d the right number. Four trials were made. Then
came a noise like the beating of a drum, 'with violent scratching
and tearing sounds'.

The trouble began three weeks after the wife's death. Once a number
of small stones were found on Maggie's bed. All the family suffered
from sleeplessness, and their candles, even when concealed, were
constantly stolen. 'It took a boot from a locked drawer,' and the
boot was found in a great chest of feathers in a loft. A Bible was
spirited about, and a Methodist teacher (the family were Methodists)
made no impression on the agency. They tried to get some
communication by an alphabet, but, said the farmer, 'it tells lies
as often as truth, and oftener, I think'.

Mr. Barrett, and a friend, on two occasions, could detect no method
of imposture, and, as the farmer did not believe that his children,
sorely distressed by the loss of their mother, would play such
tricks, at such a time, even if they could, the mystery remains
unsolved. The family found that the less attention they paid to the
disturbances, the less they were vexed. Mr. Barrett, examining some
other cases, found that Dr. Carpenter's and other theories did not
account for them. But it is certain that the children, as
Methodists, had read Wesley's account of the spirit at Epworth, in
1716. Mr. Barrett was aware of this circumstance, but was unable to
discover how the thing was managed, on the hypothesis of fraudulent
imitation. The Irish household seems to have reaped no profit by
the affair, but rather trouble, annoyance, and the expense of
hospitality to strange visitors.

The agency was mendacious, as usual, for Porphyry complains that the
'spirits' were always as deceitful as the Cock Lane ghost, feigning
to be gods, heroes, or the souls of the dead. It is very
interesting to note how, in Greece, as Christianity waxed, and
paganism waned, such inquiring minds as that of Porphyry fell back
on seances and spiritualism, or superstitions unmentioned by Homer,
and almost unheard of in the later classical literature. Religion,
which began in Shamanism, in the trances of Angakut and Birraark,
returned to these again, and everywhere found marvel, mystery,
imposture, conscious, or unconscious. The phenomena have never
ceased, imposture has always been detected or asserted, but that
hypothesis rarely covers the whole field, and so, if we walk in Cock
Lane at all, we wander darkling, in good and bad company, among