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303
The Book of Dreams and Ghosts
·
Andrew Lang
4
It
may
be
urged
that
many
of
the
stories
here
narrated
come
from
remote
times,
and,
as
the
testimony
for
these
cannot
be
rigidly
studied,
that
the
old
unauthenticated
stories
clash
with
the
analogous
tales
current
on
better
authority
in
our
own
day.
But
these
ancient
legends
are
given,
not
as
evidence,
but
for
three
reasons:
first,
because
of
their
merit
as
mere
stories;
next,
because
several
of
them
are
now
perhaps
for
the
first
time
offered
with
a
critical
discussion
of
their
historical
sources;
lastly,
because
the
old
legends
seem
to
show
how
the
fancy
of
periods
less
critical
than
ours
dealt
with
such
facts
as
are
now
reported
in
a
dull
undramatic
manner.
Thus
(1)
the
Icelandic
ghost
stories
have
peculiar
literary
merit
as
simple
dramatic
narratives.
(2)
Every
one
has
heard
of
the
Wesley
ghost,
Sir
George
Villiers's
spectre,
Lord
Lyttelton's
ghost,
the
Beresford
ghost,
Mr.
Williams's
dream
of
Mr.
Perceval's
murder,
and
so
forth.
But
the
original
sources
have
not,
as
a
rule,
been
examined
in
the
ordinary
spirit
of
calm
historical
criticism,
by
aid
of
a
comparison
of
the
earliest
versions
in
print
or
manuscript.
(3)
Even
ghost
stories,
as
a
rule,
have
some
basis
of
fact,
whether
fact
of
hallucination,
or
illusion,
or
imposture.
They
are,
at
lowest,
"human
documents".
Now,
granting
such
facts
(of
imposture,
hallucination,
or
what
you
will),
as
our
dull,
modern
narratives
contain,
we
can
regard
these
facts,
or
things
like
these,
as
the
nuclei
which
our
less
critical
ancestors
elaborated
into
their
extraordinary
romances.
In
this
way
the
belief
in
demoniacal
possession
(distinguished,
as
such,
from
madness
and
epilepsy)
has
its
nucleus,
some
contend,
in
the
phenomena
of
alternating
personalities
in
certain
patients.
Their
characters,
ideas,
habits,
and
even
voices
change,
and
the
most
obvious
solution
of
the
problem,
in
the
past,
was
to
suppose
that
a
new
alien
personality--a
"devil"--had
entered
into
the
sufferer.
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