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UNDERSTANDING AND
MANAGING FLUENCY DISORDERS

This accessible book provides an overview of fluency disorders. Written by a team

of speech-language pathology researchers and practitioners in India, it examines the
concepts of fluency and disfluency with illustrative examples in English and Indian
languages.
Understanding and Managing Fluency Disorders gives an overview of current research
and evidence-based practice in the context of a theoretical background. Clinical
aspects of each fluency disorder are described, and the book outlines assessment
protocols and intervention methods. Maruthy and Kelkar address key concepts
related to different fluency disorders, including cluttering and acquired neurogenic
stuttering. One of the highlights of the book is the chapter dedicated to typical
disfluency, which could be of immense use to beginning clinicians who wish to
increase the specificity and accuracy of their assessment. Other salient features include
case vignettes, activity examples, easy steps to carry out intervention approaches and
the added advantage of an ICF perspective, making this a practitioner’s guide to
management of fluency disorders.
Offering a comprehensive overview of theoretical and clinical aspects of stuttering,
cluttering and fluency disorders, this volume will be highly relevant reading for
students of fluency disorders and speech and language therapy. It will also provide
clinicians and trainees working in the field with up-to-date theoretical and clinical
information about assessment and intervention.

Santosh Maruthy, Ph.D., is Professor of Speech Sciences in the Department of

Speech-Language Sciences at the All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Mysore,
India. His research focuses on the mechanisms underlying stuttering as well as
bilingualism and stuttering, speech science, speech perception and voice disorders in
professional voice users.

Pallavi Kelkar, Ph.D., is Associate Professor at the School of Audiology and

Speech-Language Pathology, Bharati Vidyapeeth (Deemed to be University), Pune,
India. She is also the international representative for India at the International
Cluttering Association. Her current body of work includes clinical practice, research
and community work in the area of stuttering, cluttering and professional voice.
Understanding and Managing
Fluency Disorders
From Theory to Practice

Edited by Santosh Maruthy

and Pallavi Kelkar
Cover image: © Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Santosh Maruthy and Pallavi Kelkar;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Santosh Maruthy and Pallavi Kelkar to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without
intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-43514-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-43512-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-36767-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003367673
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents

List of contributors vii

Foreword ix

1 Introduction to fluency and its development 1

SANTOSH MARUTHY

2 Typical disfluency 15
CHANCHAL CHAUDHARY

3 Stuttering and other fluency disorders: an overview 33

MAYA SANGHI AND PALLAVI KELKAR

4 Theoretical perspectives in stuttering 60

DIVYA SETH AND SANTOSH MARUTHY

5 Assessment of stuttering 91
AMUDHU SANKAR, ANJANA B. RAM, PALLAVI KELKAR
AND SANTOSH MARUTHY

6 Management of stuttering in children 114

GAGAN BAJAJ AND DIVYA SETH

7 Management of stuttering in adults 140

VINITHA MARY GEORGE, NIRMAL SUGATHAN
AND PREETHY SUSAN RENI
vi Contents

8 Acquired neurogenic stuttering 166

RAKESH CHOWKALLI VEERABHADRAPPA AND SANTOSH MARUTHY

9 Cluttering 186
PALLAVI KELKAR

References211
Appendix A Detailed information gathering 250
Appendix B Impact Scale for Assessment of Cluttering and Stuttering
(ISACS)254
Index265
Contributors

Amudhu Sankar, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor at Sri Ramachandra Faculty of

Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology, SRIHER (DU), Chennai, India.
Her areas of work include stuttering and childhood language disorders. She is
a Hanen certified speech-language pathologist. Her current research focus is on
development of applications for guiding parents of children with stuttering.
Anjana B. Ram, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in Speech Pathology, Department of
Speech-Language Pathology, All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Mysore.
Her areas of interest include stuttering in children, adolescents and adults. Her
clinical, research and academic work are in the fields of stuttering, motor speech
disorders and autism.
Chanchal Chaudhary is Assistant Professor at the Department of Audiology and
Speech-Language Pathology, Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore. She is cur-
rently pursuing her Ph.D. in fluency disorders. Her research involves understand-
ing mechanisms underlying stuttering, speech motor learning in stuttering and
evidence-based practice in stuttering management.
Divya Seth, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Speech-Language Pathology in the
Department of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology at the Kasturba
Medical College, Mangalore, India. Her current research focuses on mechanisms
underlying stuttering and the intervention of stuttering. Her research interests
also include speech science and speech sound disorders.
Gagan Bajaj, Ph.D., is Associate Professor at Kasturba Medical College, Man-
galore, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Karnataka, India. He is pas-
sionate about exploring the heterogenous nature of fluency disorders, studying
age-linked cognitive communicative changes and applying principles of ICF to
communication disorders.
Maya Sanghi served as Assistant Professor at the Audiology and Speech Therapy
School, T.N. Medical College, Mumbai, India till 2010 and was an international
representative (India) at the International Cluttering Association till 2017. Her
present work includes management of individuals with neuro-communication
disorders, voice and fluency disorders.
viii Contributors

Pallavi Kelkar, Ph.D., is Associate Professor at the School of Audiology and

Speech-Language Pathology, Bharati Vidyapeeth (Deemed to be University),
Pune, India. She is currently the international representative for India at the
International Cluttering Association. Her current body of work includes clinical
practice, research and community work in the area of stuttering, cluttering and
professional voice.
Santosh Maruthy, Ph.D., is Professor of Speech Sciences in the Department of
Speech-Language Sciences at the All India Institute of Speech and Hearing,
Mysore, India. His research focuses on the mechanisms underlying stuttering as
well as bilingualism and stuttering, speech science, speech perception and voice
disorders in professional voice users.
Rakesh Chowkalli Veerabhadrappa, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in Speech-
Language Pathology at Manipal University. He received the prestigious Trav-
ers Reid award at the 2021 Oxford Dysfluency Conference, UK. His research
focuses on mechanisms underlying stuttering, treatment and emotional issues in
stuttering.
Foreword

It gives us immense pleasure and satisfaction to finally be able to put out a go-to
book for students and practitioners interested in fluency disorders. Understanding and
Managing Fluency Disorders is an amalgamation of the experience, expertise and hard
work of many academicians, all of them from different parts of India.
For the uninitiated, India is a country synonymous with diversity. Diversity in
terms of geographical landscape, languages, religions and cultures is inseparable from
the Indian sociocultural fabric. In the present day and age, as technology and accessi-
bility makes the world shrink, students across the globe must keep themselves abreast
of how different facets of a disorder vary across countries and cultures. Putting out a
book from India to the rest of the world, then, was something we foresaw as a neces-
sity for broadening readers’ perspectives on fluency and its disorders.
You will find in this book, numerous examples of this diversity through examples
and case vignettes. The case vignettes will also reflect two other features prominently
seen among the Indian population. Firstly, the fact that bilingualism or multilingual-
ism is a rule rather than an exception. Secondly, the culture here is predominantly
collectivistic or group oriented. While collectivism, on one hand, brings with it
strong family support, on the other hand, it also adds to barriers faced by patients in
the form of societal pressure to conform or blend in.
Speaking of barriers, another salient feature of this book is the inclusion of an
ICF perspective. All the authors of this book have found assessment, intervention
and documentation along the lines of the ICF to be extremely useful. This, in our
opinion, would aid beginning clinicians of fluency in understanding the multifacto-
rial mosaic that is a fluency disorder. It would help them look at the people behind
the disfluencies.
This last task is, in fact, practically very feasible for students in India. With a pop-
ulation which is the second largest in the world, students get abundant exposure to
the entire continuum of fluency to disfluency. However, the sheer numbers of cases
seen on a daily basis make systematic documentation a difficult task. This comes in
the way of gaining a broader insight into the people they see through assessment.
To increase the ease and time efficiency of record keeping, therefore, we bring to
the readers a detailed protocol for documenting assessment-related information. We
have also included a complete impact assessment tool, the ISACS, which is the only
x Foreword

tool that can assess impact of stuttering and/or cluttering from two perspectives –
that of the person with disfluencies and that of their significant other. It has the
added advantage of an indigenous normative, so culture specific impact assessment
is finally possible. The systematic record-keeping protocol as well as the ISACS can
be found in the Appendices.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank the publishers for giving wings
to our ideas and our respective institutes for encouraging us in this endeavour. We
thank all the contributing authors for giving us their time, efforts and cooperation
in putting this book together. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to those who gave
prompt and valuable feedback when we consulted them about some aspect of the
book. Most importantly, we can’t but thank all the people who visited our clinics
and took us a step closer to understanding fluency better. Finally, a special thank
you to our parents, in-laws, spouses and above all, our kids, for that little nudge
of motivation when meeting deadlines seemed impossible, for their patience and
understanding when we spent long hours poring over the manuscript and for smiles
at the end of long days that energized us to keep going till the end!
We hope that our efforts translate to positive educational outcomes for students
of fluency and consequently for persons with fluency disorders.

