Many of those weird melodious sounds which romance and legendary lore have connected with the enchanted strains of invisible music have originated in the moaning of the winds, and the rhythmical flow of the waves. In several of their operatic works, our dramatic composers have skilfully introduced the music of the fairies and of other aerial conceptions of the fancy, reminding us of those harmonious sounds which Caliban depicts in the ‘Tempest’ (Act iii. sc. 2):

Most countries have their stories and traditions of mysterious music which, in many cases, has been associated with certain supernatural properties. Under one form or another, the belief in phantom music has extensively prevailed throughout Europe, and in many parts of England it is still supposed to be heard, occasionally as a presage of death. It has been generally supposed that music is the favourite recreation of the spirits that haunt mountains, rivers, and all kinds of lonely places. The Indians would not venture near Manitobah Island, their superstitious fears being due to the weird sounds produced by the waves as they beat upon the beach at the foot of the cliffs, near its northern extremity. During the night, when a gentle breeze was blowing from the north, the various sounds heard on the island were quite sufficient to strike awe into their minds. These sounds frequently resembled the ringing of distant bells; so close, indeed, was the resemblance that travellers would awake during the night with the impression that they were listening to chimes. When the breeze subsided, and the waves played gently on the beach, a low wailing sound would be heard three hundred yards from the cliffs.[337]

Sometimes music is heard at sea, and it is believed in Ireland that when a friend or relative dies, a warning voice is discernible. The following is a rough translation of an Irish song founded on this superstition, which is generally sung to a singularly wild and melancholy air:

When ships go down at sea, it is said the death-bell is at times distinctly heard, a superstition to which Sir Walter Scott alludes:

At the present day, indeed, all kinds of phantom musical sounds are believed to float through the air—sounds which the peasantry, in days past, attributed to the fairies.

The American Indians have a similar piece of legendary lore. Gayarre, in his ‘Louisiana,’ says that mysterious music floats on the waters of the river Pascagoula, ‘particularly on a calm moonlight night. It seems to issue from caverns or grottoes in the bed of the river, and sometimes oozes up through the water under the very keel of the boat which contains the traveller, whose ear it strikes as the distant concert of a thousand Æolian harps. On the banks of the river, close by the spot where the music is heard, tradition says that there existed a tribe different from the rest of the Indians. Every night when the moon was visible, they gathered round the beautifully carved figure of a mermaid, and, with instruments of strange shape, worshipped the idol with such soul-stirring music as had never before blessed human ears. One day a priest came among them and tried to convert them from the worship of the mermaid. But on a certain night, at midnight, there came a rushing on the surface of the river, and the water seemed to be seized with a convulsive fury. The Indians and the priest rushed to the bank of the river to contemplate the supernatural spectacle. When she saw them, the mermaid turned her tones into still more bewitching melody, and kept chanting a sort of mystic song. The Indians listened with growing ecstasy, and one of them plunged into the river to rise no more. The rest—men, women, and children—followed in quick succession, moved, as it were, with the same irresistible impulse. When the last of the race disappeared, the river returned to its bed. Ever since that time is heard occasionally the distant music, which the Indians say is caused by their musical brethren, who still keep up their revels at the bottom of the river, in the palace of the mermaid.’

