The name of the outlaw, Humphrey Kynaston, who, with his horse, lived in the face of a precipice, is not likely speedily to be forgotten in Shropshire; his exploits are still matter of tradition, and the scenes of his adventures are yet pointed out.
Humphrey was the son of Sir Roger Kynaston, of Hordley, near Ellesmere. The family derived from Wales and from the princes of Powys. Their arms were argent, a lion rampant sable.
Sir Roger Kynaston had zealously embraced the side of the York faction. King Henry VI. had attempted to make peace by holding a conference in London, when the Lord Mayor at the head of five thousand armed citizens kept peace between the rival parties. Henry proposed an agreement, which was accepted, and then the King, with representatives of both sides, went in solemn procession to S. Paul's. To the great joy of the spectators, the Yorkist and Lancastrian leaders walked before him arm in arm, Richard, Duke of York, leading by the hand the queen, the real head of her husband's party.
But the pacification had been superficial. The Yorkists were determined to win the crown from the feeble head of Henry. At their head was the Earl of Warwick, and the King had hoped to get him out of the way by making him Governor of Calais. But strife broke out again six months after the apparent reconciliation at S. Paul's. The Earl of Salisbury was the first to move; but he had no sooner put himself in march from Yorkshire to join the Duke of York at Ludlow, than Lord Audley, with 7000 men, attempted to intercept him. They met at Blore Heath, in Staffordshire. Audley was drawn into a snare, and slain by Sir Roger Kynaston with his own hand; along with him fell 2000 of his followers. Thenceforth the Kynastons assumed, not only the Audley arms and the motto, "Blore Heath," but the rising sun of York as their crest.
Wild Humphrey was the son of Sir Roger Kynaston, by his wife the Lady Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Gray, Earl of Tankerville, and Lord of Powys. He was the second son, and not expecting to succeed to the family estates, was given the constableship of the castle of Middle, which had at one time belonged to the Lords le Strange, but which had lapsed to the Crown.
He sadly neglected his duties, and allowed the castle to fall into disrepair, almost into ruin. This was not altogether his own fault. The castle was of importance as guarding the marches against the Welsh, always ready, at the least provocation, to make raids into England. The office of constable was honorary rather than remunerative, a poor recompense for the services rendered by Sir Roger to the Yorkist cause. Humphrey was expected to keep up the castle out of his own resources, and he was without private means. It was true that with the accession of the House of Tudor, danger from the Welsh was less imminent: but Henry VII. was a parsimonious monarch, careful mainly to recover for the exchequer the sums of which it had been depleted in the Wars of the Roses.
As Humphrey was short of money, he took to robbery. The Wars of the Roses had produced anarchy in the land, and every man's hand was against his fellow, if that fellow had something of which he might be despoiled.
The story is told that one day Wild Humphrey rode to the manor-house of the Lloyds of Aston, and requested a draught of wine. With ready hospitality a silver beaker was brought forth swimming with the juice of the grape. Humphrey, who was mounted, drained it to the last drop, then, striking spurs into his horse, galloped away, carrying the silver vessel with him. As has been said of Robin Hood, so it was told of the Shropshire freebooter, that he robbed the rich and befriended the poor. On one occasion he stopped the steward of a gentleman and plundered him of the rents just received. The Lord of the Manor sent him a message that he had been a forbearing landlord, but now he absolutely must put the screw upon his tenants to make up for his loss. Kynaston at once waylaid another gentleman's steward, and paid the first back to the last penny with the proceeds of the second robbery.
His depredations at length became so intolerable that he was outlawed in the eighth year of Henry VII. As this year began on the 22nd August 1490, and did not end till the 21st of August 1491, it is not quite certain in which year of our reckoning he was placed under ban.
He was now obliged to fly from the dilapidated castle of Middle, and seek himself out a place of refuge. This he found or made for himself in the face of the cliff of Ness.
This is a hill of new red sandstone, near Bass Church, that forms an abrupt scarp towards the south. The top commands a superb view of the Shropshire plain, with the Breiden Hills rising out of them, and the Long Mynd to the south. The western horizon is walled up by the Welsh mountains. Formerly the head and slopes of Ness Cliff were open down, but have been enclosed and planted of late years by Earl Brownlow, so that it is not easy to realise what the appearance was when Wild Humphrey took up his abode in the rock.
In the cliff, that is reached by a rapid ascent, and which rises above the slope some 70 feet, he cut a flight of steps in the side of a buttress that projects, till he reached the main face of the crag, about half-way up. Then he scooped out a doorway, next excavated two chambers, one to serve as a stable for his horse, the other for a habitation for himself. In the latter he formed a hearth, and bored a hole upwards in a slanting direction, till he reached daylight, and this served as chimney. Beside his door he cut a circular orifice to act as window. The doorway was closed by a stout door sustained in place by a massive bar, the socket holes to receive which remain.
In the pier between the stable and his own apartment, he cut two recesses, probably to receive a lamp. Between these a later hand has engraved the initials H.K., and the date 1564. As Humphrey died in 1534, this was, of course, none of his doing.
At the foot of the cliff near the first step is a trough or manger cut in the living rock, apparently to receive water, but as no water exudes from the rock, it must have served for the oats or other corn given to his horse. It is traditionally said that Wild Humphrey's horse pastured in proximity to the Ness. When Humphrey saw danger, and when the shades of evening fell, he whistled; whereupon the beast ran like a cat up the narrow steps in the face of the rock, and entered its stable. Once there, Kynaston was master of the situation, for only one man at a time could mount the stair, and this was commanded by his window, through which with a pike he could transfix or throw down an intruder.
Where now stands the National School at the foot of the hill was at that time a meadow, to the grass of which his horse was partial.
The farmer to whom the meadow belonged naturally enough objected, and collected a number of men who linked themselves together with ropes and surrounded the field. The horse took no notice but continued browsing. The ring gradually contracted on him. Kynaston saw the proceeding from his eyrie, and uttered a shrill whistle. At once the gallant steed pricked up his ears, snorted, ran, leaped clean over the head of a man, and scrambled up the stair in the cliff, to his master's shelter. On another occasion a thief, thinking it no harm to rob a felon, succeeded in leaping on the horse's back. But the beast, feeling that some one was astride of him other than Wild Humphrey, ran to the cliff, and the rider, frightened at the prospect of being carried up the rock side and into the power of the desperate outlaw, was but too thankful to throw himself off and get away with a broken arm.
Humphrey had two wives, both Welsh girls, whom he carried off, but married. Gough, in his history of Middle, says: "Humphrey Kynaston had two wives, but both of soe mean birth that they could not claim to any coat of arms." By the first he had a son, Edward, who died young. By the second he had three sons, Edward, Robert, and Roger. If tradition may be trusted he proved so brutal and so bad a husband that his second wife left and returned to her kinsfolk in Wales. His son Edward was heir to the last Lord Powys, and continued the succession. Humphrey's elder brother died without lawful issue, and the honours and estates of the family devolved on Edward, upon his father's death in 1534.
Now the laws relating to the marriage of Englishmen with Welsh women were still in force. The English Parliament, in 1401, had passed a series of the most oppressive and cruel ordinances ever enacted against any people; prohibiting marriage between English and Welsh, and disfranchising and disqualifying any Englishman from holding or inheriting property, if he had married a Welsh woman, and closing all schools and learned professions to the Welsh. These infamous laws had been re-enforced by Parliament in 1413, and were not repealed when Henry VII. came to the throne, as might have been anticipated. But Henry granted the Welsh a charter, which rendered the administration less rigorous. These tyrannous laws were not repealed till 1536. Now, the fact that Humphrey's marriage with Welsh women stood against him in no way justified his treatment of his wives.
Deserted by his second wife, Wild Humphrey was assisted by his mother, who came to Ruyton, in the neighbourhood, and carried him food on Sunday, a day of civil freedom.
On one occasion when he had been committing his usual depredations, on the further side of the Severn, the Under Sheriff at the head of a posse rode to arrest him, and for this purpose removed several planks of Montford Bridge, by which he was expected to return, and then laid in wait till he arrived. In due course Humphrey Kynaston rode to the Severn Bridge and prepared to cross. Thereupon the posse comitatus rose and took possession of the bridge end believing that they had him entrapped. But the outlaw spurred his horse, which leaped the gap, and he escaped. A farmer, who had been looking on, so the legend tells, called out, "Kynaston, I will give thee ten cows and a bull for thy horse." "Get thee first the bull and cows that can do such a feat," shouted the outlaw in reply, "and then we will effect the exchange."
