# Folk-Lore Record/Volume 1/Some West Sussex Superstitions Lingering in 1868/Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI.
PROGNOSTICS OF DEATH—SICK-ROOM AND DEATH-BED SUPERSTITIONS.
ROM this long detail of the extraordinary remedies to which we trust in Western Sussex for curing almost all diseases that our flesh is heir to, we may pass, not inappropriately, to the prognostics of approaching death and other ghostly presages.
Death-tokens are very numerous. (166) An unusual rattling of the church-door portends that before the end of the week it will be open to receive a corpse. (167) Another early burial is foretold from the heavy sound of the funeral bell. When I observed one morning to a servant that we were to have another funeral this week, "I am not surprised to hear it," was her reply; "I told Jane, the day of old Master Smith's burial, that I knew from the sound of the bell that we should have another pretty soon."
(168) To break a looking-glass is accounted the greatest of all mishaps, because it portends the death of some near and dear friend.
(169) If a corpse does not stiffen soon after death, it is regarded as a token that another member of the family will soon die. A woman who was speaking of the great mortality which had occurred in a neighbouring family, where she had lived many years as servant, told me of this curious superstition. She said, "The day after my master's death, one of his sisters-in-law came into the room and asked the nurse if she had ever heard that a limp corpse was a bad sign; and nurse made answer, 'La, miss! it's nothing but an old woman's saying.' But she winked at me; and when miss was gone she said, 'I didn't like to tell her the truth; but master's corpse not stiffening is a sure sign that death will be knocking pretty soon again at the door of this house for some other of the family;' and Miss Susan did not live many years after that herself." ​(170) One is told in Sussex, that when death has entered a house he will not leave it without carrying off three of the inmates.
(171) Instances are by no means uncommon even of well-educated persons disliking to meet a funeral, from the general belief that, if you do so, your own will soon blacken the way. A good old gentleman of my acquaintance has been often known, whether on horseback or on foot, to turn round and go home again, however urgent his business might be, rather than meet one. (172) He also had a perfect faith that the thrice-repeated caws of a carrion crow are a token of death; and one day astonished all his family by announcing to them that they had lost a near relation. On their asking him how he had become acquainted with the fact, he said a carrion crow had just told him so, by flying over his head and uttering three dismal caws.
(173) The old gentleman just mentioned strictly forbade green brooms being used in his house during the month of May, and, as a reason for the prohibition, used to quote the adage—
"If you sweep the house with broom in May, You'll sweep the head of that house away;"
and this superstitious association between broom and death in the month of May is extended to its blossom. (174) A poor girl, who was lingering in the last stage of consumption, but whose countenance had always lighted up with pleasure at the sight of flowers, appeared one morning so exceedingly restless and unhappy, after a fresh nosegay of gay spring flowers had been laid upon her bed, that I asked her if the scent of them was disagreeable to her. "Oh! no," she exclaimed, "they are very nice indeed to smell; but yet I should be very glad if you would throw away that piece of yellow broom; for they do say that death comes with it if it is brought into the house in blossom during the month of May." Nor is the broom the only flower that is regarded as a death-token. The snowdrop, that "fair maid of February," and the primrose, Fletcher's "firstborn child of Ver," are equally dreaded, if one only is brought into the house when they first appear. (175) Hearing a child violently scolded for bringing into the house a single snowdrop, which the mother called a death-token, I ​asked why she gave this pretty flower so bad a name, and was informed that "it looked for all the world like a corpse in its shroud, and that it always kept itself quite close to the earth, seeming to belong more to the dead than to the living." Why she believed that a single one brought death with it, whilst she regarded any larger number of them as harmless, she did not explain. (176) From the same woman I learned that the primrose was looked upon with such dread, because it used to be much sought after to strew on graves, and to dress up corpses in the coffin. Pity that so beautiful a custom should have been made the ground of such a superstitious presage! The same fear attaches to the black- and to the white-thorn blossoms. (177) A clergyman's wife has told me that on lately visiting a woman in her parish she carried with her a piece of blackthorn in blossom, but she had hardly spoken before the woman snatched it from her hand and threw it out of the door, exclaiming, "How could you think, ma'am, of bringing that death-token into my house?" This strange superstition is supposed to be mysteriously associated with the apparent commingling of life and death, which the blackthorn presents in early spring, when it is clothed with its white flowers, but destitute of leaves. (178) A much dreaded death-token in a West Sussex village where I once resided was that remarkable appearance known by the names of ignis fatuus, "Will o' the wisp," and "Jack o' lantern," which might be often seen in that neighbourhood, flitting from place to place over a large extent of marshy ground. The direction of its rapid undulating movement was always carefully observed, not from any curious admiration of the phenomenon, but from an anxiety to ascertain where it would disappear, as it was believed to be—
"The hateful messenger of heavy things, Of death and dolour telling,"
to the inhabitants of the house nearest to that spot. Considerable alarm was once created in that same village by a pale light being observed to move over the bed of a sick person, and, after flickering for some time in different parts of the room, to vanish through the window. Of course so mysterious a manifestation was pronounced to ​be a warning, and the nurse avowed moreover that she had seen such light some scores of times, but out of doors, and she believed a death had always followed. It happened, however, that I was myself enabled accidentally to clear up the mystery. For not long after, as I was sitting up in my own room reading after midnight, all at once something fell upon the open page and appeared to have ignited it. I started in a momentary alarm, but soon perceived that the light proceeded from a luminous insect, which proved to be the male glow-worm.