It was a popular belief in years gone by, that it was dangerous to listen long to the weirdly fascinating influence of phantom music, or, as it was sometimes called, ‘diabolic music,’ as it was employed by evil-disposed spirits for the purpose of accomplishing some wicked design. Tradition tells how certain weird music was long since heard in an old mansion in Schleswig Holstein. The story goes that at a wedding there was a certain young lady present, who was the most enthusiastic dancer far and near, and who, in spite of having danced all the evening, petulantly exclaimed, ‘If the devil himself were to call me out, I would not refuse him.’ Suddenly the door of the ball-room flew open, and a stranger entered and invited her to dance. Round and round they whirled unceasingly, faster and faster, until, to the horror of all present, she fell down dead. Every year afterwards, on the same day as this tragic event happened, exactly at midnight, the mansion long resounded with diabolic music, the lady haunting the scene of her fearful death. There are numerous versions of this story, and one current in Denmark is known as ‘The Indefatigable Fiddler.’ It appears that on a certain Sunday evening, some young people were merrymaking, when it was decided to have a little dancing. In the midst of an animated discussion as to how they could procure a musician, one of the party boastingly said, ‘Now, that leave to me. I will bring you a musician, even if it should be the devil himself.’ Thereupon he left the house, and had not gone far when he met a poverty-looking man with a fiddle under his arm, who, for a certain sum, agreed to play. Soon the young people, spellbound by the fiddler’s music, were frantically dancing up and down the room unable to stop, and in spite of their entreaties he continued playing. They must have soon died of exhaustion, had not the parish priest arrived at the farmhouse, and expelled the fiddler by certain mystic words. Sometimes, it is said, the sound of music, such as harp-playing, is heard in the most sequestered spots, and is attributed to supernatural agency. The Welsh peasantry thought it proceeded from the fairies, who were supposed to be specially fond of this instrument; but such music had this peculiarity—no one could ever learn the tune.

Cortachy Castle, the seat of the Earl of Airlie, has long had its mysterious drummer; and whenever the sound of his drum is heard, it betokens the speedy death of a member of the Ogilvie family. The story goes that ‘either the drummer, or some officer whose emissary he was, had excited the jealousy of a former Lord Airlie, and that in consequence he was put to death by being thrust into his own drum and flung from the window of the tower, in which is situated the chamber where his music is apparently chiefly heard. It is said that he threatened to haunt the family if his life were taken,’ a promise which he has fulfilled.[338] With this strange warning may be compared the amusing story popularly known as ‘The Drummer of Tedworth,’ in which the ghost or evil spirit of a drummer, or the ghost of a drum, performed the principal part in this mysterious drama for ‘two entire years.’ The story, as succinctly given by George Cruikshank,[339] goes that in March 1661, Mr. Monpesson, a magistrate, caused a vagrant drummer to be arrested, who had been annoying the country by noisy demands for charity, and had ordered his drum to be taken from him, and left in the bailiff’s house. About the middle of the following April, when Mr. Monpesson was preparing for a journey to London, the bailiff sent the drum to his house. But on his return home, he was informed that noises had been heard, and then he heard the noises himself, which were a ‘thumping and drumming,’ accompanied by ‘a strange noise and hollow sound.’ The sign of it when it came was like a hurling in the air over the house, and at its going off, the beating of a drum, like that of the ‘breaking up of a guard.’ After a month’s disturbance outside the house, it came into the room where the drum lay. For an hour together it would beat ‘Roundheads and Cockolds,’ the ‘tattoo,’ and several other points of war as well as any drummer. Upon one occasion, when many were present, a gentleman said, ‘Satan, if the drummer set thee to work, give three knocks,’ which it did at once. And for further trial, he bid it for confirmation, if it were the drummer, to give five knocks and no more that night, which it did, and left the house quiet all the night after. ‘But,’ as George Cruikshank observes, ‘strange as it certainly was, is it not still more strange that educated gentlemen, and even clergymen, as in this case, also should believe that the Almighty would suffer an evil spirit to disturb and affright a whole innocent family, because the head of that family had, in his capacity as magistrate, thought it his duty to take away a drum from no doubt a drunken drummer, who, by his noisy conduct, had become a nuisance to the neighbourhood?’

