Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/359

 Collectanea, 327

The Ghost Waggon."

The following cutting is taken from a column headed " Round Scunthorpe" in the Hull and North Lincolnshire Times, April 21, 1917:

" Many of the wild and desolate scenes of Indian massacres in the West retain to this day their superstitious traditions of apparitions and other supernatural phenomena. Old plainsmen vouch for these ' visions ' and * ghosts,' and one of the traditions, that of 'The Ghost Waggon,' which rolls across the sky when- ever a death occurs in a certain Western state, has been incor- porated into the photo-play which tops the bill at the Pavilion on Monday."

The death cart, which is heard by night, is known in English folklore. For example, old people are acquainted with it in Lincolnshire. In Brittany it is seen as well as heard, the driver being Death himself in the form of the last person buried in the churchyard. These European carts follow the ordinary roads, however. So far as I know they do not traverse the sky. Can anyone give me an account of the American "Ghost Waggon"? Does it in all respects resemble the waggons of emigrants travelling over the praries ? Further, is the belief in it connected with the appearance of mirages ?

According to my experience, here in England, mirages occur much more frequently than is generally understood. Only yester- day I listened to the story of a train seen running east of Skegness, where there is nothing but sea. It was supposed to be the reflection of a train at some distance behind the spectators on the west. Mirages off Skegness are not uncommon, and I under- stand that the shallow water on a sandbank is supposed to act as a reflecting surface.

Does any English folklore appear to relate to mirages, or to those deceptive meteoric conditions which now and then change a landscape in such a marvellous manner that what is in reality a fertile river-flat may resemble a Scotch salt-water loch backed by high hills ?

Mabel Peacock.