The leap of Kynaston's horse was measured and marked out on Knockin Heath, and cut in the turf, with the letters H.K. at each end.
The accession of a Welsh prince to the crown was in reality a fortunate thing for the Kynastons, especially for Wild Humphrey; for ever since the rising of Owen Glendower, an Englishman who had married a Welsh woman was, as already said, legally disqualified from holding any office of trust, and from acquiring or inheriting land in England. Consequently Humphrey's issue by his Welsh wife might have been debarred from representing the family but for the accession of Henry VII. As it turned out, since his elder brother left no issue, the son of Humphrey eventually inherited the family estates of the Kynastons.
Two and a half or three years after his outlawry, Humphrey was pardoned, 30th May 1493. The pardon is still extant, and is in the possession of Mr. Kynaston, of Hardwick Hall and Hordley, the present representative of the family. The direct line from Wild Humphrey expired in 1740.
It is somewhat noticeable that in all the successive generations there was no further outbreak of the wild blood. The Kynastons descending from the outlaw, who was the terror of the countryside, were orderly country gentlemen, who did their duty and pursued harmless pleasures. Perhaps Wild Humphrey was rather a product of his lawless times, of the terrible disorders of the Wars of the Roses, and of the cruel law that blasted him and his issue, on account of his Welsh marriages, than a freebooter out of sporting propensities.
Tradition says that his continued misconduct and ill-treatment of his wife kept her estranged from him. But on his deathbed he had one single desire, and that was to see her and obtain her pardon. He stoutly refused to be visited by any leech; and only reluctantly agreed to allow a "wise woman," who lived at Welsh Felton, near the scene of his old exploits at Ness Cliff, to visit him and prescribe herbs.
On her arrival, however, his humour had changed, and he impatiently turned away, saying, "I'll have none of your medicines. I want naught but my Elizabeth, my poor wronged wife."
"And she is here," answered the wise woman, throwing off her hood.
Humphrey turned and laid his head on her bosom, and without another word, but with his eyes on her face, breathed his last.
Is the story true or ben trovato? Who can say! It reposes on tradition.
Ness Cliff, the rock, in the face of which Humphrey Kynaston lived four hundred years ago, remains, with his cave, his flight of steps, up which ran his faithful horse, his stable, and the feeding trough, and the hearth on which burned Wild Humphrey's fire, very much as he left it. Only one feature is changed. There, from his rock, his eye ranged over the rolling woodland and open champagne country for miles so that he could see and prepare against the enemy who ventured to approach his stronghold; now it is buried in larch and Austrian pine plantations, so that nothing is visible from the cave, save their green boughs. It seems strange that for so many years he can have been suffered to continue his depredations without an attempt being made to surround his rock and keep him imprisoned therein till he was starved into surrender. But the explanation is probably this. He had made friends among the peasantry of the neighbourhood, whom he never molested, and to whom he showed many kindnesses; and they rewarded him by giving him timely warning of the approach of those bent on his capture, and thus enabled him to mount his horse, gallop away, and conceal himself elsewhere. Yet this only partly explains the mystery. If the cave were deserted, why did not the sheriff and his posse comitatus destroy the steps leading up into it, and thus render a retreat into it impossible? The only conclusion at which one can arrive is that the custodians of the law in the fifteenth century were half-hearted in the discharge of their duty, that there was a secret admiration for the wild outlaw in their hearts, and that they were reluctant to see the scion of a brave and ancient house brought to the gallows.
Some men have become predatory animals, and as such seek out lairs as would the beasts of prey.
The Chinaman possesses an instinctive reversion to old subterranean life. Wherever he goes, wherever he succeeds in forming a "China-town," he begins to burrow and undermine the houses in which he and his fellow-countrymen live, and a labyrinth of passages and chambers is constructed, communicating with the several dwellings, so that a criminal Chinaman can rarely be trapped in the native quarter by the police. When San Francisco was burnt, the ground under the Chinese town was found to be honeycombed with runs and lurking-holes to an astounding extent.
When David had to escape from the pursuit of Saul, he fled first of all to Gath, but being recognised there, he made his way to the cave of Adullam. "And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him, and he became a captain over them; and there were with him about four hundred men." [Footnote: 1 Sam. xxii. 1-2] In a word, he became the head of a party of freebooters, who laid the neighbourhood under contribution.
The Palestine surveyors have identified the cave of Adullam with one now called by the peasants Aid-el-Ma. It lies in a round hill about 500 feet high, pierced with a number of caverns; the hill itself being isolated by several valleys and marked by ancient ruins, tombs, and quarryings. "A cave which completes the identification exists in the hill. It is not necessary to suppose that the one used by David was of great size, for such spacious recesses are avoided by the peasantry even now, from their dampness and tendency to cause fever. Their darkness, moreover, needs many lights, and they are disliked from the numbers of scorpions and bats frequenting them. The caves used as human habitations, at least in summer, are generally about twenty or thirty paces across, lighted by the sun, and comparatively dry. I have often seen such places with their roofs blackened by smoke: families lodging in one, goats, cattle, and sheep, stabled in another, and grain or straw stored in a third. At Adullam are two such caves in the northern slope of the hill, and another further south, while the opposite sides of the tributary valley are lined with rows of caves, all smoke- blackened, and mostly inhabited, or used as pens for flocks and herds.
"The cave on the south of the hill itself was tenanted by a single family when the surveyors visited it, just as it might have been by David and his immediate friends, while his followers housed themselves in those near at hand." [Footnote: Geikie (C.), "The Holy Land and the Bible," Lond. 1887, i. p. 108.]
The haunts of the bandits in the times of Herod must have been very much like those in Dordogne. They were high up in the face of precipices in Galilee, and he was able only to subdue these gangs of freebooters by letting his soldiers down in baskets from the top of the cliffs, with machines for forcing entrance. [Footnote: Josephus, "Antiq.," xiv. 6.]
Stanley says [Footnote: "Sinai and Palestine," 1856, pp. 148-149.]: "Like all limestone formations, the hills of Palestine abound in caves. In these innumerable rents, and cavities, and holes, we see the shelter of the people of the land in those terrible visitations, as when 'Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in a cave.' Or as when 'in the days of Uzziah, King of Judah, they fled before the earthquake to the ravine of the mountains;' to the rocky fissures, safer, even though themselves rent by the convulsions, than the habitations of man. We see in them, also, the hiding-places which served sometimes for the defence of robbers and insurgents, sometimes for the refuge of those of whom 'the world was not worthy;' the prototypes of the catacombs of the early Christians, of the caverns of the Vaudois and the Covenanters. The cave of the five kings at Makkedah; the 'caves, and dens, and strongholds, and 'rocks,' and 'pits,' and 'holes' in which the Israelites took shelter from the Midianites in the time of Gideon, from the Philistines in the time of Saul; the cleft of the cliff Etam, into which Samson went down to escape the vengeance of his enemies; the caves of David at Adullam and at Maon, and of Saul at Engedi; the cave in which Obadiah hid the prophets of the Lord; the caves of the robber hordes above the plain of Gennesareth; the sepulchral caves of the Gadarene demoniacs; the cave of Jotopata, where Josephus and his countrymen concealed themselves in their last struggle, continue from first to last what has been called the cave-life of the Israelite nation."
The vast grotto of Lombrive in AriÈge has been already mentioned. It became a den of a band of murderous brigands at the beginning of the nineteenth century. A detachment of soldiers was sent to dislodge them in 1802; to reach the great hall access is had by crawling through a narrow passage, and here the robbers murdered as many as 146 of the soldiers, taking them one after another as they emerged from the passage, and cutting their throats. [Footnote: "Spelunca," Paris, 1905, t. vi. p. 169.] The passage now bears the name of that of Du Crime.
The Surtshellir in Iceland has attracted a great deal of attention, perhaps because it is so different from other caves, being formed in the lava. Its origin is very easily explained. At a great eruption of lava from a neighbouring crater, the crust hardened rapidly whilst the viscid current below continued to flow, and this latter flowed on till it also became rigid, and left a great gap between it and the original crust. I visited it in 1860. It has several branches, and in it lie pools perpetually frozen. There are gaps here and there in the roof through which rays of light penetrate, and also snow that heaps itself on the floor. In one side-chamber is a great accumulation of sheep- bones. In the thirteenth century a band of twenty-four robbers took up their abode in this cavern, and made excursions in all directions around, robbing farmhouses, and driving away sheep. When this had gone on for some time the bonders united and succeeded in surrounding the gang, and killing eighteen of them. The six who escaped fled to the snow mountains, and were never heard of again. Now the strange thing is, how could the men live through a winter in this horrible cavern with a floor of ice in many places, and with a temperature below freezing even in summer? Fuel they could not procure, as there are but black sandy moors around that grow nothing but dwarf willow, and that is so scarce as to be inefficient for their purpose. They must have supplied themselves with light and heat by the tallow of the sheep they killed, run into a lamp. This is the only heating fuel used at present by the Icelanders, apart from the animal heat they give out in the closely sealed common room they occupy as sleeping quarters as well as dining-room and workshop. It may be vastly pleasant in theory to live at other people's expense, but it has its drawbacks, and in this instance le jeu ne valait pas la chandelle.
