Medieval Ghost Stories

by Andrew Joynes

  The Frightened Oxen

  Story IV

  The old people tell the story of a certain James Tankerlay, the one-time Rector of Kereby, who was buried by the chapter-house at Bellelande. His spirit began to wander at night as far as Kereby, and one evening he gouged out the eye of his concubine who still lived there. It is said that the abbot and chapter had his body in its coffin dug out of the grave and that they ordered Roger Wayneman to convey it to Gormyre. When he was about to throw the coffin into the water, the oxen drawing his wagon panicked and were almost drowned with fear …

  The Silver Spoons

  Story VI

  It happened that a man was talking with his master ploughman as they walked together through the fields. Suddenly the ploughman ran away in great terror, leaving his companion to wrestle with a spirit which tore at this clothes. Eventually he overcame it and conjured it to reveal its identity. The spirit confided that it was a certain canon of Newburgh who had been excommunicated for the theft of some silver spoons. The spirit implored the living man to go to a certain place and take it upon himself to report the matter to his former prior and beseech him for absolution. This was done, and the silver spoons were found in the place indicated by the spirit. The necessary absolution was arranged and the spirit rested in peace thereafter. But the man involved in the incident (who later confirmed that the ghost had appeared to him in the guise of a canon) fell sick and was ill for many days …

  The Howling Ghost

  Story VIII

  This is an account of how another spirit followed William of Bradford crying out ‘how how how’ on three successive occasions. And at about midnight on the fourth night, he was returning on the road to the new town of Ampleforth when he heard a terrible voice shrieking a long way behind him, as though it was on a hill. A short time afterwards it shrieked again, but closer to him, and on the third occasion he heard it calling at the cross-roads ahead of him. Eventually he made out the shape of a pale horse. His dog growled briefly but then retreated and hid itself behind its master’s legs, whereupon, in the name of the Lord and by virtue of the blood of Jesus Christ, William forbade the spirit to harm him and obstruct him on his journey. When these words had been spoken, it fell back and took on the appearance of a square piece of canvas with corners which flapped and rolled about. All of which might lead one to believe it was a spirit in dreadful need of recognition and help …

  The Child of Richard Rowntree

  Story XI

  The story is told of a certain citizen of Cleveland called Richard Rowntree, who, leaving his wife pregnant, went on pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint Joseph [at Santiago de Compostela]. He and his companions spent a night in a forest near the royal road [the camino real across Northern Spain], each of them keeping watch for a time while the others slept. When Richard’s turn came to keep watch, he heard a great noise coming from the direction of the royal road. Then he saw several figures sitting astride the horses, sheep, oxen and other animals which had been used to pay their funeral expenses when they died. He noticed in particular what appeared to be a little child tangled up in swaddling clothes, and he asked who it was and what it might be seeking. It replied, ‘It is not appropriate for you to address me, for you were my father and I was your stillborn child, buried without being named and baptised …’ Hearing this, the pilgrim took off his own shirt and put it on the little child, naming it in the name of the Holy Trinity, and took with him the old swaddling cloth as proof. With its name bestowed, the child went off exultantly, walking upright instead of floundering along as before. When the pilgrim returned from his journey, he gave a feast for his neighbours and then, in front of them all, asked his wife where her infants’ clothes might be. She showed him one of the swaddling cloths, but found that another was missing. Then he held out the cloth in which the child had been wrapped when he first saw it, and everybody at the feast marvelled at the story. The midwives then confessed the truth about the premature death and burial of the child, and the husband proceeded to divorce his wife on the grounds that their son had been aborted. But I believe such a divorce caused great displeasure to God [perhaps because the wife had not been an accessory to the indecent burial of her child] …

  The Sister of Adam de Lond

  Story XII

  Legend has it that this woman was buried in the cemetery of Ampleforth and was seen shortly afterwards by William Trower the elder. When she was conjured, she confessed that her ghost was wandering at night because of certain property deeds which she had made over unjustly to her brother Adam. From this a quarrel had arisen between her husband and herself, in that this transfer had given her brother a property advantage over her husband and her own sons, and after her death her brother had violently expelled her husband from their home, which was a croft with certain appurtenances at Ampleforth, and a bovate of land with appurtenances at Heslarton. She implored William Trower to go to her brother and tell him she wished the deeds to be returned to her husband and sons, so that their land might be given back to them. Otherwise, she said, she would find no peace until Judgment Day.

