It is interesting to compare them with the following narrations, communicated to me by the Rev. S. Baring Gould:—­“Two magicians having come to lodge in a public-house with a view to robbing it, asked permission to pass the night by the fire, and obtained it.  When the house was quiet, the servant-girl, suspecting mischief, crept downstairs and looked through the keyhole.  She saw the men open a sack, and take out a dry, withered hand.  They anointed the fingers with some unguent, and lighted them.  Each finger flamed, but the thumb they could not light; that was because one of the household was not asleep.  The girl hastened to her master, but found it impossible to arouse him.  She tried every other sleeper, but could not break the charmed sleep.  At last, stealing down into the kitchen, while the thieves were busy over her master’s strong box, she secured the hand, blew out the flames, and at once the whole household was aroused."[14]

But the next story bears a closer resemblance to the Stainmore narrative.  One dark night, when all was shut up, there came a tap at the door of a lone inn in the middle of a barren moor.  The door was opened, and there stood without, shivering and shaking, a poor beggar, his rags soaked with rain, and his hands white with cold.  He asked piteously for a lodging, and it was cheerfully granted him; there was not a spare bed in the house, but he could lie on the mat before the kitchen fire, and welcome.

So this was settled, and everyone in the house went to bed except the cook, who from the back kitchen could see into the large room through a pane of glass let into the door.  She watched the beggar, and saw him, as soon as he was left alone, draw himself up from the floor, seat himself at the table, extract from his pocket a brown withered human hand, and set it upright in the candlestick.  He then anointed the fingers, and applying a match to them, they began to flame.  Filled with horror, the cook rushed up the back stairs, and endeavoured to arouse her master and the men of the house.  But all was in vain—­they slept a charmed sleep; so in despair she hastened down again, and placed herself at her post of observation.

She saw the fingers of the hand flaming, but the thumb remained unlighted, because one inmate of the house was awake.  The beggar was busy collecting the valuables around him into a large sack, and having taken all he cared for in the large room, he entered another.  On this the woman ran in, and, seizing the light, tried to extinguish the flames.  But this was not so easy.  She blew at them, but they burnt on as before.  She poured the dregs of a beer-jug over them, but they blazed up the brighter.  As a last resource, she caught up a jug of milk, and dashed it over the four lambent flames, and they died out at once.  Uttering a loud cry, she rushed to the door of the apartment the beggar had entered, and locked it.  The whole family was aroused, and the thief easily secured and hanged.  This tale is told in Northumberland.