CHAPTER XVI.

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POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.

HESE are not rife in Scilly. There is in the islands as little of romance, and as much of matter of fact, and of commonplace, as would be looked for in a Manchester mill. In fact, the sentimental is discouraged, and the practical set up in its place, until the lovers of the marvellous find themselves quite out of their element, and very much in the position of a friend of mine, who had lost his head groom, a clever, but wicked fellow, and who remarked to a hanger-on in the stables, "that Tom had gone to the Devil at last." "Lord, sir!" replied the worthy supernumerary," does a great gentleman like you believe in the Devil?"

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I have before remarked that the absence of ghostly legends is a strong proof of a change of race, in these islands. It has always been so. The Longobard, or Aleman, never troubled himself with the apparitions of his Roman predecessors. The Arab knew nothing of Gothic marvels, beyond the story of Count Julian and la Cava. The Norman warrior sneered at, and buried in oblivion, the

Saxon hobgoblins of Croyland or of Ely. All the tales of Irish spectres belong to the Fanshawes and the Beresfords, to the Lords of the pale. And thus it is with Scilly. The whole population dates no further back than from the days of Cromwell. It is entirely modern, having its tales of horror indeed, but relating only to smuggling, and wrecking, and disasters akin to them. The most remote of these dark scenes scarcely remounts up to a period of a hundred years ago. The shades of the departed race that peopled these rocks, when they formed a wide and smiling land, may hover around the heaths on which we still see their tombs, and circles, and altars, but the eye of modern unbelief beholds them not, the voice of no descendant records their exploits, the song that celebrated them, and the hearts in which that song found an echo, are alike cold and still.

The only part of the islands in which I have met with any spectral records of respectable antiquity, is Tresco. I stumbled there by mere chance upon a trace of some ghosts, with a pretence to a decent ancestry. They would be held in little respect by such persons as the worthy Gael, who, on hearing the name of a countryman mentioned, replied contemptuously, "Pooh, the upstart only came in with Fingal." In fact, the oldest of my spirits is supported by the high authority of the great grandfather of my informant; so, after all, the revenant is only a visitor of yesterday, and may be well ashamed of his shadowy pedigree.

Where Tresco Abbey now stands, there stood formerly a religious establishment. This was plundered at the Reformation, and had the finishing touch put to its tale of ruin at the Great Rebellion. On its site, and resting against

the walls of the old Church, four or five cottages gradually arose, built of the consecrated materials, intruders upon hallowed ground, and forming, by the scenes perpetrated in them, and by the characters of their occupants, a fearful contrast to the memory of what had once existed there. The principal inhabitants of these cabins all belonged to a family now, I believe, extinct, but, in those days, rather numerous. One of them was, in two ways, distinguished from his neighbours. He was pre-eminent for wickednesseven in those times of piracy and plunder-and for his faculty of seeing supernatural appearances. He was even visited, as my informant worded it, by the "evil one" himself, for I observe that a true Scillonian-like a real Celt-never mentions Satan by name, just as an Irishman speaks of "the good people," that is, the fairies.

Now Dick the wicked, who dwelt in the desolation of the sacred precincts, feared neither their associations, nor the remembrance of the deeds of strife and violence since committed there. He was a man, it was said, who defied all agencies, human, diabolical, and divine. His life had been spent in the midst of lawless deeds, and he had grown old and infirm in the quiet nook, whose blessed influences had never moved his spirit to aught but a revolting jest. It was his boast that he had been often met, face to face, by those who were not of earth. Near the spot where the present farm buildings stand, some tale was told of a poor shipwrecked Dutchman, who was murdered and buried in

• The islanders refused burial in consecrated ground to those cast ashore from wrecks. The bodies of all who died in this manner were interred in the sand, or on the downs. Many little carns, or heaps of stones, mark the sites of these hasty graves.

the sandbank. People feared to visit the spot after nightfall. But the old wrecker had no such scruples. Often, he said, when he passed, the form of the dead man was seen pacing gloomily up and down, by the side of the present road. He never spoke, nor, when spoken to, did he reply, but moved silently onward, and, at the end of his beat, turned back again. The path to the ruins then mounted over the Abbey hill. The old sailor was once going along it, when he suddenly encountered the apparition of a deceased person, whom he had known. There is an idea prevalent that a ghost, on meeting any one, always takes the right hand. It did so on this occasion. The fiery blood of Dick the wicked was up in a moment. "What!" said he, “dost thou take the right hand of me!" The shade answered not, but turned and followed him to his door, and there only left him. On another occasion, he was passing through the burial ground, and entering his house, and there he remembered him of an ancient comrade in his wildest scenes, who had now gone to his account, and was sleeping quietly in the turf beneath his feet. It appears that they had often, in former days, spoken of one of them, in case of death, visiting the survivor. As yet the promise, made by him that was departed, was unfulfilled. Dick was pondering on these old passages of his early life, and, as he crossed his threshold, he called out "Johnny, Johnny, wilt thou not keep thy word?" Even as he spoke, there was a report like thunder, so terrible, that his hat, as it were, rose upon his bristling hair, while it stiffened with intense horror, and, in that fearful sound, his friend's voice seemed to reply. It appeared to shake the walls and the roof, until they trembled

again. Many times he heard calls in the night, and an invisible hand moved his clothes and his squalid furniture about.

At last, after innumerable glimpses of spiritual life, and communings with the dwellers in another world, Dick, one night, received a still darker summons. He had been long bedridden, but was neither cured of his evil passions, nor converted from his evil ways. One midnight, some visitant, at whom it was impossible to do more than guess, entered his room. Next morning he was found, wrapped in a long loose coat which he was in the habit of wearing, at a considerable distance from his house. It was whispered that One, scarcely more wicked than himself, had thus essayed to bear him bodily away. He died soon after, believing that Satan had been the agent in this mysterious flitting, but fearless and hardened to the last.

His son was the last of the family who possessed this sort of second sight. He was rather an improvement on his father, but still he was evidently "no great shakes." One evening, he brought his horse down to an outbuilding in the churchyard, and was engaged in foddering it, when he felt the animal start and tremble violently. He looked up, and saw, standing on the hedge (that is, the wall), the figure of a man, pale, grim, and stern, clad in an antique garb, and wearing on its head a three-cornered hat. He turned away in terror, and leaving the animal tethered, as he thought, securely, walked to his own abode. But the presence of the Unearthly was too much for the poor beast. By a strong and sudden effort, it broke the halter, and was at its master's door as soon as he.