Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/181

 HIS chapter shall be devoted largely to recollections of the customs, superstitions and legends with which I became acquainted at Lew in youth, nearly every one of which has now become a fancy of the past, the very memory of which has faded away.

A prevalent superstition when I was a child was that a flame from the churchyard would travel along the lanes to the house of one who was about to die and tarry there till death occurred, when two flames would go side by side to the graveyard. This same belief is, or was, very common in Wales, and well authenticated, or supposed to be well authenticated accounts of it exist.

One evening, the Rev. Dr. Bussell, late vice-principal of Brasenose, Oxford, was dining with me. After he had left, he returned in great perturbation, because, as he said, he had seen a bluish flame dancing above a grave in the churchyard. I advised him to go to his mother's house across the fields, and not pass again by the church, and this he accordingly did.

The following ballad I wrote, on the theme, but it is original, and not a traditional ballad. It was written to a beautiful and touching Devonshire air wedded to a very gross set of words.