from his pocket a brown withered human hand, and set it upright in the candlestick. He then anointed the fingers, and applying a match to them, they began to flame. Filled with horror, the cook rushed up the back stairs, and endeavoured to arouse her master and the men of the house. But all was in vain they slept a charmed sleep; so in despair she hastened down again, and placed herself at her post of observation.
She saw the fingers of the hand flaming, but the thumb remained unlighted, because one inmate of the house was awake. The beggar was busy collecting the valuables around him into a large sack, and having taken all he cared for in the large room, he entered another. On this the woman ran in, and, seizing the light, tried to extinguish the flames. But this was not so easy. She blew at them, but they burnt on as before. She poured the dregs of a beer-jug over them, but they blazed up the brighter. As a last resource, she caught up a jug of milk, and dashed it over the four lambent flames, and they died out at once. Uttering a loud cry, she rushed to the door of the apartment the beggar had entered, and locked it. The whole family was roused, and the thief easily secured and hanged. This tale is told in Northumberland.
A variation of the same belief prevailed in Belgium. Not far from Bailleul, in West Flanders, a thief was taken, on whom was found the foot of a man who had been hanged, which he used for the purpose of putting people to sleep. Again, in the village of Alveringen, there formerly lived a sorceress who had a thief’s finger over which nine masses had been said; for, being acquainted with the sacristan, she had wrapped it in a cloth and laid it on the altar, telling him it was a relic. With this finger she performed wonderful things. When she had lighted it—for such fingers burn like a candle—everyone in the house where she might be was put to sleep. She would then steal money and everything else she fancied, till at last she was detected, and the stolen property found in her possession.[1]
In a note to the passage quoted above from Southey’s Thalaba, it is mentioned that a somewhat similar practice is recorded by
- ↑ Thorpe’s Mythology, vol. iii. pp. 274, 275.
