How myths evolve: the example of Lord Dufferin

Myths are extremely powerful. They have given rise to most of the world’s religions and have thus played a massive role in the history of every country on the planet. But when it comes to determining how close the myth is to truth, huge difficulties arise. In one sense, this does not matter – what is important is how many people believe the myth to be true or are unwilling to dig too deeply in case their prejudices prove to be ill-founded.

An example of how a myth can arise and be widely accepted, but can also be seen to be based largely on fantasy, is the story of Lord Dufferin and his apparent saving from a terrible death.

Lord Dufferin was a British diplomat who – so the story goes – was having a break in 1883 at a country house in Ireland. One night he heard a noise outside and went to investigate. He saw a man staggering across the lawn as he carried what turned out to be a coffin. The man’s face was contorted with hate and utterly loathsome. Lord Dufferin stepped forward to confront the man and walked right through him, after which the man and the coffin disappeared.

When Lord Dufferin told the people who lived at the house what had happened, none of them could give him a clue as to what he might have seen. There were no local ghosts who fitted the bill, and the man’s description meant nothing to anyone.

The story now moved on ten years, to when Lord Dufferin was British Ambassador to France. He attended a reception at a hotel in Paris, where the main event took place on the top floor and nearly everyone used a lift to get there from the entrance hall.

Lord Dufferin and his secretary joined the queue for the lift and eventually reached the head of it. However, when the lift doors opened, Lord Dufferin was horrified to see that the lift operator was the same man that he had seen carrying a coffin across an Irish lawn, ten years before. He refused to get into the lift and pulled his secretary back as well. The crowded lift ascended but, when nearly at the top, the cables broke and the lift plunged all the down, killing everyone on board, including the lift attendant.

Lord Dufferin tried to find out who the lift attendant was, but nobody knew. The hotel had only employed him as a casual worker, and nobody ever came forward to claim the body.

And so the tale stood, as a classic ghost story involving a ghastly apparition that saved a man’s life. Although the lift accident was in 1893, it was not until 1920 that an account appeared in print. It was included in a paper written a French psychologist named De Maratray and then in a book entitled “Death and its Mystery” by a French astronomer named Flammarion.

So it must have been a true story, then?

Neither De Maratray nor Flammarion had checked their facts. Had they done so, they would have discovered that the lift accident had actually occurred in 1878, which was five years before Lord Dufferin’s supposed Irish vision. The accident had nothing to do with a diplomatic reception, and Lord Dufferin was in Canada at the time!

It appears that a similar story was first told in 1892, involving a woman who had a dream in which a hearse stopped outside her house and she was asked by its driver “Are you not ready yet?”. This question was asked by a lift attendant when she paused as she was about to enter, which she then refused to do. As you might expect, the lift crashed and the man was killed.

This story was told by another unreliable raconteur but that did not stop it doing the rounds and growing in the telling.

One variation was regularly told by a certain Lord Dufferin, who knew full well that he had nothing to do with it. He told it to an impressionable young nephew, but put himself into the story. The nephew believed everything he heard, having no reason to doubt his uncle’s story. He grew up to be a well-known writer, his name being Harold Nicholson.

Nicholson also passed the story on, with Lord Dufferin as the main character, and one of the people who heard Nicholson’s version was De Maratray, the French psychologist.

And so the myth was born. So many myths start in very similar fashion!

© John Welford

The two Umbertos

On the evening of 28 July 1900, King Umberto I of Italy dined with his aide in a restaurant in Monza, where he was due to attend an athletics event the following day. When the restaurant’s proprietor came over to greet the King, it was apparent that the two men bore a striking resemblance to each other.

When the two men got talking, a whole string of coincidences was revealed.

Both the King and the restaurateur were named Umberto. They had both been born in Turin, on the same day. They had both got married on the same day, and both their wives were named Margherita. Umberto the restaurateur had opened his establishment on the same day that the other Umberto had been crowned King of Italy.

The King invited his double to attend the athletics event the following day. However, after King Umberto had arrived at the stadium he was told that the restaurateur had died that morning in a mysterious shooting accident. Umberto was expressing his grief at this sad news when an anarchist in the crowd pointed his gun at the King and shot him dead.

What a string of coincidences! Were the two men possibly long-lost twin brothers? Was the restaurateur murdered by somebody who thought that they were shooting the King and then went to the stadium to kill the “right” man when they realized their mistake?

But that still doesn’t account for the other remarkable similarities in the lives of the Umbertos.

© John Welford

The Ritten Earth Pillars, Italy

These extraordinary structures can be seen in northern Italy, in wooded ravines on the Ritten plateau, which is near the city of Bolzano. There are three groups of these pillars, in separate valleys. They are at a height of around 3250 feet (1000 metres) above sea level.

Jagged, tapering clay spires, some of them coloured in shades of red or violet, stand up to 130 feet (40 metres) high, most of them being crowned by a block of stone.

