Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/Extraordinary dreams
EXTRAORDINARY DREAMS.
The belief in dreams is one which has existed among all nations through all time; and the records of every people contains remarkable instances of their fulfilment. In giving the following instances of the actual realisation of dreams in ancient and modern times, I am not influenced by any desire to increase the credulity which seems to have reached its culminating-point in the case of spirit-rappings, but simply to furnish food for reflection for the minds of those who take pleasure in the consideration of subjects removed from the hard facts of everyday life. The first I shall relate is one which I believe has never been published. I heard it told by a Brazilian naval officer, on board the steamer in which we were making a voyage to Lisbon, last summer; it will be as well, perhaps, to give it in his own words, as nearly as I can remember them:—
“Three years ago myself, my brother, his wife and child, and a negro nurse, were cruising in a schooner belonging to him off the Brazilian coast, for the sake of the benefit to be derived from the sea-air. We were sailing across the Bay of Todos Santos, intending to anchor at Bahia, when I saw that the negress, who had just brought the child on deck to wash it, was crying bitterly. As I knew that my sister-in-law was very partial to her, I wondered what could be the matter; but as I made a rule at all times, and especially when we were living together, not to mix myself up in any way in my brother’s domestic affairs, I asked no questions. That morning, when we sat down to breakfast, I noticed that my sister looked very serious, which was not at all usual with her. Presently she said: ‘You will think me very foolish, Pedro, but nurse has had a dream about my sister, and she takes it so to heart, and so firmly believes it to be true, that she has quite frightened me.’
“‘And what was her dream?’
“‘That Marie is dead! The nurse says that she had got up to get the child some drink, a little before it was light, and had just dropped off asleep again when she dreamed that she heard Marie’s voice quite plainly, calling her by her name. She forgot where she was at the moment, and answered her as though she had been at home, and was not at all surprised to find herself standing beside the sofa on which Marie was lying, until the thought occurred to her that she was now at sea, and that there must be hundreds of miles between them. My sister, she says, was looking eagerly towards the door, as if she expected her to come when she called. She was partly dressed, and seemed in great distress that Jacinta did not come. After a few moments she called Jacinta twice rapidly, and then became deadly pale, and sank down motionless. At that instant the door opened, and two of the women came in hastily, one carrying a light in her hand. Jacinta woke then, and has been crying ever since; for she says she is sure my sister is dead. You know Jacinta was her foster-mother, and they have always been as fond of each other as mother and daughter could be. I have been trying to persuade her that it is nothing but a dream, and that she will find Marie alive and well when we get home; but it is no use trying to comfort her—she persists that she is dead, and she is so convinced of it that, though I do not believe there is any ground for the belief, I cannot help feeling anxious and ill at ease.’
“His wife was so troubled that my brother determined on getting home as soon as possible. It took us longer than it otherwise would, because the wind went down soon after we got out of the bay, and it was no use landing on any part of the coast nearer than Pernambuco. As I did not share my sister-in-law’s fears with respect to Marie, I was not much troubled by the slowness of our progress; still I was not sorry when we anchored, for it had become so dismal on board that it was anything but a voyage of pleasure. I am almost afraid to tell you the rest—it appears so extraordinary. I did not leave Pernambuco with them, for I had to make preparations for going to sea again, and my time was short; but I made them promise to send a man with an account of the state of matters directly they reached home. The second day after this I had been dining with one of the government officials; and the cards had just been arranged on the table, and we were about to begin play, when one of the servants came to tell me that a messenger had brought a letter from my brother. I went out directly, and the first look at the fellow told me that something was wrong. I opened the letter on the spot. It confirmed Jacinta’s dream in every particular. Marie had been to a dance, came home a little before midnight; and as soon as her maid had arranged her hair she sent her to bed. She made no complaint of being unwell. The maid was woke out of her sleep by hearing her mistress call Jacinta in a voice which frightened her, and, lighting a candle, she ran to her room, followed by one of the other women, who had also heard my sister-in-law calling Jacinta, knowing that the latter had been away some time. They found their mistress lying on the sofa without her dress, and quite dead. Making allowance for the distance between us at the time it happened, her death must have taken place at the very instant when Jacinta dreamed it.”