(179) There was a belief common enough in the weald a few years ago, closely resembling the French superstition of the Fétiches, animals of a dazzling whiteness, which appear only in the night-time, and vanish as soon as any one attempts to touch them. A blacksmith's wife at Ashington, the daughter of a small farmer, was found one morning much depressed in mind, and on being questioned as to the cause of it, said, with a heavy sigh, "I shall hear bad news before the day is over; for late last night, as I was sitting up waiting for my husband, who had gone to Horsham, what should I see, on looking out of the window, lying close under it, but a thing like a duck, yet a great deal whiter than it ought to have been, whiter than any snow. I was all of a tremble and cried out quite loud, and off went the thing, faster than I ever saw anything run before." We suggested that it might have been a neighbour's cat, and that it looked whiter than usual in consequence of the moonlight falling upon it. "Oh, dear no!" she said, "it was no cat, nor anything alive;" those white things were sent as warnings; she should hear of a death before night. And, though no sad news came, she remained firmly convinced that a warning of some kind had been supernaturally sent to her.
(180) That the screech-owl should be regarded as a messenger of evil by the ignorant can excite no surprise in any one who is acquainted with its unearthly note. I was walking rather late one summer's evening close by the village church, when a strange, startling sound seemed suddenly to come from the low belfry, and continued so long that the inhabitants of the neighbouring cottages ran to the ​spot, to see what had occasioned it. At length an owl was seen sitting solemnly on the roof-ridge of the church. Satisfied with this discovery of the cause of the excitement, I was walking off, when some women stopped me to express their fears lest we should soon hear of a death in the parish. This, as we might expect, is one amongst the oldest and most universal of all superstitions. "The scritch owl, scritching loud," put our poor villagers, as it may have put their forefathers in Shakspeare's time (Mids. N. D. v. 2), "in remembrance of a shroud," destined for themselves or some near neighbour. It is still "the fatal bellman that gives the stern'st good night." (Macbeth, ii. 2.) We know that it was in ill favour with the ancients as being a bird of evil omen, and the traditionary dislike to it is expressed in the old legend glanced at by poor Ophelia (Ham. iv. 5), that the owl was a baker's daughter, turned into an owl by our Lord for refusing to give him bread. (181) Nor is it surprising that the dark, forbidding looking raven, with its hoarse, sepulchral note, and stealthy way of dogging the steps of man, should be accounted an illomened bird; to say nothing of the very old belief in its prophetic powers, which certainly was held by our own Saxon forefathers. For Odin had two ravens, which he let loose every morning to collect intelligence of what was going on in the world, and at night on their return they lighted on his shoulders and unfolded to him the news that they had gathered. I have not met with any instance in my own immediate neighbourhood of the raven actually coming "o'er the infected house, boding to all;" or of the belief, that to it is given—
for it is by no means a common bird in Sussex, though one or two may generally be seen in the neighbourhood of the sea-shore. But it is not long since I heard of one exciting quite as great a horror in the heart of an old woman in the neighbourhood of Chichester as did that celebrated one, in the heart of the "Old woman of Berkeley:"
(182) I have met with even educated persons, as well as those whom the schoolmaster has not reached, who, if a hare were the first animal that crossed their path upon their leaving home, would turn back, regarding it as a warning, that, if they went any further on their way, death, or some dire mishap, would certainly befall them. Perhaps the old belief may still be lingering amongst us of a witch taking the form of a hare, either for the sake of the exercise of running before the hounds, or of the malicious gratification of disappointing the hunt.
