Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/429

Rh "Disturbance of Coffins in Vaults. As attention has been directed to this rather curious and perhaps novel subject, I beg to add an instance which occurred within my own knowledge and recollection (some twenty years ago) in the parish of Gretford, near Stamford, a small village of which my father was the rector. Twice, if not thrice, the coffins in a vault were found on re-opening it to have been disarranged. The matter excited some interest in the village at the time, and, of course, was a fertile theme for popular superstition: but I think it was hushed up out of respect to the family to whom the vault belonged.

"A leaden coffin is a very heavy thing indeed; some six men can with difficulty carry it. Whether it can float is a question not very difficult to determine. If it will, it seems a natural, indeed the only explanation of the phenomenon, to suppose that the vault has somehow become filled with water.

"I enclose an extract from the letter of a lady to whom I wrote, not trusting my own memory, as to the details of the case:

Penn., Oct. 15, 1867. 'I remember very well the Gretford vault being opened when we were there. It was in the church and belonged to the … family. The churchwarden came to tell the rector, who went into the vault, and saw the coffins all in confusion: one little one on the top of a large one, and some tilted on one side against the wall. They were all lead, but of course cased in wood. The same vault had been opened once before, and was found in the same state of confusion, and set right by the churchwarden, so that his dismay was great when he found them displaced again. We had no doubt from the situation and nature of the soil, that it had been full of water during some flood which floated the coffins. I daresay … is still alive, and could give the date, and