Santosh Maruthy, Ph.D.

Pallavi Kelkar, Ph.D.
1 Introduction to fluency and its
development
Santosh Maruthy

Introduction
Speech is produced with simultaneous and successive programming of muscular
movements. The different dimensions of speech include voice, articulation, fluency
and prosody. This chapter mainly aims to define and elaborate on the concept of flu-
ency, different components of speech fluency and prosody. Development of fluency
and factors affecting it are also discussed.

What is fluency?
The word “fluency” is derived from Latin word fluere, which means “to flow”.
Based on this root word, anything that involves a smooth flow can be considered
as fluent. In the domain of language, fluency may be interchangeably used with
proficiency. A person is considered as fluent if he or she is able to speak either the
first language (L1) or the second language (L2) rapidly and continuously without
any difficulty. Fluency in the written modality could be defined as being able to
read or write in a particular language in a smooth, uninterrupted manner. In order
to be fluent in a language, then, an individual must gain fluency in each linguistic
component; in other words, syntactic fluency, semantic fluency, phonologic fluency
and pragmatic fluency. A person is thought to be phonologically fluent if they are able
to construct long and complicated strings of phonological sequences without any
difficulty; syntactically fluent if they are able construct highly complex sentences;
semantically fluent if they possess an ability to access a large vocabulary; and pragmati-
cally fluent if they are skilled at speaking at a variety of speaking situations.

Dimensions of fluency
In speech communication, fluency may be defined as effortless continuous speech
uttered at a rapid rate (Starkweather, 1987). This definition highlights that fluent
speech needs to be uttered continuously, at a rapid rate with a minimal amount of
effort. Hence, fluency is a multidimensional behaviour, its domains being continu-
ity, rate and effort. Starkweather (1987) also added speech rhythm as the fourth
domain. Each of these dimensions of fluency are discussed briefly below.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003367673-1
2 Santosh Maruthy

Continuity

Continuity refers to smooth flow of speech. It reflects how speech flows from one
sound to another in a word, from one word to another in a phrase and from one
phrase to another in a sentence. Although ideally fluent speech needs to be devoid
of any interruptions, conversational or spontaneous speech is sometimes interrupted
by different sets of behaviours, which may break the smooth flow of speech. One
kind of speech interruptions that are seen in typically speaking individuals are called
as disfluencies. Examples of these behaviours are pauses (filled and unfilled), revi-
sions, parenthetical remarks, multisyllabic word repetitions, etc. The second type of
speech interruptions that are majorly seen in individuals who have fluency disorders
are referred to in many textbooks as dysfluencies. These refer to abnormal motoric
breakdowns in speech. For example, repeating a sound or syllable multiple times,
prolonging a sound (voiced or voiceless) or uttering a broken word. Individuals with
fluency disorders may have disfluencies, that is, the stoppages that are usually seen in
typical speakers, along with dysfluencies. Some textbooks, on the other hand, use
the word “disfluencies” to refer to stoppages of any kind. We would be using the
uniform term “disfluencies” in the present text. Further classification of these disflu-
encies into typical and atypical ones will be discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. A detailed
account of different types of disfluencies which are characteristic of typically speak-
ing individuals and persons with fluency disorders is given below.

Pauses

The continuity of fluent speech is often interrupted by filled or unfilled pauses. In

case of filled pauses, the utterances used to fill the pause are meaningless or neutral
utterances such as “um, uh, am, ah, eh, er, I mean, you know”, etc. Unfilled pauses
are silences which are longer than 250 milliseconds (Goldman-Eisler, 1958). Clarke
(1971) classified these pauses as conventional pauses and idiosyncratic pauses. Con-
ventional pauses are those which a fluent or proficient speaker uses to signal some-
thing that is important. For example, if the speaker wants the listener to know that
he is coming on Wednesday and not on Monday, he may pause just before the word
Wednesday and Monday. Idiosyncratic pauses are those pauses that are used by less
proficient or uncertain speakers who may not be sure of word choice, meaning or
the syntax. Conventional pauses help listeners to comprehend a message better. In
contrast, idiosyncratic pauses often increase listeners’ processing load and could be
a barrier to comprehension of messages. Pauses in general occur more often before
words that are grammatically loaded, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs
compared to words which are less grammatically loaded, such as articles, preposi-
tions and conjunctions. Pauses are seen more often in conventional spontaneous
speech or conversational speech tasks than during loud reading. Further, pauses are
more synchronized with breathing in reading tasks than during conversational tasks.
The available evidence also suggests that pauses occur more frequently before words
with high uncertainty (Cook, 1971), words which are longer and phonetically com-
plex (Cook et al., 1974), and at the beginning of the clauses rather than within
 Introduction to fluency and its development 3

clauses (Boomer, 1970). Frequency and duration of pauses can be documented for
both filled and unfilled pauses.

Repetitions

Like pauses, repetitions also interrupt the continuity and forward flow of fluent
speech. As its name implies, a repetition involves repeated production of an utter-
ance. A person might repeat a sound, syllable, word or phrase. For example, “p p
pen” would be sound repetition, “ca ca camp”, a syllable repetition, “ball ball ball”,
a word repetition, and “I want I want I want coffee”, a phrase repetition. Sound
and syllable repetitions can be combined under the blanket term “part-word repeti-
tions”. Word repetitions can involve monosyllabic words, such as “I I I want cof-
fee” or multisyllabic words, such as “Mohan Mohan Mohan, can you come here?”
Frequency of repetitions in speech can be calculated in terms of a percentage. This
is done by counting all the repeated syllables/words, dividing the number by the
total number of syllables/words and then multiplying the resultant number by 100.
For instance, if there are 25 part-word repetitions in a total of 300 words, then
(25/300)∗100 = 8.33%. Some researchers also note the total number of repeated
units (Ambrose & Yairi, 1999). For instance, the sentence “m m m my name is
Jagadeesh” has three repeated units.

False starts/revisions, parenthetical remarks and interjections

When a speaker interrupts the forward flow of speech and restarts or changes the
utterance they had originally planned to speak, the result is a false start or a revision
(e.g. “This is a blue – a purple bag”). The modification may be in terms of replac-
ing the word with an entire new word as in the previous example or insertion of a
word in a word sequence (e.g. “This is a bag – blue bag”). Changes in the gram-
matical structure of the sentence are also called revisions (e.g. “I will – I shall do it”).
False starts or revisions can thus serve as self-repair strategies as well. Parenthetical
remarks are words or phrases that are meaningful in nature but not appropriate for
the sentence (e.g. “I mean, like, you know, well”). Interjections are the addition of
extraneous sounds that are meaningless in nature (e.g. “uh, um”). It may be recalled
that these examples (of interjections and parenthetical remarks) were also given
while mentioning filled pauses. Interjections and parenthetical remarks are thus,
often used to fill pauses when the speaker may not want to remain silent for a long
time between two words. These utterances may be repeated by the speaker several
times. Similar to repetitions, the frequency of false starts, parenthetical remarks and
interjections can also be calculated as a percentage.

Broken words or blocks and prolongations

The next two chapters would get the reader familiarized with stuttering, one of
the various fluency disorders. In persons who stutter (PWS), apart from the above-
mentioned disfluencies, another common type of speech discontinuity or disfluency
4 Santosh Maruthy

is broken words or blocks. Broken words are within-word disfluencies characterized

by a break in the smooth flow of speech. These breaks are accompanied by fixed
articulatory postures and often a stoppage in the outflow of air that is customary
while speaking (e.g. “I am g . . . oing”). In this example, during the production of
the /g/ sound the articulator is fixed, which is accompanied by a discontinuity in
the flow of air.
Prolongations, in contrast, are characterized by an undue persistence of a speech
sound. Only continuants such as vowels, nasals and fricatives are prolonged. During
a prolongation of speech sounds, although the articulator is fixed, there will be con-
tinuous flow of air or voicing. If there is a flow of air accompanied by voicing, the
prolongation is said to be “voiced”. A prolongation which involves only the flow of
air, but no voicing is a “voiceless” prolongation. Both the frequency and duration of
broken words and prolongations can be calculated. For example, if the person who
stutters prolongs utterances for 500 milliseconds to 4 seconds, you can calculate the
average duration of the prolongation by adding durations of all prolonged instances
in the speech sample and then dividing the sum by the number of instances pro-
longed. The frequency of prolongations and blocks can be calculated in a manner
similar to pauses, repetitions, etc.

