# Folk-Lore Record/Volume 1/Some West Sussex Superstitions Lingering in 1868/Chapter 3

CHAPTER III.
GHOSTS, GOBLINS, WITCHES AND FAIRIES.
BELIEF in the apparition of Ghosts and Goblins still maintains its hold upon the minds of our West Sussex peasantry almost as firmly as in the time of their less-instructed forefathers. I do not know to what enlightenment in these matters the youth of other counties have attained, but I can bear witness to the contemporary darkness of young Sussex. A short time ago there was committed to me the teaching of a Sunday School class composed principally of tradesmen's children, who, on my asking them if they knew what was meant by their "ghostly enemy." one and all replied, "Yes, a spirit that comes back from the grave;" and as they showed an eagerness to tell me everything they knew upon the subject, I allowed them to go on. They then spoke all at once, and quite overwhelmed me with the stories of what their fathers, mothers, brothers, or relations, in whom they placed the same implicit trust, had seen. (74) Some spirits were reported to walk about without their heads, others carried them under their arms, and one, haunting a dark lane, had a ball of fire upon its shoulders in lieu of the natural finial. On my explaining the true meaning of the term "ghostly enemy," a fresh torrent of superstitious narrative burst forth. (75) One boy knew a man who had seen the devil, and another told a fearful story of a poor sinner who saw little devils dancing round his bed "when he was a dying," though nobody else could see them; and then followed the account of a man who was always seeing the devil, or the "black man," as he was styled by most of them.
Their early Sussex nurture had been probably too like my own; for what nights of misery does that name, the black man, bring back to my memory! I almost shudder now at the recollection of the sleepless hours he caused me in my childhood, and of the dark closet ​in my bedroom from which I had been taught to look for his appearance with "Dame Dark." Such tales by superstitious nurses are very generally prevalent.
(76) There stood, and still may stand, upon the downs, close to Broadwater, an old oak-tree, that I used, in days gone by, to gaze at with an uncomfortable and suspicious look from having heard that always on Midsummer Eve, just at midnight, a number of skeletons started up from its roots, and, joining hands, danced round it till cock-crow, and then as suddenly sank down again. My informant knew several persons who had actually seen this dance of death, but one young man in particular was named to me who, having been detained at Finden by business till very late, and forgetting that it was Midsummer Eve, had been frightened (no difficult matter we may suspect) out of his very senses by seeing the dead men capering to the rattling of their own bones.
I could give many a village tale of later years in proof of the existing belief of these ghostly visitants often appearing amongst us. Sometimes they are supposed to come in order to inform us of a death of which we have not previously had any notification, or they come with a dejected look to signify that all is not right, and they wish inquiries to be made about their death and burial, or the purpose of their coming is to upbraid an unkind husband or wife with his or her ill-treatment of them. And sometimes they are ghostly representatives of the living, such as those apparitions of a lover or a future husband to be mentioned in the chapter of superstitions associated with love and marriage.
(77) We have amongst us ghosts even of the brute creation; a headless horse tears madly up and down a lane in Tillington, and the apparition of a headless pig is seen occasionally in the parish.
(78) It is likely that the present disposition to believe in ghost stories is in a great measure traditionary from the last generation, when smuggling was in the ascendant. For I believe that the vigi​lance of the Preventive Service has laid many ghosts in Sussex; there being very little doubt that the numerous ghosts seen wandering formerly in blue flames, near lonely houses on the coast, were of an illicit class of spirits, raised by the smugglers in order to alarm and drive all others but their accomplices from their haunts. In those days the unearthly noises heard night after night in a house at Rottingdean caused such alarm amongst the servants that they all gave warning; when suddenly the noises ceased, and soon afterwards one of a gang of smugglers, who had fallen into the hands of the police, confessed to their having made a secret passage from the beach close by this house, and, that wishing to induce the occupiers to abandon it, they had been in the habit of rolling at the dead of night tub after tub of spirits up the passage, and had so caused it to be reported that the place was haunted.
