Note 43 — FIENDS, GHOSTS, AND SPRITES. (continued 2)

"The marvellous stories, the frightful tales, the threats, which were so long the apanage of infancy, would dispose the naturally impressionable mind to receive all the fantastic creations of the period. Now, it is said, the system is completely changed, and they are taught to ridicule these ancient beliefs. This argument would be unanswerable if they spoke of colleges and boarding schools; but they forget the servants to whom are confided the early years of infants; thus is the nursery always reviving fooleries, terrors, and frightful stories, in the middle of which the infant grows. I will content me with one example, that of one of the celebrated poets of England, Robert Burns. 'I owed much in my infancy,' says this writer, 'to an old woman who lived with us, and who was extremely ignorant, and remarkably credulous and superstitious. No one in the country had a larger collection of tales and songs respecting devils, fairies, ghosts, sorcerers, magicians, jack-o'-lanterns, hobgoblins, phantoms, apparitions, charms, giants, dragons, &c.

"'Not only did these tales cultivate in me the germs of poesy, but they had such an effect upon my imagination, that, even now, in my night journeys, I have often, in spite of myself, the eye upon certain suspicious places; and although no one can be more sceptical in such matters, an effort of the reason is occasionally necessary to chase away these vain terrors.'

"'Darkness, obscurity, the silence of night, solitariness, contribute strongly to develop the feeling of terror so wrongly cast in the minds of infants. Their eye readily perceives frightful figures which regard them in a menacing manner; their chamber is peopled with assassins, robbers, devils, and monsters of all kinds."—A. Brierre de Boismont. "Des Hallucinations; ou Histoire Raisonnée des Apparitions," &c. Ed. II, 1852, p. 362.