In Pitscottie's "Chronicles of Scotland," and in Holinshed's "Scottish Chronicle," at the end of the reign of James II. there is a story of a brigand who is said to have lived in a den called Feruiden, or Ferride's Den, in Angus, who was burnt along with his wife and family for cannibalism, the youngest daughter alone was spared as she was but a twelvemonth old. But when she grew up she was convicted of the same crime, and was condemned to be burnt or buried alive.
I have given elsewhere a very full account of the cave—a den of robbers beside which that to which Gil Blas was carried was a paradise —La Crouzate on the Causse de Gramat in the Department of Lot. I will therefore here mention it but superficially. At the entrance are notches in the rock, showing that at one time it was closed by a door. A rapid descent is suddenly brought to a standstill by an opening in the floor of a veritable oubliette, and this opening is crossed only by a bridge of poles, the hand helping to maintain the balance by pressing against the wall of rock on the right hand. Then comes a second hollow, but not so serious, and then a third that can only be descended by a ladder. This opens into a hall in the midst of which yawns a horrible chasm, across which lies a rough bridge of poles that give access to some small chambers beyond, which had formerly been tenanted by the brigands who had their lair in this cavern. Notches in the walls of the well show that across it were laid poles that sustained a pulley, by means of which a bucket could be let down to the well 265 feet, for water. My cousin, Mr. George Young, actually found remains of the crane employed for the purpose at the bottom of the well. About the year 1864, M. Delpons, prefect of the Department of Lot, observing a huge block of limestone lying in a field near La Crouzate, had it raised, and discovered beneath it twelve skeletons ranged in a circle, their feet inwards, and an iron chain linking them together; probably the remains of the bandits who made of La Crouzate their den, whence they issued to rob in the neighbourhood. According to the local tradition, the peasants of the surrounding country paid a poll-tax for every sheep and ox they possessed so as to raise a levÉe which should sweep the Causse of these marauders, and it was due to this effort that the band was captured and every member of it hung to the branches of the walnut tree beneath which lies the broad stone.
At Gargas, near MontzÉjeau, in Hautes PyrenÉes, is a prehistoric cavern of considerable extent. In it have been found sealed up in stalagmite the remains of primitive man. Now the significant fact exists that just ten years before the outbreak of the French Revolution this cave was inhabited by Blaise Ferrage, a stone-mason, who at the age of twenty- two deliberately threw aside his trade and retired into the grotto, whence he sallied forth to seize, murder, and eat children and young girls. Men also he shot, strangled, or stabbed, and dragged to his lair, there to devour their carcases.
For three years this monster terrorized the countryside. The number of his victims was innumerable. As last he was caught and broken on the wheel in December 1782. There is no evidence that the naked prehistoric men who had inhabited the cave of Gargas were cannibals.
That the outlaw and he who has dropped out of the ranks of ordered social life, and he who seeks to prey on civilised society should naturally, instinctively, make the cave his home, is what we might expect. He is reverting to the habits of early man whose hand was against every man.
In the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," the outlaws are presented as living in a cave. The robbers in "Gil Blas" had their lair also in one.
One of the finest and most pathetic of Icelandic Sagas is the history of Grettir the Outlaw, who was born in 997, and killed by his enemies in 1031. He spent nineteen years in outlawry in Iceland, and outlawry there in that terrible climate, with no house to cover his head, would seem an ordeal impossible for human endurance. Between the autumn of 1022 and the spring of 1024, that is to say during two winters, he lived in a cave in the west of the island. A steep shale slide was below a cliff, and above this a hollow in the rock. He built up the mouth of the cave, and hung grey wadmal before the entrance, so that none below could notice anything peculiar, or any one living there. Whatever fuel he wanted, all he had to eat, everything he needed, had to be carried up this slippery ascent by him. Down the shale slide he went when short of provisions, and over the marshes to this or that farm and demanded or carried off, sometimes a sheep, sometimes curds, dried fish—in a word what he required.
In the summer of 1862 a very similar lair which Grettir inhabited a little later in the east of Iceland was explored by a farmer living near. This is his description of it: "The lair stands in the upper part of a slip of stones beneath some sheer rocks. It is built up of stones, straight as a line, four and three-quarter ells long and ten inches wide, and is within the walls seven-eighths of an ell deep. Half of it is roofed over with flat stones; small splinters of stone are wedged in between these to fill up the joints, and these are so firmly fixed that they could not be removed without tools. One stone in the south wall is so large that it would require six men to move it. The north wall is beginning to give way. On the outside the walls are overgrown with black lichen and grey moss."
A chapman spending the winter in a farm hard by, named Gisli the Dandy, heard that a price of nine marks of silver was placed on the head of Grettir. "Let me but catch him," said he, "and I will dress his skin for him."
The outlaw heard of this threat, and one day looking down from his rock he saw a man with two attendants riding along the highway. His kirtle was scarlet, and his helmet and shield flashed in the sun. It occurred to Grettir that this must be the dandy, and he at once ran down the slide of stones, clapped his hand on a bundle of clothes behind the saddle, and said, "This I am going to take." Gisli, for it was he, got off his horse, and called on his men to attack Grettir. But the latter soon perceived that the chapman kept behind his servants, and never risked himself where the blows fell; so he put the two thralls aside and went direct upon the merchant, who turned and took to his heels. Grettir pursued him, and Gisli, in his fear, threw aside his shield, then away went his helmet, and lastly a heavy purse of silver attached to his girdle. Presently the flying man came to a bed of old lava full of cracks. He leaped the fissures and reached a river that flowed beyond. There he halted, unable to make up his mind to risk a plunge into it, and that allowed Grettir to run in on him and throw him down.
"Keep my saddle-bags and what I have thrown away," pleaded the fallen man, "only spare my life." "There must be a little skin-dressing done first," answered Grettir. Then he took a good handful of birch rods from the wood, pulled Gisli's clothes up over his head, and laid the twigs against his back in none of the gentlest fashion. Gisli danced and skipped about, but Grettir had him by his garments twisted about his head, and contrived to flog till the fellow threw himself down on the ground screaming. Then Grettir let go, and went quietly back to his lair, picking up as he went the purse and the belt, the shield, casque, and whatsoever else Gisli had thrown away. Also he retained the contents of his saddle-bags. [Footnote: "Grettir Saga," Copenh. 1859. "Grettir the Outlaw," Lond. 1890.]
At Dunterton, on the Devon side of the Tamar, is a headland of rock and wood projecting above the river, and in this is a cave. In or about 1780 there was a man, the terror of the neighbourhood, who lived in this cave, but that he was there was unknown. He was wont to "burgle" the houses of the gentry round, and his favourite method of proceeding was to get on the roof and descend the chimneys, which in those days were wide. In my hall chimney was, till I removed it, an apparatus fitted with sharp spikes upward to impale the burglar should he attempt to get into the house that way. In the house of a neighbouring squire a funnel was made into which he might drop, and from which he could not escape. He was finally discovered by Colonel Kelly, when drawing the wood with his hounds; as the cave was held to be the den of the ogre, it was looked upon with fear, and was also long the lair of smugglers.
Perhaps the latest cave-dwelling criminal was Carl Friedrich Masch, who before his execution confessed to having committed twelve murders and to having attempted several more. This man carried on this warfare against society from 1856 to 1864, that is to say for eight years, in Prussia. His presence in the district was always suspected rather than ascertained, by the numerous cases of arson, burglary, and robbery, as well as by murders and murderous attacks. One of his worst crimes was the butchery of a whole family, a miller, his wife, three children, aged respectively twelve, ten, and five, and a young servant-maid in 1861. In vain were large rewards offered for the capture of Masch; if he had confederates they were not bribed to betray him, and the police were powerless to trace him. Even soldiers were called out to search the forests, but all in vain, and he was not captured till 1864 when he was arrested when tipsy in the street of Frankfurt on the Oder, and then it was not till some hours later that it was discovered he had but just committed a fresh murder.