In many parts of the country, phantom bells are supposed to be heard ringing their ghostly peals. Near Blackpool, about two miles out at sea, there once stood, tradition says, the church and cemetery of Kilmigrol, long ago submerged. Even now, in rough weather, the melancholy chimes of the bells may be heard sounding over the restless waters. A similar story is told of Jersey. According to a local legend, many years ago, ‘the twelve parish churches in that island possessed each a valuable peal of bells, but during a long civil war the bells were sold to defray the expenses of the troops. The bells were sent to France, but on the passage the ship foundered, and everything was lost. Since then, during a storm, these bells always ring at sea, and to this day the fishermen of St. Ouen’s Bay, before embarking, go to the edge of the water to listen if they can hear the bells; if so, nothing will induce them to leave the shore.’ With this story may be compared one told of Whitby Abbey, which was suppressed in 1539. The bells were sold, and placed on board to be conveyed to London. But, as soon as the vessel had moved out into the bay it sank, and beneath the waters the bells may occasionally be heard, a legend which has been thus poetically described:

To this day the tower of Forrabury Church, Cornwall, or, as it has been called by Mr. Hawker, ‘the silent tower of Bottreaux,’ remains without bells. It appears the bells were cast and shipped for Forrabury, but as the ship neared the shore, the captain swore and used profane language, whereupon the vessel sank beneath a sudden swell of the ocean. As it went down, the bells were heard tolling with a muffled peal; and ever since, when storms are at hand, their phantom sound is still audible from beneath the waves:

Legends of this kind remind us of Southey’s ballad of the ‘Inchcape Bell,’ founded on a tragic legend. The abbots of Aberbrothock (Arbroath) fixed a bell on a rock, as a kindly warning to sailors, that obstruction having long been considered the chief difficulty in the navigation of the Firth of Forth. The bell was so fastened as to be rung by the agitation of the waves, but one day, Sir Ralph the Rover ‘cut the bell from the Inchcape float,’ and down sank the bell with a gurgling sound. Afterwards,

But the night is dark and hazy, and—

But it is too late—the ship is doomed:

Indeed, there are all kinds of whimsical stories current of phantom bells, and according to a tradition at Tunstall, in Norfolk, the parson and churchwardens disputed for the possession of some bells which had become useless because the tower was burnt. But, during their altercation, the arch-fiend quickly travelled off with the bells, and being pursued by the parson, who began to exorcise in Latin, he dived into the earth with his ponderous burden, and the place where he disappeared is a boggy pool of water, called ‘Hell Hole.’ Notwithstanding the aversion of the powers of darkness to such sounds, even these bells are occasionally permitted to favour their native place with a ghostly peal. Similarly, at Fisherty Brow, near Lonsdale, there is a sort of hollow where, as the legend runs, a church, parson, and congregation were swallowed up. On a Sunday morning the bells may be heard ringing a phantom peal by anyone who puts his ear to the ground.

Occasionally, it is said, phantom music, by way of warning, is heard just before a death, instances of which are numerous.

Samuel Foote, in the year 1740, while visiting at his father’s house in Truro, was kept awake by sounds of sweet music. His uncle was at about the same time murdered by assassins. This strange occurrence is thus told by Mr. Ingram.[340] Foote’s maternal uncles were Sir John Goodere and Captain Goodere, a naval officer. In 1740 the two brothers dined at a friend’s house near Bristol. For a long time they had been on bad terms, owing to certain money transactions, but at the dinner-table a reconciliation was, to all appearance, arrived at between them. But, on his return home, Sir John was waylaid by some men from his brother’s vessel, acting by his brother’s authority, carried on board, and deliberately strangled, Captain Goodere not only unconcernedly looking on, but furnishing the rope with which the crime was committed. The strangest part of this terrible tale, however, remains to be told. On the night the murder was perpetrated, Foote arrived at his father’s house in Truro, and he used to relate how he was kept awake for some time by the softest and sweetest strains of music he had ever heard. At first he tried to fancy it was a serenade got up by some of the family to welcome him home, but not being able to discover any trace of the musicians, he came to the conclusion that he was deceived by his own imagination. He shortly afterwards learnt that the murder had been consummated at the same hour of the same night as he had been haunted by the mysterious sounds.