Much discomfort was, about the same time, caused in another house upon the coast, by the nightly report of noises being heard beneath the kitchen floor, and crockery rattling, and chairs and tables being moved from their places, by some unseen agency. But, when the cook, at last, solemnly assured her master, that one evening, just as it was growing dusk, a ghostly head, with black hair and fiery eyes, had risen up suddenly from the floor and shaken itself at her, he thought it time to investigate the matter. Accordingly one Sunday night, when all the servants had gone out, he seated himself behind a screen in the kitchen, and waited for the apparition of the head. At length a tremulous motion was perceptible in the floor, and presently a head arose through a small opening, a pair of eyes belonging to it wandered cautiously around, and ascertained that the kitchen apparently was empty. And then the body belonging to the head was preparing to climb up, when the master of the house, springing forward and seizing with no gentle grasp the hands that rested on the sides of the opening in the floor, inflicted a greater fright on the apparition than it had done on the poor cook. It proved not to be a silent ghost, but begged for mercy like a mortal, and promised, if permitted to descend again in peace, and unmolested, to the lower regions, to tell nothing but the truth. The story of the owner of the black head and fiery eyes was simply that a gang of smugglers had long kept the house and ​premises, which were convenient for the carrying on their trade, untenanted, by reporting that they were haunted; and, when it was re-occupied, had succeeded in reviving and obtaining credit to their old report, by a contrivance which enabled them from time to time to displace the furniture in the kitchen, and cause the pots and pans to play such fantastic tricks as made the servants weep with fright. The business on that evening, which had been so unexpectedly interrupted, was to upset the furniture, put the glass and china in strange spots, and create such confusion as might alarm the servants on their return, and tend to scare them from the place.
The Preventive men, however, as I have already remarked, have done much towards banishing many a long-cherished superstition. Often, in the last generation, from the windows of some uninhabited house—
and such lights were regarded as the tokens of coming woe. But the old folk, "Time's doting chronicles," will tell you in simplicity, "It's a queer thing; but them lights, that were so common years ago, have seldom been seen of late years." These supernatural lights, it is now well ascertained, were put up as signals to smuggling cutters, whose crews would understand by them whether it was safe to land their cargoes or not.
Of haunted houses we can boast a score; but, their nightly visitants being of the usual common-place description, I shall say no more about them, than that some are of the class of those unquiet spirits who return to earth in order to have the dark stain, supposed to have been left there by their blood, erased from some chamber floor, and upon which, you are assured, both soap and scrubbing-brush have been tried scores of times, and yet the tell-tale spots remain. Scott, in his amusing story (in the introduction to the second series of Chronicles of the Canongate) of the alarm of the old housekeeper at Holyrood, when the cockney agent of a great London house would have fetched out, in five minutes, with his scouring-drops, the stains of blood shed upon the floor on the night of Ilizzio's assassination, states his own opinion that, if blood be allowed to sink into wood, the stain becomes indelible ​by anything but the carpenter's plane. But we know better than this in Sussex; for (79) I have been told of blood-stained boards being planed, and that in less than four-and-twenty hours the spots have always reappeared.
(80) A man of notoriously bad character, who lived in a lonely spot at the foot of our South Downs, without any companion of either sex, was believed to be nightly haunted by evil spirits in the form of rats. And an old woman told me, with a shudder, that persons passing near his cottage late at night had heard him cursing them, and desiring them to let him rest in peace. It was her belief, she said, that they were sent to do judgment on him, and would carry him away some night or other. But he was not to die the death of Bishop Hatto; for, whatever might have been the expectation of his neighbours, he received his death-blow in a drunken brawl.
(81) Numbers of our people believe in "the might of magic spell," and in the power of witches and wizards to work them ill, and to reveal to them the future events of their lives, and imagine that they have acquired this power and knowledge by selling themselves to the Evil One. They fear witchcraft, and have their remedies and preventives for it. There lived, till very lately, in a village near Chichester, a woman of indifferent character, who was never spoken of by the villagers by any other name than that of "the Witch." All appeared to dread her power, and every sudden misfortune that befell them was ascribed to her; but, instead of saying that they were bewitched, they used the very singular expression of being "sin-struck" by the witch. The groom of a gentleman residing in the parish assured his master that there was no resisting her power, and added, "If she willed that I should sit across the roof of this stable from morning to night she'd have me up there in an instant, and nothing could bring me down till she gave me leave to come."
(82) In proof that a belief in witchcraft is still lingering in the west of Sussex, I may add the case of an assault, lately before a bench of magistrates, in which the defendant declared that she should not have molested the plaintiff had she not found out that she was a witch. She had long had her suspicions how it was, and she had watched and ​watched for an opportunity of setting her mind at ease about it, and at last she managed, unseen by her, to scratch her (the witch's) arm with a crooked pin she carried about with her for this purpose, and, when no blood came, then she up with her fist and gave it her well. On the magistrates' inquiring whether the plaintiff had ever molested her in any way, she replied that she had suspected her of doing her many an unkind turn, and that she now knew that she had come in at the keyhole when her child was in its cradle, and had thrown him into fits. The plaintiff was most unlike our old ideal image of a witch, being a remarkably tall, fat, rosy, good-tempered looking woman.