In March 1858 a miller named Ebel went into the Pyritz forest near Soldin, along with his servant-man to fetch away firewood he had purchased. After having laden his wagon he sent it home under the conduct of his man, and remained behind among the trees. He looked about among the bushes to find a suitable branch that he could cut to serve as a walking-stick. Whilst thus engaged he came on some rising ground overgrown with young birch, and on the slope of the hill not more than 200 paces from the much-frequented highroad he noticed a spot where the snow was beaten hard, as if it had been the lair of a wild beast. To get a better sight of this, Ebel parted the bushes and came closer. Then he was aware of a patch of dried leaves uncovered by snow. Unable to account for this, he stirred the leaves with his recently cut stick, and to his surprise saw them slide down into the earth as into a funnel. More puzzled than ever he began to examine the locality, when he noticed that the ground under his feet sounded hollow, and that there was hard by a second and larger hole. As he stood staring at this, suddenly a cudgel appeared followed by the white face of a man with black hair and beard and dark piercing eyes, rising out of the ground. For a moment Ebel stood paralysed with terror, and then, as the man was heaving himself to the surface, he beat a hasty retreat.
When he reported what he had seen to the forester and some wood- cutters, he was at first not believed, but he insisted that they should accompany him to the spot. They did so, and this is what they found: a board, covered with earth, but with a hole in the midst, through which a couple of fingers could be thrust so as to bring it from below into position, had been used to cover the entrance to an underground habitation. Jumping into a pit, a passage was seen about five feet high, in which a stove had been placed, and the hole the miller had seen, into which the leaves had fallen, was the chimney. Further on was a chamber seven feet long by seven feet broad, and five feet high, that had clearly served as a dwelling for some considerable time. It was full of clothing, linen, an axe, a hammer, a bunch of keys, and an assortment of burglar's tools. The roof was supported by posts and transverse beams, and from them hung legs of pork, bacon, and sausages. There was also a cellar well stocked with wine and brandy, and even champagne. A bed was fashioned of birch boughs and fir branches and hay. The boughs protected from the damp of the soil. Great quantities of bones of pigs, sheep, geese, and other poultry were found buried in the sides of the passage and about on the surface.
The forester reported to the police what he had seen. A good many of the articles found were reclaimed by peasants who had been robbed; but the denizen of the cave-dwelling had vanished, and returned no more. At the same time, attacks on persons and property ceased in that neighbourhood, but began in the neighbourhood of Berlin. But in the spring of 1859 they were renewed in the district of Soldin. The military were ordered to manoeuvre, surround, and traverse the woods, and search every moor. All was in vain, not a trace of the perpetrator of these crimes could be found, and no sooner were the soldiers withdrawn than a taverner and his young wife were discovered in their little inn, with their heads beaten in, and their throats cut, and the man's watch and his money taken. This was followed by the murder of a peasant girl, on the highroad, as she was returning from saying farewell to her lover who had to leave his village for military service. Next came the slaughter of the miller and his family. Renewed efforts to trace the murderer were made and were equally fruitless.
A toll-keeper was fired at in his bed and severely wounded. The would- be assassin had drawn a cart into position, placed boards on it, raised an erection on the boards to support himself so as to be able to take aim at the sleeping man through the window. He could see where he was, as a light burned in the room. He was prevented breaking into the house and murdering the wife and child by the approach of passengers. A farmer was shot at and also badly hurt when returning from market, and only saved from being killed and robbed by his horse taking fright and galloping out of reach.
A further hiding-place of Masch was discovered by accident, as was the first, in May 1861, in the neighbourhood of Warsin. It was more roomy than the first, constructed with more art, was also underground, and contained innumerable objects that had been stolen; amongst others a little library of books that Masch could read in the long winter evenings to pass away the time.
When after eight years of this sort of life, he was finally arrested, he was brought to confess his crimes. And one portion of his narrative concerned his place of concealment in the winter of 1858-59, before he had dug out his subterranean abode at Warsin, and after the discovery of his den at Pyritz.
That was also spent underground, but not in a cave of his construction. I will give the account in his own words.
"The winter came on and I had no money and no place of refuge against the cold. It was only when a hard frost set in that I found an asylum in the culvert constructed to carry off the water from the Bermling lake. The canal consists of a stone-built tunnel, the entrance to which is closed by closely-set iron stancheons. But accustomed as I was, like a cat, to contract and wriggle through narrow spaces, I succeeded in forcing my way in and I formed my lair on the solid ice. Before a fall of snow I provided myself with food, wine, brandy, clothing, and bedding, but I was constrained to spend many weeks in my hiding-place lest I should betray it by my footprints in the snow. My abode there was terribly irksome, for the culvert was not lofty enough to allow one to stand upright in it, and I was constrained to wriggle about in it, crawling or thrusting myself along with hands and feet. I had indeed covered my legs with leather wound about them, but my limbs became stiff. Sitting on the ice was almost as uncomfortable as lying on it. An upright position when seated became unendurable with my legs stretched out straight before me. Accordingly I hacked a hole through the ice into the frozen mud, and thrust my legs down into it. But my blood chilled in them, and my legs would have been frozen in, had I not withdrawn them and stretched them out as before, well enveloped. Moreover I could not sit with my back leaning against the ice-cold stone walls, and the air in the tunnel was dense and foggy. As soon as the ground was clear of snow I escaped from my horrible prison, and enjoyed myself in the open, but for safety had to retreat to it again. On one occasion I narrowly escaped discovery. The owner of the estate hard by and his son were out one day with their hounds. These latter rushed to the entrance of the culvert and began snuffing about at it. Their masters observed this, and made the brutes enter the tunnel. I crouched, my loaded gun in my hand, and peered betwixt the iron bars. If one of the hounds had come near me, I would have shot it. Happily the beasts did not venture far in, probably on account of the heavy vapour they had lost the scent. They withdrew, and I remained in my cellar-dwelling till the spring. When the ice melted and the mud became soft, I had to quit my winter quarters. I had suffered so unspeakably that I resolved without more ado to excavate for myself a new habitation underground which in comparison with the culvert seemed a paradise to me." [Footnote: Der neue Pitaval, Leipzig; neue Serie, ii. 1867, pp. 104-105.]
Masch was executed on 18th July 1864.
A picturesque walk through the woods near Wiesbaden on the Taunus road leads to the LeichtweishÖhle, a cave under a mass of fallen rock, in the Nerothal. The cave measures 100 feet in length, and at its entrance and exit are now set up portraits of the former occupant of this retreat and his mistress. Within, in a side chamber, is the bedroom of the robber, and his bed, that was covered with dry moss. In the midst of the cave is a round, massive stone table, and under its foot is a pit excavated to receive his money and other valuables. The cave, now accessible, is an object of many a pleasant excursion from Wiesbaden; over a century ago it was in a dense and pathless forest, the intricacies of which were unknown.
Henry Antony Leichtweiss was born in 1730 at Ohrn, and was the son of a forester in the service of the Duke of Nassau. He was put apprentice to a man who was at once a baker and a besom-maker, and he learned both professions with readiness. Being a well-built, handsome youth, he managed to get engaged as courier in a noble family, and in the situation made many journeys and learned to know the world, and also to lay by some money. In September 1757 he married the daughter of the magistrate (Schultheiss) of Dotzheim, and he obtained appointment under him as scrivener. By his wife he had seven children. On the death of his father-in-law, and the appointment of a new magistrate, the aspect of his affairs changed. He was detected in attempts to appropriate trust-money to his own use, and was dismissed his office. He sank deeper and deeper, and was arrested and imprisoned at last for theft. On leaving Wiesbaden, where he had been confined, he returned to Dotzheim, but there no one would have anything to say to him, and his own wife refused to receive him into her house.
Leichtweiss now gave himself up to a vagabond life, and as he had of old been associated with the chase, he turned to poaching as a resource. The wide stretch of forests of the Taunus, well stocked with game, and the proximity to such markets as Frankfort and Mainz, offered him a prospect of doing a good business in this line. He managed to induce a wench to associate herself with him, and he dug out a cave of which the description has already been given, in which he made his headquarters, and where he lived and carried on his depredations unmolested for seven years. The spot was so secret and the confusion of rocks there was so great, that he trusted never to be discovered. The main danger lay in smoke betraying him when his fire was lighted, or of his track bring followed in the snow during the winter. But, as already said, for seven years he remained undiscovered, although the keepers of the Duke were well aware that the game in the forests was being shot down and disposed of in the town, and although villagers declared that he had stayed and robbed them. These allegations were, however, never proved. When he was at last captured, he was tried and sentenced to be placed in the stocks at Wiesbaden in the market. Two days after he hung himself in prison.
