However, we have finished; for less than a folio could not do that justice to our subject in its various bearings which it requires;—nor, indeed, would less than an intimate acquaintance with all the tongues and traditions of all nations that are, or ever have been, upon the face of the earth—so intermingled are divine revelations, corrupt mythologies, wild and palpable fictions, fantastic imaginings, exaggerated allegories, poetical machinery, and the very insanity of human hopes, fears, and wishes, &c. &c., in the great and never to be analyzed body of popular superstition!
Can any of the readers of the Mirror throw additional light on the subject of coincident traditions?—Can any of its contributors show the connexion which subsists between oriental mythology, allegory, and legendary lore, with that of the Scandinavian nations? This Sir Walter Scott has omitted to do;—but this might afford, even formed of the the materials to be gleaned from various desultory sources, another volume upon “Demonology and Witchcraft.”
M.L.B.
Footnotes:
This escritoire is said to be in the possession of Lady Clauwilliam, at Giltown, her father having married the sister and co-heiress of Lady Beresford; and a picture was lately existing, and may he now, at Catherine Grove (the seat of Richard Georges Meredith, Esq., her grandson on Capt. Georges’ side), exhibiting Lady B. with a broad black ribbon round the wrist, which the apparition of Sir Tristram is said to have scorched.
Vide Mirror, vol. ii. p. 157, for the story of “The Rosewood Trunk.”
Vide Mirror, vol. v. p. 93, for the story of “Mary M’Cleod.”
Vide Mirror, vol. viii. p. 90, for the story of “The Lady of Edenmere”—by the author of this article.
Vide Mirror, vol. xii. p. 267, for the “Ghost Story”—by M.G. Lewis.