  Following her instruction, William went to Adam de Lond with her suggestion, but found him unwilling to restore the deeds. ‘I do not believe a word of what you are telling me,’ said Adam to William, who replied: ‘My story is true in every respect, and with God’s grace you will yourself hear from your sister about all this.’ A short time later, William saw the woman’s ghost again and took her to Adam’s house, where she spoke to her brother. He remained obdurate and told her she could wander around forever as far as he was concerned, but that he would not hand back the deeds. With a groan she replied: ‘May God judge us both over this matter. I will not rest until you have died, and then afterwards you will be forced to wander in my place …’

  It is said that downy cobwebs hung in strands from her right hand, and that it had turned black, and that when she was asked why this was, she replied that she had often held up this hand to swear false oaths. Eventually her ghost was conjured [and thus constrained] to go to another place because of the terror it inspired in the inhabitants of the town. I crave indulgence if by chance I have offended by writing against the truth. It is said moreover that Adam de Lond the younger made partial restitution to her heirs after the death of Adam the elder …

  Source: Re-told from the Latin texts of ‘Twelve Medieval Ghost Stories’, edited by M.R. James in the English Historical Review XXXVII (1922), pp. 413–22.

  Part Four

  Ghosts in Medieval Literature

  Introduction

  The absence of any specific genre of ghost story during the Middle Ages means that there is perhaps the danger of ‘over-classifying’ the ghostly occurrences and supernatural incidents which feature in medieval literature. By the late Middle Ages, European literature itself consisted of a number of different strands which, increasingly, were being written in vernacular languages rather than in Latin, but all of which drew upon interlocking and related traditions. For instance, just as the fashion for verse romance developed in the twelfth century alongside an older tradition of epic poetry – romance certainly did not ‘replace’ epic by some neat process of literary evolution1 – so monastic chronicles came to be complemented by historical verses in the vernacular, and popular fable, written in the language spoken in the streets, overlapped more and more with the exempla contained in the Latin preachers’ manuals.

  Although what in retrospect have come to be seen as distinct forms of literary activity were all being practised at the same time, each of them is likely to have made its appeal to a different section of medieval society because of what might be called the ‘code’ in which it was written. This code governed the overall form of the work; it conditioned the audience’s response to the development of the narrative; and it drew upon the shared cultural assumptions of author and audience. It could often result in profoundly different expectations of the conduct of the principal figures in the work. For instance, a baron and his retinue of
warrior-companions listening to the recitation of epic verse in the hall of his castle would expect the knight who was the hero of an epic to conduct himself as a grim-faced warrior for Christendom, hewing with his sword at a mass of pagan enemies. At the same time, the baron’s wife and her circle listening to a verse romance in the upper chamber of the hall would be presented with an entirely different image of a knightly hero: a blithe, elegant, golden figure, cantering off in springtime to listen to the nightingale. Ultimately, of course, the code of the romance, with its frequent emphasis upon the agonies and complexities of courtly love, proved the more durable and influential in that it permitted the development of ‘character’ in literature. Given the complex code that underlay the genre in which they worked, the romance poets had the potential to explore intention, state of mind and conflict of emotion in a way that was not possible for the epic poets, who had to deal with a more restricted and stereotypical set of responses.2