In the chapter on Souterrains I have spoken of the Adersbach and Wickelsdorf rock labyrinths, without mentioning that they have served as a haunt for robbers. I will now deal with them from this point of view. Take a piece of veined marble, and suppose all the white veins of felspar washed clear, leaving the block cleft in every direction from top to bottom, and all the cleavages converging to one point and through that one point only, on the Wickelsdorf side, is access to be had to the labyrinth. But then conceive of the block thus fissured towering three hundred feet or more sheer up, and having narrow rifts as the passages by which the interior may be penetrated. In the eleventh century sixty knights of the army of Boleslas III., when the latter was driven back by the Emperor Henry II., took refuge in the neighbourhood of Trauterau, and built there a castle, and subsisted on robbery. The captain was a Pole named Nislaf. As they prospered and multiplied, Nislaf divided his company, and placed one portion under Hans Breslauer, who said to his men, "We have a treasure-house in these rocks, only unhappily it is empty. We must pillage the merchants and travellers, and fill it." Nislaf's party fell out with one another, and one, named Alt, led off the discontented and built a fortress, the remains of which may be traced at the highest point above the Adersbach labyrinth. One day the crowing of a cock betrayed where Nislaf had his abode, and troops were sent from Prague to clear the country. Most of the bandits were captured and executed.
In the early part of the nineteenth century a notorious ruffian at the head of a gang lurked in this neighbourhood. His name was Babinsky.
One evening, in the autumn of 1839, a carriage drew up at the outskirts of the Dobrusch forest. A couple of ladies descended from it at the door of a tavern, and asked the Jewish landlady if they could be accommodated with supper and a bed. "We are afraid to proceed," said one of the ladies, "for fear of Babinsky." "Babinsky," answered the hostess, "has never shown his face here."
The ladies were shown into a plain apartment, but were made uneasy by seeing a number of ferocious looking men in the passage and bar. "Who are these?" asked the lady. "Only packmen," replied the landlady. After supper the two ladies were shown into a large bedroom in which at one side was an old-fashioned wardrobe. When left alone they examined this article of furniture, and perceived an unpleasant odour issuing from it. By some means or other they succeeded in forcing open the door, when they perceived that at the bottom of the wardrobe was a trap-door. This they raised, and to their dismay discovered a well or vault, out of which the unpleasant odour issued. They now set fire to some newspaper, and threw it down the hole, and to their unspeakable horror saw by the flames a half-naked corpse. The ladies closed the trap and considered. It was clear that they were in a murderous den, probably controlled by Babinsky. The youngest lady, who had most presence of mind and courage, descended the stairs, opened the guest-room, and said to her coachman, "Hans, it is now half-past nine. This is the hour at which Captain Feldegg, my brother-in-law, promised to start at the head of a military escort to conduct us through the forest. We will leave as soon as you can harness the horses to save him the trouble of coming on so far as this."
Hans finished his glass of wine and rose. The men in the guest-room looked at one another. Before half-an-hour had elapsed the carriage rolled away, and next morning the police were communicated with. It need hardly be said the ladies met with no escort.
A few days later a middle-aged, ragged fellow, with a grinding organ, arrived at the inn, and called for a glass. In the guest-room were the "packmen," and some equally wild-looking girls. The grinding organ was put in requisition, and to its strains they danced till past midnight, when Babinsky himself entered and the dancing ceased. The organ-grinder had so ingratiated himself into the favour of the robbers, that they resolved on retaining him as the musician of the band. He was conveyed across country till they reached some such a rocky retreat as that of Wickelsdorf or Adersbach, and there spent three weeks, only allowed to accompany the band when they were going to have a frolic. On these occasions they betook themselves to the resort agreed on, by twos and threes. One day as some of them passed along a road, they saw a blind beggar in the hedge, asking for alms. Some cast him coppers, and the organ-grinder slipped into his hand a kreutzer, wrapped in a bit of paper.
That night the tavern was surrounded by the military, and the whole gang, along with Babinsky, was captured. This was on 15th October 1839. The organ-grinder was the Prague detective Hoche.
The trial dragged on for several years; some of the robbers were executed, some sentenced to ten, others to twenty years of imprisonment. No evidence was produced that actually convicted Babinsky of having committed, or been privy to the murders, and he was sentenced to penal servitude for life.
I was rambling in Bohemia and tracing the Riesen Gebirge in 1886. On reaching home I read what follows from the Vienna Correspondent of the Standard. "At the little market town of Leitomischl in Bohemia," at the foot of the continuation of the Giant Mountains I had been exploring, "an innkeeper and his wife and son have just been arrested by the police on a charge of having, during the last twenty-five years, murdered no fewer than eleven persons. The victims were all travellers who had put up for a night at his house, and who had shown that they were in possession of ready cash. For a considerable time the suspicions of the police had been aroused by the sudden disappearance of various visitors staying at this inn. Among the latest cases was a cattle dealer who, after visiting the market, was returning home with the proceeds of the sale of a herd of cattle, and a young baron who had won a large sum in a public lottery. After putting up at the inn in question, these men, like others before them, were never heard of again. The very last case was that of the sudden disappearance of a lady, who was undoubtedly murdered and robbed by the arrested persons."
I did in fact find the inns in Bohemia, in certain places infested, but not with bandits and cut-throats.
CHAPTER XII
ROCK SEPULCHRES
A noteworthy distinction exists between the countless rock-tombs in Palestine and those equally countless in Egypt. In the former there has not been found a single inscription to record the name of the occupant, whereas among the latter not one was unnamed.
The reason probably was that the Jew had no expectation of existing in a state after death, and those of his family he put away in their holes in the rocks had ceased to be to him anything more than a recollection. All his hopes, his ambition, were limited to this life and to the glorification of his nation. The highest blessing he could personally reckon on was that his days might be long in the land which the Lord his God would give him.
The horizon of the Egyptian, on the other hand, was full of anticipation of a life of the spirit when parted from the body. "Instead of the acres of inscriptions which cover the tombs of Egypt," says Dean Stanley, "not a single letter has been found in any ancient sepulchre of Palestine."
When the Israelites escaped from the iron furnace of Egypt, they carried with them so intense an abhorrence of all that savoured of Misraim that they put away from them polytheism and repudiated idolatry; they swept away as well the doctrine of life after death, such as dominated the Egyptian mind, that they might focus all their desires on this present life.
"Let me bury my dead out of my sight," expressed the feeling of the Israelite before and after the Exodus.
The patriarchs had no conception of the resurrection of the body. The idea was unknown to them. Their faith did not even embrace a belief in the immortality of the soul. A passage in Job (xix. 25-27) has been adduced to prove the contrary, but it does so only because it is a mistranslation, and was manipulated by the translators according to their own preconceptions. Even the word rendered Redeemer has no such signification, it means "the Avenger of Blood." It was probably through contact with other nations that had a wider hope, that slowly and haltingly the conception of a prolonged existence after death made its way among the Jews.
Christianity invested the body with a sacredness undreamt of under the Old Covenant, and gave assurance, not of a continued existence after death alone, but of a resuscitation of the body. "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
The Jews entertained a strong aversion towards incineration, because the latter was a pagan usage, and they gloried in their singularity. In Rome they had their catacombs hewn out of the rock, and the Christians followed their example.
A short time before the Christian era, Judea had been made tributary to Rome by the victories of Pompey, and many thousands of Jews were transferred to Rome, where a particular district was assigned to them on the right bank of the Tiber. We know how tenaciously Jews clung to their religion and to their traditional practices, and they sought to lay their departed members in rocky sepulchres, such as those of their distant country. And, in fact, outside the Porta Portese, the gate nearest to their quarter of the town, a Jewish catacomb exists, discovered in 1602, excavated in Monte Verde, that contains the tombs of the Hebrews. From this all emblems exclusively Christian are absent. There are representations of the Ark of the Covenant, of the seven- branched candlestick. The lamps also were impressed with the same symbols; and in a fragment of a Greek inscription is traced the word "Synagogue."
The catacombs of the Christians resembled those of the Jews in every other particular.
