Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/301

 Rh GHOSTLY LIGHTS.

BY M. J. WALHOUSE.

The popular belief in ghostly fires seen wandering at night exists, sometimes with curious points of resemblance, in widely separated countries. Crofton Croker, in the third part of his Irish Fairy Legends and Traditions, has given an account, with many instances, of the corpse-candles (canwyll gorf) in Wales, once generally believed in there, nor yet entirely discredited. These were small lights seen to issue from the beds of sick persons, and pass thence to the churchyard along the way the funerals were afterwards to go, for they were sure forerunners of death. If one were met on the road it was dangerous to stand in its way. Some, who went aside as it passed, could discern a dark shadow carrying a light between its forefingers, others have seen the likeness of a candle carried in a skull. In a paper read before the Bengal Asiatic Society, Mr. Theobald relates that Will-o'-the-wisps are often seen in the flat marshy country under the Rajmahal Hills, and are called Bhûtni, from Bhûta, a goblin. The people say they are borne by ghosts; Mr, Theobald also says that in Burmah there is a tribe of wizards or conjurors, whose heads are believed to leave their bodies during the night and wander in the jungle feeding on carrion, and the ignis fatuus is said to issue from their mouths; if one of these heads be seized it screams and struggles to escape, and if kept away from the body for more than twelve hours both perish. This curiously resembles the shadow and skull-borne corpse-candles of Welsh superstition.

I lately met with a curious account of somewhat similar appearances in Germany, where on the high road leading to Sommerda, in Thuringia, people travelling by night see a lantern held by a hand only, no other part of a body being visible, which accompanies them to the town-gate, when it disappears. Many of the old folks profess to have seen it; one of them related that his grandfather saw it while walking on the road late in the evening. On coming near he uttered