" Possibly not; nor dare we
profess to be utterly sceptical--simply as Christians--to all narratives
of this description; but, allowing the possibility, nay, the necessity in
some cases, of supernatural agency, still, a spirit should have some just
and striking reason for its permitted appearance; and we cannot exactly
discover the object of Sir Tristram's mission. Would it be unfair to
hazard a conjecture that the lady, being a Catholic, married in Captain
Georges a Protestant (a supposition which the double performance of the
marriage ceremony with him seems to favour), whom, being anxious to
convert to her own faith, she thought to deceive, by the "cunningly
devised fable" of a spirit with a burning hand, into the Papistical tenet
of purgatory? and, that by a confusion of real circumstances with her
original fiction, is derived the remarkable family tradition recorded?
Leaving this speculation for the private rumination of our readers, we
proceed:
The stories of the young lady suffocated by accidentally enclosing herself
in a chest with a spring lock[7]--of the girl frightened into complete
idiotcy by those who placed a skeleton, or, as some say, a skull only, in
her bed[8]--and of ladies, bishops, &c. obtaining their livelihoods
privately by highway robbery[9], with similar narratives, rather romantic
than superstitious, are general property, and to be met with under various
modifications throughout England.
Pages:
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47