The Book of Dreams and Ghosts - Andrew Lang

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the stories continue to be told, and our business is with the stories.

      Taking, first, dreams of the unknown past, we find a large modern collection of these attributed to a lady named “Miss A---”. They were waking dreams representing obscure incidents of the past, and were later corroborated by records in books, newspapers and manuscripts. But as these books and papers existed, and were known to exist, before the occurrence of the visions, it is obvious that the matter of the visions may have been derived from the books and so forth, or at least, a sceptic will vastly prefer this explanation. What we need is a dream or vision of the unknown past, corroborated by a document not known to exist at the time when the vision took place and was recorded. Probably there is no such instance, but the following tale, picturesque in itself, has a kind of shadow of the only satisfactory sort of corroboration.

      The author responsible for this yarn is Dr. Gregory, F.R.S., Professor of Chemistry in the University of Edinburgh. After studying for many years the real or alleged phenomena of what has been called mesmerism, or electro-biology, or hypnotism, Dr. Gregory published in 1851 his Letters to a Candid Inquirer on Animal Magnetism.

      Though a F.R.S. and a Professor of Chemistry, the Doctor had no more idea of what constitutes evidence than a baby. He actually mixed up the Tyrone with the Lyttelton ghost story! His legend of Queen Mary’s jewels is derived from (1) the note-book, or (2) a letter containing, or professing to contain, extracts from the note-book, of a Major Buckley, an Anglo-Indian officer. This gentleman used to “magnetise” or hypnotise people, some of whom became clairvoyant, as if possessed of eyes acting as “double-patent-million magnifiers,” permeated by X rays.

      “What follows is transcribed,” says the Doctor, “from Major Buckley’s note-book.” We abridge the narrative. Major Buckley hypnotised a young officer, who, on November 15, 1845, fell into “a deeper state” of trance. Thence he awoke into a “clairvoyant” condition and said:—

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      “I have had a strange dream about your ring” (a “medallion” of Anthony and Cleopatra); “it is very valuable.”

      Major Buckley said it was worth £60, and put the ring into his friend’s hand.

      “It belonged to royalty.”

      “In what country?”

      “I see Mary, Queen of Scots. It was given to her by a man, a foreigner, with other things from Italy. It came from Naples. It is not in the old setting. She wore it only once. The person who gave it to her was a musician.”

      The seer then “saw” the donor’s signature, “Rizzio”. But Rizzio spelled his name Riccio! The seer now copied on paper a writing which in his trance he saw on vellum. The design here engraved (p. 32) is only from a rough copy of the seer’s original drawing, which was made by Major Buckley.

      “Here” (pointing to the middle) “I see a diamond cross.” The smallest stone was above the size of one of four carats. “It” (the cross) “was worn out of sight by Mary. The vellum has been shown in the House of Lords.” {31}

      “… The ring was taken off Mary’s finger by a man in anger and jealousy: he threw it into the water. When he took it off, she was being carried in a kind of bed with curtains” (a litter).

      Just before Rizzio’s murder Mary was enceinte, and might well be carried in a litter, though she usually rode.

      The seer then had a view of Sizzle’s murder, which he had probably read about.

      Three weeks later, in another trance, the seer finished his design of the vellum. The words

      A

       M

       DE LA PART

      probably stand for à Marie, de la part de—

      The thistle heads and leaves in gold at the corners were a usual decoration of the period; compare the ceiling of the room in Edinburgh Castle where James VI. was born, four months after Rizzio’s murder. They also occur in documents. Dr. Gregory conjectures that so valuable a present as a diamond cross may have been made not by Rizzio, but through Rizzio by the Pope.

      It did not seem good to the doctor to consult Mary’s lists of jewels, nor, if he had done so, would he have been any the wiser. In 1566, just before the birth of James VI., Mary had an inventory drawn up, and added the names of the persons to whom she bequeathed her treasures in case she died in child-bed. But this inventory, hidden among a mass of law-papers in the Record Office, was not discovered till 1854, nine years after the vision of 1845, and three after its publication by Dr. Gregory in 1851. Not till 1863 was the inventory of 1566, discovered in 1854, published for the Bannatyne Club by Dr. Joseph Robertson.

      Turning to the inventory we read of a valuable present made by David Rizzio to Mary, a tortoise of rubies, which she kept till her death, for it appears in a list made after her execution at Fotheringay. The murdered David Rizzio left a brother Joseph. Him the queen made her secretary, and in her will of 1566 mentions him thus:—

      “A Josef, pour porter à celui qui je luy ay dit, une emeraude emaille de blanc.

      “A Josef, pour porter à celui qui je luy ai dit, dont il ranvoir quittance.

      “Une bague garnye de vingt cinq diamens tant grands que petis.”

      Now the diamond cross seen by the young officer in 1845 was set with diamonds great and small, and was, in his opinion, a gift from or through Rizzio. “The queen wore it out of sight.” Here in the inventory we have a bague (which may be a cross) of diamonds small and great, connected with a secret only known to Rizzio’s brother and to the queen. It is “to be carried to one whose name the queen has spoken in her new secretary’s ear” (Joseph’s), “but dare not trust herself to write”. “It would be idle now to seek to pry into the mystery which was thus anxiously guarded,” says Dr. Robertson, editor of the queen’s inventories. The doctor knew nothing of the vision which, perhaps, so nearly pried into the mystery. There is nothing like proof here, but there is just a presumption that the diamonds connected with Rizzio, and secretly worn by the queen, seen in the vision of 1845, are possibly the diamonds which, had Mary died in 1566, were to be carried by Joseph Rizzio to a person whose name might not safely be written. {35a}

      We now take a dream which apparently reveals a real fact occurring at a distance. It is translated from Brierre de Boismont’s book, Des Hallucinations {35b} (Paris, 1845). “There are,” says the learned author, “authentic dreams which have revealed an event occurring at the moment, or later.” These he explains by accidental coincidence, and then gives the following anecdote, as within his own intimate knowledge:—

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      Miss C., a lady of excellent sense, religious but not bigoted, lived before her marriage in the house of her uncle D., a celebrated physician, and member of the Institute. Her mother at this time was seriously ill in the country. One night the girl dreamed that she saw her mother, pale and dying, and especially grieved at the absence of two of her children: one a curé in Spain, the other—herself—in Paris. Next she heard her own Christian name called, “Charlotte!” and, in her dream, saw the people about her mother bring in her own little niece and god-child Charlotte from the next room. The patient intimated by a sign that she did not want this Charlotte, but her daughter in Paris. She displayed the deepest regret; her countenance changed, she fell back, and died.

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