"The Rules of Folklore" in the Ghost Stories of M.R. James

3 The document can still be seen there, and is translated in Lindow 1978, 45. At the end of "Number 13" James says, more accurately, that Salthenius became Professor of Hebrew.

4 The article gives the reference as "Sagn og Overtro, 1866," but this date is a misprint for "1886."

5 A selection of eighty-six legends from Kristensen had been included in Sir William Craigie's Scandinavian Folklore of 1896, though only five are about ghosts. James might also have noticed an appreciation of Kristensen which Craigie had just written in Folk-Lore, with the comment that "The Danish ghost is not so impressive as the Icelandic, but its doings often have an uncomfortable touch of the horrible about them" (Craigie 1898, 213). By the time James visited Denmark the prolific Kristensen had published, not merely the Jyske Folkeminder series to which James alluded in 1922, but also most of his Danske Sagn series, of which volume 5 (1897) contains ghost legends.

6 In this story, the villain hopes to obtain magic powers of flight and invisibility by eating the hearts of "not less than three human beings below the age of twenty-one years," having found this recipe "in considerable detail in the works of Hermes Trismegistus." The many writings attributed to "Hermes" are treatises on alchemy, the invocation of angels, and allegedly ancient philosophical wisdom; heretical they may be, but they do not include crude cannibalism (I am grateful to Mr R. Weighell for confirmation on this point). James had read some of them while still a schoolboy (Pfaff 1980, 36); later, as a scholar specialising in apocrypha of the early Christian centuries, he would surely have had further occasion to explore them. It seems strange that he should blacken their reputation in this way. However, there was a genuine Danish folk belief that magic powers of flight could be got by eating the hearts of seven (or twelve) foetuses cut from their mothers' bodies, and James could have learnt this in Kristensen's 1883 volume (Kristensen 1883, 108-9 no. 156 and note) and adopted it in a bowdlerised form. Die Handworterbuch des Deutschen Aberglaubens (2:16) attests to the belief in Germany too, giving as reference Carl Meyer, Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters und der nachtsfolgenden Jahrhunderte (Basel 1884, 279). I suspect James of indulging in mystification here, misdirecting the reader to the impressive Hermes Trismegistus, but actually using folklore - probably Danish, but just possibly German.

7 In England, ash trees are credited with healing, divinatory and protective powers. I have found one Scottish story and two from the Fens where ghosts are seen near ashes (Briggs 1971, 1:478-80, 482-4 and 489-91), but this hardly seems significant. Scarfe suggests that the allusion is to actual trees, including ash trees, round Livermere Hall in the village where James grew up (Scarfe 1986, 1418); the unusual surname "Mothersole," given to the witch in this tale, occurs on gravestones in Livermere churchyard.