(83) Not many years ago a farmer residing on the western border of Sussex and Surrey seriously declared that the witches were in the habit of riding his horses by night, as they were often found by him in the morning covered with dirt and perspiration, and in a state of great exhaustion. This marvel, too, like many of our ghost stories, might probably be accounted for by the lawless practices of the gangs of smugglers, who took the liberty of borrowing the farmer's horses for the night-work of bringing up their kegs of brandy from the coast.
(84) There is a strong persuasion that certain persons have a supernatural and mysteriously acquired foreknowledge; and there is, I believe, still living in the parish of Bury a cunning woman, to whom young men and maidens resort, to inquire from her whether their presumptive husbands or wives will be short or tall, rich or poor, dark or fair, only a few months since I heard of three young girls, attired in their Sunday best, walking from a distant town to consult her.
(85) If you nail a horseshoe that you have picked up over your door it will prevent all witches and evil spirits crossing the threshold. I have seen several doors that can boast of this protecting talisman. (86) An old woman in Tillington parish keeps, with religious care, a printed copy of the apocryphal epistle of our Lord to Abgarus, King of Edessa, which she bought from a travelling man (that is, a pedlar), who told her that if she stuck it up on her kitchen-wall, it would preserve her and her house from witchcraft and the evil eye. ​My own household once exhibited an unquestionable proof of their disposition to believe in witchcraft. They declared that at a certain hour, on several successive nights, the back kitchen door had shaken violently, though no one was near it, and that the wooden latch had moved up and down; that they had looked out through the window, but not a human being was to be seen. One night the cook, the heroine of the party, had had the courage, while the latch was actually moving, to throw open the door, and what did she see? Nothing but darkness visible. They thought it must be witchcraft. But this was not to be endured; and a report of these mysterious doings being laid before the mistress of the house, and proper means resorted to to ascertain the cause of the disturbance, at length the author of it was detected, caught in the very act, and proved to be a cat, that used to sleep and have his supper set for him in the back kitchen, but, being of an erratic disposition, and having become a keeper of late hours, he returned home after the house was shut up, and attempted to get in by springing from the ground and catching, as he had been often seen to do, at the string that lifted up the latch. (87) Fortunate was it for the servants' peace of mind that it was not a strange cat that was discovered so employed, for in that case their worst suspicions must have been confirmed, since nothing would have induced them to believe that it was not a witch that had assumed the shape. The whiskered race are on the whole, however, more loved than feared by our Sussex peasantry—but there is a belief (88) that if left alone in the same room with an infant in a cradle they will creep in and suck its breath, a superstition probably derived from the old general belief in witchcraft. For the witch, who declared—
"Under a cradle I did creep By day; and, when the child was asleep At night, I sucked the breath,"
had first taken upon her the form of a cat.
(89) Persons afflicted with epileptic fits are supposed to be bewitched, and a very extraordinary remedy is sometimes resorted to for their cure. A lady of my acquaintance has told me the following curious story. She had observed, upon a cottage hearth, a quart bottle filled ​with pins; and, on inquiring why they were put there, was requested not to touch the bottle, as it was red hot, and because, if she did so, she would spoil the charm. "What charm?" she asked, in some surprise; " Why, ma'am," replied the woman, "it has pleased God to afflict my daughter here with falling-fits, and the doctors did her no good; so I was recommended to go to a wise woman, who lives on this side of Guildford, and she said, if she was well paid for it, she could tell me what ailed the girl, and what would cure her. So I said I was agreeable, and she told me that people afflicted with falling-fits were bewitched, and that I must get as many pins as would fill a quart bottle, and put them into it, and let it stand close to the fire, upon the hearth, till the pins were red hot; and, when that came about, they would prick the heart of the witch who had brought this affliction on my poor girl, and she would then be glad enough to take it off." I have learned from a medical gentleman in this neighbourhood, that within his experience it was a very common thing for people in cases of long illness to ask the doctor who attended them if he did not think that they were suffering from the effects of the evil eye, or that they were bewitched. He told me, that, when a house in Pulborough was, a few years ago, undergoing a thorough repair, on removing the hearth-stone in one of the rooms, a bottle containing upwards of two hundred pins was found; every pin being bent, and some of them nearly in a curve. A gentleman present took up the bottle, and expressed his surprise at its being there, and at its contents, when the workmen told him that they often found them, and that they were deposited under the hearth-stone (with certain ceremonies, that, my informant said, were ludicrous, but unfit for him to relate) for the purpose of protecting the house against witchcraft. The superstitious custom which has been already mentioned of breaking through the bottom of an egg-shell after eating its contents as a preventive of witchcraft shows our lingering belief in it.
