Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/365

 Rh vanished, but the light became painfully dazzling, and in the midst of it stood Our Lord displaying His five wounds. She was left in a state of overwhelming joy, and could not restrain herself from relating what she had seen to some of her neighbours and to the parish priest; but she had a strong aversion to relating it to any one who did not believe in the supernatural, lest, as she termed it, she should be ‘giving that which is holy unto dogs, and casting pearls before swine.’

“Another Horbury woman, of a different character from Widow Freeman, and by no means so attentive to her religious duties, had a vision whilst engaged in her work this month (November, 1865). She saw suddenly before her a monstrous and very terrible beast ‘summat like a padfoit,’ and she was ‘right fleyed to see’t; it had great goggle e’en and a mouth ravening for blood.’ It seemed about to rush upon her and rend her in pieces, when a hand appeared marked with blood, and this hand smote the beast, and it fled with a bellow that shook the house.”

The following dream recorded by the same hand is very remarkable: “A man at ———, in Lincolnshire, known for his drunken and disorderly life, had a dream. He thought that he was driving down a winding lane on a dark night. He heard footsteps behind him and turned to look, but could only discern a dark figure approaching, without being able to see the face. The stranger came up with the cart, and the driver saw that he was dressed in a long dark cloak. Suddenly the foot-traveller threw open the cloak, and asked to be received into the cart, and by the wounds in His hands the poor man recognised ‘his dear Saviour.’ Before he answered the man awoke. For some time he lived a better life, but gradually relapsed, and before the year was out had become worse than ever. Then he dreamt again. He was driving down the same dark lane, but no footstep sounded behind him. He looked round. At that moment the cart was upset, he fell into a ditch full of fire, and awoke with a scream, wafting the flames from his mouth. A few nights after the wretched man left a public-house drunk in his cart, and