GHOSTS AS DEBT COLLECTORS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 976, 22 June 1883, Page 4

GHOSTS AS DEBT COLLECTORS.

The necessity for increasing the! severity of the Bankruptcy Law, which! has compelled Administration after! Administration to propose fresh legis-j lation in order to secure the payment of just debts, would not be felt if the! debtors could be thoroughly convinced j of the truth of one of the Ulster superstitions which Mrs Damant describes! in her pleasant paper in the currents number of the “Antiquary.” In the northern province the common people have a belief, or perhaps it would be better to say had a belief—for Ulster, like all the rest of the world, is exposed | to the dissolvent forces of this sceptical! century —that the soul could not rest! ; in peace if any of the debts incurred whilst it was in the body were left un-| paid; Mrs Damant tells two stories | illustrating the operation ot this superstition, in both of which the defunct debtor haunted the homes of the surviving relatives until they paid his; creditors that which was owing. The; first was a tale of three brothers, who lived together for years on the confines of a great bog. One of them died, and one night some years after, as one of the survivors was looking out at the Starlit sky, the spirit of the dead man spoke out of the darkness and told them that he had lingered there year

after year, till cockcrow every night, trying to get a word with them, but • they never had noticed him. He had wanted, he said, to make one very urgent request: —‘“He told them if they fulfilled it he would surely be freed, and would wander no more near the dreary bogs. Speech had been given him to rin a towffiPwiwe3eMd ort& s&yM Msell some cattle at a fair should be paid. The money had been spent, on himself, and he had ‘thought shame’ to tell his brothers, who would pay it with difficulty. Till it was paid, the gates of Paradise QQdd neverhim; if before Ea«ep»st%fts fiScMrged, they might think of him on Easter Sunday, when released souls go home to heaven. As he spoke his voice grew fainter, and with ucrfarewell he seemed to melt away 'into air. Of course the money was scraped together and faithfully paid, and on Easter morning, as the brothers 6ofe£ii Mifl T waft passing near them told of the release of one spirit in prison on its way to happiness.” The other story relates to a widow whose husband had died of fever in the hospital. Her husband’s spirit could cd£aartifo*l3Phte time owing to the cock which roosted over the porch; but one night, when she the door slowly opened and some one entered. The rest of the story is told as followsnpijpr made her powerless to spdat, till in the darkness she heard the heartbroken sigh that pleads for some sign from .the living, and then lHg^l^(f?Mrate 7 To i ask and hear that the soul of her husband was beside her. He came.tp, tell of a debt he had 'on his return from England. Unless it was paid he must bi ?e in vain. #( Next * morning she walked again to the distant town and shopkeepers wondered at her knowledge of what her husband said was a secret from ‘the Wifef the debts. They were very small. She sold all she possessed, and was paying the few shillings towards the account, when the shopkeeper suddenly asked her . the cause of her miserably altered looks. She told her tale, and he was so moved by I?#’ tore up the receipt in part and wrote one in full, which sent her from his presence happy and con^ted. r ,, !^ut^s-tl^i 9n>y means of a livelmooa 'ihemad were gone, she had'to go to the workhouse, where she ended her davs: not, however, till she ha2Hflfe i feeling once again the * cold waft’ telling of her husband’s freedom, while she knelt at mass among the other paupers ~6ti Easter morning.” -The supernatural sanction, however, is than the prayers of a tormented ghost, and, perhaps, considering the immense number of in these latter days, it is as well for the living that they are subject to no “ cold wafts " from the other world. If “cold wafts” were added to the existing draughts, the Stock Exchange would become a cave of yEolus , ,