Numerous suggestions were made by the listeners to account for the coincidence, but they were all overthrown as soon as started. The only plausible one, as it seemed to me, was that made by a Spanish priest on his way to Vigo, which was that Jacinta was aware of some complaint, being likely to end in sudden death, under which Marie was labouring, and that absence from her kept the idea prominently before her. The occurrence of the dream at the precise time when the event took place he regarded as a simple coincidence. “Indeed,” he said, “I do not regard it as being nearly so extraordinary a coincidence as many which happen in every man’s life, but which are scarcely noticed because they are associated with matters of trivial interest: the really wonderful part of the matter is the identity of the circumstances under which the death took place with those seen in the dream.”
Of dreams that may be easily accounted for is that which has been often quoted of a lady whose son was engaged to take a sail on a lake on the following day with some friends. In the course of the night she dreamed that the boat upset, and drowned all in it. She woke up very much alarmed, and after a time fell asleep, and dreamed the same thing again and again. This made such an impression upon her that she induced her son not to go. The boat was upset, and those in it drowned. This, also, is a remarkable coincidence no doubt, but nothing more. Nervous mothers are always fancying that something will happen to their sons if they go anywhere, or do anything in which there is the least possibility of danger; but it rarely happens that their fears are realised. In this instance, had the boat returned safely, nothing would have been heard of the dream.
In 1553, Nicholas Wotton, our ambassador in France, dreamed two nights in succession that his nephew Thomas Wotton, then in England, was about to join in an enterprise which would result in the death and ruin of himself and family. To prevent such a catastrophe he wrote to Queen Mary, and begged her to send for his nephew, and cause him to be examined by the Lords of the Council on some frivolous pretence, and committed to the Tower. This was done: and on the ambassador’s return Thomas Wotton confessed to him that, but for his committal to prison, he would have joined the insurrection led by Sir Thomas Wyatt. It is also recorded of the same Thomas Wotton that he, being then in Kent, dreamed one night that the Oxford University treasury had been robbed by five persons; and as he was writing to his son at the university the next day, he mentioned his dream. Singular to relate, the letter reached Sir Henry Wotton on the morning after the robbery had been actually committed, and led to the discovery of the perpetrators. M. Boismont, in a work on the subject of dreams, relates that a young woman who was living with her uncle, and whose mother was many miles distant, dreamed she saw her looking deadly pale, and apparently dying, and that she heard her ask for her daughter. The persons in the room, thinking it was her granddaughter she wanted, who had the same name, went to fetch her; but the dying woman signified that it was not she, but her daughter in Paris whom she wanted to see. She appeared deeply grieved at her absence, and in a few minutes ceased to exist. It was afterwards found that her mother did actually die on that night, and that the circumstances attending her death were precisely those her daughter had witnessed in her dream. There is another instance which we remember to have read, but we are unable at this moment to refer to the book in which it is related: it is as follows. A man who was employed in a brewery suddenly disappeared, and nothing could be ascertained respecting him. Years passed away without the mystery being cleared up, until one night one of the workmen, who slept in the same room with another, heard the latter muttering something in his sleep about the missing man. The workman questioned him, and elicited replies from him to the effect that he had put the man into the furnace beneath the vat. He was apprehended on the following day. He then confessed that he had quarrelled with the other, and that in the passion of the moment he had killed him, and disposed of the body by putting it in the furnace.