Three different kinds of stone compose the basis of the Roman Campagna; the tufa litoide, as hard and durable as granite, used extensively for building purposes; the tufa granolare, which is consistent enough to retain the form given to it by excavators, but it is useless as building material, and lastly the Pozzuolana, largely employed in the making of Roman cement. Neither the arenaria or sand quarries, nor those for the building stone were ever employed for excavation to make catacombs, whereas the granular tufa has been so largely excavated for this purpose that if the galleries were continued in one line, it has been reckoned that they would stretch the entire length of the Italian peninsula. They form a labyrinth of passages and cross-passages, and are moreover in several stages called piani. But they do not extend far from the Eternal City, not beyond the third milestone. The galleries have a breadth of from two to four feet, and their height is governed by the nature of the rock in which they are hewn. The walls on both sides are lined with graves dug out of the rock, in a horizontal position, one above the other, like bunks in a cabin. In each of these reposed one or more bodies. Here and there the sequence is broken by a cross-passage that leads to a small chamber, and in these chambers the sides, like those of the galleries, are perforated with graves. All these graves were originally closed by slabs of marble or tiles. This is about the only distinction between the graves of the rich and those of the poor, of the slave from his master. Those who desired to set some mark on the resting-place of a relative, to distinguish it from those around, either had the name engraved upon the slab, or rudely scratched with the sharp end of a trowel in the mortar by which the slab was secured, or else a bit of ornamented glass or a ring or coin was impressed in the mortar while it was still wet.
The martyrs in many cases were accorded a more elaborate grave. They were laid in a sarcophagus in an arcossolium, and on the covering slab the Holy Mysteries were celebrated on the anniversary of their martyrdom. But sometimes a wealthy family had its own chamber, cubiculum, reserved for its members.
The puticoli, of which mention has already been made as ash and refuse pits, were of a totally different description. They were funnel-shaped shafts sunk in the rocks, the narrow orifice being on the level of the ground. Into this were precipitated the carcases of slaves and of the poor. Indeed, they are still in use at Naples, when a cart with a lantern may be followed till it reaches the place of interment, where a hole gapes. The corpse that is enveloped in a shroud only, is shot down into the hole, without its winding sheet, that is reserved for further use.
But to return to the catacombs. There are not only over thirteen in the neighbourhood of Rome, but they are found also at Otricoli, Soriano, Spoleto, Vindena, Chiusi, Lucca, Castellamare, Prata by Avellino, Aquila, Puzzuoli, BaiÆ, Nola, Canesa, Tropea, Manfredonia, Venisa—this last perhaps Jewish. There are five sets of them at Naples. Others in Malta. In Spain at Ancona, Siviglia, and Elvira. In France is the hypogee opening out of the early church of S. Victor at Marseilles. In Germany is one at TrÈves. In Hungary at FÜnfkirchen. One in the Greek island of Melos, at Alexandria also, and at Cyrene. One at Salamis in Cyprus. The catacombs of Syracuse are like those of Rome, of vast extent. They have lofty vaults very superior to the narrow gangways of the cemeteries of Rome. A broad gallery runs athwart the whole labyrinth, and from this branch out innumerable passages. One large circular hall is lighted from above. Along the sides are niches that served as sepulchres. Paintings as at Rome decorate the walls and vaults, all of an early Christian character, representing men and women in the attitude of prayer, the peacock, and the sacred monogram.
Numerous inscriptions from the tombs are collected in the museum of Syracuse.
The catacombs of Paris are not of ancient date as catacombs. They were originally, like those of Syracuse, quarries for the construction of the calcaire grossier for building the city, down to the seventeenth century. They extend under the communes of Vauregard, Montrouge, and Gentilly on the left bank of the Seine, and it is said that a tenth part of Paris is thus undermined. In 1774, and again in 1777, accidents occurred through the giving way of the crowns of the caverns, bringing down with them the houses built above. In the Boulevard Neuf a building near the BarriÈre d'Enfer suddenly sank into a hole 80 feet deep, and this drew public attention to the danger.
Until the end of the reign of Louis XVI the principal burying-ground of Paris had been the Cemetery of the Innocents. Originally situated beyond the walls of the town, it had in due course been so surrounded by the growing metropolis as to render it impossible to continue its use as a cemetery, and in 1784 the practice of burying therein was discontinued, the accumulated bones of Parisians were removed thence with great precaution, on account of the insalubrity of the operation, and they were deposited in the old quarries, and the catacombs were solemnly consecrated for their reception by the Archbishop of Paris on 7th April 1787. A public market-place was then established on the site of the former cemetery.
To protect the town from settling down into this necropolis, vast sums were expended in substructures, so as to remove all danger of future collapse.
Gradually many other cemeteries that had been encroached upon, or surrounded, were required to yield up their dead, so that it was estimated that the catacomb contained the remains of three million persons. The bodies of some victims of the Revolution were placed here as well.
For many years the bones remained as they were thrown down on their removal, in heaps, but after 1812 they were gradually arranged in a fantastic manner, and turned into an exhibition for the curious. Sixty- three staircases lead from the different parts of the town into the catacombs, and are used by workmen and agents appointed to take care of the necropolis. Twice in the year tours of inspection are made by the surveyors, but visitors are no longer allowed access to the catacomb. There have occurred cases of men having been lost in the intricate labyrinth.
The crypts in which were laid the bodies of saints gave occasion to kings, princes, and great men employing like mausoleums.
The poor and mean might lie in the earth, but men of consequence must have vaults in which the members of their families might be laid. What hideous profanation of sepulchres would have been spared had the kings of France been laid in the earth! They elected to repose in the crypt of the splendid minster of S. Denis. When the Revolution broke out, the Convention resolved that the tombs should be destroyed in accordance with the motion of BarrÈre, 31st July 1793, "La main puissante de la RÉpublique doit Éffacer impitoyablement ces Épitaphes superbes, et demolir ces mausolÉes qui rappeleraient des rois l'effrayant souvenir;" and "of the coffins of our old tyrants let us make bullets to hurl at our enemies." The decree for the destruction was sacrilegiously executed; the coffins were opened—Henri II. and his queen in their robes, Henri IV. in a perfect state of preservation, Louis XIV. still recognisable. The body of Turenne, with the fatal bullet visible in it, was preserved as a peep-show. The rest were thrown into "fosses communes" dug in the neighbourhood. By a singular coincidence, the work of desecration was begun on 12th October 1793, the anniversary of the day on which, one hundred years before, Louis XIV. had caused the demolition of the tombs of the German Emperors at Spires. Not only so, but the agent employed by the Convention was Hentz, a namesake of the superintendent of the work of destruction carried out at Spires.
And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges—Louis XI. escaped. He had been buried in a crypt at ClÉry, and had been forgotten. In 1889 the abbÉ Saget, curÉ of ClÉry, opened the vault and found the body intact. Louis XI. had this sepulchre made for himself during his lifetime. Now the visitor can take in his hand the head, and muse over it on the treachery, cunning, and cruelty that once lodged in that little brain-pan. Scott may have been incorrect in his history in "Quentin Durward," but he was accurate in his characterisation of the king.
The instinct of immortality is implanted in the human breast. The reverential care with which primeval man treated his dead, showed a confusion of ideas between soul and body. His senses told him, and told men in the historic period, that the body dissolved to dust, yet as a temple of the spirit it was treated with respect. The soul to the Egyptians was in some manner always related to the body. The "ka" must have something to which to return, if not to the mummy, then to its model.
The dead in the first ages were given the caves in which they had lived, but they began to press out the living, to monopolise all caves, and afterwards artificial dwellings were reared to receive them, stone structures, dolmens, that were heaped over with earth, to make them resemble their former subterranean habitations. Sometimes these structural caves consist of a series of chambers connected by a passage, the so-called allÉes couvertes of France, but of which we have fine examples in Scotland and Ireland.
Where huge slabs of granite, limestone, or sandstone were not available, the living scooped out underground cemeteries, closely resembling their own underground dwellings.
In the Petit Morin are many of these that have been explored and described by the Baron de Baye. I have already spoken of the habitable caves there found. But there were sepulchral chambers excavated in the chalk as well. These differ from the others in that the entrances are blocked by a large slab, and in some instances have sculptured figures in them of the goddess of Death, or of a stone hammer.
The Norsemen buried their sea-kings in the ships in which they had sailed on their piratical expeditions. King Ring, when he slew Harold HilditÖn, buried him in his chariot and with his horses. In Gaulish tombs such chariots have been found. The Scandinavians seem to have had but a confused idea of what death was; the dead were but in a condition of suspended animation. HervÖr went to the isle of Samsey where, under a huge cairn, lay her father Angantyr and his eleven brothers who had fallen in single combat. Angantyr had been buried along with his sword Tyrfing.
When she reached the grave mound she sang:—
"Wake thou up, Angantyr! Wakens thee HervÖr Thy only daughter. Give from the grave mound Freely thy good sword.
