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Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft by Sir Walter Scott

S >> Sir Walter Scott >> Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft




Of this disposition, to see as much of the supernatural as is seen by
others around, or, in other words, to trust to the eyes of others rather
than to our own, we may take the liberty to quote two remarkable
instances.

The first is from the "Historia Verdadera" of Don Bernal Dias del
Castillo, one of the companions of the celebrated Cortez in his Mexican
conquest. After having given an account of a great victory over extreme
odds, he mentions the report inserted in the contemporary Chronicle of
Gomara, that Saint Iago had appeared on a white horse in van of the
combat, and led on his beloved Spaniards to victory. It is very curious
to observe the Castilian cavalier's internal conviction that the rumour
arose out of a mistake, the cause of which he explains from his own
observation; whilst, at the same time, he does not venture to disown the
miracle. The honest Conquestador owns that he himself did not see this
animating vision; nay, that he beheld an individual cavalier, named
Francisco de Morla, mounted on a chestnut horse, and fighting
strenuously in the very place where Saint James is said to have
appeared. But instead of proceeding to draw the necessary inference, the
devout Conquestador exclaims--"Sinner that I am, what am I that I should
have beheld the blessed apostle!"

The other instance of the infectious character of superstition occurs in
a Scottish book, and there can be little doubt that it refers, in its
first origin, to some uncommon appearance of the aurora borealis, or the
northern lights, which do not appear to have been seen in Scotland so
frequently as to be accounted a common and familiar atmospherical
phenomenon, until the beginning of the eighteenth century. The passage
is striking and curious, for the narrator, Peter Walker, though an
enthusiast, was a man of credit, and does not even affect to have seen
the wonders, the reality of which he unscrupulously adopts on the
testimony of others, to whose eyes he trusted rather than to his own.
The conversion of the sceptical gentleman of whom he speaks is highly
illustrative of popular credulity carried away into enthusiasm, or into
imposture, by the evidence of those around, and at once shows the
imperfection of such a general testimony, and the ease with which it is
procured, since the general excitement of the moment impels even the
more cold-blooded and judicious persons present to catch up the ideas
and echo the exclamations of the majority, who, from the first, had
considered the heavenly phenomenon as a supernatural weapon-schaw, held
for the purpose of a sign and warning of civil wars to come.

"In the year 1686, in the months of June and July," says the honest
chronicler, "many yet alive can witness that about the Crossford Boat,
two miles beneath Lanark, especially at the Mains, on the water of
Clyde, many people gathered together for several afternoons, where there
were showers of bonnets, hats, guns, and swords, which covered the trees
and the ground; companies of men in arms marching in order upon the
waterside; companies meeting companies, going all through other, and
then all falling to the ground and disappearing; other companies
immediately appeared, marching the same way. I went there three
afternoons together, and, as I observed, there were two-thirds of the
people that were together saw, and a third that saw not; and, _though I
could see nothing_, there was such a fright and trembling on those that
did see, that was discernible to all from those that saw not. There was
a gentleman standing next to me who spoke as too many gentlemen and
others speak, who said, 'A pack of damned witches and warlocks that have
the second sight! the devil ha't do I see;' and immediately there was a
discernible change in his countenance. With as much fear and trembling
as any woman I saw there, he called out, 'All you that do not see, say
nothing; for I persuade you it is matter of fact, and discernible to all
that is not stone-blind.' And those who did see told what works (_i.e._,
locks) the guns had, and their length and wideness, and what handles the
swords had, whether small or three-barr'd, or Highland guards, and the
closing knots of the bonnets, black or blue; and those who did see them
there, whenever they went abroad, saw a bonnet and a sword drop in the
way."[1]

[Footnote 1: Walker's "Lives," Edinburgh, 1827, vol. i. p. xxxvi. It is
evident that honest Peter believed in the apparition of this martial
gear on the principle of Partridge's terror for the ghost of Hamlet--not
that he was afraid himself, but because Garrick showed such evident
marks of terror.]

This singular phenomenon, in which a multitude believed, although only
two-thirds of them saw what must, if real, have been equally obvious to
all, may be compared with the exploit of the humourist, who planted
himself in an attitude of astonishment, with his eyes riveted on the
well-known bronze lion that graces the front of Northumberland House in
the Strand, and having attracted the attention of those who looked at
him by muttering, "By heaven it wags! it wags again!" contrived in a few
minutes to blockade the whole street with an immense crowd, some
conceiving that they had absolutely seen the lion of Percy wag his tail,
others expecting' to witness the same phenomenon.

