Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, June 1885Various
History
Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, June 1885
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
Seemed all on fire that chapel proud,
Where Roslin’s chiefs uncoffined lie,
Each baron, for a sable shroud,
Sheathed in his iron panoply.
Scott derives the idea from the tomb fires of the Sagas, but we have
shown the wide diffusion of the belief.
[41] Rink, _Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo_, p. 43.
[42] “And all the house showed clear as in the light of dawn.”—Theoc.
xix. 30-40, ed. Ahrens.
By way of ending this brief sketch of the comparative study of ghost
stories, an example may be given of the recurrent tale which is told of
different people in different ages and countries. Just as the anecdote
of William Tell and the Apple occurs in various times, and among widely
severed races, so, in a minor degree, does the famous Beresford ghost
story present itself in mythical fashion. The Beresford tale is told at
great length by Dr. F. G. Lee, in his _Glimpses of the Supernatural_.
As usual, Dr. Lee does not give the names of his informants, nor trace
the channels through which the legend reached them. But he calls his
version of the myth “an authentic record” (p. 51). To be brief, Lord
Tyrone and Miss Blank were orphans, educated in the same house “in the
principles of Deism.” When they were about fourteen years of age their
preceptor died, and their new guardians tried to “persuade them to
embrace revealed religion.” The boy and girl, however, stuck to Deism.
But they made a compact that he or she who died first should appear to
the survivor “to declare what religion was most approved by the Supreme
Being.” Miss Blank married Sir Martin Beresford. One day she appeared
at breakfast with a pale face, and a black band round her wrist. Long
afterwards, on her death-bed, she explained that this band covered
shrunken sinews. The ghost of Lord Tyrone, at the hour of his death,
had appeared to her, had prophesied (correctly) her future, and had
touched her wrist by way of a sign.
He struck my wrist; his hand was as cold as marble; in a moment the
sinews shrank up, every nerve withered.... I bound a piece of black
ribbon round my wrist. The black ribbon was formerly in the possession
of Lady Betty Cobb, who, during her long life, was ever ready to
attest the truth of this narration, as are, to the present hour, the
whole of the Tyrone and Beresford families.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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