Fiends, Ghosts, and Sprites Part 6

The adventures of _Jack the Giant-Killer_, the most celebrated of all celebrated nursery heroes, are for the most part derived from the fabulous era of our own country, and from Scandinavian mythology; and the whole tale is a degraded and vitiated tradition in which the deeds of Corineus, a celebrated personage in the mythical history of Britain, and Prince Arthur; the adventures of Thor, the G.o.d of thunder, and other Scandinavian deities, are jumbled together in strange confusion.

Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his British History[39] states that the early inhabitants of this island were giants. Brutus, a grandson of Ascanius, the companion of aeneas in his flight from Troy, and Corineus, also of Trojan descent, guided by a dream, discovered Britain, and delighted with "the pleasant situation of the place, the plenty of rivers abounding with fish, and the engaging prospect of its woods," they became desirous of fixing their habitation in so desirable a country, and landing, drove the giants into the fastnesses of the mountains, and divided the country.

To Corineus was apportioned that part of the island which we call Cornwall, and it is recorded that he had selected this portion of the island for his share, because "it was a diversion to him to encounter the said giants, which were in greater numbers there than in all the other provinces that fell to the share of his companions."

Corineus is described as being "an ardent man in matters of council, and of great courage and boldness; who in an encounter with any person, even of gigantic stature, would immediately overthrow him as if he were a child."

In the same fabulous history (B. X, ch. 3) it is stated, that a giant who had invaded our sh.o.r.es, and taken refuge at the top of St. Michael's Mount, was attacked by King Arthur in the night and killed; the country being thus freed "from a most destructive and voracious monster."

Some of Jack's princ.i.p.al adventures are derived from the ancient Eddas and Sagas of Scandinavia.

The incident which represents Jack as having overheard a giant, upon whose hospitality he had intruded, muttering--

"Though you lodge with me this night, You shall not see the morning light; My club shall dash your brains out quite;"

and in which he had evaded the catastrophe by placing a log of wood in the bed, he lying quietly in a corner, while the giant furiously beat with his club the inanimate object, thinking to dash him to pieces; and the delightfully cool response of Jack to the wonder-struck giant when he beheld him safe and sound in the morning, and inquired if he had not been disturbed in the night,--"No, nothing worth mentioning, I believe a rat struck me with his tail two or three times:"--this incident is a modification of an adventure which occurred to Thor on his journey to the land of giants, and it is found in some form or other in the folk-lore of every nation in the north of Europe.

Thor, while journeying to the land of giants, met with one of that race named Skrymir. They formed a companionship, and the whole of the provisions were placed in the giant's wallet. At night, when they stopped to rest, Skrymir at once lay down and fell asleep, previously handing the wallet to Thor in order that he might refresh himself. Thor was unable to open it, and wroth with the giant for his apparent insensibility and the mode in which he had tied the knots, he seized his mighty hammer and flung it at the giant's head. Skrymir awaking, asked whether a leaf had fallen on his head, and then he fell asleep again.

Thor again struck him with his hammer, and it apparently sank deep into his skull; and the giant again awoke, and asked, "Did an acorn fall on my head? How fares it with thee, Thor?" Thor, incensed beyond measure, waited until the giant again slept, and then exerting all his power, dashed his hammer at the head of the sleeping monster, into which it sank up to the handle. Skrymir, rising up, rubbed his cheek and said, "Are there any birds perched on this tree? Methought, when I awoke, some moss from the branches fell on my head."

Skrymir, distrusting Thor, had before he slept interposed a huge rock betwixt himself and the G.o.d, and upon this Thor had unwittingly exercised his strength.

The adventure in which Jack is represented as outwitting a giant in eating, by placing his food in a large leathern receptacle beneath his vesture, and then ripping it up, and defying the giant to do the same, whereupon the giant seizes a knife, plunges it into his breast and kills himself, is contained also in stories which are prevalent among the Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, Servians, and Persians.