  In some of the extracts which follow, we can see how ghostly occurrences were used to reinforce the romance code, in a manner which is a striking development of the way in which other medieval accounts of ghosts were used to convey a monastic message. For the devotees of the cult of courtly love, for instance, the punishment of those who ignored the demands of the god of love called for exemplary accounts of their suffering after death. This called in turn for stories, such as the one that is told in the poem the Lay du Trot, of a witness to a ghostly procession. In this medieval French lay, the knight Lorois, riding through the early summer landscape to be confronted by alternating visions of loving and lovelorn ghosts, fulfils the same function as the priest Walchelin, trudging homeward in the account of Hellequin’s Hunt by Orderic Vitalis. Both Lorois and Walchelin are observers; both are instructed in the meaning of the ghostly visions which pass before them by spectral participants in the processions; both are required to carry back a warning to their mortal companions. There is even a similarity between the punishment inflicted on the ghostly women riding in Hellequin’s procession (they are bounced along on red-hot saddles) and the uncomfortable jolting gait of the ghosts who have scorned love in the Lay du Trot. Significantly, however, the intention of this punishment is diametrically different: the monk Orderic deems this painful equestrian posture to be the wages of sin and sensuality, while the author of the lay depicts the second group of ghosts as being jolted around for failing to follow the dictates of love and eroticism.

  There are other examples of the ‘standard’ form of medieval ghost story being adapted for use as a device in romance literature. The spectral pursuit of a ghostly young woman by her scorned lover which is described in Boccaccio’s Decameron is similar to the story by Caesarius of Heisterbach which I have called ‘The Shoes of the Hunted Woman.’ So, too, the sufferings in the afterlife described in the Awntyrs of Arthure by the ghost of Guinevere’s mother resemble accounts given by spirits who appear in monastic Miracula to implore their relatives to make suffrage donations on their behalf to lessen their time in purgatory. What is perhaps different about these ghosts in medieval literature is the context in which they manifest themselves. The ‘sin’ for which the girl’s ghost is hunted in the Decameron is that of having scorned love – of having failed to yield to erotic desire – and her sufferings are cited as a warning to her living counterparts; while the grotesque apparition in the Awntyrs that approaches Guinevere and Gawain as they take their ease in a forest glade has the purpose – both instructive and entertaining in a shiversome way – of acting as a reminder of the briefness of life. In other words, by appearing when and as it does, the ghost of Guinevere’s mother has the literary effect of highlighting the Arthurian idyll which it interrupts, and whose demise it forecasts.3

  It is worth noting, incidentally, that the code which underlies Marie de France’s story of the werewolf Bisclavret might even have contained a tacit message for its first listeners which related to political developments in the Angevin realm during the late twelfth century. In her preface to the poem, Marie says that the name she has given her supernatural creature is the Breton term for a werewolf. Stories of werewolves and shape-changers were common in the folklore of the Celtic lands: Giraldus Cambrensis, for instance, has an account in his Topography of Ireland of the ‘wonder and miracle’ of a wolf conversing with a priest.4 In Marie’s story, it is perhaps significant that, even in its non-human form, the focus of this Breton werewolf ’s loyalty and devotion is the king. This motif, whereby the monarchy is presented as inspiring awe even across a supernatural boundary, is perhaps a cultural expression of political trends in the Angevin domain at the time. As Henry II expanded his power and influence in the Celtic lands of Wales, Ireland and Brittany, the local cultures, rich in folklore, were being confronted with the reality of an external power. In another of Giraldus’s anecdotes – this time from his Conquest of Ireland – Henry II himself is said to have deliberately gone out of his way to cross a bridge in Wales which, according to a prophesy of the seer Merlin, would be associated with his death. ‘Who now will have faith in that liar Merlin?’ demanded the king emphatically as he crossed the bridge unharmed, giving the clear implication that strong monarchs made their own destinies.5 In other words, any use of legend in the late twelfth century was to be turned to the Angevin monarchy’s own advantage, and Marie’s engaging image of a werewolf slavering obediently at a king’s heels was entirely consistent with this trend.

