Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/355

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This uncomfortable behaviour was less than the ghost did with other people. "It took an' scrooped arm-chair round," it broke the glass and china, upset the dairy, and rattled milk pans. Now for the cause of all this disturbance. The farmer at Atherfield in days long gone by,—but I will continue in the man's words, which I wrote down immediately after he told me the tale:—

In nearly every instance I have given there is some reason for the return of the spirit to its earthly abode, but, did time permit, I could give you many instances of hauntings with apparently no reason for ghostly unrest on the part of the dead. It is simply, as I have already said, that "everyone walks." We find the fear of this return in the custom that insists on the opening of all doors and windows when the coffin has been carried out; this used always to be the case at Lymington, for instance. I was given no reason as to why salt should be put on the floor under a coffin, or why the wise woman of Lymington aforementioned always collected biscuits at funeral feasts, but Mr. Heanley has given me the reason for another custom I knew of,—ringing a merry peal after a funeral, "or a single bell rung very quickly. It was," he wrote,