The Swedish version is as follows:--"In the evening, when the giant and his boy were about to sup, the crone placed a large dish of porridge before them. "That would be excellent," said the boy, "if we were to try which could eat the most, father or I." The giant was ready for the trial, and they began to eat with all their might. But the boy was crafty: he had tied his wallet before his chest, and for every spoonful that entered his mouth, he let two fall into the wallet. When the giant had despatched seven bowls of porridge, he had taken his fill, and sat puffing and blowing, and unable to swallow another spoonful; but the boy continued with just as much good-will as when he began. The giant asked him how it was, that he who was so little could eat so much. "Father, I will soon show you: when I have eaten as much as I can contain, I slit up my stomach, and then I can take in as much again." Saying these words, he took a knife and ripped up the wallet, so that the porridge ran out. The giant thought this a capital plan, and that he would do the like. But when he stuck the knife in his stomach, the blood began to flow, and the end of the matter was that it proved his death."[40]

The sword of sharpness, and the cloak which rendered the wearer invisible, and by the aid of which Jack won so many important victories, are two of the princ.i.p.al supernatural elements in the _Nibelungenlied_.

In this ancient legend, which contains the same tragical story as the still more ancient Scandinavian poem, the _Volundar-Kvida_, the sword "Balmurg" is described:--

"a broad and mighty blade, With such keen-cutting edges, that straight its way it made, Where'er it smote on helmet:"

and the cloud-cloak which Siegfried took from the dwarf Albric, is pourtrayed as--

"A vesture that hight cloud-cloak, marvellous to tell, Whoever has it on him, may keep him safe and well From cuts and stabs of foemen; him none can hear or see, As soon as he is in it, but see and hear can he Whate'er he will around him, and thus must needs prevail; He grows besides far stronger; so goes the wondrous tale."[41]

The story of _Cinderella, or the Gla.s.s Slipper_, is of great antiquity, and versions of it are found in many countries.

aelian, who lived about A.D. 225, relates that, as Rhodope, a celebrated Greek courtezan, who had been carried into Egypt, was bathing one day, an eagle carried off one of her slippers, and as it flew over Memphis, where king Psammetichus was at that time sitting in tribunal, it let fall the sandal into his bosom. Astonished at the occurrence, and at the smallness of the sandal, he caused inquiries to be made for its owner, whom, when he had discovered, he married.

Old versions of this story are found in Norway, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, France, Italy, Wallachia, Servia, Russia, Poland, and Wales.[42]

In _Jack and the Bean-stalk_, the bean is evidently a version of the ash Ygdrasil of the Edda, reaching from h.e.l.l to heaven; and the golden hen, harp, &c., are familiar features in northern stories.

_Puss in Boots_, the _Seven-league Boots_, &c., have their prototypes in Scandinavian folk-lore; and the two last-mentioned tales, as well as others, are probably of considerable antiquity.

Tales derived from these sources and composed of such elements, and fables in which beasts, birds, and fishes are represented as speaking and reasoning in a manner that puts man to the blush, are among the earliest things engrafted in the infant mind; and ever now

"By night The village-matron round the blazing hearth, Suspends the infant-audience with her tales, Breathing astonishment--of witching rhymes, Of evil spirits: of the death-bed call Of him who robb'd the widow, and devoured The orphan's portion: of unquiet souls Risen from the grave to ease the heavy guilt Of deeds in life concealed; of shapes that walk At dead of night, and clank their chains and wave The torch of h.e.l.l around the murderer's bed.

At every solemn pause the crowd recoil, Gazing each other speechless, and congeal'd With shiv'ring sighs; till eager for the event, Around the beldam all erect they hang, Each trembling heart with grateful terror quell'd."

Ideas of mysterious and supernatural powers, vague, undefined, and frightful, are thus instilled into the child, and influence it unchecked and uncontrolled by the Scriptural doctrines of the invisible which are taught to it. At first the two trains of thought derived from these ant.i.thetical sources go on separately and distinctly; the more frightful and wonderful events of legendary lore and fable having a much greater influence, and forming a deeper impression on the mind of the child, whose reasoning powers are still in abeyance to the emotions, than the Scriptural doctrines of the supernatural. As it advances in years these trains of thought insensibly blend; the more rampant absurdities of the supernatural framework of legendary and ghost-lore are discarded; but the less obvious and more insidious portions remain to a greater or less extent, and they are so graven in the mind, that they become part and parcel of it, and in whatever manner they may be subsequently modified in form, it is probable that they are never eradicated, but form a medium which gives a false and deceptive gloss to all our ideas upon those matters which are not immediately within the ken of reason, or which are more clearly attributable to other agency than the forces of the material word--such matters, for example, as are contained in Holy Writ.

