1892.] on Tales of the Scottish Peasantry. 495 



superstitions is that which prescribed a belief in the periodical return 

 of the dead to their former homes — not as night-walking spectres 

 encountered only by those who were alone and in the dark — but as 

 social beings, come back to join the family circle and share in its 

 festivities, — in short, in the old phrase, come back " to dine and dance 

 with the living." How anything so incredible should ever have come 

 to be believed, we may well be at a loss to understand. Yet believed 

 it seems to have been. There are two of the old ballads which are 

 concerned with the belief, and they are two of the finest which have 

 come down to us. The fragment entitled "The Wife of Usher's 

 Well " tells how a thriving country-woman made provision for her 

 three sons by sending them to sea. But they have not been long away 

 from her, when she hears that they have perished in a storm. Then, 

 in the madness of her grief, she puts up a blasphemous prayer to 

 Heaven, — praying that the conflict of wind and wave may never cease 

 until her sons come home to her in their likeness as she knew them 

 of old. Her prayer is heard ; and answered. When the long dark 

 nights of Martinmas come round, the sons return to their home. In 

 outward seeming they are unchanged ; but the hats they wear, as we 

 are told, are of a birk, or birch-tree, which is not of earthly growth. 

 Rising to a height of simple, unconscious, tragic irony, the ballad goes 

 on to detail the preparations which are made by the mother to fete 

 the home-coming of her sons. In a fever of happiness, she issues her 

 orders to her maids. The fatted calf is slain ; and a brief hour of joy 

 goes by. Then, as it grows late, the young men betake themselves to 

 rest. The mother has prepared their bed with her own hands. But 

 the dawn draws near — the period of their Bojourn is almost up. The 

 cock crows. They recognise the signal which binds them under 

 penalty to return whence they came, and with a few touching words 

 of leave-taking they depart as they had come. In this case the 

 superstition of the return of the dead to their homes, to visit their 

 friends, is complicated with the idea of punishment for a rash utter- 

 ance or impious prayer. But in " The Clerk's Twa Sons of Oxen- 

 ford " — the other ballad which deals with the same theme — in which 

 the home-coming of the dead is timed at Christmas, the fundamental 

 idea appears in its simplest form. These two tales are perhaps the 

 wildest in the whole range of Scottish popular story ; but, wild as they 

 are, they contain, I think, a distinct and deep human significance. 

 It will be observed that, in either case, the return of the dead to their 

 homes is fixed at a season of relaxation and festivity. At such seasons 

 the thoughts of the working-people, being set free from their daily 

 occupations, are at liberty to wander ; and it is a fact that the annual 

 recurrence of such landmarks in time, with their familiar accom- 

 paniment of usages and ceremonies, brings bygone years before the 

 mind with a peculiai* clearness — or, at least, brings them before the 

 minds of people who lead simple monotonous lives with few events 

 to mark them. Nothing is commoner at such seasons than to hear 

 the country-people refer to the friends whom they have lost since that 

 time last year, dwelling upon particular acts of theirs, and upon 