Rate of speech

Rate of speech or speech rate is the second dimension of fluency. It refers to the
speed with which one can speak. Speech rate could be influenced by mood, envi-
ronment, linguistic structure, a person’s age, culture, speed of articulatory movement
and co-articulation. As per the definition of fluency (Starkweather, 1987), fluent
speech is uttered at a rapid rate. However, speech rate varies continuously based
on the situation. Speech rate may be measured in syllables per second, syllables per
minute or words per minute. It can be calculated using the formula:

Total number of words or syllables read ( excluding disfluent utterancces )

Total time taken to read the passage

Adult speakers whose native language is English, on an average, speak at a rate of 5 to

6 syllables per second (Walker & Black, 1950). If documented in words per minute,
normal rates of speech vary between 80–180 words per minute. The upper range of
rate can vary between 250 to 280 words per minute if speech is intelligible. Another
pertinent measurement in fluency literature and clinical practice is articulation rate
(AR). AR is the total number of utterances produced (after removing unfilled pauses
and disfluencies) within the time taken only for articulation (devoid of any silences)
(Costa et al., 2016, p. 43)
It is given by the formula:

Total number of syllables ( without pauses and disfluent utterances ) read

Total time taken to read the passage ( without unfilled pauses )
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
explained and demonstrated all the mechanical process of this
imposture. You will find also the account of these gems of
marvellous history in Sinclair and Plott, and the chronicles of those
days, which eclipse the haunted house of Athenodorus in Pliny.
In the 16th century, Master Samuel Stryck discussed the whole
question regarding these haunted houses, and warnings of ghosts,
and belief in the reality of apparitions, in his work published at
Francofurt, “De Jure Spectrorum,” and thus he runs up the question
of damages: “If the house be haunted, the tenant might bring in a
set-off against his rent, thus—‘Deduct for spectres in bed and bed-
room, and elsewhere, 5l. 10s.’ ”
The drama of the Drummer, by Addison, I believe was founded
on the mystery of the “Demon of Tedworth,” which beat the drum in
the house of Mr. Mompesson. This also was the source of extreme
wonder, until the drummer was tried, and convicted, and Mr.
Mompesson confessed that the mystery was the effect of
contrivance.
The author of the Pandemonium, or Devils’ Cloyster, garnished
his book with tales of this nature. In 1667, when he slept in “my
Lady chamber,” in the house of a nobleman, he was waited on by a
succession of spectral visitors; the explanation of which Ferriar and
Hibbert, and others, have wrought for you, if you deign to turn over
the leaves of their natural philosophy.
The impostures of the Stockwell miracles of 1772 are recorded,
with other curiosities, in the “Every-day Book” of Hone, the skilful
and unwearied collector of our ancient mysteries.
The Cock-lane ghost is another instance of illusion in the ears of
the credulous. Although Dr. Johnson, the Bishop of Salisbury, and
other learned Thebans, sat in solemn judgment to develop its
mystery, I believe many were so in love with the marvellous, that
they regretted the unravelling of the plot, and still believed; as
Commodore Trunnion, in despite of evidence as to the fluttering in
his chimney, swore that he knew a devil from a jackdaw, as well as
any man in the kingdom.
Astr. I wonder, Evelyn, at your veneration for the classics; for are
they not replete with stories, which, if true, (and I believe them so,)
will undermine all your philosophy? When Pausanias writes of the
ghosts at Marathon, of horses and men who were heard rushing on
to battle four hundred years after they were slain; and Plutarch of
the spectres and supernatural sounds in the baths at Chæronea, the
scene of bloodshed and murder;—what may be their motives, but
the record of acknowledged incidents?
Ev. The classics, if they might rise up and listen, would believe
me, dear Astrophel, so clear and simple is the source of these
illusions.
Of the credulity of the Romans I have spoken; but even in minds
not prone to superstition, deep mental impression, or constant
dwelling on a subject of interest, will effect this illusion of a sense.
In Holy Island, near the ruins of the convent (in the dungeons of
which romance has decided the fate of Constance Beverley), was a
small fortress of invalid soldiers. One of them once conducted a
visitor to a steep rock, under which, he said, there must be a
profound cavern, as the sound of a bell was distinctly heard every
night at twelve o’clock, deep in the bowels of the earth. The traveller
soon discovered that the mysterious sound had never been heard by
the oldest inmates, until the poem of “Marmion” appeared, in which
the condemnation and the death of Constance in the dungeons of
the cathedral are so forcibly described. This is, however, a
metaphysical source of mystery.
In volcanic regions, as in that of the Solfatara, near Naples, these
strange and subterranean sounds are not unfrequently heard; and in
the rocky and caverned coasts of our own island also, where dwell
the unlettered and the superstitious, by whose wild and romantic
fancy these noises are readily magnified into the supernatural.
Camden, in his “Britannia,” informs us,—“In a rock in the island
of Barry, in Glamorganshire, there is a narrow chink, or cleft, to
which if you put your ear you shall perceive all such sorts of noises
as you may fancy smiths at work under ground, strokes of hammers,
blowing of bellows, grinding of tools.” At Worm’s Head, in the
peninsula of Gower in Glamorganshire, these sounds are, even now,
often heard; and it requires but a moderate stretch of imagination to
create all this cyclopean imagery, when the sea is rolling in cavities
under our feet, and the tone of its voice is magnified by confinement
and repercussion. From some such source probably sprung the fable
of “the Syrens,” two solitary maidens, who, by their dulcet voices, so
enchanted the navigators who sailed by their rocks, that they forgot
home and the purpose of their voyage, and died of starvation.
Ulysses, instructed by his mother Circe, broke the spell, and the
ladies threw themselves into the sea with vexation. This fable, like
many of the classic mysteries, may be thus topographically
explained.
In the grand duchy of Baden, near Friburg, is a very curious
example of an Æolian lyre, constructed, as the traditions of the
mountains will have it, by the very genius loci himself.
In a romantic chasm of these mountains, most melodious sounds
are sometimes heard from the top of fir-trees overhanging a
waterfall. The current of air, ascending and descending through the
chasm, receives a counter impulse from an abrupt angle of the rock,
and, acting on the tops of the string-like branches of the trees,
produces the soft tones of the Æolian harp, the effect of which is
much enhanced by the gushing of the waterfall.
There may be in these natural sounds the source of many fables
of the ancients: the moaning of the wind among the branches of a
pine-grove might be the wailing of a hamadryad.
Among the granite rocks on the Orinoco, Baron Humboldt heard
the strangest subterranean sounds; and at the palace of Carnac,
some of Napoleon’s savans heard noises exactly resembling the
breaking of a string. It is curious that Pausanias applies exactly this
expression to the sounds of the Memnonian granite,—the colossal
head of Memnon, which was believed to speak at sunrise. He writes,
—“It emits sounds every morning at sunrise, which can be compared
only to that of the breaking of the string of a lyre.”
Juvenal has the same notion, but he has multiplied the sounds.
The mystery of Memnon may be readily explained, by the
temperature and density of the external air differing from that within
the crevices, and the effort of the current to promote an equilibrium;
yet these simple sounds were in course of time warped into
articulate syllables, and at length obtained the dignity of an oracular
voice. And in these illustrations, fair Castaly, you have the clue to all
the mysteries of demonia and fairyland.
To these natural illusions, let me add the triumphs of phonic
mechanism and the peculiar faculty of the ventriloquist, the secrets
of which the science of Sir David Brewster has so clearly developed.
The wondrous heads of Memnon, and Orpheus, and Æsculapius, the
machines of Albertus Magnus, and Sylvester, are now held but as
curious specimens of art, and are indeed eclipsed by the speaking
toys of Kratzenstein, and Kempelin, and Willis, and Savart, and the
ingenious instruments of Wheatstone.
Of ventriloquism, it is not my purpose to speak; but there is a
wonder of our time in the person of young Richmond, which, with
many distinguished physiologists, I examined at the conversazione
of Dr. E——, in C—— Street.
When Richmond sat himself to perform, we heard a subdued
murmur in his throat for about half-a-minute, when suddenly a
sound issued of the most exquisite and perfect melody, closely
resembling, but exceeding in delicacy, the finest musical box. The
mouth was widely open, and the performance was one of
considerable effort. The sounds were a mystery to us at the time, for
they were perfectly unique, and are yet not satisfactorily explained.
It is decided, however, by some, that the upper opening of the
windpipe may be considered as a Jew’s-harp, or Æolina, of very
exquisite power, behind the cavity of the mouth, instead of being
placed between the teeth.
Astr. And thus concludes our lecture on special mechanics.
Ev. I professed no more, Astrophel. It may be the privilege of the
sacred poet to soar beyond the confines of our own planetary
system:

“Into the heav’n of heav’ns he has presum’d,

An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air.”

