They fly in clouds and flap their shrouds,
When full the moon doth sail;
In dead of night, when lacketh light,
We hear them sob and wail.
And many a soul with dismal howl
Doth rattle at the door,
Or rave and rout, with dance and shout
Around the granite tor.
We hear a soul i’ th’ chimney growl
That’s drenched with the rain,
To wring the wet from winding sheet,
To feel the fire ’t were fain.
This idea is not antagonistic to metempsychosis: it shows us the spirits of the deceased wandering over the world in quest of bodies that they may occupy. In African tribes a madman is supposed to be possessed of two souls, one of a lately deceased man that has taken up its abode in him, the other is his own spirit. Frobenius mentions a case. ‘A few years ago such a possessed person burnt a whole village in the Gaboon district without anyone preventing him. The villagers stood by and looked on, not venturing even to save their own effects. When the Government forces arrived, there was a great row, and the arrest of the poor idiot almost led to a war.’
In Yorkshire, Essex and on Dartmoor it is supposed that the souls that pipe and wail on the wind are those of unbaptized
