Note 157 — Chapter V

Some modern historical instances of a similar superstitious feeling are given lower down in the text. Its nature, however, cannot be better illustrated than by reference to the legend attaching to the family of Redgauntlet in the novel of that name. The downfall of the house of Ravenswood, in the admirable tale of the Bride of Lammermoor, though foretold and fated, is not sufficiently identified with the story of the Mermaid’s Well, to be quoted on this occasion. If it were so, that work, from the severe grandeur of its serious parts, and the singularly impressive way in which all events, and all agency, human and supernatural, combine from the outset to bring about a catastrophe, foreseen and prophesied, but not the less inevitable, would offer to the English reader an excellent example of the spirit of the superstitions and tragedies here alluded to, though widely differing from them in form.