"Wake thou up Hervard! Wake thou, Hjorvard! Hrani, Angantyr! Shake off your slumbers Under the tree-roots."
From his grave Angantyr replies:—
"HervÖr, my daughter, Wherefore disturb me? Full of temerity Madly thou seekest Dead men to waken."
But she persists. She will have the sword. Whereupon the cairn gapes, and she sees fire therein, and from out of the mound and flame the sword is hurled forth and falls at her feet. [Footnote: "Hervarar Saga," Copenh. 1785.]
Grettir the Strong broke into the tomb of Karr the Old, an ancient Viking, to obtain his sword, and had to wrestle with the dead man before he could wrench it from him. [Footnote: "Grettir Saga," Copenh. 1859, chap. xviii.] I will quote another case of cairn-breaking that exhibits the same conception of suspended life in the grave, and that in Christian times. I shall slightly condense the story. "Gest started breaking into the mound in the day. At evening, with the help of the priest, he had got down to make a hole in the vault, but next morning it was all closed up again." To obviate this the priest watched all night by the cairn furnished with holy water. Next morning when Gest returned, the mound was as he had left it, and the two continued their operations. Gest was let down into the cavity, and the priest and other men held the rope. It was fifty fathoms down to the floor. Gest had a candle in his hand, and he now lighted it and looked about him. He saw a big ship with five hundred men in it, and they were all preparing to start up, but as the light of the (consecrated) candle fell on them none stirred, but they stared blankly and snorted. Gest smote at them to cut off their heads, but it was as though his sword passed through water. He cleared the dragon-ship of all its valuables and sent them up by the rope. Then he searched for Raknar (the Seaking whose tomb it was). He found a descent still further underground, and there he discovered Raknar seated on a throne. He was frightful to look upon, and the vault was both cold and stinking. A cauldron was under his feet full of treasure, and he had a torque about his neck, very resplendent, and a gold ring on his arm. He was in breastplate and helmet, and had a sword in his hand. Gest went up to Raknar and saluted him courteously in a song, and Raknar bowed in acknowledgment. Gest said to him: "I cannot commend your appearance at present though I can praise your achievements. I have come a long way in quest of you, and I am not going away unrewarded for my trouble. Give me some of what you have, and I will sing your renown far and wide." Raknar bowed his head to him, and allowed him to remove his helmet and breastplate. But when Gest attempted to deprive him of his sword, Raknar sprang up and attacked Gest. He found him neither old nor stiff. And now the consecrated candle went out. Raknar became so strong that Gest could hardly bear up against him; and all the men in the ship now rose up. Then Gest invoked his father Bard who appeared, but availed naught, then he called upon Him who had created heaven and earth, and vowed to accept the faith which King Olaf was preaching. Thereupon Olaf appeared in a blaze of light, and Raknar collapsed, with all his men. His power was gone from him. Whereupon Gest cut off his head and laid it at his thigh. At the apparition of King Olaf all the dead men who had stood up reseated themselves on their benches. After that Gest removed all the treasures out of the tomb. [Footnote: "BartÐa Saga," Copenh. 1860, chap. xx.] The cairn of the outlaw Gunnar was seen open occasionally. "Sharphedin and Hogni were out of doors one evening by Gunnar's cairn on the south side. The moon and stars were shining clear and bright, but every now and then the clouds drove over them. Then all at once they thought they saw the cairn standing open, and lo! Gunnar had turned himself in the grave-mound and was looking at the moon. They thought they saw four lights burning within, and none of them threw a shadow. They saw Gunnar, that he was merry, and wore a right joyful face. He sang a song, and that so loud it might have been heard though they had been further off." The song of the dead man is given, and then it is added: "After that the cairn was shut up again." [Footnote: "Nials Saga," chap. lxxix., trans, by Dasent, Edin. 1861, chap. lxxvii.]
Helgi Hundingsbane was visited in his grave-mound by his wife Sigrun, who spent a night there with him. He informed her that all her tears fell on and moistened him. "Here Helgi have I prepared for thee in thy mound a peaceful bed. On thy breast, chieftain, I will repose as I was wont in thy lifetime." To which the dead Helgi replies: "Nothing is to be regarded as unexpected, since thou, living, a king's daughter, sleepest in a grave-mound, in the arms of a corpse." Next morning Sigrun departs. [Footnote: "Helgi Kv. Hundingsbana," ii. 45-47.]
Saxo Grammaticus tells us a grimly tale. Asmund and Asvid, brothers in arms, had vowed not to be separated in death. It fell out that Asvid died, and was buried along with his horse and dog in a cairn. And Asmund, because of his oath of friendship, had courage to be buried with him, food being put in for him to eat. Now just at this time, Eric (King of Sweden) happened to pass nigh the barrow of Asvid, and the Swedes thinking it might contain treasure, broke into it with mattocks, and saw disclosed a cave deeper than they had anticipated. To explore this, a youth, chosen by lot, was let down in a basket. But Asmund, when he saw the boy descend, cast him out, and got into it himself. Then he gave the signal to draw up. Those above drew in the basket, thinking by the weight that it contained much treasure. But when they saw the unknown figure of a man emerge, scared by his strange appearance, and thinking that the dead had come to life again, they flung down the rope and fled. For Asmund looked ghastly, covered with the corruption of the charnel-house. He tried to recall them, and assured them that they were needlessly alarmed. And when Eric saw him, he marvelled at the aspect of his bloody face, the blood flowing freely and spurting out. Then Asmund told his story. He had been buried with his friend Asvid, but Asvid came to life again every night, and being ravenously hungry, fell on and devoured his horse. That eaten, he had treated his dog in the same manner, and having consumed that he turned on his friend, and with his sharp nails tore his cheek and ripped off one of his ears. Asmund, who had no ambition to be eaten, made a desperate resistance, and finally succeeded in driving a stake through the body of the vampire. Out of delicacy due to old friendship, Asmund did not have recourse to the usual means of quelling the posthumous vivacity and vitality of a corpse, which was to cut off the head and make the dead man sit on it. [Footnote: "Saxo Gramm.," V., chap, clxii- iii.]
The notion of suspended animation after death by no means expired with paganism. When Severus, Bishop of Ravenna, was about to die, he went in full pontificals to the tomb of his wife and daughter, had the stone removed, and bade the dead ones make room for him between them, and they obeyed. When S. Meven died, and his faithful friend Austell followed him shortly after, the dead body moved on one side in the sarcophagus to accommodate his companion. When an irreverent man struck the coffin of S. Cadoc with a staff, the incensed Saint "roared like a bull." In the Life of S. Germanus of Auxerre is a curious episode. A pagan named Mamertinus being overtaken by night and a storm, took refuge in a solitary building in which was a sarcophagus. He put his knapsack under his head on the upper slab of the tomb, and lying down there went to sleep. At midnight he was roused by a young man at the door of the cell, who called out, "Corcodemus, Corcodemus, levite of Christ, arise!" whereupon a voice answered from the tomb, "What do you want?" The youth replied, "Bishop Perigrinus and Bishop Amator want you at the church, where they are holding vigil." "I can't go," replied the dead man, "I have a visitor here and I must show him hospitality." After an interval the young man returned with two others and again summoned Corcodemus, who now got out of his grave and said to one of those who was at the door, "I will go with you, but you must abide here and protect my visitor, for there is a bitch with her young, to the number of seven, ready to tear him to pieces."
So late as 1680 a book appeared, De Miraculis Mortuorum, by L. C. F. Garmann, published at Leipzig, opposing opinions not merely of the ignorant but of the learned as to a kind of prolongation of physical life in the dead—their issuing from the graves to suck the blood of the living, their continuing their wonted avocations underground, as a shoemaker being heard cobbling in his coffin, of infants shedding their milk teeth and growing second teeth, of gnawing their grave clothes, and many other horrible superstitions—showing how persistent the belief was that the dead did continue to live in their sepulchres. [Footnote: The confusion between the ghost and the corpse is exemplified in "Hamlet."
"Tell Why thy canoniz'd bones, hearsed in death, Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre, Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd, Hath op'd his ponderous and marble jaws To cast thee up again."
Act I. sc. 5.]
The idea that by symbolic burial a man became regenerate, that he put off the old condition and entered into another that was new, by passing through the earth or a hole in the rocks, was very general, and it has continued to the present day in the modified form of enabling a sufferer by this means to leave behind his infirmities and pass into a condition of robust health, or of one charged with a crime clearing himself by this ordeal.