On such occasions as we have hitherto mentioned, we have supposed that
the ghost-seer has been in full possession of his ordinary powers of
perception, unless in the case of dreamers, in whom they may have been
obscured by temporary slumber, and the possibility of correcting
vagaries of the imagination rendered more difficult by want of the
ordinary appeal to the evidence of the bodily senses. In other respects
their blood beat temperately, they possessed the ordinary capacity of
ascertaining the truth or discerning the falsehood of external
appearances by an appeal to the organ of sight. Unfortunately, however,
as is now universally known and admitted, there certainly exists more
than one disorder known to professional men of which one important
symptom is a disposition to see apparitions.

This frightful disorder is not properly insanity, although it is
somewhat allied to that most horrible of maladies, and may, in many
constitutions, be the means of bringing it on, and although such
hallucinations are proper to both. The difference I conceive to be that,
in cases of insanity, the mind of the patient is principally affected,
while the senses, or organic system, offer in vain to the lunatic their
decided testimony against the fantasy of a deranged imagination. Perhaps
the nature of this collision--between a disturbed imagination and organs
of sense possessed of their usual accuracy--cannot be better described
than in the embarrassment expressed by an insane patient confined in the
Infirmary of Edinburgh. The poor man's malady had taken a gay turn. The
house, in his idea, was his own, and he contrived to account for all
that seemed inconsistent with his imaginary right of property--there
were many patients in it, but that was owing to the benevolence of his
nature, which made him love to see the relief of distress. He went
little, or rather never abroad--but then his habits were of a domestic
and rather sedentary character. He did not see much company--but he
daily received visits from the first characters in the renowned medical
school of this city, and he could not therefore be much in want of
society. With so many supposed comforts around him--with so many visions
of wealth and splendour--one thing alone disturbed the peace of the poor
optimist, and would indeed have confounded most _bons vivants_. "He was
curious," he said, "in his table, choice in his selection of cooks, had
every day a dinner of three regular courses and a dessert; and yet,
somehow or other, everything he eat _tasted of porridge_." This dilemma
could be no great wonder to the friend to whom the poor patient
communicated it, who knew the lunatic eat nothing but this simple
aliment at any of his meals. The case was obvious. The disease lay in
the extreme vivacity of the patient's imagination, deluded in other
instances, yet not absolutely powerful enough to contend with the honest
evidence of his stomach and palate, which, like Lord Peter's brethren in
"The Tale of a Tub," were indignant at the attempt to impose boiled
oatmeal upon them, instead of such a banquet as Ude would have displayed
when peers were to partake of it. Here, therefore, is one instance of
actual insanity, in which the sense of taste controlled and attempted to
restrain the ideal hypothesis adopted by a deranged imagination. But the
disorder to which I previously alluded is entirely of a bodily
character, and consists principally in a disease of the visual organs,
which present to the patient a set of spectres or appearances which have
no actual existence. It is a disease of the same nature which renders
many men incapable of distinguishing colours; only the patients go a
step further, and pervert the external form of objects. In their case,
therefore, contrary to that of the maniac, it is not the mind, or rather
the imagination, which imposes upon and overpowers the evidence of the
senses, but the sense of seeing (or hearing) which betrays its duty and
conveys false ideas to a sane intellect.

More than one learned physician, who have given their attestations to
the existence of this most distressing complaint, have agreed that it
actually occurs, and is occasioned by different causes. The most
frequent source of the malady is in the dissipated and intemperate
habits of those who, by a continued series of intoxication, become
subject to what is popularly called the Blue Devils, instances of which
mental disorder may be known to most who have lived for any period of
their lives in society where hard drinking was a common vice. The joyous
visions suggested by intoxication when the habit is first acquired, in
time disappear, and are supplied by frightful impressions and scenes,
which destroy the tranquillity of the unhappy debauchee. Apparitions of
the most unpleasant appearance are his companions in solitude, and
intrude even upon his hours of society: and when by an alteration of
habits, the mind is cleared of these frightful ideas, it requires but
the slightest renewal of the association to bring back the full tide of
misery upon the repentant libertine.

