mental integration, it may be assignable to psychological conditions operating here and now.”
In short, the folk-lorist must seek to do equal justice to passing and to permanent conditions. “A surface-view of history as a welter of chance clashings and collocations shows change and decay everywhere. Seeking deeper, however, we come upon tendencies and motives that are, humanly speaking, everlasting.”
Noises from a Tomb.
The rector of Millbrook, Bedfordshire, is still seeking to trace any of the descendants of the Huett (or Hewitt) family, whose sculptured tomb, dating from 1621, was recently unearthed from the churchyard and is to be restored to its position in the church. The parish records fail to trace the family after 1621, but they were clearly people of importance in the country in their day.
The effigy of William Huett depicts him in knightly armour, and Marie, his wife, is in the dress of the Stuart period. The warrior has lost his head, and the effigy of his spouse is cracked across the body, but otherwise the two figures are wonderfully well preserved and there are still traces of the gold decoration with which the tomb was embellished.
Inquiry does not support the story which first gathered round the discovery, representing that on account of “dismal noises” emanating from it the tomb was removed from the church. The much more prosaic reason is that in its old position the tomb interfered with a restoration scheme undertaken by a former rector.
The monument, according to the story of the present rector (Rev. H. P. Pollard), was first taken across to the rectory. Thereafter, says village gossip, inexplicable noises, likened by one listener to the loud cracking of a whip, were heard coming from the place where the effigies were stored, and were associated with what was regarded as the sacrilege of disturbing the tombs. So the effigies were removed to the churchyard and buried.
Years later a gravedigger chanced upon the buried tomb, and told the villagers the story of how his pick had severed the