(183) "A sound, for all the world like a chirping of chickens," some old nurses tell you, has been sometimes heard in the chamber of death, just before the spirit left the body.
(184) The dog too, like the raven, is believed to possess the faculty of anticipating death; and there are instances without number of the alarm caused by a long-continued howling, at the dead of night, of some dog, who was perhaps baying at the moon, or might have lost his master, from the conviction that it was a sure foretoken of the death of some one of the household. This belief is by no means confined to the uneducated; and I well remember the consternation amongst high and low at Worthing a few years ago, caused by a Newfoundland dog, the property of a clergyman in the neighbourhood, lying down on the steps of a house in Warwick Street, piteously, and refusing to be driven away; it being made known that, soon after the howling commenced, a young lady, long an invalid, but who, it was believed, might still have lingered on for some weeks, had died there. This fact caused so much excitement, that the story reached the owner of the dog, who came to Worthing to inquire into the truth, when it turned out, much to the disgust of all lovers of the marvellous, that the dog had accidentally been separated from his master late in the evening, and had been seen running here and there in search of him, and howling at the door of the stable where he put up his horse, and other places which he often visited in Worthing. His master had called frequently at the house in Warwick Street, and the poor dog ​went there; but it was ascertained that he had passed from it to the door of the reading-room in the same street, and it was there that he had howled so long and loud, to the dismay of numbers who averred next morning that the melancholy sound came from the steps of the house where the young lady died.
(185) An omen of death quite new to me has been lately added to my collection by our cook, who, on being questioned as to the state of the kitchen fire, when an envelope containing some bank notes had inadvertently been thrown into it, exclaimed, "Oh, dear me! it was indeed the blackest fire I ever saw; and, though I am not superstitious, I did not like its looks; and I said then, 'We have had two sudden deaths close to us, and if I do not make that horrid, black-looking fire blaze up, see if we don't soon hear of another death, or else some terrible misfortune.' So I gave it a good poke; and, when it still looked just as black as it had done before, I put a lot of lucifer matches into it, but still it would not burn up; and then we all got frightened, and thought it a very bad sign indeed. And so it has proved to be, for all that money has been burnt, and who can say but a death may follow pretty soon?" (186) Another superstition drawn from the state of the fire is, that its sudden blazing up is a sign of some stranger being near.
(187) The tapping of the beetle, known by the ominous name of the death-watch, is here, as elsewhere, deemed a warning that death is near at hand. How often has the sound made me start and tremble in my childhood when heard at night, in consequence of my having had this belief instilled into me by my nurse.
(188) A superstitious custom, in which the inhabitants of our country villages and towns have faith, believing that its omission is a death-omen, is, that the front door of a house through which a corpse is carried out must be kept wide open till the burial service is concluded, or else another death will follow very soon. A short time ago a death occurred in the St. Mary's Almshouses at Chichester; and on the morning of the funeral, as soon as the body had been carried out, the niece of the deceased locked the door of the apartment, and had hardly done so when she heard the inmates of the Almshouses thumping and rattling it to force it open. On finding all ​their efforts useless, one of them exclaimed, "Hang that good-for-nothing woman! her locking this door before the old girl is buried will bring death among us pretty soon again."
(189) I was told lately by a medical gentleman in an adjoining parish of another strange death-token, a firm belief in which had probably caused the death of the patient, whose husband related it to him. The woman, one day when she was near her confinement, perceived a swarm of bees settled on a dead hedge-stake, and turning to her husband said, "That is a token of death, and it is sent to me." From that hour she declared that she should die in her confinement; and her husband and the nurse, much to the surprise of the doctor, were evidently of the same opinion. At the end of a week or ten days the poor woman actually died. When the doctor called, the husband said he knew some time ago how it was to end, and on being asked what he meant, replied that they had had a token more than three weeks ago, when the bees swarmed on a dead hedge-stake. Gay mentions this amongst his rustic omens:
(190) To dream that a tree is uprooted in your garden is regarded as a death-warning to the owner. This is a widely-spread superstition, and has been practically commemorated, amongst others, by Mrs. Hemans, in The Vassal's Lament for the Fallen Tree:
"Yes! I have seen the ancient oak On the dark deep water cast."
