Page:A book of folk-lore (1913).djvu/71

68 I’d rather walk a hundred miles
 * And run by night and day,

Than have that carriage halt for me,
 * And hear my lady say—

Now pray step in, and make no din,
 * Step in with me to ride;

There’s room, I trow, by me for you,
 * And all the world beside.

Of course the notion of the death-coach is comparatively modern. It is an expansion of the ancient idea of Death coming to fetch the departing soul. Presumably the earlier idea was of a bier. There is a remarkable account in Mrs. Henry Wood’s novel of The Shadow of Ashlydiat that gives us a notion of what the earlier superstition was. She is very emphatic over it that it is a real fact, and a fact of which she herself was witness. Opposite to the ash trees on the estate of Ashlydiat there extended a waste plain, totally out of keeping with the high cultivation around. It looked like a piece of rude common. Bushes of furze, broom, and other stunted shrubs grew upon it. At the extremity, opposite to the ash trees, there arose a high archway, a bridge built of grey stones. Beyond the archway was a low round building, looking like an isolated windmill without sails.

Strange to say, the appellation of this waste piece of land, with its wild bushes, was the ‘Dark Plain.’ Why? The plain was not dark; it was not shrouded; it stood out, broad and open, in the full glare of sunlight. That certain dark tales had been handed down with the appellation is true; and these may have given rise to the name. Immediately before the archway, for some considerable space, the ground