mansion, with its

wide hall and spacious kitchen; or a venerable
farm house, in which there is so much fireside
comfort and good housewifery. There was something
of national character in their love of order
and cleanliness. In the vigilance with which
they watched over the economy of the kitchen
and the functions of the servants; munificently
rewarding, with silver sixpence in shoe, the tidy
housemaid; but venting their direful wrath, in
midnight bobs and pinches, upon the sluttish
dairy maid. I think I can trace the good effects
of this ancient fairy sway over household concerns,
in the care that prevails to the present day
among English housemaids, to put their kitchens
in order before they go to bed.

I have said, too, that these fairy superstitions
seemed to me to accord with the nature of English
scenery. They suit these small landscapes,
which are divided by honey-suckled hedges into
sheltered fields and meadows, where the grass
is mingled with daisies, butter cups, and hare
bells. When I first found myself among English
scenery I was continually reminded of the

sweet pastoral images which distinguish their
fairy mythology; and when, for the first time, a
circle in the grass was pointed out to me, as one
of the rings where they were formerly supposed
to have held their moonlight revels, it seemed
for a moment as if fairy land were no longer
a fable.

Browne, in his Britannia's Pastorals, gives a
picture of the kind of scenery to which I allude.

And there is another picture of the same in a
poem ascribed to Ben Jonson.

Indeed, it seems to me that the older British
poets, with that true feeling for nature which
distinguishes them, have closely adhered to the

simple and familiar imagery which they found
in these popular superstitions; and have thus
given to their fairy mythology those continual
allusions to the farm house and the dairy, the
green meadow and the fountain head, that fill
our minds with the delightful associations of
rural life. It is curious to observe how the
most beautiful fictions have their origin among
the rude and ignorant. There is an indescribable
charm about the illusions with which chimerical
ignorance once clothed every subject.
These twilight views of nature are often more
captivating than any which are revealed by the
rays of enlightened philosophy. The most accomplished
and poetical minds, therefore, have
been fain to search back into these accidental
conceptions of what are termed barbarous ages,
and to draw from thence their finest imagery
and machinery. If we look through our most
admired poets we shall find that their minds
have been impregnated by these popular fancies;
and that those have succeeded best who
have adhered closest to the simplicity of their
rustic originals. Such is the case with Shakspeare
in his Midsummer's Night's Dream,
which so minutely describes the employments
and amusements of fairies, and embodies all
the notions concerning them, which were current
among the vulgar.

It is thus that poetry, in England, has
echoed back every rustic note, softened into
perfect melody: it is thus that it has spread its
charms over every day life; displacing nothing;
taking things as it found them; but tinting them
up with its own magical hues; until every green
hill, and fountain head every fresh meadow,
nay, every humble flower is full of song and
story.

I am dwelling too long, perhaps, upon a threadbare
subject; yet it brings up with it a thousand
delicious recollections of those happy days of
childhood, when the imperfect knowledge I have
since obtained had not yet dawned upon my
mind; and when a fairy tale was true history to
me. I have often been so transported by the
pleasure of these recollections as almost to wish

that I had been born in the days when the fictions
of poetry were believed; even now I cannot
look upon these fanciful creations of ignorance
and credulity without a lurking regret that
they have all passed away. The experience of
my early days tells me that they were sources of
exquisite delight; and I sometimes question
whether the naturalist who can dissect the flowers
of the field, receives half the pleasure from contemplating
them, that he did who considered
them the abodes of elves and fairies. I feel convinced
that the true interests and solid happiness
of man, are promoted by the advancement of
truth; yet I cannot but mourn over the pleasant
errors which it has trampled down in its progress.
The fawns and sylphs; the household sprite; the
moonlight revel; Oberon, Queen Mab, and the
delicious realms of fairy land, all vanish before the
light of true philosophy; but who does not sometimes
turn with distaste from the cold realities of
morning, and seek to recall the sweet visions of
the night?

⁂ In an old play entitled the Mayds Metamorphosis,
there is a scene resembling in many
respects Nick Bottom's dialogue with the fairies
in Midsummer's Night's Dream. The edition
that I saw was printed in 1600, and was bound
up in the same volume with an edition of Mid-summer's
Night's Dream published in the same
year. Which of these plays was written first,
I do not know; though it is very possible Shakspeare
may have taken his idea from the other
play, and improved upon it; as he took the hint
of his witch scenes in Macbeth from a play of
Marlow's. I subjoin the scene alluded to from
the Mayds Metamorphosis.

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