surmises), who signed every page of the manuscript. Mr. Alfred Wallace quotes the tale, without citing his
authority. The witnesses for the falling of stones round the bewitched girl were the maid herself, and her
master, John Pyne, who deposed that she was 'much troubled with little stones that were thrown at her
wherever she went, and that, after they had hit her, would fall on the ground, and then vanish, so that none of
them could be found'. This peculiarity beset Mr. Stainton Moses, when he was fishing, and must have 'put
down' the trout. Objects in the maid's presence, such as Bibles, would 'fly from her,' and she was bewitched,
and carried off into odd places, like the butler at Lord Orrery's. Nicholas Pyne gave identical evidence. At
Ragley, Mr. Greatrakes declared that he was present at the trial, and that an awl would not penetrate the stool
on which the unlucky enchantress was made to stand: a clear proof of guilt.
Here, then, we have the second phenomenon which interested the circle at Ragley; the flying about of stones,
of Bibles, and other movements of bodies. Though the whole affair may be called hysterical imposture by
Mary Longdon (who vomited pins, and so forth, as was customary), we shall presently trace the reports of
similar events, among people of widely remote ages and countries, 'from China to Peru'.
Among the guests at Ragley, as we said, was Dr. Joseph Glanvill, who could also tell strange tales at first
hand, and from his own experience. He had investigated the case of the disturbances in Mr. Mompesson's
house at Tedworth, which began in March, 1661. These events, so famous among our ancestors, were
precisely identical with what is reported by modern newspapers, when there is a 'medium' in a family. The
troubles began with rappings on the walls of the house, and on a drum taken by Mr. Mompesson from a
vagrant musician. This man seems to have been as much vexed as Parolles by the loss of his drum, and the
Psychical Society at Ragley believed him to be a magician, who had bewitched the house of his oppressor.
While Mrs. Mompesson was adding an infant to her family the noise ceased, or nearly ceased, just as, at
Epworth, in the house of the Rev. Samuel Wesley, it never vexed Mrs. Wesley at her devotions. Later, at
Tedworth, 'it followed and vexed the younger children, beating their bedsteads with that violence, that all
present expected when they would fall in pieces'. . . . It would lift the children up in their beds. Objects were
moved: lights flitted around, and the Rev. Joseph Glanvill could assure Lady Conway that he had been a
witness of some of these occurrences. He saw the 'little modest girls in the bed, between seven and eight
years old, as I guessed'. He saw their hands outside the bed-clothes, and heard the scratchings above their
heads, and felt 'the room and windows shake very sensibly'. When he tapped or scratched a certain number of
times, the noise answered, and stopped at the same number. Many more things of this kind Glanvill tells. He
denies the truth of a report that an imposture was discovered, but admits that when Charles II. sent gentlemen
to stay in the house, nothing unusual occurred. But these researchers stayed only for a single night. He
denied that any normal cause of the trouble was ever discovered. Glanvill told similar tales about a house at
Welton, near Daventry, in 1658. Stones were thrown, and all the furniture joined in an irregular corroboree.
COMPARATIVE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 34
Cock Lane and Common-Sense
Too late for Lady Conway's party was the similar disturbance at Gast's house of Little Burton June, 1677.
Here the careful student will note that 'they saw a hand holding a hammer, which kept on knocking'. This
hand is as familiar to the research of the seventeenth as to that of the nineteenth century. We find it again in
the celebrated Scotch cases of Rerrick (1695), and of Glenluce, while 'the Rev. James Sharp' (later Archbishop
of St. Andrews), vouched for it, in 1659, in a tale told by him to Lauderdale, and by Lauderdale to the Rev.
Richard Baxter. {94} Glanvill also contributes a narrative of the very same description about the haunting of
Mr. Paschal's house in Soper Lane, London: the evidence is that of Mr. Andrew Paschal, Fellow of Queen's
College, Cambridge. In this case the trouble began with the arrival and coincided with the stay of a
gentlewoman, unnamed, 'who seemed to be principally concerned'. As a rule, in these legends, it is easy to
find out who the 'medium' was. The phenomena here were accompanied by 'a cold blast or puff of wind,'
which blew on the hand of the Fellow of Queen's College, just as it has often blown, in similar circumstances,
on the hands of Mr. Crookes, and of other modern amateurs. It would be tedious to analyse all Glanvill's tales [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]