Cock Lane and Common-Sense

Cock Lane and Common-Sense,
by Andrew Lang

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Andrew Lang
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Title: Cock Lane and Common-Sense
Author: Andrew Lang
Release Date: June 21, 2004 [eBook #12674]
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COCK
LANE AND COMMON-SENSE***

Transcribed by David Price, email [email protected]

COCK LANE AND COMMON-SENSE

TO JAMES PAYN, Esq.
Dear Payn,
Spirits much more rare and valuable than those spoken of in this book
are yours. Whatever 'Mediums' may be able to do, you can 'transfer'
High Spirits to your readers; one of whom does not hope to convert you,
and will be fortunate enough if, by this work, he can occasionally bring
a smile to the lips of his favourite novelist.
With more affection and admiration than can be publicly expressed,
Believe me,
Yours ever,
ANDREW LANG.

PREFACE.
Since the first publication of Cock Lane and Common-Sense in 1894,
nothing has occurred to alter greatly the author's opinions. He has tried
to make the Folklore Society see that such things as modern reports of
wraiths, ghosts, 'fire-walking,' 'corpse-lights,' 'crystal-gazing,' and so on,
are within their province, and within the province of anthropology. In
this attempt he has not quite succeeded. As he understands the situation,
folklorists and anthropologists will hear gladly about wraiths, ghosts,
corpse- candles, hauntings, crystal-gazing, and walking unharmed
through fire, as long as these things are part of vague rural tradition, or
of savage belief. But, as soon as there is first-hand evidence of
honourable men and women for the apparent existence of any of the
phenomena enumerated, then Folklore officially refuses to have
anything to do with the subject. Folklore will register and compare
vague savage or popular beliefs; but when educated living persons
vouch for phenomena which (if truly stated) account in part for the

origin of these popular or savage beliefs, then Folklore turns a deaf ear.
The logic of this attitude does not commend itself to the author of Cock
Lane and Common-Sense.
On the other side, the Society for Psychical Research, while anxiously
examining all the modern instances which Folklore rejects, has hitherto
neglected, on the whole, that evidence from history, tradition, savage
superstition, saintly legend, and so forth, which Folklore deigns to
regard with interest. The neglect is not universal, and the historical
aspect of these beliefs has been dealt with by Mr. Gurney (on
Witchcraft), by Mr. Myers (on the Classical Oracles), and by Miss X.
(on Crystal-Gazing). Still, the savage and traditional evidence is nearly
as much eschewed by psychical research, as the living and
contemporary evidence is by Folklore. The truth is that anthropology
and Folklore have a ready-made theory as to the savage and illusory
origin of all belief in the spiritual, from ghosts to God. The reported
occurrence, therefore, of phenomena which suggest the possible
existence of causes of belief not accepted by anthropology, is a
distasteful thing, and is avoided. On the other hand, psychical research
averts its gaze, as a rule, from tradition, because the testimony of
tradition is not 'evidential,' not at first hand.
In Cock Lane and Common-Sense an attempt is made to reconcile
these rather hostile sisters in science. Anthropology ought to think
humani nihil a se alienum. Now the abnormal and more or less
inexplicable experiences vouched for by countless living persons of
honour and sanity, are, at all events, human. As they usually coincide in
character with the testimony of the lower races all over the world; with
historical evidence from the past, and with rural Folklore now and
always, it really seems hard to understand how anthropology can turn
her back on this large human province. For example, the famous affair
of the disturbances at Mr. Samuel Wesley's parsonage at Epworth, in
1716, is reported on evidence undeniably honest, and absolutely
contemporary. Dr. Salmon, the learned and acute Provost of Trinity
College, Dublin, has twice tried to explain the phenomena as the results
of deliberate imposture by Hetty Wesley, alone, and unaided. {0a} The
present writer examined Dr. Salmon's arguments (in the Contemporary

Review, August, 1895), and was able, he thinks, to demonstrate that
scarcely one of them was based on an accurate reading of the evidence.
The writer later came across the diary of Mr. Proctor of Wellington,
near Newcastle (about 1840), and found to his surprise that Mr. Proctor
registered on occasion, day by day, for many years, precisely the same
phenomena as those which had vexed the Wesleys. {0b} Various
contradictory and mutually exclusive