t Britain," 1794-5.

[20] Oxford, 1857.

[21] "Scenes and Legends of the Vale of Strathmore." J. Cargill
Guthrie, 1875.

[22] "All the Year Round," 1880.

[23] See "Wilts Archaeological Magazine," vols. i.-x.

[24] See "Notes and Queries," 1st S., I., p. 67.

CHAPTER VI.

INDELIBLE BLOOD STAINS.

"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnardine,
Making the green one red."--MACBETH.

It was a popular suggestion in olden times that when a person had died
a violent death, the blood stains could not be washed away, to which
Macbeth alludes, as above, after murdering Duncan. This belief was in
a great measure founded on the early tradition that the wounds of a
murdered man were supposed to bleed afresh at the approach or touch of
the murderer. To such an extent was this notion carried, that "by the
side of the bier, if the slightest change were observable in the eyes,
the mouth, feet, or hands of the corpse, the murderer was conjectured
to be present, and many an innocent spectator must have suffered
death. This practice forms a rich pasture in the imagination of our
old writers; and their histories and ballads are laboured into pathos
by dwelling on this phenomenon."[25] At Blackwell, near Darlington,
the murder of one Christopher Simpson is described in a pretty local
ballad known as "The Baydayle Banks Tragedy." A suspected person was
committed, because when he touched the body at the inquest, "upon his
handlinge and movinge, the body did bleed at the mouth, nose, and
ears," and he turned out to be the murderer. Similarly Macbeth (Act
III., sc. 4), speaking of the ghost, says:--

"It will have blood; they say blood will have blood;
Stones have been known to move and trees to speak,
Auguries and understood relations have
By magot pies and choughs and rooks brought forth
The secret'st man of blood."

Shakespeare here, in all probability, alludes to some story in which
the stones covering the corpse of a murdered man were said to have
moved of themselves, and so revealed the secret. In the same way, it
was said that where blood had been shed, the marks could not be
obliterated, but would continually reappear until justice for the
crime had been obtained. On one occasion, Nathaniel Hawthorne enjoyed
the hospitality of Smithells Hall, Lancashire, and was so impressed
with the well-kno