"Thereupon, as soon as the priest began to
move, she ran with all her might out of the
church, and heard behind her a mighty
tumbling and rattling, as if all the church
were falling in, and all the ghosts followed
her out of the church, and caught her in the
churchyard by the cloak, and dragged it off
her neck; but she then, leaving that behind
her, got free and outran them.

"Then when she came back to the town
gate, she found it still closed, for it was but
one hour after midnight, was obliged therefore
to rest three hours in a house outside
before the door was opened, from which it
may be observed that no good spirit could
have helped her through the door when she
went out, and that the pigs which she had
seen and heard at the gate (as if it were the
usual time for driving out the herds) must
have been so many devils.  Nevertheless, as
she was a brave woman, and had so far
escaped unhurt, she did not take the matter
much to heart, but went home and suffered
no harm, beyond being confined to bed for
two days by the fright. But on the same
morning after this had befallen her, when she
sent somebody out to the churchyard to look
about and see whether her cloak was lying
there and was to be recovered, the same was
then found torn to small pieces in such manner
that upon every grave there lay one little
shred of it, at which the townspeople who
flocked out in crowds to the churchyard
marvelled greatly."

Another superstition connected with man
after death, the bleeding of a murdered
person in the presence of his murderer, I
should be glad, if there were space, to illustrate
by quoting from a legal protocol, setting forth
the result of an inquiry into a case of murder
instituted in accordance with this superstition.
The wound was declared not only to
have bled when the assassins three times
repeating the prescribed oath, touched the
corpse with two fingers, on the mouth, the
wound itself, and the body; but the corpse
indicated also the gradations of guilt in
persons accessory to the deed. Before one man
who was simply present at and acquiescent
in the murder, red foam issued from the
mouth. In the presence of another who took
part in the fatal quarrel, but was not the
striker of the fatal blow, there was the foam,
and also a slight flow of blood out of the
wound. At the touch of the murderer himself
blood flowed rapidly over the sides, and the
lips of the wound throbbed, as if the heart—
it was a wound over the heart—were beating
under them. A murdered man, it was thought,
even if buried, bleeds when his murderer
walks by.

Many strange things were believed, too,
of the bodies of suicides. Such a body,
for example, was light as a feather when
being dragged up hill, but down-hill as
much as a team could move. There existed
at the same time strong belief in the life of
men, not as spectres, but as supernatural
objects of a peculiar kind. The Wandering
Jew, who is to us only the subject of a legend,
was to our forefathers a person. Matthew
Paris tells of an Armenian archbishop who
had often entertained him at his table. Then
there was Pontius Pilate, who, having
committed suicide was thrown into the Tiber,
where the evil spirits made such work with
his body, that they caused, now floods in the
river, now thunder, lightning and hail in the
air. The body was for that reason taken out
of the Tiber, and cast into the Rhone, near
Vienna. The people of Vienna, unable to
endure the whirlwinds and the tumult of
demons that attended upon the body as it
floated on their stream (it would not sink),
carried it away into the neighbouring Alps,
where they plunged it down a deep well.

Near Lucerne, there is a mountain that
had been called, because of the cloud-cap
always about its head, the Capped Mountain,
which is, in Latin, Mons Pileatus.
Superstition fastened upon this name, and declared
that on Mount Pilate, Pontius Pilate appears
once a year, in judge's robes, and that they
who see him, die before the year is out.
There, too, they say, is a pond; upon the
surface of which you raise a storm by dropping
a stone. Luther tells of it, and of another such
pond on the Polsterberg. "They are places,"
he adds, "in which devils lie imprisoned."

Another person who was supposed to
remain on earth, and to be sometimes visible,
was our own hero, King Arthur. Arthur
married in his old age a third wife, daughter
of a British prince: and, travelling on hero's
business across the seas, left his young wife
behind him, to be stolen from him with the
kingdom, by his nephew Modred. Arthur
came back, and killed Modred in battle, but
was himself dangerously wounded, and
disappeared. The fairy Morgana, who loved
him, took him away to her own island of
Avalon, and almost healed him there, but
not quite; once every year his wounds
broke out, as he himself related to a young
man who met him in the wilderness about
Mount Etna. Gervasius Tiberiensis tells
how the meeting happened. The young
man was groom to the Bishop of Catania,
and was brushing his palfrey one day, when
the horse escaped, and galloped up into the
mountain. The groom hunted for him in
vain among the precipices until after it had
grown dark. What next? A narrow path
led suddenly to a wide and lovely plain, on
which he saw the palace of King Arthur, and
the king in it, sitting beneath a royal canopy.
The king asked what brought the young man
to his presence, and, being told of the mishap,
caused the bishop's palfrey to be brought
and handed over to him. He then obliged
the young man with some account of himself,
and "even," Gervasius goes on to say, "sent
presents to that bishop, which have been seen
by many, and marvelled at by some." But