ausa esse credebatur, ut videretur sanguis
clamare ad Deum."[959] In the "Athenian Oracle" (i. 106), this supposed
phenomenon is thus accounted for: "The blood is congealed in the body
for two or three days, and then becomes liquid again, in its tendency to
corruption. The air being heated by many persons coming about the body,
is the same thing to it as motion is. 'Tis observed that dead bodies
will bleed in a concourse of people, when murderers are absent, as well
as present, yet legislators have thought fit to authorize it, and use
this trial as an argument, at least to frighten, though 'tis no
conclusive one to condemn them." Among other allusions to this
superstition may be mentioned one by King James in his "Daemonology,"
where we read: "In a secret murder, if the dead carkasse be at any time
thereafter handled by the murderer, it will gush out of blood, as if the
blood were crying to heaven for revenge of the murderer." It is spoken
of also in a note to chapter v. of the "Fair Maid of Perth," that this
bleeding of a corpse was urged as an evidence of guilt in the High Court
of Justiciary at Edinburgh as late as the year 1668. An interesting
survival of this curious notion exists in Durham, where, says Mr.
Henderson,[960] "touching of the corpse by those who come to look at it
is still expected by the poor on the part of those who come to their
house while a dead body is lying in it, in token that they wished no ill
to the departed, and were in peace and amity with him."

[959] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. pp. 229-231.

[960] "Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," 1849, p. 57.

We may also compare the following passage, where Macbeth (iii. 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;
Augurs and understood relations have
By magot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth
The secret'st man of blood."

Shakespeare perhaps 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. The idea of trees speaking probably refers to
the story of the tree which revealed to AEneas the murder of Polydorus
(Verg., "AEneid," iii. 22, 599). Indeed, in days gone by, this
superstition was carried to such an extent that we are told, in
D'Israeli's "Curiosities of Literature," "by the side of the bier, if
the slig