  In terms of the later, post-medieval, development of the ghost story, the extracts which follow from the Gesta Romanorum are perhaps the most noteworthy. This is despite the fact that when the stories were first gathered together in this influential collection of folk-tales and fables, each of them was accompanied by a detailed examination of its allegorical significance in terms of Christian theology. Although some of this material was recorded originally by Gervase of Tilbury, it can be argued that it was the gathering together of stories from a variety of sources which made the Gesta collection significant from a literary point of view. The social context in which these tales were told can perhaps be gleaned from the reference, in the story which I have called ‘The Phantom Knight of Wandlesbury’, to a medieval household entertaining itself around the fire with folk-stories and local legends. This image has a resonance with the story-telling context of The Decameron (Boccaccio tells of a group of Florentine refugees from their plague-ridden city passing their time in a country villa by telling each other stories) and of The Canterbury Tales, in which Chaucer’s pilgrims tell each other stories on their journey to Becket’s shrine. It is an image indeed in which one can perhaps discern the emergence of a genre of ghost story which is beginning to free itself from the requirement to adopt a moralising tone. Certainly these three stories from the Gesta Romanorum – of a spectral warrior haunting an ancient hill-top, of a ghostly butler offering a jewelled cup, and of a child taken away by demons to an invisible palace – stand alone in a narrative sense, free from any theological or romance or political gloss, and they would certainly have held the attention of the wide-eyed listeners around the fire. Read on their own, without the moralising interpretations of each story on which the monastic theologians would have insisted, they have the compellingly eerie quality which characterised the development of a later genre of ghost story.

  * * *

  1. ‘… Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving, yet never leaving anything behind …’: C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love, Oxford 1937, p. 1.

  2. See W.P. Ker, Epic and Romance: Essays in Medieval Literature, London 1931; and E. Vinaver, The Rise of Romance, Oxford 1971.

  3. ‘Pride of life is confronted with its opposite, an image of death and after-death …’: see an analysis of the Awntyrs in J. Speirs, Medieval English Poetry, London 1957, pp. 252–62.

  4. See The Historical Works of Giraldus Cambrensis, ed. and trans. T. Wright, London 1863, p. 79. The identification of wolves with men in the medieval i
magination may also have had a juridical basis, stemming from the legal requirement to treat outlaws and social outcasts as though they were wolves, to be hunted down and killed. One of the laws of Edward the Confessor required that a man who broke the peace of the Church should betreated as though ‘he bears the head of a wolf ’.

  5. The Historical Works of Giraldus Cambrensis, p. 238.

  The Lays of Marie de France

  ‘Marie’ was the name by which an otherwise anonymous twelfth-century author of a series of lays, or narratives in verse, called herself in the introduction to one of her works; others later styled her ‘Marie de France’. The lays are likely to have been written by a woman who was high-born and of French origin living in England and in regular contact with the Angevin court, where her works were known and circulated. She has been variously identified as Marie, the Abbess of Shaftesbury and half-sister of Henry II; as Marie the daughter of the royal adviser Count Waleran de Beaumont; and as Marie the Countess of Boulogne. For the most part, her stories are concerned with the fashionable subjects of love and desire, but one of her lays addresses the theme of shape-changing. The nobleman who is the hero of the lay is able – or is perhaps compelled by some supernatural instinct – to change his form and become a wolf frequenting the forests which surround his home. Stories of werewolves were common in the medieval period, but these supernatural creatures did not always have the monstrous connotations later attached to them. The Scandinavian Saga of the Volsungs, for instance, tells how the hero Sigmund and his son become wolves for a time to enhance their power and defeat their enemies. For Marie de France, the shape-changer whom she calls Bisclavret (she tells us in her preface that this is the Breton term for a werewolf, and that the Normans called it a ‘Garwaf’) is a rather amiable creature whose betrayal by his wife justifies his attacks upon her and her lover.