The author of “Signs before Death” tells of a certain Captain John Rogers, who commanded a vessel proceeding to Virginia—that he one night left the deck and went to bed, leaving the chief-mate in charge of the vessel. About three hours afterwards he woke, and heard the second-mate asking the other officer how the vessel was going, and heard the chief mate reply that the wind was fair, and the vessel was sailing well. The captain then fell asleep again; and dreamed that a man pulled him and told him to go on deck. He woke, turned over, and went to sleep again; and again dreamed the same thing, and this repeatedly, until he could bear it no longer, but dressed and went on deck. The night was fair, and there was nothing apparent to excite alarm. He questioned the mate and received satisfactory answers, whereupon he turned to go below; but as he did so, he seemed to hear a voice close to him say, “Heave the lead.” He asked the mate when he last took soundings, and what depth of water he got. The latter answered, “About an hour ago; and found sixty fathoms.” The captain ordered him to heave the lead again. The soundings were eleven fathoms, and at a second cast only seven fathoms. The vessel was put about immediately, and as she wore round she had only four fathoms and a half under her stern. The next morning they found they were within sight of the American coast, and that had the vessel continued but one cable’s length further on the course she was steering in the night she would have gone ashore.
There is a singular dream recorded in “Warley’s Wonders of the Little World,” of an English gentleman residing in Prague. He was lying in bed one morning, when he dreamed that a shadow appeared to him, and told him that his father was dead. He awoke in great alarm, and taking his diary, made an entry of the circumstance, with the day and hour when it took place. This book, with many other things, he put into a barrel and sent to England. Going from Prague to Nuremberg, he met at the latter place a merchant who had come from England, and who knew his family well. This gentleman told him that his father was dead. Four years later he himself reached this country; but, before he would touch the barrel he had sent from Prague, he procured the attendance of his sisters and some friends, and in their presence opened the barrel, took out the book, and called their attention to the entry. To the astonishment of all present, the date was that of the day on which his father died. This same gentleman says: “I may lawfully swear, that in my youth, at Cambridge, I had a like dream of my mother’s death; where, my brother Henry, lying with me, early in the morning, I dreamed that my mother passed by with a sad countenance, and told me ‘that she could not come to my commencement’ (I being within five months to proceed Master of Arts, and she having at that time promised to come to Cambridge). When I related this dream to my brother, both of us waking together in a sweat, he protested to me that he had dreamed the very same; and when we had not the slightest knowledge of our mother’s sickness, neither in our youthful affections were any whit moved with the strangeness of this dream, yet the next carrier brought us word of our mother’s death.”
The dream related by Sir Walter Scott must be so well known, that we hesitate to repeat it; but we will do so, because we think it is susceptible of explanation. Mr. R., of Bowland, a gentleman of property in the Vale of Gala, was prosecuted for a very considerable sum, the accumulated arrears of tiend, for which he was said to be indebted to a noble family (the titulars). Mr. R. was strongly impressed with the belief that his father had, by a form of process peculiar to the law of Scotland, purchased those lands from the titular, and, therefore, that the present prosecution was groundless. But after an industrious search among his father’s papers, an investigation of the public records, and a careful inquiry among all persons who had transacted law-business for his father, no evidence could be recovered to support his defence. The period was now near at hand when he conceived the loss of the lawsuit to be inevitable, and he had formed the determination to ride to Edinburgh next day, and make the best bargain he could in the way of compromise. He even went to bed with this resolution; and, with all the circumstances of the case floating upon his mind, had a dream to the following purport: His father, who had been many years dead, appeared to him, he thought, and asked him why he was disturbed in his mind. In dreams men are not surprised at such apparitions. Mr. R. thought he informed his father of the cause of his distress, adding that the payment of a considerable sum of money was the more unpleasant to him, because he had a strong consciousness that it was not due, though he was unable to acquire any evidence in support of his belief. “You are right, my son,” replied the paternal shade; “I did acquire right to these tiends for payment of which you are now prosecuted. The papers relating to the transaction are in the hands of Mr. , a writer, who is now retired from professional business, and resides at Inveresk, near Edinburgh. He was a person whom I employed on that occasion for a particular reason, but who never on any other occasion transacted business on my account. It is very possible that Mr. may have forgotten a matter which is now of a very old date, but you may call it to his recollection by this token,—that when I came to pay his account, there was difficulty in getting change for a Portugal piece of gold, and that we were forced to drink out the balance at a tavern.” Mr. R. awoke in the morning, with all the words of the vision imprinted on his mind, and thought it worth his while to ride across the country to Inveresk, instead of going straight to Edinburgh. When he came there he waited on the gentleman mentioned in the dream; and, without saying a word of the vision, he inquired whether he remembered the circumstance, which after some consideration he did, and produced the papers. There is every probability, in this case, that Mr. R. had been told this by his father when he was very young, and, from not understanding the importance of the information, had paid so little attention to it that he had quite forgotten it. That incidents of old date, totally forgotten in our waking moments, frequently recur to the memory during sleep, we have most of us experienced.
