Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/356

334 it. The other bench-ends bear shields with the emblems of the Passion upon them. The screen has wholly disappeared.

“The carpenter who was employed in 1832 to replace these old benches with neat deal pews, before leaving his work one evening, out of curiosity, opened the vault in which lay William Drake Gould and his lady. Finding the lady’s coffin-lid loose, he proceeded to raise it, that he might take a look at the redoubted Madame. Immediately she opened her eyes, sat up, and rose to her feet. The carpenter, who was an elderly man, frightened out of his senses, rushed from the church, which was filled with light from the body of the risen lady. As the man dashed down the churchyard avenue he turned his head back, and saw her over his shoulder gleaming in the porch, and preparing to sail down the path after him.

“From the church to his house was a good mile and a quarter, and the road passes nearly all the way through woods. He ran as he never ran before, and as he ran his shadow went before him, cast by the light which shone from the spectral lady who followed him. On reaching his house he burst the door open, and dashed into bed beside his wife, who was infirm and bed-ridden. Both then saw the figure standing in the doorway, and the light from it was so intense that, to use the old woman’s words, she could see by it a pin lying on the floor.

“There is a stone shown on the ‘ramps’ of Lew Slate Quarry where seven parsons met to lay the old Madame. Opinions differ as to what took place—whether she was laid in part or not at all. Some say that the white owl, which nightly flits to and fro in front of Lew House, is the spirit of the lady conjured by the pardons into a bird; others doubt this; but I believe all agree that the parsons failed because one of the number was ‘a bit fresh’ when he came, and had forgotten the right words to be used.

“I have not the smallest doubt in my own mind that this history is in its essentials of very great antiquity; that the apparition is really an ancient white lady, who has suffered anthropomorphosis, and become Madame Gould; the same stories and