Secret Commonwealth - Page 2

place, and finding some ease by so purning [journeying] and changing
habitations. Their chameleon-like bodies swim in the air near the earth
with bag and baggage; and at such revolution of time, seers, or men of
the second sight (females being seldom so qualified) have very terrifying
encounters with them, even on highways; who, therefore, awfully shun to
travel abroad at these four seasons of the year, and thereby have made it
a custom to this day among the Scottish-Irish to keep church duly every
first Sunday of the quarter to _seun_ or hallow themselves, their corn
and cattle, from the shots and stealth of these wandering tribes; and
many of these superstitious people will not be seen in church again till
the next quarter begins, as if no duty were to be learnt or done by them,
but all the use of worship and sermons were to save them from these
arrows that fly in the dark.

They are distributed in tribes and orders, and have children, nurses,
marriages, deaths, and burials in appearance, even as we (unless they so
do for a mock-show, or to prognosticate some such things among us).

They are clearly seen by these men of the second sight to eat at funerals
[and] banquets. Hence many of the Scottish-Irish will not taste meat at
these meetings, lest they have communion with, or be poisoned by, them.
So are they seen to carry the bier or coffin with the corpse among the
middle-earth men to the grave. Some men of that exalted sight (whether
by art or nature) have told me they have seen at these meetings a double
man, or the shape of some man in two places; that is a super-terranean
and a subterranean inhabitant, perfectly resembling one another in all
points, whom he, notwithstanding, could easily distinguish one from
another by some secret tokens and operations, and so go and speak to the
man, his neighbour and familiar, passing by the apparition or resemblance
of him. They avouch that every element and different state of being has
animals resembling those of another element; as there be fishes sometimes
at sea resembling monks of late order in all their hoods and dresses; so
as the Roman invention of good and bad demons, and guardian angels
particularly assigned, is called by them an ignorant mistake, sprung only
from this original. They call this reflex man a co-walker, every way
like the man, as a twin brother and companion, haunting him as his
shadow, as is oft seen and known among men (resembling the original),
both before and after the original is dead; and was often seen of old to
enter a house, by which the people knew that the person of that likeness
was to visit them within a few days. This copy, echo, or living picture,
goes at last to his own herd. It accompanied that person so long and
frequently for