The passing of a child through the earth was forbidden by the Canons of Edgar (A.D. 969). [Footnote: Thorpe, "Ancient Laws and Institutes," Lond. 1840.] Women who had crying children dug a hole in the earth and thrust the child through, drawing it out at a further hole. Men were forbidden also to pass cattle through a hollow tree or per terram foratam transire. In France weak children were passed through a hollow stone of S. TessÉ. In the crypt of Ripon Minster is a hole in the rock through which young women crept to establish their innocence when charged with incontinence. In Iceland a long turf was cut attached to the soil at both ends, and such as would pass out of a condition of hostility into one of brotherhood crawled through the gap. At Ilefeld, in the Harz, is a holed stone called the NadelÖhr. Any one coming to settle in the Harz for the first time is required to creep twice through the perforation. In a good many places in Germany a similar process is gone through to cure lumbago. Indra, the god of Thunder among the Hindoos, drew a sick man thrice through a hole, and thereby gave him health and new birth. The many Helfensteins that are found in Germany were in like manner stones of Help, by traversing which the old man was put off and the new man put on. [Footnote: Sepp, Altbayerischer Sagenschatz, Munich, 1876, p. 87 et seq.] Creeping through a holed stone, or under one suspended over another, is still practised in Ireland as a cure for disorders. From passing under the earth the custom passed to going through a split tree, the tree representing the coffin. An interesting account of this usage will be found in White's "Selborne."
And now let us turn to something else.
A religion of the worship of ancestors formed the ground-work of many religions that in process of time have totally changed their character. It lies at the root of the creeds and practices of most peoples in east and west. It was in Greece before its religion passed into the stage of the deification of natural forces. The Assyrians and Chaldeans clung to it in Western Asia. The Egyptians in the valley of the Nile, the Etruscans in Italy. At the other extremity of the world, the Chinese and Anamites perform its rites to this day from Saghalien to Cambodia.
But in Western Asia and in Europe the primitive religion became modified little by little. On the borders of the Tigris and the Euphrates, as well as on the banks of the Nile, appeared the beginnings of a different eschatology and a vague expectation of a resurrection of the dead. The Hellenes and Romans, under the influence of philosophy, acquired another conception of immortality, and their institutions, issuing from collectivism, broke up into individualism.
In the extreme East, on the other hand, the ancient beliefs and institutions remained stationary, and Buddhism was unable materially to disturb them. It introduced its doctrine of Metampsichosis, its Nirvana, and its hell; but these notions did not modify, they got mixed up with the old conceptions in a jumble of heterogeneous and contradictory beliefs. To the present day the family remains the unit in the State; it is under the patriarchal despotism of the head of the line, the priest of the domestic hearth, the proprietor for the time being of the family estate. Every household has its particular gods and protectors—the ancestors thus sublimated, and the master of the family, the prospective god. The condition beyond the grave in no way depends on conduct during life, it is determined by the descendants. If the defunct be honoured, enriched with sacrifices, he becomes a beneficent protector and is happy; neglected and abandoned, he avenges his unfortunate condition on his forgetful posterity. To transmit the family cult and the patrimonial field to an heir is the first duty of man. We inherit unconsciously, not the physical character of our ancestors only, but also their ideas and prejudices. Our practices are often dictated by custom of very ancient date, not at all by reason or by conviction. Expense and trouble are incurred to convey a corpse from one end of Europe to England, that it may repose in the family vault. We decorate our graves with flowers as though the dead appreciated them; they are but the representatives of the ancient sacrifice to the dead. We drink to the memory of the deceased as though pouring out libations to them. Our tombstones are direct descendants of the menhir and the obelisk, our altar-tombs of the dolmen, our family vault of the primeval cave ossuary.
But in one point we have diverged very far from the path of old beliefs. We have lost touch with the invisible world; we put our dead out of sight and remember them no more, as though no part of the community to which we belong, nor links in a chain of which every link is living.
It was one of the sayings of Swedenborg, that the Aryan West had something to learn from the Turanian East. It is so—the reverend thought of the dead as still forming a part of the organism of the family. With the revolt at the Reformation at the trade made out of the feelings of the bereaved, the coining of their tears into cash to line the pockets of the priests, came an unwarranted oblivion of the dead, a dissociation from them. The thought that the departed had still a claim on our sympathy and on our prayers was banished as smacking of the discarded abuse. Prayer for the dying was legitimate and obligatory at ten minutes to three, but prohibited at five minutes to three when the breath had passed away. We have gone too far in this direction. We live in an immaterial as well as in a material world. We are planted at the overlap of two spheres, that which is spiritual and that which is physical, and we gravitate so sensibly and so rapidly to the latter as to lose touch with the former, and finally to disbelieve in the existence of such a sphere.
The earth can radiate its heat, and receive and be steeped in the falling dew only when the sky is not overcast; but our heavens are so thick with clouds that our spirits can exhale no warmth into the Infinite, nor drink in any balm descending from the Unseen. It is only by detachment from the routine of vulgar life that we can enter into any relation with the spiritual world. Political interests, social obligations, financial concerns, choke the spiracles of our inner being, and we lose all concern about what is supersensible, and hold no communication with it. There are stars and planets overhead, Orion with his spangled belt, Cassiopeia in her glittering chair, and Pleiades in their web of silver, but we cannot see them because of the fog that envelops us.
According to an Indian legend, the first men were bred like maggots in the heart of the earth, but laying hold of some depending fibres drew themselves up into the light of day. We reverse the order, and from the bright spiritual sphere crawl underground by the thousand tendrils of daily life.
The early Methodists and the Quakers broke away from the low material conception of life common in their day, and asserted the reality of the spiritual world, and the duty of living for it, as also the certainty of holding intercommunion with the spirits. The 'Other worldliness' of the mediaeval monastic mysticism had produced a revolt against a conception of life that was false, its passive hostility to civilisation, the hollowness of its ideal existence, its exaggerated asceticism, its disparagement of the family life, and the result was the swing of the pendulum in the opposite direction. The recoil came with the Methodists. But we cannot live wholly in the world of spirit, any more than we ought to live wholly in the world of matter, for our nature is double, and no portion of it should be atrophied. Extreme mysticism is as falsifying of our nature as is extreme worldliness. The stupidity and charlatanism of modern spiritualism is the rebellion of men and women against the materialism of present conception of life. Where natural expression of a need is checked, it breaks out in a disordered form, just as arrested perspiration and circulation of the blood produce fever. If all recognition of supersensible existence be denied, the assertion that it does, has its place, and makes its demands on us, will call forth, if not a wholesome, then a diseased expression.
We are intended to rise at times and breathe the atmosphere above us, and then to descend again to the lower region. It is only the dab and the common plaice that are content to lie ever on the bottom, and they are but one-sided fish. They see with one eye only, the other has been absorbed and become dead. Every creature has in it a promise of something better than what it is. The slow-worm has rudimentary legs, but they are never developed; the oyster has rudimentary eyes, but they come to nothing. The larva has in it the promise of wings, and it grows into a butterfly or dies a grub. The soul of man has its wings so battered by its cage and is so enamoured of its groundsel and bit of sugar, that even if the door be left open it will not look forth, certainly not break away. Yet there is a world beyond the bars, and a world peopled by happy spirits, and if it cannot at once join them, it can call to them and unite with them in rapturous song. The old turnspit was bred in the kitchen, and its daily task was to run in the revolving drum that helped to roast the meat. Its legs became deformed like those of the dachshund. It cared not to romp in the green meadows, to run with the hounds, it waddled about the kitchen floor looking out for the bones and scraps of fat cast to it, as payment for its toil. And that is what we are becoming through unremitting neglect of our spiritual avocation.
More than fifty years ago I was walking at night through lanes near Dartmoor, and caught up a trudging postman who daily, nightly, measured long distances. I soon found that he was a man who had his spiritual eye open.
"Do you not feel lonely in these long walks in the dark?" I inquired.
"I am never alone," he replied, "the spirits are always with me."
"Your thoughts," I suggested.
"My thoughts are indeed within me, humming in my head. I must go forth to meet the spirits. Look here," he went on, "the soul of man is like a fly in a cobweb. It can't spread its wings till it breaks loose, and then it very often carries away some of the threads with it."
Mr. Jacks gives us, in his "Human Studies," one of a shepherd on the Wolds, the counterpart of my postman. There be more of these men than is generally supposed. But he who would deal with this subject would be constrained to say with the knight in the "Canterbury Pilgrims"—
"I have, God wot, a large field to ere And wayke ben the oxen in the plough."
I have broken away from my caves, and have rambled—I know not whither.
Vive, vale: si quid novisti rectius istis, Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum. —HORACE, Epist. i. 6.