Hence our ideas of the supernatural are derived from two sources--from legendary lore and from Scripture; and this results, that although in after-life the more glaring errors and absurdities of the former are removed, those only being retained which are thought to be compatible with Holy Writ, yet the idea of the supernatural thus obtained, foreign from revelation, is retained in a vague and undefined form, and its origin and sources being lost sight of, it is regarded as an innate consciousness of the existence of supernatural beings, and prompts to the ready reception and belief of mysterious and not readily explicable phenomena being the result of supernatural agency.

That proclivity to the belief in supernatural interpositions, that vague notion of spiritual beings, that so-called innate consciousness of the existence of the supernatural, which most persons possess more or less of, and which is totally inconsistent with the clear and perfect doctrine of the invisible taught in the Gospel, is, we believe, derived solely from the infant mind and earlier periods of youth being poisoned by the supernatural events and phenomena detailed in fabulous, legendary, and ghost-lore.[43]

This substratum of superst.i.tion is the prime cause of the retention of those figments of degenerated and christianized mythology which are yet found among us, and for the persistence of the most generally received of these figments--_ghosts_. It is also a highly important element in the formation of that state of the mind which is from time to time manifested in singular and wide-spreading delusions respecting the communication of the spirit-world with man, and of which we have examples before us at the present time in the prevalent follies of "spirit-rapping" and "table-talking."

The belief in ghosts does not now possess those glaring features which were attached to it at the commencement of the present century, hence it is less obtrusive; but it is very far from being extinguished, as some would teach, and its "etiology" is of interest, because it leads to the elucidation of the princ.i.p.al causes and sources of the fallacies to which the senses of man are subject, and by which he has been led in the remotest periods of antiquity, as well as at the present time, to frame those mighty trammels of superst.i.tion from which the mind in vain strives to disentangle itself completely.

The doctrine that the spirits of the dead return to visit the scenes which were dear to them during the body's existence, is in itself awfully solemn and sublime. Man, p.r.o.ne to believe in supernatural interpositions (from causes already explained), and trusting altogether to the evidence of his senses, for many ages received this doctrine unquestioned; and aided by a fertile imagination, he clothed it with attributes which, although absurd in the main, yet as appealing to some of the deepest and warmest affections and pa.s.sions of our nature, cannot even now be contemplated without exciting sensations of awe, if not fear.

The thought that the spirits of those who, during life, were bound to us by the closest ties of affection, are ever near, scrutinizing our actions and thoughts, and prompting us ever and anon to that course which would most tend to our profit here and our joy hereafter[44]--shielding us, like guardian angels, from the wiles of those wandering spirits who, like the "Wicked One" that came softly up to Christian in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and "whisperingly suggested many grievous blasphemies to him, which he verily thought had proceeded from his own mind,"[45] seek to tempt us to destruction,--such a thought thrills through the soul of every one, and fills it with strange and undefined emotions of blended joy and fear.

Few can free themselves altogether from the emotion of terror which is almost necessarily connected with scenes polluted by murder, or by other outbreaks of man's foulest pa.s.sions. This feeling acting on the minds of the superst.i.tious and ignorant, has led them to people with spectres all those places which have obtained notoriety from being the scene of some terrible ebullition of human frailty and wickedness.

Thus, the glen where murder had been committed; the pond in which the mother had immersed her new-born infant; the h.o.a.ry ruin pregnant with horrid legends of the past; the rocks over which the inebriated drunkard fell; the four cross roads where the suicide was impaled; the dwelling of the miser, or of him who did unjustly to the orphan; and the willow-banks of the still-flowing river into which the love-lorn maiden had cast herself,--each had its spectre, and at the midnight hour the ghost of the murdered bared to the moon the mementos of its foul and most unnatural end; the spectre of the murderer, writhing in agony, rattled its gibbet-chains; the suffocating sobs of the drowning infant were borne on the fitful breeze; hideous spectres hovered o'er the deserted ruin; the ghost of the miser guarded its quondam treasures; the cruel guardian and the suicide shrieked forth the agonies of the d.a.m.ned; and the phantom of the deceived maiden gliding on the banks of her watery grave, mingled its plaintive wails with each sough of the midnight wind.

But, alas! this prolific source of terror and romance must be consigned to the delusions of the past; and the churchyard--erst pregnant with "thin-sheeted phantoms"--is now also shorn of its gloomy horrors, and regarded alone as the last quiet resting-place of man on earth.