But the study of philosophy is nature and nature’s known laws. If we

lean, for one moment, to the credence of a modern miracle, there is
an end to our philosophy. Revealed truth, and the immaterial nature
of the mystical essence within us, we may not lightly discourse on.
The sacred histories of Holy Writ, and the miracles recorded in its
pages—the hand-writing in the hall of Belshazzar, the budding of
Aaron’s rod, the standing still of the sun upon Gibeon, and, above
all, the miracles of the Redeemer, are of too holy a nature to be
submitted to the test of philosophical speculation: they rest on the
conviction of conscience and the heart; a proof far more sublime
than may ever be elicited by the ingenuity of man, or the workings
of his sovereign reason.
 FAIRY MYTHOLOGY.

“I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee.”

Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Astr. Why so thoughtful, fair Castaly? I fear Evelyn has clipped

your sylphid wings, and made a mortal of you.
Cast. Your finger on your lips, Astrophel; for the world, not a
syllable of confession to Evelyn.
I could think I heard the murmurs of a host of fairies streaming
up to earth from elf-land, in fear of libels on their own imperial
sovereignty by this matter-of-fact scholar.
Astr. Why did we listen to his philosophy? why not still believe
the volumes of our antique legends; that those which tell the
influence of fairies and demons on man’s life, have their source in
the real history of a little world of creatures more ethereal than
ourselves? Perhaps even the bright thoughts of a poet’s fancy are
not his own creation.
Cast. We must hear no more, although Evelyn will still convert
syrens into rocks and trees, and make a monster out of a mist or a
thunder-cloud. The sunlight is sleeping on Wyndcliff, and the breeze,
creeping among the leaves, seems to me a symphony meet to
conjure the phantoms of romantic creatures. Evelyn is far away
among the rocks; let us steal the moment to revel in our dreams of
faëry. Even now, are we not in a realm of Peristan? Yon mossy
carpet of emerald velvet, strewed with pearls and gold, may be the
presence-chamber of Titania; and fays are dancing within their ring,
which the silvery beech o’ercanopies so shadily; and the chaunting
of their viralays, or green-songs, comes like the humming of a
zephyr’s wing flitting o’er the mouth of a lily. Ariel is lying asleep in
her cinque-spotted cowslip bell, and the fays are feeding on their
fairy-bread, made of the pollen of the jasmine; and Oberon quaffs to
his queen the drops that hang on the purple lip of the violet, or
glitter in the honied bell of the hyacinth, or that purest crystal of the
lotus, that brings life to the fainting Indian in the desert, or the liquid
treasure of the nepenthe.
We pray you, Astrophel, recount to us, now we are in the
humour, the infancy of bright and dark spirits; for you have dipped
deep, I know, into the Samothracian mysteries.
Astr. Know, then, that the birth-time of mythology and romance
was in the primeval ages of man. The ancient heathens believed in
the legends of their deities, as we have credence in modern history
and biography; indeed, the romance of the moderns was with the
ancients truth. They had implicit faith in the presence of their gods,
and that they might perchance meet them in the groves and hills,
which were consecrated to their worship, and adorned with sculpture
and idols in honour of the deities. Hence the profusion of their
names and nature, recorded in the pages of the olden time, when
the scribe traced his reed letter on the papyrus.
From the climes of the sun came the orient tales of genie, and
deeves, and peris; and of naiad, and nereid, and dryad, and
hamadryad, from Greece and Rome. In the Koran shone forth the
promised houris of Mahomet’s paradise; and its mysteries were
echoed to us from the lips and tables of pilgrims and crusaders, who
had blazoned their red cross in the holy wars. Thus was romance
cradled and bosomed in religion.
From the legends of the East, spring the fairy romances of our
own days. The Peri of Persia was the denizen of Peristan, as the
Ginn of Arabia was of Ginnistan, and the Fairy of England of
Fairyland; and we have their synonyms in the Fata of Italy and the
Duerga of northern Europe.
These spirits of romance are almost innumerable; for thus saith
the “Golden Legend:” that “the air is full of sprites as the
sonnebeams ben full of small motes, which is small dust or poudre.”
The alchemyst Paracelsus asserts that the elements were
peopled with life; the air with sylphs and sylvains, the water with
ondines, the earth with gnomes, and the fire with salamanders. And
Martin Luther coincides with these assertions; nay, hath not Master
Cross of Bristol illustrated the creed, and shown, by his galvanic
power, an animated atom starting forth, as if by magic, from a flint,
a seeming inorganic mass?
The sagas, or historical records of Scandinavia, of the Celtic,
Scaldic, and Runic mythology, assert that the duergas or dwarfs,
which are the Runic fairies, sprang from the worms in the body of
the giant Ymor, slain, according to the Edda, by Odin and his
brother; and Spenser has left a very interesting genealogical record
of the faëry brood, in that romantic allegory of the Elizabethan age,
the “Faëry Queen.” Elf, the man fashioned and inspired by
Prometheus, was wandering over the earth alone, and in the bosky
groves of Adonis he discovered a lady of marvellous beauty—Fay.
From this romantic pair sprang the mighty race of the fairies, and we
have wondrous tales of the prowess of their heroic princes. Elfiline
threw a golden wall round the city of Cleopolis; Elfine conquered the
Gobbelines; Elfant built Panthea, of purest crystal; Elfan slew the
giant twins; and Elfinor spanned the sea with a bridge of glass.
Cast. Spenser, I presume, borrowed his romance from Italy. We
read that the rage and party spirit of the potent Guelphs and
Ghibellines rankled even in their nurseries. The nurses were wont to
frighten the children into obedience with these hated names, which,
corrupted to the epithets of elf and goblin, were hence-forth applied
to fairies and phantoms.
Astr. This story is itself a mere fiction. Ere the period of these
feuds of party, the term Elfen (and Dance identifies this with the
Teutonic Helfen,) was a common epithet of the Saxon spirits: Weld-
elfen were their dryads; Zeld-elfen their field-fairies, &c.
The American Indians to this day have faith in the presidencies of
spirits over those lakes, trees, and mountains, and even fishes,
birds, and beasts, which excel in magnitude. The orient Indian, too,
at this hour, peoples the forests with his gods; and peacocks, and
squirrels, and other wild creatures, are thus profanely deified.
The legends of later days have quaintly blended the classic with
the fairy mythology. Hassenet tells us that Mercurius was called the
Prince of Fairies; and Chaucer sings of Pluto, the King of Fayrie; and,
in the romance of the Nine Champions, Proserpine sits crowned
among the fairies. The great zoologist, Pliny, writes in his Natural
History, that “you often encounter fairies that vanish away like
phantasies.” And Baxter believed that “fairies and goblins might be
as common in the air, as fishes in the sea.”
As the Peri could not enter Paradise in consequence of the errors
of her “recreant race,” so the elves could not enjoy eternity without
marrying a Christian; and on this plea they came up to the
daughters of men. And we read, in the tenets of the Cabala, that, by
these earthly weddings, they could enjoy the privileges and
happiness of each other’s nature. But these unnatural unions were
not always happy. There is, in our old chronicles, a tradition of a
marriage between one of the counts of Anjou and a fair demonia,
which entailed misery and commission of crime on the noble house
of Plantagenet.
Now there are appointed times when the influence of the spirit
fades for a season. It was the moment of the eclipse, among the
American Indians and the African blacks; in Ireland, it is the feast of
the Beltane; in Scotland, this immunity came over the mortal life on
Hogmanay, or New-year’s Eve, and during the general assemblies of
these mystic spirits of the world.
In Britain, it was on the eve of the first of May, the second of
November, and on All Souls’ Day. At these times, indeed, they might
be induced to divulge the secrets of their mysterious freemasonry.
In Germany, on May-day, when the unearthly rendezvous was on
the dark mountain of the Hartz, and on Halloween, in Caledonia,
even the secrets of time and futurity were unfolded by the spirits to
a mortal, if one were found so bold as to repair on these festivals to
their unhallowed haunts.
If a mortal enters the secret abodes of the Daoine Shi, in
Scotland, and anoints his eyes with their charmed ointment, the gift
of seeing that which is to all others invisible is imparted; but this
must be kept secret, for the Men of Peace will blind the second-
sighted eye, if once they are recognized on earth by a mortal.
In the gloomy forests of Germany rose the legends of Kobolds,
and Umbriels, and Wehrwolves, the Holts Konig, the Waldebach, the
Reiberzahl, and the Schattenman, the Hudekin, the Erl Konig, and
the beautiful naiad, the Nixa. The devil himself was believed to be a
gnome king; for when the Elector of Saxony offered Martin Luther
the profit of a mine, he refused it, “lest by accepting it he should
tempt the devil, who is lord of those subterraneous treasures, to
tempt him.”
Then we have the Putseet, or Puck of the Samogitæ, on the
Baltic; the Biergen Trold, or Skow, of Iceland; and those mermaids
which gambol around the Faroe Islands. We read in the Danske
Folksaga, that these “merrows” cast their skins like the boa, and in
that condition are changed into human beings, till their scales are
restored to them. And the Shetlanders implicitly believe that awful
storms instantly arise on the murder of one of these sea-maids.
There was the Norse goddess, Freya, which, like the Dragon of
Wantley, and the Caliban of the “still vexed Bermoothes,” blasted the
fair face of nature, and far eclipsed the giant-serpent off Cape Saint
Anne, or the kraken of Norway; and even that monstrous sea-snake,
the jormungandz (so conspicuous among the wild romances of the
Edda), whose coils entwined the globe. Thor angled for this snake
with a bull’s head, but it was not to be caught, being reserved for
some splendid achievement in the grand conflict which is to herald
the Ragnarockr,—the twilight of the gods.
Among the mountains of our own island we have a profuse
legion. In Wales, the Tylwth Tag and the Pooka; and many a hollow
in the mountain where these strange animals resort, is called Cwm
Pooka; and the wondrous cavern of the Meltè, in Breconshire, was
believed to be haunted by this little pony.
In Ireland, they have a Merrow, the Runic sea, or oigh-maid; the
Banshee, or fairy prophet; the Fear-Dearg, the Irish Puck; the
Clurricane, a sottish pigmy; and the Pooke, the wild pony.
Cast. These must have been a prolific as well as a wandering
brood, for I also have seen many caverns in the rocky districts,
called Poola Phouka, in which these mischievous little creatures
concealed themselves.
Astr. In Man there is a hill called the “Fairy Hill,” a tumulus of the
Danes, which is thought to be a nocturnal revel-place for the Man
fairies which preside over their fisheries.
 Scotland was a fertile mother of monsters: the Ourisks or Uriskin,
the goblin-satyrs or shaggy men; the Brownies; the Kelpies, or river-
demons; the Bargheists; the Red-cap; the Daoine Shi, or Men of
Peace; the Glaslic, or noontide hag, which haunted the district of
Knoidart; and the Lham-Dearg, or red-hand, in the forests of
Glenmore, and Rothiemurchus; the Bodach-Glas; and the Pixies, or
small grey men.
Cast. There is an islet among the Scottish Hebrides, which is
called the Isle of Pigmies; and I remember a chapel there, in which
very minute human bones were some time ago discovered. Think
you, Astrophel, that these were the skeletons of pixies?
Astr. I cannot think the notion irrational; there are dwarfs and
giants even in our days. The Bosgis-men of the Cape, and the
Patagonians of South America, prove the existence of beings of
another stature; and perchance of another nature, in days long
agone. The Laplander and Bushman of the Cape are little more than
three feet high; and that there were giants too, is proved by the
fossil bones which have been found in the strata of our earth.
Cast. Then we have really dwindled in our growth, and Adam was
really a hundred and twenty-three feet nine inches high, and Eve a
hundred and eighteen feet nine inches and three quarters, as we are
solemnly informed by our profane chronicles? Nay, even the story
may be true of the Pict, who bit off the end of the mattock, with
which some slave of science was opening his coffin, and thundered
forth this exclamation: “I see the degeneracy of your race by the
smallness of your little finger.”
Ida. If Evelyn were here, he would ask why we have no skeletons
of giants as of lizards in our secondary rocks; and he would tell this
learned Theban, Castaly, that Cuvier decided these fossils, which
seemed to be the débris of a giant race, to be the bones of
elephants. The legends of Athenæus are probably a fable, and the
fossils of the pigmies were, I dare say, the petrified skeletons of
“span-long, wee unchristen’d bairns.”
Your allusion to the brownies, reminds me of the monstrous
errors which have crept into our legends from the mingling of two
stories, or the warping of plain facts in natural history. And indeed I
interrupt you to recount, in proof of this, some fragments from
“Surtees’ Durham.”
“Every castle, tower, or manor-house has its visionary
inhabitants. ‘The Cauld Lad of Hilton’ belongs to a very common and
numerous class, the brownie or domestic spirit, and seems to have
possessed no very distinctive attributes. He was seldom seen, but
was heard nightly by the servants who slept in the great hall. If the
kitchen had been left in perfect order, they heard him amusing
himself by breaking plates and dishes, hurling the pewter in all
directions, and throwing every thing into confusion. If, on the
contrary, the apartment had been left in disarray, (a practice which
the servants found it most prudent to adopt,) the indefatigable
goblin arranged every thing with the greatest precision. This poor
esprit folet, whose pranks were at all times perfectly harmless, was
at length banished from his haunts by the usual expedient of
presenting him with a suit of clothes. A green cloak and hood were
laid before the kitchen fire, and the domestics sat up watching at a
prudent distance. At twelve o’clock the spirit glided gently in, stood
by the glowing embers, and surveyed the garments provided for him
very attentively, tried them on, and seemed delighted with his
appearance, frisking about for some time, and cutting several
summersets and gambados, till on hearing the first cock, he
twitched his mantle tight about him and disappeared with the usual
valediction:

