The Ear of Dionysius

Front matter

Class .

Book_

Gopyiight N°

I. Scripts affording Evidence of Personal Survival. *

On the 26th of August, 1910, the automatist who is already well known to members of the Society under the name of Mrs. Willett sat for script with Mrs. Verrall.

The script produced on this occasion, partly written and partly dictated — I use the word script for convenience sake to include the spoken as well as the written word — contained the phrase " Dionysius' Ear the lobe." The phrase occurred in the dictated part of the script, and the name Dionysius was pronounced as in Italian. It has no obvious relevance to the context, and this first appearance of it in Willett Script remains even now without any satisfactory explanation.

To Mrs. Verrall herself, as we shall see presently, the words conveyed at the time no meaning what-

1 This Paper was read at a meeting of the Society for Psychical Research on November 9th, 1916, substantially in the form in which it is now published, except that considerable additions have been made to the argumentative portion.

ever. As a good many of my audience may be in like case with her, I had best explain at the outset that the Ear of Dionysius is a kind of grotto hewn in the solid rock at Syracuse and opening on one of the stone-quarries which served as a place of captivity for the Athenian prisoners of war who fell into the hands of the victorious Syracusans after the failure of the famous siege so graphically described by Thucydides. A few years later these quarries were again used as prisons by the elder Dionysius, Tyrant of Syracuse. The grotto of which I have spoken has the peculiar acoustic properties of a whispering gallery, and is traditionally believed to have been constructed or utilised by the Tyrant in order to overhear, himself unseen, the conversations of his prisoners. Partly for this reason, and partly from a fancied resemblance to the interior of a donkey's ear, it came to be called L'Orecchio di Dionisio, or the Ear of Dionysius; but the name only dates from the sixteenth century. The grotto is still one of the objects of interest which every visitor to Syracuse is taken to see.

No further reference was made in any Willett Script to the Ear of Dionysius until more than three years later. The subject was first revived in a script written in the presence of Sir Oliver Lodge on the 10th of January, 19 14. The sitting was a very long one, and in the course of it occurred the following passage.

A.

(Extract from Script of Jan. 10, 1914.)

Do you remember you did not know and I complained of your classical ignorance Ignorance

It concerned a place where slaves were kept — and Audition belongs, also Acoustics

Think of the Whispering Gaily

To toil, a slave, the Tyrant — and it was called Orecchio — that's near

One Ear, a one eared place, not a one horsed dawn [here the automatist laughed slightly], a one eared place — You did not know (or remember) about it when it came up in conversation, and I said Well what is the use of a classical education —

Where were the fields of Enna

[Drawing of an ear.]

an ear ly pipe could be heard

To sail for Syracuse

Who beat the loud-sounding wave, who smote the moving furrows

The heel of the Boot

Dy Dy and then you think of Diana Dimorphism

To fly to find Euripides

not the Pauline Philemon

This sort of thing is more difficult to do than it looked.

There are several interesting points to be noted in connection with this passage. Earlier in the script it was stated that a message was to be sent to Mrs. Verrall; but at the point where the extract commences, Mrs. Verrall is directly addressed in the second person, although she was not herself present. The communication must be taken as purporting to come from Dr. A. W. Verrall, the incident recalled in the extract having actually happened very much as described. I will relate it in the words of Mrs. Verrall's own note, written on Jan. 19, 19 14, after, this portion of the script had been shown to her.

My typed note on the Willett Script of Aug. 26, 1910, is as follows : " ' Dionysius' Ear the lobe ' is unintelligible to me. A. W. V. says it is the name of a place at Syracuse where D. could overhear conversations." This makes clear what was instantly recalled to me on hearing the Willett Script of Jan. 10, that I did not know, or had forgotten, what the Ear of Dionysius was, and that I asked A. W. V. to explain it. I cannot say whether on that occasion he asked " What is the use of a classical education?" but he expressed considerable surprise at my ignorance, and the phrase of the script recalls — though it does not, I think, reproduce — similar remarks of his on like occasions.

The incident to me is very striking. I am quite sure that Mrs. Willett was not present when I asked A. W. V. about the Ear of Dionysius; no one was present except A. W. V. and myself. . . . She therefore had no reason to suppose that on this particular subject, of the Ear of Dionysius, my information had been obtained from A. W. V. On the other hand, the form given to my contemporary note — " A. W. V. says etc." — confirms my own vivid recollection of the incident above described. It is not easy, I think, to devise a more convincing single incident.

