Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/291

 Rh they moved on at once, but never did their driver dare to go abroad again without being well armed with witchwood.

In some respects Silky showed a family likeness to the Brownies. Like them she would, during the night, tidy a disorderly house; but if cannie decent people had cleaned their rooms, and arranged them neatly, especially on a Saturday afternoon, the wayward sprite would disarrange everything as soon as they were gone to bed, so that on Sunday morning all would be in the wildest confusion.

Silky disappeared from her haunts very suddenly. One day a female servant, being alone in one of the rooms of a house at Black Heddon, was terribly frightened by the ceiling above suddenly giving way, and a black mass falling through it with a crash upon the floor. She instantly fled out of the room, screaming at the pitch of her voice, “The devil’s in the house!—the devil’s in the house! He’s come through the ceiling!” The family collected around her in some alarm, and at first no one dared enter the room; when the mistress at last ventured to go in, she found on the floor a large rough skin filled with gold. From this time Silky was never more heard or seen, so it was believed that she was the troubled phantom of some person who had died miserable because she owned treasure, and was overtaken by her mortal agony before she had disclosed its hiding-place. The Rev. J. F. Bigge relates, however, that an old woman named Pearson, of Welton Mill, whom he visited on her deathbed, told him, a few days before her death, that she had seen Silky the night before, sittting at the bottom of her bed, all dressed in silk.

Mr. James Hardy, Silky’s historian, to whom I am indebted for these particulars respecting the wayward sprite, tells me of three sister spirits, also clad in silk attire. One is the family apparition of the mansion of Houndwood, in Berwickshire, and bears the quaint name of “Chappie.” A knocking was repeatedly heard at the front-door of this house, but only on one occasion was any one seen. Then a grand lady swept in, and went up the staircase, but was never seen again in or out of the house. Denton Hall, near Newcastle, was also haunted by a female form,