“ ‘Here’s a cloak, and here’s a hood,

The cauld lad of Hilton will do no more good.’ ”

The genuine Brownie, however, is supposed to be, ab origine, an

unembodied spirit; but the boy of Hilton has, with an admixture of
English superstition, been identified with the apparition of an
unfortunate domestic, whom one of the old chiefs of Hilton slew at
some very distant period, in a moment of wrath or intemperance.
The baron had, it seems, on an important occasion, ordered his
horse, which was not brought out so soon as he expected. He went
to the stable, found the boy loitering, and seizing a hay-fork, struck
him, though not intentionally, a mortal blow. The story adds, that he
covered his victim with straw till night, and then threw him into a
pond, where the skeleton of a boy was (in confirmation of the tale)
discovered in the last baron’s time.
I am by no means clear that the story may not have its
foundation in the fact recorded in the following inquest:
“Coram Johannem King, coron., Wardæ de Chestræ, apud Hilton, 3
Jul. 7 Jac. 1609.”
(And here follows a report in Latin.)
Nevertheless, I strongly suspect that the unhousel’d spirit of
Roger Skelton, whom in the hay-field the good Hilton ghosted, took
the liberty of playing a few of those pranks which are said by writers
of grave authority to be the peculiar privilege of those spirits only
who are shouldered untimely by violence from their mortal
tenements.

“Ling’ring in anguish o’er his mangled clay,

The melancholy shadow turn’d away,
And follow’d through the twilight grey.”

