Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/355

Rh ground, looking at the moon.’ All who heard him started, and a blank expression passed over their countenances. The young man, seeing that he had surprised them more than he anticipated, asked what was the matter. The reply was, ‘Madame was buried three days ago in Lew church.’

“It must be noticed that a belief connected with the appearance of spirits, up to the third day after death or burial, is very ancient. S. Macarius the Younger, of Alexandria (A.D. 373), thus speaks: ‘On the third day, the oblation having been made in the church, the alleviation of its pain, which it underwent through separation from the body, the departed soul. . . . . receives good hope. For two days it was permitted to the soul to wander about on the earth at its will. Wherefore the soul, enthralled with love to its body, sometimes haunts the mansion wherein it had dwelt, sometimes the sepulchre in which its body is laid, and thus for two days it seeks, as it were, its part, in seeking its corpse.’

“But to return to the subject under consideration.

“An old woman once entered the orchard near Lew church, and seeing the trees laden with apples she shook some down and filled her pockets, keeping one in her hand to eat. She then turned to the gate into the road, but suddenly there flashed before her in the way the figure of the old Madame in white, pointing to the apple. The poor woman in an agony of terror cast it away, and fled across the orchard to a gap in the hedge on the opposite side; but at the moment she reached it the figure of the White Lady appeared standing in the gap, looking at her sternly, and pointing to her pocket. It was not till the old goody had emptied it of the stolen apples that the spectre vanished.

“Old Lew Trenchard church was handsomely furnished with a carved oak screen and bench-ends. Some of these ends alone remain. They are of excellent workmanship: one representing St. Michael weighing souls, one a lady’s portrait in a medallion, with a jester in cap and bells in a niche beneath it, another a gentleman’s portrait with an old battlemented gateway beneath