218 MY LIFE [Chap. 



engine house and parts of the other machinery are now pointed out as 

 an undoubted and visible proof of the witch's power. 



The witch, being aware of her power over the minds of the people, 

 makes use of it for her own advantage, borrowing her neighbours' horses 

 and farming implements, which they dare not refuse her. 



But the most characteristic and general superstition of this part of the 

 country is the " corpse candle." This is seen in various shapes and 

 heard in various sounds ; the normal form, from which it takes its name, 

 being, however, a lighted candle, which is supposed to foretell death, by 

 going from the house in which the person dies along the road where the 

 coffin will be carried to the place of burial. It is only a few of the most 

 hardy and best educated who dare to call in question the reality of this 

 fearful omen, and the evidence in support of it is of such a startling and 

 voluminous character, that did we not remember the trials and burnings 

 and tortures for witchcraft and demonianism, and all the other forms of 

 superstition in England but a few years ago, it would almost overpower 

 our common sense. 



I will mention a few cases which have been told me by the persons 

 who were witnesses of them, leaving out the hundreds of more marvellous 

 ones which are everywhere to be heard secondhand. 



A respectable woman, in a house where we lodged, assured us that on 

 the evening before one of her children died, she saw a lighted candle 

 moving along about three feet from the ground from the foot of the stairs, 

 across the room towards her, that it came close up to her apron and then 

 vanished, and that it was as distinct and plainly visible as the other 

 candles which were in the room. 



Another case is of a collier who, going one morning into the pit 

 before any of the other men were at work, heard the coal waggons 

 coming along, although he knew there could be no one then at work. He 

 stood still at the side of the passage, the waggons came along drawn by 

 horses as usual, a man he knew walking in front and another at the side, 

 and the dead body of one of his fellow workmen was in one of the 

 waggons. In the course of the day he related what he had seen to some 

 of the workmen (one of whom told me the story), declaring his belief that 

 the man whose body he had seen would meet with an accident before 

 long. About a year afterwards the man was killed by an accident in the 

 pit. The two men seen were near him, and brought him out in the 

 waggon, and their being obliged to stop at the particular place and 

 every other circumstance happened exactly as had been described. This 

 is as the story was told me by a man who declares he heard the prophecy 

 and saw the fulfilment a year afterwards. When such stories are told 

 and believed, it is, of course, useless arguing against the absurdity of it. 

 They naturally say they must believe their own senses, and they are not 

 sufficiently educated to appreciate any general argument you may put to 

 them. There seems to be no fixed time within which the death should 

 follow the " candle " (as all these appearances are called), and therefore 

 when a person sees or thinks he sees anything at night, he sets it down 



