Transcribed , email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
Dear Payn,
Spirits much more rare and valuable than those spoken of in thisbook are yours. Whatever ‘Mediums’ maybe able to do, you can ‘transfer’ HighSpirits to your readers; one of whom does not hope to convertyou, and will be fortunate enough if, by this work,he can occasionally bring a smile to the lips of his favourite novelist.
With more affection and admiration than can be publicly expressed,
Believe me,
Yours ever,
ANDREW LANG.
Since the first publication of Cock Lane and Common-Sensein 1894, nothing has occurred to alter greatly the author’s opinions. He has tried to make the Folklore Society see that such things as modernreports of wraiths, ghosts, ‘fire-walking,’ ‘corpse-lights,’‘crystal-gazing,’ and so on, are within their province,and within the province of anthropology. In this attempt he hasnot quite succeeded. As he understands the situation, folkloristsand anthropologists will hear gladly about wraiths, ghosts, corpse-candles,hauntings, crystal-gazing, and walking unharmed through fire, as longas these things are part of vague rural tradition, or of savage belief. But, as soon as there is first-hand evidence of honourable men and womenfor the apparent existence of any of the phenomena enumerated, thenFolklore officially refuses to have anything to do with the subject. Folklore will register and compare vague savage or popular beliefs;but when educated living persons vouch for phenomena which (if trulystated) account in part for the origin of these popular or savage beliefs,then Folklore turns a deaf ear. The logic of this attitude doesnot commend itself to the author of Cock Lane and Common-Sense.
On the other side, the Society for Psychical Research, while anxiouslyexamining all the modern instances which Folklore rejects, has hithertoneglected, on the whole, that evidence from history, tradition, savagesuperstition, saintly legend, and so forth, which Folklore deigns toregard with interest. The neglect is not universal, and the historicalaspect of these beliefs has been dealt with by Mr. Gurney (on Witchcraft),by Mr. Myers (on the Classical Oracles), and by Miss X. (on Crystal-Gazing). Still, the savage and traditional evidence is nearly as much eschewedby psychical research, as the living and contemporary evidence is byFolklore. The truth is that anthropology and Folklore have a ready-madetheory as to the savage and illusory origin of all belief in the spiritual,from ghosts to God. The reported occurrence, therefore, of phenomenawhich suggest the possible existence of causes of belief notaccepted by anthropology, is a distasteful thing, and is avoided. On the other hand, psychical research averts its gaze, as a rule, fromtradition, because the testimony of tradition is not ‘evidential,’not at first hand.
In Cock Lane and Common-Sense an attempt is made to reconcilethese rather hostile sisters in science. Anthropology ought tothink humani nihil a se alienum. Now the abnormal and moreor less inexplicable experiences vouched for by countless living personsof honour and sanity, are, at all events, human. As theyusually coincide in character with the testimony of the lower racesall over the world; with historical evidence from the past, and withrural Folklore now and always, it really seems hard to understand howanthropology can turn her back on this large human province. Forexample, the famous affair of the disturbances at Mr. Samuel Wesley’sparsonage at Epworth, in 1716, is reported on evidence undeniably honest,an