Legends and Traditions of Huntingdonshire," 1878, 1-3.

[38] London, printed for A. Bell, 1714.

CHAPTER X.

FAMILY DEATH OMENS.

"Say not 'tis vain! I tell thee, some
Are warned by a meteor's light,
Or a pale bird flitting calls them home,
Or a voice on the winds by night--
And they must go. And he too, he,
Woe for the fall of the glorious tree."
--MRS. HEMANS.

A curious chapter in the history of many of our old county families is
that relating to certain forewarnings, which, from time immemorial,
have been supposed to indicate the approach of death. However
incredible the existence of these may seem, their appearance is still
intimately associated with certain houses, instances of which have
been recorded from time to time. Thus Cuckfield Place, Sussex, is not
only interesting as a fine Elizabethan mansion, but as having
suggested to Ainsworth the "Rookwood Hall" of his striking romance.
"The supernatural occurrence," he says, "forming the groundwork of one
of the ballads which I have made the harbinger of doom to the house of
Rookwood, is ascribed, by popular superstition, to a family resident
in Sussex, upon whose estate the fatal tree--a gigantic lime, with
mighty arms and huge girth of trunk--is still carefully preserved." In
the avenue that winds towards the house the doom-tree still stands:--

"And whether gale or calm prevail, or threatening cloud hath fled,
By hand of Fate, predestinate, a limb that tree will shed;
A verdant bough, untouched, I trow, by axe or tempest's breath,
To Rookwood's head, an omen dread of fast approaching death."

"Cuckfield Place," adds Ainsworth, "to which this singular piece of
timber is attached, is the real Rookwood Hall, for I have not drawn
upon imagination, but upon memory, in describing the seat and domains
of that fated family." A similar tradition is associated with the
Edgewell Oak, which is said to indicate the coming death of an inmate
of Castle Dalhousie by the fall of one of its branches; and Camden in
his "Magna Britannia," alluding to the antiquity of the Brereton
family, relates this peculiar fact which is reported to have been
repeated many times: "This wonderful thing respecting them is commonly
believed, and I have heard it myself affirmed by many, that for some
days before the death of the heir of the family the trunk of a tree
has always been seen floating in the lake adjoining th