Of this the following instance was told to the author by a gentleman
connected with the sufferer. A young man of fortune, who had led what is
called so gay a life as considerably to injure both his health and
fortune, was at length obliged to consult the physician upon the means
of restoring, at least, the former. One of his principal complaints was
the frequent presence of a set of apparitions, resembling a band of
figures dressed in green, who performed in his drawing-room a singular
dance, to which he was compelled to bear witness, though he knew, to his
great annoyance, that the whole _corps de ballet_ existed only in his
own imagination. His physician immediately informed him that he had
lived upon town too long and too fast not to require an exchange to a
more healthy and natural course of life. He therefore prescribed a
gentle course of medicine, but earnestly recommended to his patient to
retire to his own house in the country, observe a temperate diet and
early hours, practising regular exercise, on the same principle avoiding
fatigue, and assured him that by doing so he might bid adieu to black
spirits and white, blue, green, and grey, with all their trumpery. The
patient observed the advice, and prospered. His physician, after the
interval of a month, received a grateful letter from him, acknowledging
the success of his regimen. The greens goblins had disappeared, and with
them the unpleasant train of emotions to which their visits had given
rise, and the patient had ordered his town-house to be disfurnished and
sold, while the furniture was to be sent down to his residence in the
country, where he was determined in future to spend his life, without
exposing himself to the temptations of town. One would have supposed
this a well-devised scheme for health. But, alas! no sooner had the
furniture of the London drawing-room been placed in order in the gallery
of the old manor-house, than the former delusion returned in full force:
the green _figurantes_, whom the patient's depraved imagination had so
long associated with these moveables, came capering and frisking to
accompany them, exclaiming with great glee, as if the sufferer should
have been rejoiced to see them, "Here we all are--here we all are!" The
visionary, if I recollect right, was so much shocked at their
appearance, that he retired abroad, in despair that any part of Britain
could shelter him from the daily persecution of this domestic ballet.

There is reason to believe that such cases are numerous, and that they
may perhaps arise not only from the debility of stomach brought on by
excess in wine or spirits, which derangement often sensibly affects the
eyes and sense of sight, but also because the mind becomes habitually
predominated over by a train of fantastic visions, the consequence of
frequent intoxication; and is thus, like a dislocated joint, apt again
to go wrong, even when a different cause occasions the derangement.

It is easy to be supposed that habitual excitement by means of any other
intoxicating drug, as opium, or its various substitutes, must expose
those who practise the dangerous custom to the same inconvenience. Very
frequent use of the nitrous oxide which affects the senses so strongly,
and produces a short but singular state of ecstasy, would probably be
found to occasion this species of disorder. But there are many other
causes which medical men find attended with the same symptom, of
embodying before the eyes of a patient imaginary illusions which are
visible to no one else. This persecution of spectral deceptions is also
found to exist when no excesses of the patient can be alleged as the
cause, owing, doubtless, to a deranged state of the blood or nervous
system.

The learned and acute Dr. Ferriar of Manchester was the first who
brought before the English public the leading case, as it may be called,
in this department, namely, that of Mons. Nicolai, the celebrated
bookseller of Berlin. This gentleman was not a man merely of books, but
of letters, and had the moral courage to lay before the Philosophical
Society of Berlin an account of his own sufferings, from having been, by
disease, subjected to a series of spectral illusions. The leading
circumstances of this case may be stated very shortly, as it has been
repeatedly before the public, and is insisted on by Dr. Ferriar, Dr.
Hibbert, and others who have assumed Demonology as a subject. Nicolai
traces his illness remotely to a series of disagreeable incidents which
had happened to him in the beginning of the year 1791. The depression of
spirits which was occasioned by these unpleasant occurrences, was aided
by the consequences of neglecting a course of periodical bleeding which
he had been accustomed to observe. This state of health brought on the
disposition to see _phantasmata_, who visited, or it may be more
properly said frequented, the apartments of the learned bookseller,
presenting crowds of persons who moved and acted before him, nay, even
spoke to and addressed him. These phantoms afforded nothing unpleasant
to the imagination of the visionary either in sight or expression, and
the patient was possessed of too much firmness to be otherwise affected
by their presence than with a species of curiosity, as he remained
convinced from the beginning to the end of the disorder, that these
singular effects were merely symptoms of the state of his health, and
did not in any other respect regard them as a subject of apprehension.
After a certain time, and some use of medicine, the phantoms became less
distinct in their outline, less vivid in their colouring, faded, as it
were, on the eye of the patient, and at length totally disappeared.

