ff speaks of a woman of Bohemia,[578] who, in 1355, had
eaten in her grave half her shroud. In the time of Luther, a man who
was dead and buried, and a woman the same, gnawed their own entrails.
Another dead man in Moravia ate the linen clothes of a woman who was
buried next to him.

All that is very possible, but that those who are really dead move
their jaws, and amuse themselves with masticating whatever may be near
them, is a childish fancy--like what the ancient Romans said of their
_Manducus_, which was a grotesque figure of a man with an enormous
mouth, and teeth proportioned thereto, which they caused to move by
springs, and grind his teeth together, as if this figure had wanted to
eat. They frightened children with them, and threatened them with the
Manducus.[579]

Some remains of this old custom may be seen in certain processions,
where they carry a sort of serpent, which at intervals opens and shuts
a vast jaw, armed with teeth, into which they throw cakes, as if to
gorge it, or satisfy its appetite.

Footnotes:

[575] Mich. Rauff, altera Dissert. Art. lvii. pp. 98, 99, et Art. lix.
p. 100.

[576] De Nummis in Ore Defunctorum repertis, Art. ix. a Beyermuller,
&c.

[577] Richer, Senon, tom. iii. Spicileg. Ducherii, p. 392.

[578] Rauff, Art. xlii. p. 43.

[579]
"Tandemque venit ad pulpita nostrum
Exodium, cum personae pallentis hiatum
In gremio matris fastidit rusticus infans."
_Juvenal_, Sat. iii. 174.

CHAPTER XLVI.

SINGULAR INSTANCE OF A HUNGARIAN GHOST.

The most remarkable instance cited by Rauff[580] is that of one Peter
Plogojovitz, who had been buried ten weeks in a village of Hungary,
called Kisolova. This man appeared by night to some of the inhabitants
of the village while they were asleep, and grasped their throat so
tightly that in four-and-twenty hours it caused their death. Nine
persons, young and old, perished thus in the course of eight days.

The widow of the same Plogojovitz declared that her husband since his
death had come and asked her for his shoes, which frightened her so
much that she left Kisolova to retire to some other spot.

From these circumstances the inhabitants of the village determined
upon disinterring the body of Plogojovitz and burning it, to deliver
themselves from these visitations. They applied to the emperor's
officer, who commanded in the territory of Gradiska, in Hungary, and
even to the cure of the same place,