Cock Lane and Common-Sense

154

Information from Mr. Mackay, Craigmonie.

155

2 Kings, v. 26.

156

i. 259. Longmans, London, 1811.

157

Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 143.

158

This belief is not confined to the Highlands. Mr. Podmore quotes Ghost 636 in the Psychical Society’s collections: ‘The narrator’s mother is said to have seen the figure of a man’. The father saw nothing till his wife laid her hand on his shoulder, when he exclaimed, ‘I see him now’ (S. P. R., Nov., 1889, p. 247).

159

‘Spectral evidence’ was common in witch trials. Wierus (b. 1515) mentions a woman who confessed that she had been at a witch’s covin, or ‘sabbath,’ when her body was in bed with her husband. If there was any confirmatory testimony, if any one chose to say that he saw her at the ‘sabbath,’ that was ‘spectral evidence’. This kind of testimony made it vain for a witch to take Mr. Weller’s advice, and plead ‘a halibi,’ but even Cotton Mather admits that ‘spectral evidence’ is inconclusive.

160

Papon. Arrets., xx. 5, 9. Charondas, Lib. viii. Resp. 77. Covarruvias, iv. 6. Mornac, s. v., Habitations, 27 ff., Locat. and Conduct. Other doctors do not deny hauntings, but allege that a brave man should disregard them, and that they do not fulfil he legal condition, Metus cadens in constantem virim. These doctors may never have seen a ghost, or may have been unusually courageous. They held that a man might get accustomed to the annoyances of bogles, s’apprivoiser avec cette frayeur, like the Procter family at Willington.

161

Miscellanies, p. 94, London, 1857.

162

Hibbert, Philosophy of Apparitions, second edition, p. 224. Hibbert finds Graime guilty, but only because he knew where the body lay.

163

Notices Relative to the Bannatyne Club, 1836, p. 191. Remarkable Trial in Maryland.

164

Paris, 1708. Reprinted by Lenglet Dufresnoy, in his Dissertations sur les Apparitions. Avignon, 1751, vol. iii. p. 38.

165

Second edition, Buon, Paris, 1605. First edition, Angers, 1586.

166

Dr. Lee, in Sights and Sounds (p. 43), quotes an Irish lawsuit in 1890. The tenants were anxious not to pay rent, but were non-suited. No reference to authorities is given. There was also a case at Dublin in 1885. Waldron’s house was disturbed, ‘stones were thrown at the windows and doors,’ and Waldron accused his neighbour, Kiernan, of these assaults. He lost his case (Evening Standard, February 23, 1885, is cited).

167

p. 195, London, 1860.

168

The account followed here is that of the narrator in La Table Parlante, p. 130, who differs in some points from the Marquis de Mirville in his Fragment d’un Ouvrage Inédit, Paris, 1852.

169

For bewitching by touch see Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 150. ‘Library of Old Authors,’ London, 1862.

170

Cotton Mather, op. cit., p. 131.

171

Table Parlante, p. 151. A somewhat different version is given p. 145. The narrator seems to say that Cheval himself deposed to having witnessed this experiment.

172

Gazette des Tribunaux, February 2, 1846, quoted in Table Parlante, p. 306.

173

Table Parlante, p. 174.

174

Hibbert, Apparitions, p. 211.

175

Mather’s own account of the lost sermon (p. 298) is in his Life, by Mr. Barrett Wendell, p. 118. It is by no means so romantic as Wodrow’s version.

176

An account of the method by which the Miss Foxes rapped is given, by a cousin of theirs, in Dr. Carpenter’s Mesmerism (p. 150).

177

See Dr. Carpenter’s brief and lucid statement about ‘Latent Thought’ and ‘Unconscious Cerebration,’ in the Quarterly Review, vol. cxxxi. pp. 316-319.

178

A learned priest has kindly looked for the alleged spiritus percutiens in dedicatory and other ecclesiastical formulæ. He only finds it in benedictions of bridal chambers, and thinks it refers to the slaying spirit in the Book of Tobit.