The case of Nicolai has unquestionably been that of many whose love of
science has not been able to overcome their natural reluctance to
communicate to the public the particulars attending the visitation of a
disease so peculiar. That such illnesses have been experienced, and have
ended fatally, there can be no doubt; though it is by no means to be
inferred, that the symptom of importance to our present discussion has,
on all occasions, been produced from the same identical cause.

Dr. Hibbert, who has most ingeniously, as well as philosophically,
handled this subject, has treated it also in a medical point of view,
with science to which we make no pretence, and a precision of detail to
which our superficial investigation affords us no room for extending
ourselves.

The visitation of spectral phenomena is described by this learned
gentleman as incidental to sundry complaints; and he mentions, in
particular, that the symptom occurs not only in plethora, as in the case
of the learned Prussian we have just mentioned, but is a frequent hectic
symptom--often an associate of febrile and inflammatory
disorders--frequently accompanying inflammation of the brain--a
concomitant also of highly excited nervous irritability--equally
connected with hypochondria--and finally united in some cases with gout,
and in others with the effects of excitation produced by several gases.
In all these cases there seems to be a morbid degree of sensibility,
with which this symptom is ready to ally itself, and which, though
inaccurate as a medical definition, may be held sufficiently descriptive
of one character of the various kinds of disorder with which this
painful symptom may be found allied.

A very singular and interesting illustration of such combinations as Dr.
Hibbert has recorded of the spectral illusion with an actual disorder,
and that of a dangerous kind, was frequently related in society by the
late learned and accomplished Dr. Gregory of Edinburgh, and sometimes, I
believe, quoted by him in his lectures. The narrative, to the author's
best recollection, was as follows:--A patient of Dr. Gregory, a person,
it is understood, of some rank, having requested the doctor's advice,
made the following extraordinary statement of his complaint. "I am in
the habit," he said, "of dining at five, and exactly as the hour of six
arrives I am subjected to the following painful visitation. The door of
the room, even when I have been weak enough to bolt it, which I have
sometimes done, flies wide open; an old hag, like one of those who
haunted the heath of Forres, enters with a frowning and incensed
countenance, comes straight up to me with every demonstration of spite
and indignation which could characterize her who haunted the merchant
Abudah in the Oriental tale; she rushes upon me, says something, but so
hastily that I cannot discover the purport, and then strikes me a severe
blow with her staff. I fall from my chair in a swoon, which is of longer
or shorter endurance. To the recurrence of this apparition I am daily
subjected. And such is my new and singular complaint." The doctor
immediately asked whether his patient had invited any one to sit with
him when he expected such a visitation. He was answered in the negative.
The nature of the complaint, he said, was so singular, it was so likely
to be imputed to fancy, or even to mental derangement, that he had
shrunk from communicating the circumstance to any one. "Then," said the
doctor, "with your permission, I will dine with you to-day,
_tete-a-tete_, and we will see if your malignant old woman will venture
to join our company." The patient accepted the proposal with hope and
gratitude, for he had expected ridicule rather than sympathy. They met
at dinner, and Dr. Gregory, who suspected some nervous disorder, exerted
his powers of conversation, well known to be of the most varied and
brilliant character, to keep the attention of his host engaged, and
prevent him from thinking on the approach of the fated hour, to which he
was accustomed to look forward with so much terror. He succeeded in his
purpose better than he had hoped. The hour of six came almost unnoticed,
and it was hoped might pass away without any evil consequence; but it
was scarce a moment struck when the owner of the house exclaimed, in an
alarmed voice, "The hag comes again!" and dropped back in his chair in a
swoon, in the way he had himself described. The physician caused him to
be let blood, and satisfied himself that the periodical shocks of which
his patient complained arose from a tendency to apoplexy.