A free pardon for the above manslaughter appears on the rolls of

Bishop James, dated 6th September, 1609.
I will only add that, among the Harleian MSS., the same legend is
told with some variations, in which this “cauld lad” is termed the
“Pale Boy of Hilton.”
This confusion of our mythology is as conclusive of the fiction of
all the mysterious legends of the moderns, as the jumble which the
classic poets have made of their monsters. If we read Lempriere, the
genealogy of the classic monster is involved in a maze of impious
confusion; and the mythology of Chimera, and Echidna, and Typhon,
Geryon, and Cerberus, and the Hydra and Bellerophon, and Ortha
and the Sphynx, and the Nemæan Lion, and the Minotaur, and the
demoniac records of their origin, it is almost profanation even to
reflect on.
 But when Martianus Capella tells us that devils have aërial
bodies, that they live and die, and yet, if cut asunder, soon re-unite;
and when Bodine asserts, in his “Solution of Natural Theology,” that
spirits and angels are globular, as being of the most perfect shape, I
confess I feel more disposed to smile at their imposture than to
frown, were it not for their utter worthlessness.
Yet all the allegories which adorn our legends are not so remote
from truth or nature. The vampires are said to have gloated over the
sacrifices of human life, while the gouls and afrits, the hyenas in
human shape, not only fed on dead carcases, but, by a special
transmigration, took possession of a corpse. On this fable is founded
the monstrous legend of “Assuet and Ajut.” I confess it monstrous;
but indeed there is little exaggeration even in these tales of horror, if
we may believe, for once, Master Edmund Spenser, in that part of
his record of the rebellion of Desmond, in Ireland, which treats of
the Munster massacre:—“Out of every corner of the woodes and
glennes, they came creeping forth upon their handes, for their
legges could not bear them; they looked like anatomies of death;
they spake like ghostes, crying out of their graves: they eat the dead
carrions—happy were they could they find them—yea, and one
another soon after, insomuch as the very carcases they spared not
to scrape out of their graves.” That episode also, in the “Inferno” of
Dante, in which Count Ugolino wears out days and nights in gnawing
the skull of an enemy, may well seem a fiction; but even this hellish
repast is but a prototype of the savage rage for scalping and
cannibalism among the Indian hordes of America.
 DEMONOLOGY.

“Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

Thou com’st in such a questionable shape—”
Hamlet.

Astr. Now from the holy records, from the creed of the Magus
Zoroaster, from the Greek, and Roman, and other legends, how clear
is the influence of ethereal beings, of angels and demons, on man’s
life; and of the imparted power of exorcism! In allusion to this divine
gift to Solomon, Josephus has the following story:—“God also
enabled him to learn that skill which expels demons, which is a
science useful and sanative to men. And this method is of great
force unto this day, for I have seen a certain man of my own
country, whose name was Eleazer, releasing people that were
demoniacal in the presence of Vespasian, and his sons, and his
captains, and the whole multitude of his soldiers. The manner of the
cure was this. He put a ring, that had a root of one of those sorts
mentioned by Solomon, to the nostrils of the demoniac, after which
he drew out the demon through his nostrils; and when the man fell
down immediately, he adjured him to return into him no more,
making still mention of Solomon, and reciting the incantations which
he composed. And when Eleazer would persuade and demonstrate
to the spectators that he had such a power, he set a little way off a
cup or bason full of water, and commanded the demon, as he went
out of the man, to overturn it, and thereby to let the spectators
know that he had left the man.”
The gods of the Greeks and the Latins, the lares and lemures, or
hearth-spirits, the pagan and the Christian elves, were ever held as
delegated agents of the Deity, who worked, not by a fiat, but by an
instrument. Such were the Cemies of the American islanders, and
the Kitchi and Matchi Manitou of the Indians; and, if we consult
Father Borri, we shall learn that in Cochin China Lucifer himself
promenaded the streets in human shape.
Psellus records six kinds of devils; and the arrangements of
Agrippa, and other theologians, enumerate nine sorts of evil spirits,
as you may read in one of old Burton’s eccentric chapters.
The mythology of the Baghvat Geeta, the sacred record of the
Hindoo theists, is based on the notion of good and evil spirits, the
emblems of virtue and of vice under the will and power of Brahma.
Indeed, the Hindoo mythology is but that of the classic in other
words. Agnee, the god of fire, Varoon, the god of the ocean, Vayoo,
the god of the wind, and Cama, the god of love, are but other
names for Jupiter, and Neptune, and Œolus, and Cupid.
The creed of Zoroaster asserts a perpetual conflict between the
good and evil deity, the types of religious knowledge and ignorance.
The southern Asiatics are people of good principle, and the northern
nations people of evil principle. And why may not the Persian thus
coincide with Bacon himself, who in his book “De Dignitate,”
confesses his belief in good and bad spirits, in charms, and
prophecies, and the varieties of natural magic. Or is it inconsistent
that the Hindoos should incarnate the malignant disease, small pox,
in the person of the deity Mah-ry-umma, of whose lethal influence
they lived in abject fear.
Ida. In the holy records, it is true, we read that demons were
even permitted to enter the bodies of other beings, and that when
they had so established a possession, by divine command they went
out of those possessed, as, for sacred example, into the herd of the
Gadarenes; that they were also commissioned, for the fulfilment of
the inscrutable will of the Creator, to try the endurance of Job, and
even to tempt the divinity of the Saviour, and that they were the
immediate cause of madness and other sad afflictions.
I do fear, Astrophel, that there is much danger, now, in this
embodying of a demon; and that we too often model our modern
principles, on the proud presumption of still possessing that
miraculous power of exorcism. With sorrow may I confess, that the
holy truths of Scripture, so clearly evincing a special purpose, should
have been ever warped, by worse than inquisitorial bigotry, into the
motive for cruelties unparalleled. From the Scripture histories of
demoniac possession have arisen the coercion and cruelties, which
once marked with an indelible stain the records of our own
madhouses; where chains and lashes, inflicted by the demons of
science, have driven the moody wretch into a raving maniac, when a
light hand and a smile would have brought back the angel reason to
the mind.
Impersonation is the grand source of many similar errors. The
demon, which, since the light of the Christian dispensation has
brooded in man’s heart and mind, is his own base passion, which
incites him to shut his eyes to this holy light, and follow deeds of
evil; to be a slavish worshipper in the hall of Arimanes. With this
profane homage, we court our evil passions, to betray and destroy
the soul. And this is the interpretation of an allegory in the profane
legends of the Talmud—that Lilis, the wife of Adam, ere the creation
of Eve, brought forth none but demons; the origin, indeed, of moral
evil.
There are many popular stories which bear a moral to this end:
that the evil spirit is powerless over the heart, if it be not
encouraged and invited; and, alas! the alluring masque under which
evil looks on us, is often but too certain to charm us to its influence,
or we are too thoughtless to beware the danger. Thus the disguised
enchanter enters into the palace of the Sultan Mesnar, (in “The Tales
of the Genii,”) and thus the gentle Christabel of Coleridge leads the
false Geraldine over that threshold, which she could not cross
without the help of confiding and unsuspecting innocence.
Cast. The crones of retired villages have not yet yielded their
belief in fairy influence.
Among the low Irish it is believed that (as the nympholepts of old
who had looked upon Pan, sealed an early doom), the paralytic is
fairy-struck; and superstition has inspired them with a belief in the
influence of the evil eye or glamourie, especially in the vicinity of
Blackwater.
I remember, when our wanderings among the Wicklow
mountains led us through the dark glen of the Dargle, the implicit
faith of the Irish women in the charm of amulets and talismans. Like
the fabled glance of the basilisk, the evil eye is bestowed on some
unhappy beings from their very birth; nay, the spell infests the cabin
in which they herd. To avert this fatal influence from the children, a
charm is suspended around their necks, which when blessed by the
priest is called a “gospel.”
When a happy or evil star shines at a birth, it is the eye of a
cherub or a demon, smiling or frowning on the destiny of the babe;
and when happiness or misery predominates in a life, it is a minister
of good or ill that blesses or inflicts. There is one beautiful scrap of
this mythology—the thrill of holy joy which the Irish mother feels
when her infant smiles in its sleep; for she knows it is a holy angel
whispering in its ear.
In our own island they are often celebrated as the very pinks of
hospitality.
In Cornish history, we read how Anne Jeffries was fed for six
months by the small green people. And in yonder forest of Dean, (as
writeth Gervase, the Imperial Chancellor, in his “Otia Imperialia,”) “In
a grovy lawn there is a little mount, rising in a point to the height of
a man, on which knights and other hunters are used to ascend,
when fatigued with heat and thirst, to seek some relief for their
wants. The nature of the place and of the business is, however,
such, that whoever ascends the mount must leave his companions
and go quite alone. When alone, he was to say, as if speaking to
some other person, ‘I thirst,’ and immediately there would appear a
cup-bearer in an elegant dress, with a cheerful countenance, bearing
in his outstretched hand a large horn, adorned with gold and gems,
as was the custom among the most ancient English. In the cup,
nectar of an unknown but most delicious flavour was presented; and
when it was drunk, all heat and weariness fled from the glowing
body, so that one would be thought ready to undertake toil, instead
of having toiled. Moreover, when the nectar was taken, the servant
presented a towel to the drinker to wipe his mouth with, and then,
having performed his office, he waited neither for recompense for
his services, nor for questions, nor inquiry.”
This frequent and daily action had, for a very long period, of old
times taken place among the ancient people, till one day a knight of
that city, when out hunting, went thither, and having called for drink,
and gotten the horn, did not, as was the custom, and as in good
manners he should have done, return it to the cup-bearer, but kept it
for his own use. But the illustrious Earl of Gloucester, when he
learned the truth of the matter, condemned the robber to death, and
presented the horn to the most excellent king, Henry the Elder; lest
he should be thought to have approved of such wickedness, if he
had added the rapine of another to the store of his private property.
But the fairies might rue their kindness, if you frowned so darkly
on them, Astrophel. They would fear the influence of your spells, for
there is blight and mildew in that glance. At the banquet of the
fairies, if the eye of the seer but look on them, the romance is
instantly at an end: the nymphs of beauty are changed into withered
carles and crones, and the splendour of Elfin-land is turned to dust
and ashes.
Ida. As a set-off against the virtues of your fairies, Castaly, you
forget there was a propensity to mischief. They were rather fond,
like the Daoine Shi, of stealing unchristened babes, and of chopping
and changing these innocents, thence called changelings. On this
fable your own Shakspere has wrought the quarrel of Oberon and
Titania: —