These pillars were created at the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago. As glaciers moved across the land they carried rocks of various sizes hundreds of miles from their original locations, as well as vast quanties of softer "boulder clay". When the glaciers stopped and melted, the rocks were left in place on a thick layer of boulder clay. Rainwater then carved gullies in the clay, but where there was a rock, the clay beneath it was protected. The pillars seen today are the result.

One factor that could have accelerated the formation of the pillars was the development of agriculture in the region in the 13th century. Clearing the forests to create pastures and vineyards could have laid the land open to the erosive power of rain.

Not surprisingly, pillars like these - and they are found in a few other places around the world apart from here - have gathered a certain amount of folklore and superstition around them. They are known in north Italy as "little men" and "earth mushrooms". In France there is a group known as "young ladies with their hats on".

The pillars have been there for thousands of years, but they will not last for ever. If a rock falls from the top, the rate of erosion of the pillar will increase considerably until there is nothing left. This will eventually be the fate of all the pillars.

However, a fallen rock may then serve to protect the boulder clay on to which it has fallen and a new pillar will form. This process could continue until the base of the boulder clay layer is reached.

© John Welford

The haunting of Yorkshire Jack

The tragic tale of how a sailor known as Yorkshire Jack was hounded to his death began when the woman he loved was hanged for murder. 

This took place early in the 19th century in the Mount’s Bay area of Cornwall. This is just to the east of Penzance, the Bay taking its name from the island of St Michael’s Mount that is its most prominent feature. 

A man named Polgrain had taken a wife who was much younger than himself. This was Sarah, who grew tired of her husband and took a lover of her own age, this being Yorkshire Jack. She decided to murder Mr Polgrain and nearly got away with it. 

After the death certificate was signed with “natural causes” given as the reason for death, rumours started to spread after Jack moved into Sarah’s house. So many people reckoned that there had been foul play that Polgrain’s body was eventually exhumed and found to be full of arsenic. 

Sarah was tried, found guilty of murder and sentenced to hang, which in those days was done in public.

Sarah asked that Jack could accompany her on to the scaffold, and as the noose was placed around her neck she kissed Jack and was heard to say “You will – you promise you will?” to which Jack replied “I will, Sarah, I will”. 

After the execution there are reports that Sarah’s ghost had been seen in the locality, at places which she and Jack had frequented. 

The person who saw Sarah’s ghost more than anyone else was Yorkshire Jack, whose character changed completely in the months after the hanging. He became morose and short-tempered, with a habit of constantly looking over his shoulder. 

Jack went back to sea, but Sarah would not leave him alone even there. He proved to be a difficult shipmate, especially when his fellow sailors also felt that there was an extra person on board whom they were unable to see. 

When Jack’s ship came back to Mount’s Bay he told his shipmates that Sarah had made him promise on the scaffold that he would marry her at midnight that day. He had agreed, thinking to comfort her in her last moments, but he had not imagined that she would try to bind him to that promise after she was dead. He now realized that she wanted to be bound to him in death because she could not do so when alive. 

At midnight on the day that Jack had told this tale, the shipmates heard a light tap-tap of feet in high-heeled shoes. They followed the footsteps to where Jack lay in his hammock with a look of terror on his face. He got up and proceeded to the ship’s foredeck, followed by the footsteps. 

Jack then jumped overboard, never to be seen again. The shipmates said that they could hear the sound of church bells, as if chiming for a wedding. 

In later years people claimed they could hear wedding bells out at sea on Mount’s Bay, together with a ghostly voice saying “I will” before it was lost on the wind. 

Is this a story you can believe?

© John Welford

Superstitions concerning doors

Doors, and how they are used, have long featured in various superstitions that people have held down the centuries. In particular, forbidding the entry of evil spirits and the exit of good luck have been regarded as being of particular importance.

The porch of the front door, which is the main entrance, should be protected by a good luck charm. This could be a small statue – a household god in ancient Rome – or a horseshoe, but the latter must always be nailed so that the points are at the top, otherwise the good luck could fall out!

When you first move into a new home you must use the front door the first time you enter it, because the back door is not protected against evil spirits and one or more might slip in alongside you. You must also ensure that visitors to your home always leave by the same door by which they entered, because otherwise they will take the owner’s good luck out of the house when they leave.

If a door opens of its own accord – maybe due to a gust of wind – a visitor is on their way, and if a door slams, that could mean that the good spirits that look after your home might be injured or trapped!

Doors and windows should be left open when a baby is born or someone is dying. This is so that the person’s soul can enter or leave without hindrance.

The Romans had the idea that it was unlucky to allow someone to enter your home with the left foot first. Wealthy Romans even employed servants to make sure that this never happened. This is the origin of the “footman” who formed part of the establishment of well-to-do families in more recent times.

Do you actually believe in any of these superstitions? And, if so, why?!

© John Welford