[32] This incident suggested to Sir Walter Scott his description of the concealment and discovery of the Countess of Derby in “Peveril of the Peak.”  See “Dictionary of National Biography,” xxxv., 74.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE DEAD HAND.

    Open, lock,
    To the dead man’s knock! 
    Fly, bolt, and bar, and band;
      Nor move, nor swerve,
      Joint, muscle, or nerve,
    At the spell of the dead man’s hand. 
               INGOLDSBY LEGENDS.

One of the most curious and widespread instances of deception and credulity is the magic potency which has long been supposed to reside in the so-called “Hand of Glory”—­the withered hand of a dead man.  Numerous stories are told of its marvellous properties as a charm, and on the Continent many a wonderful cure is said to have been wrought by its agency.  Southey, it may be remembered, in his “Thalaba, the Destroyer,” has placed it in the hands of the enchanter, King Mohareb, when he would lull to sleep Zohak, the giant keeper of the Caves of Babylon.  And the history of this wonder-working talisman, as used by Mohareb, is thus graphically told: 

                            Thus he said,
    And from his wallet drew a human hand,
    Shrivelled and dry and black. 
    And fitting, as he spake,
    A taper in his hold,
    Pursued:  “A murderer on the stake had died. 
    I drove the vulture from his limbs and lopt
    The hand that did the murder, and drew up
    The tendon strings to close its grasp,
    And in the sun and wind
    Parched it, nine weeks exposed.”

From the many accounts given of this “Dead Hand,” we gather that it has generally been considered necessary that the hand should be taken from a man who has been put to death for some crime.  Then, when dried and prepared with certain weird unguents, it is ready for use.  Sir Walter Scott, in the “Antiquary” has introduced this object of superstition, making the German adventurer, Dousterswivel, describe it to the assembled party among the ruins at St. Ruth’s thus jocosely:  “De Hand of Glory is very well known in de countries where your worthy progenitors did live; and it is a hand cut off from a dead man as he has been hanged for murder, and dried very nice in de smoke of juniper wood; then you do take something of de fatsh of de bear, and of de badger, and of de great eber (as you do call ye grand boar), and of de little sucking child as has not been christened (for dat is very essential), and you do make a candle, and put into de Hand of Glory at de proper hour and minute, with the proper ceremonials; and he who seeketh for treasures shall never find none at all.”