“A lovely boy, stol’n from an Indian king;

She never had so sweet a changeling.”

I am willing, dearest, that the poet shall make a good market of

these fictions; but superstitious ignorance may make a sad and cruel
work of it, even among your romantic Irish peasantry.
A few months since, on the demesne of Heywood (as we learn
from the “Tipperary Constitution”), the death of a child, six years
old, was accomplished with a wantonness of purpose almost
incredible. Little Mahony was afflicted with spinal disease, and, like
many other deformed children, possessed the gift,—in this case the
fatal gift,—of acute intellect. For this quality, it was decided that he
was not the son of his reputed father, but a fairy changeling. After a
solemn convocation, it was decreed that the elfin should be scared
away: and the mode of effecting this was, by holding the child on a
hot shovel, and then pumping cold water on his head! This had the
effect of extorting a confession of his imposture, and a promise to
send back the real Johnny Mahony; but ere he could return to
elfland and perform this promise, he died. But who is he sitting at
your ear, Castaly?
Cast. Sir, is this fair? You have played the eaves-dropper. Why
come you here?
Ev. To counsel you to silence on these mysteries, sweetest
Castaly: remember the fate of Master Kirke, of Aberfoyle, for his
dabbling in elfin matters, which you may read in Sir Walter’s
“Demonology.” Yet I will not flout all your fayrie legends; there may
be innocent illusions, that carry with them somewhat of morality and
retribution,—seeing that there are good and bad spirits, which
reward and punish mortality. But, in sooth, I never think of fairyland,
without remembering that good Sir Walter, as sheriff of Selkirkshire,
once took the deposition of a shepherd, who affirmed that he saw
the good neighbours sitting under a hill-side: when, lo! it was proved
that these were the puppets of a showman, stolen and left there by
some Scotch mechanics. And, better still, the story of the Mermaid
of Caithness, as related to Sir Humphrey Davy, and recorded in his
“Salmonia;”—the mermaids, as I take it, being nearly allied to the
Nereid, or Sea-fairy, and the reality of one about as true as that of
the other.
Nature is wild and beautiful enough, without these false
creations. Read her truth, fair lady, and leave the fables to the
fairies. There is not a ripple or a stone that is not replete with
scientific interest, and yields not a study that both ennobles and
delights the mind.
The doublings, or horse-shoes, of this Wye, or Vaga as the
Romans named it, within its circle of rocks, so exquisitely fringed
with green and purple lichens (like the Danube, round the castle of
Hayenbach in the gloomy gorge of Schlagen, or the Crook of Lune,
in Westmoreland, and many others), illustrate at once the nature of
the stratification on the earth’s surface; even the varied tints of
these mountain streams may read the student a practic lesson in
geology.
From the lime-rock springs the azure-blue, as the Glaslyn stream,
at Beddgelert, the Rhone, and the Traun in Styria; from the chalk
ripples the grey water of the Dee and the Arve; from the clay hills
the stream comes down yellow, as “the Derwent’s amber wave;” and
where the peat-mosses abound, especially in the autumnal flood, the
stream is of a rich and dark sienna brown, as the Conway, and the
Mawddach, in Merioneth; or even of transparent black, as the Elain,
which flows down through the white schist rocks of Cardiganshire.
Cast. And is there wisdom, Evelyn, in thus

“Flying from Nature to study her laws,

And dulling delight by exploring the cause?”

I do fear that this analytic study of nature destroys the romance of

life which flings around us its rainbow beauty.
Oh, for those halcyon days of infancy, when every thought was a
promise; when hope, the dream of waking men, was lost in its
fulfilment; and even fear itself was a thrill of romance!
Behold yon silver moon! it is, to the poet’s eye, an orb of
unsullied beauty, and the planets and their satellites glitter like
diamond studs in the firmament. Yet shift but the lens of the star-
gazer, and lo! dark and murky spots instantly shadow o’er its purity;
nay, have I not read that one deep astronomer, Fraüenhofer, has
discovered mountains and cities; and another, Sir John Herschell, the
laying down of rail-roads in the moon? So the optics of Gulliver
magnified the court beauties of Brobdignag into monsters, and the
auburn tresses of a maid of honour into a coil of dusty ropes!
Ev. A truce, fair Castaly. If science discovers defects, does it not
unfold new beauties, a new world of animated atoms, endowed with
faculties and passions as influential as our own? Nay, science has
thrown even a poetry around the blue mould of a cheese-crust; and
in the bloom of the peach the microscope has shown forth a
treasury of flowers, and gigantic forests, in the depths of which the
roving animalcule finds as secure an ambush as the lion and the
tiger within the gloomy jungles of Hindostan. In a drop of liquid
crystal the water-wolf chases his wounded victim, till it is changed to
crimson with its blood. Ehrenberg has seen monads in fluid the
24,000th part of an inch in size; and in one drop of water
500,000,000 creatures—the population of the globe! I hope, Castaly,
you will not, like the Brahmin, break your microscope, because it
unfolds to you these wonders of the water.
Then, by the power of the telescope, we roam into other
systems —

“World beyond world in infinite extent,

Profusely scattered o’er the blue expanse,”