(191) Upon the death of an old woman lately in our parish, a farmer's wife observed to me that she knew three days before that the poor woman's end was near at hand, and on my asking how,—"Oh!" ​she said, "by her longing so for cider." I replied that she was very feverish, and had a constant thirst, which probably was the cause of her wishing for cider. "No," was the reply, "I do not think that had anything to do with it; for it is considered a sure sign of death when such people long for it." And she then went on to cite half a dozen instances, that had fallen under her own observation, of death following soon after a sick person had longed for cider.
From these specimens of our prognostics of death we may proceed to some other popular superstitions connected with the chamber of sickness and death. And in connection with lore just recorded may be mentioned the extraordinary belief (192) that if bees are not immediately informed of the death of the head of the family, some terrible misfortune will ensue. In western Sussex the bad news of their master's death is announced to them by some member of the family tapping with the key of the house-door against the side of every hive, saying at the same time that So-and-so is dead. In some places a piece of black crape is tied upon each hive.
Mrs. Briggs, my daughter's monthly nurse at Westdean, told me that when she was first in service she lived at a house where the son died; and that the mother in the midst of her grief turned to a servant and said, "Let the bees be told, or some fresh trouble will happen," and that she (Mrs. B.) was sent out into the garden for the purpose. She added, she knew many instances of some one being sent to inform the bees when a death had occurred in the family.
(193) If the feathers of game-birds, or of pigeons, are mixed up with the other feathers of the bed on which a dying person lies, they are supposed to prolong the death-struggle. I once heard a sicknurse tell, with much self-satisfaction, how the poor person whom she attended wanted to die but could not, till she guessed how it was, and fetched away the bolster and the feather-bed, and then he went off easy. These nurses by profession are a strange race; and I believe there is no exaggeration in the following story:—The wife of the clergyman of an adjoining parish was told by one of them that never did she see any one die so hard as old Master Short; and at last she thought (though his daughter said there were none) that there must be ​game-feathers in the bed, and she tried to pull it from under him; but he was a heavy man and she could not manage it alone, and there was no one with him but herself; and so she got a rope and tied it round him, and pulled him by it off the bed; and "he went off in a minute quite comfortable, just like a lamb."
(194) Doors and windows are frequently thrown wide open in the chamber of death, in order that the spirit may have a freer passage when it leaves the body. Drawers, too, are unlocked and opened, but wherefore has not been satisfactorily explained to me; and I remember once, when I was present in the sick room of a dying friend, being asked by the attendant nurse for the keys of a wardrobe, and when I had given them to her, under the impression that she wanted to take something out of it, I was surprised to see her merely throw back the doors and open all its numerous drawers. She then came close to me and said, that, as the poor gentleman's death struggles did not cease after she had left a passage for the spirit to go out by opening the door and window, she thought it might be the cabinets being locked that hindered it.
(195) The belief is very common that a mother's longing to keep her dying child on earth lengthens its last struggles, and that violent grieving for the dead will prevent their resting in their graves in peace. There is a song very popular in some parts of Sussex, and probably the production of some village poet, called The Unquiet Grave, which turns on this belief. I wrote down the song from the lips of a girl who repeated it to me, and, as it has not appeared in print, to my knowledge, it would be well to record it here:
THE UNQUIET GRAVE, A SUSSEX SONG.
And here my notes may end. The children inherit and honour the errors of their fathers. False doctrines undisputed come to be thought indisputable. They are in possession of the minds of the many, and possession is held to be so good a title that the popular superstitions of the present generations are likely, to a large extent, to keep their hold upon the next—and, mayhap, upon the next and next.
* ↑ Mrs. Ayling, of Tillington.
* ↑ See Pluquet's Contes Populaires.
* ↑ Mr. Martin of Fulborough.
* ↑ Mrs. Hemans takes as a text for her poem a passage from Camden's Britannia, "Here (at Brereton, in Cheshire) is one thing incredibly strange, but attested, as I myself have heard, by many persons and commonly believed. Before any heir of the family dies, there are seen, in a lake adjoining, the bodies of trees swimming on the water for several days."