Even when glimpses of the spirit-world are vouchsafed to those who still firmly believe in occasional visitations from its inhabitants, it would seem that the fashion of their appearance has become more in accordance with the quiet well-regulated ideas of the age. The major part of those terrible attributes of the nether world, that of old were delighted in, are no longer exhibited, and they are numbered with the things that have been. The form which appertained to Satan himself--the cloven foot, the forked tail, the hirsute frame, and the horned head--must also vanish before the march of civilisation; hence Mephistopheles, in the "Faust"

of Goethe, is represented as saying:--

"Refinement too, which smoothens all O'er which it in the world has pa.s.s'd, Has been extended in its call, And reached the devil, too, at last.

That northern phantom found no more can be, Horns, tail, and claws, we now no longer see, As for the foot--I cannot spare it, But were I openly to wear it, It might do greater harm than good To me among the mult.i.tude.

And so like many a youth beside, Who bravely to the eye appears, Yet something still contrives to hide, I've worn false calves for many years!"

The phenomena upon which the belief of the occasional manifestation of disembodied spirits to man is founded, may be accounted for without having recourse to the doctrine of supernatural interposition.

Our senses and our reasoning powers are apt to err. We may deceive ourselves, and are liable to be deceived by an erroneous appreciation of the sensations which we receive from the objects surrounding us--_illusions_--but of the nature of which we may readily convince ourselves.

Illusions of the _sight_ may arise either from an error of judgment, or from a disordered state of the eye.

Of those illusions arising from an error of judgment, perhaps none bear directly upon our subject. Examples of this kind of illusion are the broken appearance of a stick partially immersed in water; the apparent movement of trees, houses, &c., past a train in motion, or the banks of a river past a steamboat.

Illusions arising from a disordered condition of the eye, prompting the imagination, are a prolific source of ghost-seeing.

In the obscurity of the evening, or during the darkness of the night (particularly on those nights which are cloudy, and the darkness seems to rest on the ground), the difficulty with which we distinguish any object to which the attention is directed, is liable to induce a disordered state of the eye, the effects of which are very startling.

"The imperfect view which we obtain of such objects forces us to fix the eye more steadily upon them; but the more exertion we make to ascertain what they are, the greater difficulties do we encounter to accomplish our object. The eye is actually thrown into a state of the most painful agitation, the object will swell and contract, and partly disappear, and it will again become visible when the eye has recovered from the delirium into which it has been thrown."[46]

This illusion is increased by a disturbed condition of the pupil of the eye.

The pupil is surrounded by a muscle called the _iris_, by the contraction and dilatation of which the size of the opening is increased or diminished, and a greater or less amount of light admitted to the eye. On a dark night, or during the twilight, the pupil is dilated to its utmost extent, so that every available ray of light may enter. In this condition the eye is not able to accommodate itself to near objects, and they become more indistinct; shadowy, and confused.

Under these circ.u.mstances, an object to which the attention is strongly attracted, may appear to a.s.sume strange variations in form,--now increasing, now diminishing in size, now approaching nearer, now going further off, or anon disappearing altogether; and a bush, a guide-post, a stoop, &c., will seem as though it a.s.sumed the most startling changes in size and appearance. Add the effects of the imagination, and we shall at once perceive a source of the various goblins, boggards, and other strange sights which have been supposed to haunt many of our byeways and deserted places.

To ill.u.s.trate this form of illusion: a man with whom we were acquainted tells the following tale:--When young, he, one evening, had a quarrel with his mother about some trifling affair, and in defiance of her grief and supplications he left home late at night, intending to enter the army. It was very dark and stormy, and as he proceeded along a bye-path, suddenly a tall object arrested his attention; startled, he stood still, when, to his utter horror and astonishment, the object increased in size, and seemed as though about to pounce upon him; it then vanished, and anon appeared again. Terrified beyond measure, and conceiving that Satan had waylaid him for forsaking his mother, the poor man fell on his knees, and exclaimed: "O good Lord Devil, do not take me, and I'll go back to my mother, and be a good lad!" It is unnecessary to dwell upon the goggle eyes burning with flames which he imagined Satan to possess; suffice it that he remained before the supposed devil some time, overcome with terror, when a blink of the rising moon showed that he was laid at the foot of the stump of a tree. Heartily ashamed of his fear, he rose up, slunk back home, and made peace with his mother.[47]