The belief that dreams reveal events that have happened, or which are about to happen, had doubtless been much weakened of late years by reading; but it may be questioned whether it is not now almost as strong as ever it was, owing to the publication, in the “Times” and other papers, of the case of a man who dreamed more than once that he had seen the body of a man hanging in a barn, which dream impressed itself so strongly upon his mind, that in the morning he went to the barn he had seen in his dream, and there found a man hanging. There was another instance, published in the same journal subsequently, of a man who dreamed that the body of one who had been missing for some time lay under water on a certain part of the coast, where indeed it was found.
A very circumstantial account is given of two friends, who entered a town together, but being unable to get accommodation in the same inn, separated. In the middle of the night one of them heard his friend calling to him for help. He awoke from his sleep, but finding it was only a dream, he immediately went to sleep again; but awoke, directly after he had fallen asleep, by hearing, as it appeared to him, his friend’s cries for help. Again he fell asleep, and dreamed that his friend stood all bloody beside his bed, and said to him: “Though you would not come to help me, at least avenge my death. The landlord of the inn where you left me intends to carry my body out of the town concealed in a load of straw.” The young man was so impressed by this dream, that he dressed himself and went to the city-gates, where he remained until they were opened. Shortly afterwards he saw a cartload of straw approaching, and in the driver he recognised the landlord of the inn where he had left his friend. He appealed to the guard at the gates, told them of his suspicions, and without much trouble induced them to search the straw; and there they found the dead body of his friend, whom the landlord confessed he had murdered.
The last dream of this kind I shall quote is related, I think, in a “History of the County of Chester.” I am forced to give it from memory, as I cannot refer to the volume at this moment. I omit the names, for the sufficient reason that I cannot remember them, though they are given in the history referred to above. The narrative is somewhat long, but is to this effect. A man had living with him a young woman, who acted as his housekeeper. On the understanding that she was to be his wife, an evil intimacy sprang up between them, and certain consequences arose which made her very earnest in her persuasions that he should fulfil his promise. Upon some pretence or other he sent her to a place at some distance, with one Mark Sharp, who killed her as they were crossing a moor, and threw her body down the shaft of a disused mine. A little after this a miller saw, or imagined he saw, the apparition of the young woman standing before him, with her hair hanging about her shoulders and dreadfully gashed in the head. She told him that she had been murdered by Mark Sharp at the instance of her master. He did not do anything in consequence of this apparition on the first occasion; but when it appeared to him again, and threatened him if he did not go to the magistrate and inform him of what he had seen, he went to the justice, and related the whole affair. The man was apprehended and examined, and while under examination it was noticed that the justice became deadly pale, the cause of which was stated afterwards,—namely, that he himself saw, standing in court, the apparition, exactly as it appeared to the miller.
The dreams related above are, there is no denying, very wonderful; and they are only a few of a very large number that might be given, if it were worth while, or space would allow of their publication. But when we reflect on the small number of these in proportion to the myriads which are experienced nightly, the wonder is rather that so few of them have anything like a fulfilment. That mysterious part of our being which communicates activity to the brain never sleeps, and gives rise to incessant dreaming; so that no man passes a night without awaking to a consciousness that his brain has been busy with events which he can seldom recall in his waking hours. The most curious part of the phenomenon is, that the man who never thinks—that is to say, the man who never carries out a train of thought on any subject—has usually short and broken dreams, which change rapidly from one subject to another; whereas the man who is in the habit of reasoning with himself at any length, or of exercising his imagination in the invention of fictions when awake, commonly has dreams of wonderful method and regularity.