Susanna Wesley

THE SUPERNATURAL NOISES. 123
There was something wonderfully like human
agency in all this, especially when Mrs. Wesley's
Jacobite proclivities are remembered. Imagination,
perhaps, caused the girls to think that the latches of
their doors were uplifted and their beds heaved upfrom
underneath. It is, moreover, on record that the
phenomena were almost always accompanied by the
change and rising of the wind. Everyone who
knows how servants and ignorant rustics are in the
habit of out- Heroding Herod when there is anything
mysterious afloat will take the statements of Robin
Brown, the man-servant, for what they were worth.
He heard gobbling like a turkey-cock, and something
stumbling among his boots and shoes, saw an uncanny
little beast resembling a white rabbit, and once, when
grinding corn in a handmill, declared that the handle
went round vigorously when the mill was empty and
he was not touching it.
The fear shown by the mastiff" whenever the noises
A memorandum written by
began was very curious.
John Wesley records that " the first time my mother
ever heard any unusual noise at Epworth was long
before the disturbance of Old Jeffery." This was the
name given by the girls to the intruding agency
f:
My brother, lately come from London, had one
evening a sharp quarrel with my sister Sukey, at which
time, my mother happening to be above in her own.
chamber, the door and windows rang and jarred very
loud, and presently three distinct strokes, three by
three, were struck. From that night
it never failed
to give notice in much the same manner against any
signal misfortune, or illness of any belonging to the
family." Emilia, writing thirty-four years afterwards
to one of her
" brothers, declared that Jeftery never