into this attempt. . . .  The master of the house and his friend both declared that the noises the girl had made this morning had not the least likeness to the former noises.’  In the same way the Wesleys at Epworth, in 1716, found that they could not imitate the perplexing sounds produced in the parsonage.  The end of the affair was that Parsons, Mary Frazer, a clergyman, a tradesman, and others were tried at the Guildhall and convicted of a conspiracy, on July 10, 1762.  Parsons was pilloried, and ’a handsome collection’ was made for him by the spectators.  His later fortunes, or misfortunes, and those of the miserable little Elizabeth, are unknown.  One thing is certain, the noises did not begin in an attempt at imposture on Parsons’s part; he was on good terms with his lodgers, when Fanny was first disturbed.  Again, the child could not counterfeit the sounds successfully when she was driven by threats to make the effort.  The seance of rather more than an hour, in which Johnson took part, was certainly inadequate.  The phenomena were such as had been familiar to law and divinity, at least since 856, A.D. {170a} The agencies always made accusations, usually false.  The knocking spirit at Kembden, near Bingen, in 856 charged a priest with a scandalous intrigue.  The raps on the bed of the children examined by the Franciscans, about 1530, assailed the reputation of a dead lady.  When the Foxes, at Rochester, in 1848- 49, set up alphabetic communication with the knocks, they told a silly tale of a murder.  The Cock Lane ghost lied in the same way.  The Fox girls started modern spiritualism on its wild and mischievous career, as Elizabeth Parsons might have done, in a more favourable environment.  There was never anything new in all these cases.  The lowest savages have their seances, levitations, bindings of the medium, trance-speakers; Peruvians, Indians, have their objects moved without contact.  Simon Magus, or St. Paul under that offensive pseudonym, was said to make the furniture move at will. {170b}

There is a curious recent Cock Lane case in Ireland where ’the ghost’ brought no accusations against anybody.  The affair was investigated by Mr. Barrett, a Professor in the Royal College of Science, Dublin, who published the results in the Dublin University Magazine, for December, 1877.  The scene was a small lonely farm house at Derrygonnelly, near Enniskillen.  The farmer’s wife had died a few weeks before Easter, 1877, leaving him with four girls, and one boy, of various ages, the eldest, Maggie, being twenty.  The noises were chiefly heard in her neighbourhood.  When the children had been put to bed, Maggie lay down, without undressing, in the bedroom off the kitchen.  A soft pattering noise was soon heard, then raps, from all parts of the room, then scratchings, as in Cock Lane.  When Mr. Barrett, his friend, and the farmer entered with a candle, the sounds ceased, but began again ’as if growing accustomed to the presence of