The phantom with the crutch was only a species of machinery, such as
that with which fancy is found to supply the disorder called
_Ephialtes_, or nightmare, or indeed any other external impression upon
our organs in sleep, which the patient's morbid imagination may
introduce into the dream preceding the swoon. In the nightmare an
oppression and suffocation is felt, and our fancy instantly conjures up
a spectre to lie on our bosom. In like manner it may be remarked, that
any sudden noise which the slumberer hears, without being actually
awakened by it--any casual touch of his person occurring in the same
manner--becomes instantly adopted in his dream, and accommodated to the
tenor of the current train of thought, whatever that may happen to be;
and nothing is more remarkable than the rapidity with which imagination
supplies a complete explanation of the interruption, according to the
previous train of ideas expressed in the dream, even when scarce a
moment of time is allowed for that purpose. In dreaming, for example, of
a duel, the external sound becomes, in the twinkling of an eye, the
discharge of the combatants' pistols;--is an orator haranguing in his
sleep, the sound becomes the applause of his supposed audience;--is the
dreamer wandering among supposed ruins, the noise is that of the fall of
some part of the mass. In short, an explanatory system is adopted during
sleep with such extreme rapidity, that supposing the intruding alarm to
have been the first call of some person to awaken the slumberer, the
explanation, though requiring some process of argument or deduction, is
usually formed and perfect before the second effort of the speaker has
restored the dreamer to the waking world and its realities. So rapid and
intuitive is the succession of ideas in sleep, as to remind us of the
vision of the prophet Mahommed, in which he saw the whole wonders of
heaven and hell, though the jar of water which fell when his ecstasy
commenced, had not spilled its contents when he returned to ordinary
existence.

A second, and equally remarkable instance, was communicated to the
author by the medical man under whose observation it fell, but who was,
of course, desirous to keep private the name of the hero of so singular
a history. Of the friend by whom the facts were attested I can only say,
that if I found myself at liberty to name him, the rank which he holds
in his profession, as well as his attainments in science and philosophy,
form an undisputed claim to the most implicit credit.

It was the fortune of this gentleman to be called in to attend the
illness of a person now long deceased, who in his lifetime stood, as I
understand, high in a particular department of the law, which often
placed the property of others at his discretion and control, and whose
conduct, therefore, being open to public observation, he had for many
years borne the character of a man of unusual steadiness, good sense,
and integrity. He was, at the time of my friend's visits, confined
principally to his sick-room, sometimes to bed, yet occasionally
attending to business, and exerting his mind, apparently with all its
usual strength and energy, to the conduct of important affairs intrusted
to him; nor did there, to a superficial observer, appear anything in his
conduct, while so engaged, that could argue vacillation of intellect, or
depression of mind. His outward symptoms of malady argued no acute or
alarming disease. But slowness of pulse, absence of appetite, difficulty
of digestion, and constant depression of spirits, seemed to draw their
origin from some hidden cause, which the patient was determined to
conceal. The deep gloom of the unfortunate gentleman--the embarrassment,
which he could not conceal from his friendly physician--the briefness
and obvious constraint with which he answered the interrogations of his
medical adviser, induced my friend to take other methods for prosecuting
his inquiries. He applied to the sufferer's family, to learn, if
possible, the source of that secret grief which was gnawing the heart
and sucking the life-blood of his unfortunate patient. The persons
applied to, after conversing together previously, denied all knowledge
of any cause for the burden which obviously affected their relative. So
far as they knew--and they thought they could hardly be deceived--his
worldly affairs were prosperous; no family loss had occurred which could
be followed with such persevering distress; no entanglements of
affection could be supposed to apply to his age, and no sensation of
severe remorse could be consistent with his character. The medical
gentleman had finally recourse to serious argument with the invalid
himself, and urged to him the folly of devoting himself to a lingering
and melancholy death, rather than tell the subject of affliction which
was thus wasting him. He specially pressed upon him the injury which he
was doing to his own character, by suffering it to be inferred that the
secret cause of his dejection and its consequences was something too
scandalous or flagitious to be made known, bequeathing in this manner to
his family a suspected and dishonoured name, and leaving a memory with
which might be associated the idea of guilt, which the criminal had died
without confessing. The patient, more moved by this species of appeal
than by any which had yet been urged, expressed his desire to speak out
frankly to Dr.----. Every one else was removed, and the door of the
sick-room made secure, when he began his confession in the following
manner:--

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