Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/74

52 over the year he would shoot Askew; but he died before St. Mark’s day came round again.

I have received a very remarkable story of an apparition on St. Mark’s Eve, at Ford, Northumberland, which I give in the words of my informant, M. T. Culiey, Esq. Coupland Castle: “Two men, both of whom my wife has seen, were ascending the hill at Ford alongside of the churchyard, having been surveying land. They had just turned into the Ford Road from, I think, Kimmerston Lane, when they saw the chancel door of the church open, and the rector, the Rev.—— Marsh, walk out in his surplice. It was the dusk of the evening, but there was a light around the figure, which enabled the men to see his features distinctly, and they afterwards asserted positively that there could be no doubt as to his identity. The figure advanced to a certain point in the churchyard and vanished. That night the rector was taken ill at Ford Castle, where he was dining, was carried home, died the following day, and was buried just were the figure had been observed to disappear.”

I have heard of the rite in Cleveland too, and at Teesdale; at Sedbergh, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the local belief is somewhat different. It is said there that the forms of those who will die during the year, preceded by the parish clerk, parade the churchyard on All Saints Eve. The clerk’s daughter, named Barbara Butterwith, narrated this to my informant, the Rev. W. Delancey Lawson, and declared that she was going out to see the procession, but he dissuaded her from it, thinking that she might in some way get a panic.

Another mode of divining into futurity has also been resorted to in Yorkshire, called cauff-riddling, and was thus practised. The barn-doors must be set wide open, a riddle and some chaff must be procured, and those who wish to pry into the future must go into the barn at midnight, and in turn commence the process of riddling. Should the riddler be doomed to die during the year two persons will be seen passing by the open barn-doors carrying a coffin; in the other case nothing will be visible.

Not many years ago two men and a woman went to a barn near Malton, in Yorkshire, on St. Mark’s Eve, to riddle cauff.