and orbs so remote as to reduce to a mere span the distance

between us and the Georgium Sidus; and revel in all the gorgeous
splendour of rings, and moons, and nebulæ, the poetry of heaven.
Is there not an exquisite romance in the closing of the
barometrical blossoms; of the white convolvulus, and the anagallis
or scarlet pimpernel; of the sun-flower, and the leaves of the Dionæa
and mimosa?
Is there not poetry in the delicate nautilus, with its arms dropped
for oars; in the velella and purple physalia expanding their
membranous sails; and the beautiful fish-lizard, the Proteus of
transparent alabaster, found in the wondrous cavern of Maddalena,
among the Styrian mountains; and even in the Stalactytes of
Antiparos, as glittering as the gems and crystal pillars of Aladdin’s
palace? Are not these more beautiful because they are true, and
better to be read than all the impersonations of mythology, or that
voluptuous romance which would endow a flower with the fervour of
sense and passion?
Ida. I have ever wondered that a scholar, like Darwin, should
have so wasted time with his “Loves of the Plants.” For the study of
nature and the discoveries of science are ever vain, if they lift not
the heart in adoration. The insect, that fans the sunbeam with its
golden wing, or even the flower that opes its dewy eyes to the light,
are unconscious worshippers of the Divine Being.
 The Epicurean, who weeps for a decaying body, but mourns not
for a lost soul, will enjoy these beauties of nature with a heart
faithful to his creed, that pleasure is the only good; but the Christian
feels that, when he chips a stone, or culls a flower, he touches that
which comes fresh from the hand of its Creator.
How full is nature, too, of mute instruction! the simplest incident
is a lesson, if we will but learn it. You see that fading blossom
floating on the surface of the stream. That inanimate type of
decaying beauty shows, to the reflective mind, that even in the
summer of life the flower of existence will lose its youthful lustre,
and float down the stream of time into the depths of eternity.
But tell me, Evelyn, may not the influence of that science that
magnifies the lights of heaven (created to rule day and night) into
habitable worlds, weaken the influence of faith in holy writ?
May we not fear that, like the Promethean Preadamites of
Shelley, the Cain of Byron, the fabled beings of Ovid, and the
mythology of Milton, will be the vaunted discoveries of the geologist,
in controversion of the Mosaic records, of the creation and the
deluge; proving the wisdom of Bacon, that to associate natural
philosophy with sacred cosmogony, will lead to heretical opinions?
Indeed, I remember in the Zendavesta of Zoroaster, the chronicle of
the Magian religion (supposed to be a piracy from the book of
Genesis), the sun IS created before light.
Ev. Fear not this, fair Ida. Rather believe with Bouget, that
philosophy and natural theology mutually confirm each other. The
latter teaches us that which it is our duty to believe; the former to
believe more firmly. And Lord Bacon himself, in his “Cogitata et Visa,”
deems natural philosophy “the surest antidote of superstition, and
the food of religious faith.”
The belief in existence of a preadamite world, presumes not to
controvert the Mosaic record of the development of the globe, the
creation of Adam, or the fall of man. Modern geology has peopled
this preadamite world with saurians, or lizards, a race of beings not
concerned in the punishment of that delinquency. Of the existence
of these creatures there is no doubt; the discovery of their fossil
remains, without a vestige of the human skeleton, marks the period
of their destruction, and that the crust of the globe enveloping these
relics, might have been reduced to that chaos when “the earth was
without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the
deep;” and from which our beautiful world was fashioned by a fiat.
The truth of holy Scripture is too clear even to be disturbed by a
sophist. You may recollect that Julian, the apostate, contemplated
the reconstruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, in order to confute
the prophecies; but Julian failed, and misfortune was the lot of all
who were leagued in the impiety.
As to natural laws, think me not so profane as to cite such as the
superstitious alchemyst, Paracelsus, in proof of their use in the
working of a miracle; who says that “devils and witches raise storms
by throwing up alum and saltpetre into the air, which comes down as
rain-drops!”
And it were reversing this solemn argument were I to confess the
doctrines of the Illuminaten, who, taught by Jacob Boehmen, and
the mysticisms of his “Theosophia Revelata,” explained all nature’s
laws by warping texts of Scripture to their purpose. Yet it is clear
that even the miracles of the prophets may have been sometimes
influenced by established laws. Elisha raised the Shunamite’s son by
placing mouth to mouth, as if by inhalation.
Believe not then, fair Ida, that philosophy is set in array against
religion, when the student of nature endeavours to explain her
phenomena by physical laws, for those laws the great Creator
himself hath made.
 NATURE OF SOUL AND MIND.

“And for my soul, what can it do for that,

Being a thing immortal?”
Hamlet.

Cast. We have risen with the lark to salute you, Astrophel. And
you have really slept in Tintern Abbey? Yet not alone; “I see queen
Mab hath been with you,” and brushed you with her wing as you lay
asleep.
Astr. Throughout the live-long night, sweet Castaly, I have
revelled in a world of dreams. My couch and pillow were the green
grass turf. No wonder that tales of the times of old should crowd on
my memory, that elfin lips should whisper in my ear —
Cast. “The soft exquisite music of a dream.”
Ida. Talk not of dreams so lightly, dear Castaly; the visions of
sleep are among the most divine mysteries of our nature: these
transient flights of the spirit in a dream, unfettered as they seem by
the will, are, to my own mind, among the most exalted proofs of its
immortality. Is it not so, Evelyn?
Ev. The mystery which you have glanced at, Ida, is the most
sublime subject in metaphysics. Yet in our analysis of the
phenomena of intellect, it is our duty to discard, with reverential
awe, many of the notions of the pseudo psychologists in allusion to
that self-evident truth, that requires not the support of such
arguments.
In tracing the mystery of a dream to its association with our
immortal essence, reason will at length be involved in a maze of
conjecture. True philosophy will never presume to explain the
mystical union of spirit and of flesh; she would be bewildered even
in their definitions, and would incur some peril of forming
unhallowed conclusions. Even the nature of the rational soul will
involve him in endless conjecture, whether it be fire, as Zeno
believed; or number, according to Xenocrates; or harmony,
according to Aristoxenus; or the lucid fire—the Creator of all things,
of the Chaldean astrologers.
He who aspires to a solution of the mystery, may wear out his
brain in the struggle, as Philetas worked himself to death in a vain
attempt to solve the celebrated “Pseudomenos,” the paradox of the
stoics; or, like the gloomy students of the German school, he might
conclude his researches with a question like this rhapsody—
unanswerable.
“But thou, my spirit, thou that knowest this, that speakest to
thyself, what art thou? what wast thou ere this clay coat was cut for
thee? and what wilt thou be when this rain-coat, this sleeping-frock,
fall off thee like a garment torn to pieces? Whence comest thou?
where goest thou? Ah! where from and to, where darkness is before
and behind thee? Oh ye unclothed, ye naked spirits, hear this
soliloquy—this soul-speech. Know ye that ye be? Know ye that ye
were, that ye are as we are or otherwise, in eternity? Do ye work
within us, when a holy thrilling darts through us like lightning, where
not the skin trembles but the soul within us? Tell us, oh tell us, what
then is death?”
Now, if we reflect on the psychology of the Greeks, can we
discern their distinctions of νους, πνευμα, ψυχη, σωμα, of soul or
spirit—of spiritual body, or of idol and of earthly body; or of θυμος,
ψυχη, and νους, ψυχη, and so forth?
This fine distinction may be reduced to one simple proposition:—
that soul and mind are the same, under different combinations:
mind is soul evinced through the medium of the brain; soul is mind
emancipated from matter. This principle, if established, might
associate the anomalies of many sophists; the existence of two
minds, the sensitive and intellectual, taught by the Alexandrian
philosophers, or the tenets of Bishop Horsley, in his sermon before
the Humane Society, the separation of the life of intellect from
animal life; and it might reconcile the abstract reasoning of medical
philosophy, with the pure but misdirected arguments of the
theological critic.
 We believe the spirit to be the essence of life and immortality;
and it signifies not whether our words are those of Stahl—that it
presided over the animal body; or those of Galen and Aristotle—that
it directed the function of life. It is enough that we recognize the
πνοη ξωης, or that breath of life, which the Creator breathed into
none but man; and the εικων θεου, the image of God, in which he
was created. In this one proposition all the points of this awful
question are comprehended. And it is on this combined nature that
we must reason, ere we discourse on sleep and dreams.
Cast. I condole with you, Astrophel; you must forget the
splendour of your dreams, and listen to their dull philosophy.
Astr. We may indeed sympathize with each other, Castaly; we are
threatened with another abstruse exposition of the mind, although
we are already sated with the contrasted hypotheses of our deepest
philosophers: the cogitation or self-reasoning of Descartes, (the
essence of whose “Principia” was “Cogito, ergo sum;” and it is an
adoption of Milton’s Adam, “That I am, I know, because I think:”
forgetting that the very ego which thinks, is a proof of prior
existence;) and of Malebranche, who believed they existed because
they thought; the abstract spiritualism of Berkley, who believed he
existed merely because others thought of him; the consciousness of
Locke; the idealism of Hume; the material psychology of Paley; the
mental corporeality of Priestley; and the absolute nonentity of
Pyrrho.
Ev. I leave these hypotheses to speak for themselves, Astrophel;
my own discourse will be wearying enough without them.
Over the intricate philosophy of mind, Creative Wisdom has
thrown a veil, which we can never hope to draw aside. True, the
beautiful mechanism of its organ, the brain, is apparent; and we can
draw some analogies from inspection of the brain of a brute, and its
progressive development in fœtal life, in reference to comparative
simplicity and complexity; but its phenomena are not, like most of
the organic functions of the body, demonstrable.
Now, although we know not the mode of this mutual influence,
the seat of mind is a subject of almost universal belief; not that
Aristotle, and Ætius, and John Locke, are our oracles on this point,