Yorkshire Oddities, Incidents, and Strange EventsBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
Yorkshire Oddities, Incidents, and Strange Events
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Legends -- England -- Yorkshire; Yorkshire (England) -- Miscellanea
"For the above facts I can vouch, and I have no reason to believe
that the following are either incorrect or exaggerated.
"It is said to appear very frequently on Trinity Sunday, and to
bring two other figures on to the scene, another female, called the
nurse, and the child. It is often seen as distinctly on a dark,
rainy, or snowy day, as when the sun is shining. When I saw it the
sun was not bright.
"The motion is even, not at all jerky. Sometimes it glides swiftly;
at other times slowly. It cannot be a mere accidental reflection,
from a door or window, for instance, for the figure faces different
ways, according to the direction in which it is going; and it is
not always alone, nor do the figures always act in concert.
"One of my friends, with a companion, has watched outside on the
wall, where he had a full view of the whole place around, during
morning service. The ghost has been seen from the inside while
outside nothing was visible.
"It is said to have haunted the church for 150, 200, and some
authorities say 300 years, and there are many pretty legends
connected with it.
"One of the many traditions says that 300 years ago, during
religious disturbances, a party of soldiers came to sack the
convent attached to this church; that the abbess, a woman of great
virtue and courage, stopped them, as they were entering, declaring
that they should enter over her dead body only, and that, should
they succeed in their sacrilegious purpose, as they afterwards did,
her spirit would haunt the place until the true Church were
re-established, and a convent built on the same spot. Another story
relates that during the plague, some two hundred years ago, a
nurse and child died of the pestilence, and were necessarily buried
outside the city walls, while the unfortunate mother of the child,
at her death, was interred in Holy Trinity Churchyard. Here the
mother waits and receives the nurse and child, weeping and wringing
her hands before parting with them. The same scene is often enacted
several times during the same day, and even during the same
service.
"Whatever may have been the circumstances under which the ghost (if
it is one, which it is hard to believe in these matter-of-fact
days) commenced its peculiar promenade, I would recommend those who
have the chance to go to Holy Trinity Church, York, and see for
themselves, though an audience of the apparition cannot always be
assured. A ghost in broad daylight does no harm, frightens no one,
and ought to interest everybody.--I am, &c.,
"H. G. F. T."
Finally the Rector of Holy Trinity, York, intervened; he wrote to the
"York Herald":--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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