Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/352

 3i6 Hampshire Folklore.

of them nowadays, and they " carries on a treat," " they carries on something chronic," It was not surprising after this to hear that even the ghosts " seemed 'bout played out now." However, after a little discussion, it appeared that, if they had given no very recent manifestation, they were yet plentiful enough in the neighbourhood. There was one at the farm way over, — a man who hanged himself in a barn. He came of a wild lot. Soon after, shepherd was driving a flock past to Petersfield Fair with a dog " that would face anything." Shepherd was a steady man, but at the corner of the barn the dog cowered down, and the " ship " rushed home and nothing could get them by. No one had seen this ghost lately, — not that shepherd saw anything, — but the people at the farm had heard it knocking, so 'twas said. There was a ghost, too, near Mabbits' Farm, where Countess Gleichen stayed to paint horses. Old Mr. Hayes of Horndean " never believed in such things" as ghosts before he visited Hawkley, but he " heard the ghost" of the girl who was drowned in Greatham Mill stream. She had been a country heiress with ^^3000, but an evil-living brother ill-treated her, " brought three women from London, he did," to the house, and the girl in despair committed suicide, nor was Mr. Hayes the only one to vouch for the resultant ghost.

Considerable interest is being taken at the present moment in An Adventure of two ladies at Le Petit Trianon. Well, since 1896, at Coombe, on the border of the north-west angle, — officially in Berkshire though the inhabitants refuse to be recognised as other than Hants folk, — the late vicar told me of a parallel case. One day a local labourer came to the vicarage with a tale of " furrin folk " in the garden of the old manor. He was a stolid and uneducated yokel, the last man to suffer from over- stimulated imagination, but on being questioned he described accurately the dresses worn by the said " furrin folk," and they were unquestionably of the Stuart period.