There certainly is very little poetry or romance generally speaking in the Sussex folk-lore, but a belief of fairies and of fairy-land is still lingering amongst us. (90) Those singular circles in the grass known by the name of fairy-rings, "the green sour ringlets whereof ​the ewe not bites" (Tempest, v. 1) are still believed to be caused by the feet of the fairies who have danced there in a round—unseen, unheard; and Dr. Wollaston's less romantic theory, that they owe their origin to a certain kind of fungus, would find little favour. We still regard the beautiful red cup-moss as the fairies' baths. In days gone by the little good folk appear to have been extremely common in Sussex, for it has been observed that many of our farms and closes seem to owe their names to their having been the reputed haunts of fairies—such as Pook-ryde (Folk-ryde), Pook-hole, Pook-croft, Pook-bourne, and to this list we may add Fay-gate, near Horsham. It is suggested by the same writer that the sharp end of the seed-vessel of the needle scandix (S. pecten), called here by the common people "the pook-needle," may have been regarded as belonging to the fairies. The common name in the west of Sussex for the puff-ball is "Puck's stool."
There is an unromantic fairy-tale told in our nurseries the scene of which is laid in West Sussex, how, once upon a time, two men stole a pig, and put it in a sack, and laid the sack down upon the ground just over a hole in which dwelt a fairy, who contrived to step into the sack in the form and in the place of the real grunter. The men were to take it in turns to carry the sack, and as one of them was toiling with his heavy load up a steep ascent he was startled to see a very little figure running close by his side, and asking, in a melancholy voice, "Dick, Dick, where be you?" and much was his alarm increased when a voice from the sack replied,
"In a sack, Pick-a-back, Riding up Beeding Hill."
The frightened men of course threw down the sack and ran away, and the good fairy resumed his own form and returned to his home by the pigsty, rejoicing that he had saved the pig from the thieves, it being the property of a man for whom the fairies had a liking. ​(91) I have often heard our cook repeating over her churn, when the butter was slow in forming:
And this charm she repeated three times, in order that it might oblige the witch, who had affected the cream, and, like Robin Goodfellow, "bootless made the breathless housewife churn," to run away, and at the same time bring the good fairies to her assistance.
(92) There is a tradition in the parish of Pulborough of a fairy's funeral, and the very place of burial is pointed out to you. It is at the top of a green mound, known by the name of the Mount, and it would be hard to find a more fitting spot for such a funeral train to assemble at. But the favourite Sussex fairy tale in the days of my youth was one which cannot but remind us of the story told upon the evening of the "sun-shine holiday" in L'Allegro, how the drudging, goblin swet,—
"When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowing flail hath threshed the corn."
(93) A farmer at Washington, who had been often surprised, on going into his barn early in the morning, to see large heaps of corn that had been threshed during the night, determined at last to sit up, and discover, if possible, who the kind friends were who worked so hard and well for him whilst he was taking his rest. So creeping to the barn-door, and looking through a chink in it, he was astonished at seeing two little fairies working away with their fairy flails, and only stopping for an instant, now and then, to say to each other, " See how I sweat! See how I sweat!" the very consequence of the ​labour of the "lubbar fiend" in Milton. The farmer in his delight, forgetting that fairies are offended if a mortal speaks to them, cried out, with a loud laugh, "Well done, my little men;" and instantly (the story says) the little men uttered a wild cry and disappeared, and never more were known to resume their work in that barn.
* ↑ A ghost, "not three feet in height, and dressed in a round frock and brown gaiters," has been seen repeatedly by the keepers of Captain Barttelot [now Sir Walter Barttelot, M.P.] in the wood about Hilliers; one of the men saw it standing by a stile, and attempted to catch hold of it, but his hand passed through the figure!
* ↑ Mr. Paxton, of Westdeau, near Chichester.
* ↑ Reported to me by Major Sandham, J.P., who was present.
* ↑ This is a letter said to have been written by Christ in answer to an invitation from Abgarus, King of Edessa, to visit his citySee The Apocryphal New Testament (London: Printed for William Hone, Ludgate Hill, 1820).
* ↑ Mrs. Paxton of Westdean.
* ↑ Mr. Martin of Pulborough.
* ↑ See (23).
* ↑ Phil. Trans. 1807, pt. 2.
* ↑ By Mr. Blencowe, Sussex Archæol. Coll. iii. p. 124.
* ↑ In A Candle in the Dark by Thomas Ady, published in 1655, he states that he was told this charm by an old witch; she declared that her grandmother had learnt it in the days of Queen Mary.
* ↑ See (64).