The incident is certainly striking; but I have to confess that its evidential force is weakened by a dim though haunting recollection on my part of a conversation having taken place between Mrs. Willett and me sometime previously on this very subject of Dionysius' Ear. She has no memory of it herself; but I still think she told me one day that the words " Ear of Dionysius " had been running in her head, and asked me what they meant ; whereupon I explained, adding that they had come in one of her own scripts several years before. I do not believe I referred to Mrs. Verrall, or to Dr. Verrall's having rallied her upon her ignorance. But as I had been told of the incident by Mrs. Verrall herself shortly after it occurred, it is just possible I may have done so; and this possibility spoils what would otherwise have been a good piece of evidence.

Returning now to the extract from the Willett

Script of Jan. 10, 1914, 1 proceed to apply a running commentary to the other allusions, certain or probable, which it contains.

The "place where slaves were kept" refers of course to the stone-quarries where the Athenian captives were imprisoned. The words that follow describe the Ear of Dionysius, with its peculiar acoustic properties. Dionysius himself is not named either in this or in the succeeding scripts to which I shall presently call attention; though the syllables " Dy Dy " towards the end of the extract probably represent an attempt at the name. The use of the Italian for Ear, Orecchio, is noteworthy, and recalls the Italian pronounciation of " Dionysius " in the earlier script. I may say that Mrs. Willett knows Italian and has spent some time in Italy, though she has never been in Sicily. Much play is made later on with the phrase " a one-eared place." It seems to have little point in the present extract save to bring in our old friend the " one-horsed dawn " — an appropriate reminiscense for Dr. Verrall, as readers of the Proceedings will not require to be told. 1 Sir Oliver Lodge's record tells us that the

^^The words "a one-horsed dawn" refer to a telepathic experiment tried by Dr. Verrall in his life-time on Mrs. Verrall, of which a full account was published by her in Proceedings S.P.R., Vol. XX., pp. 156-167. See also Proceedings, Vol. XXVII., pp. 237-238.

automatist laughed as she wrote " not a one-horsed dawn." From my experience of Willett Script I have no doubt that the laugh represents amusement on the part of the communicator, not on that of the automatist herself. It is Dr. Verrall — or the personality purporting to be Dr. Verrall — who laughs as he transmits the words; the laughter of the automatist is but an echo.

The meadows of Enna, a town in Sicily, were famous in antiquity as the scene of the Rape of Proserpine. They are introduced here either to indicate Sicily as the country with which the message is concerned, or, more probably, to add to the various literary and historical associations which are piled up in this and the immediately succeeding scripts.

Another such association, and a strangely far-fetched one, seems to be dragged in in the next line " An ear ly pipe could he heard." The allusion here is apparently to the lines in Tennyson's well-known poem " Tears, idle tears : " 1

" The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds To dying ears."

1 Since this Paper was written it has been suggested to rafe that the "pipe" is the shepherd's pipe, and that the allusion is to Theocritus, the famous Sicilian bucolic poet. Theocritus is said to have imitated the Cyclops of Philoxenus in his eleventh idyll.

io THE EAR OF DIONYSIUS

The bringing of this poem into forced connection with the Ear of Dionysius, and that by means of an abominable pun, is certainly not characteristic of the automatist. I doubt however whether Dr. Verrall's intimates would scout it as a sally impossible to his more playful moments. Indeed, there may even be an evidential point about the jest; for Mrs. Verrall writes in her contemporary note : " The non-serious or parody-like introduction of this poem is consistent with the feeling of the supposed communicator; A. W. V. always considered the sentiment of the poem somewhat overstrained, and maintained that that view was warranted by Tennyson's own description of Ida's reception of it ' with some disdain,' as a fancy ' hatched in silken folded idleness.' "

The next reference in the script is almost certainly to the ill-fated Athenian expedition against Syracuse. The words " who beat the loud-sounding wave, who smote the moving furrows " are probably reminiscent of Tennyson's Ulysses:

" Sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows,"

though I do not think that any allusion to Ulysses

is intended here, in spite of the fact that he plays,

I am still inclined to prefer the explanation given in the text.

THE EAR OF DIONYSIUS n

as we shall see, an important part in subsequent developments. " The heel of the Boot " may be taken to indicate the route followed by the Athenian fleet, which passed from Corcyra to Tarentum in the heel of Italy, thence coasted along to the toe, and so reached Sicily.

" Dy Dy " I have already explained as probably an attempt at the name Dionysius. The communicator fails to get the whole name through, and then addressing the automatist, who repeats his language, reproaches her with thinking of words beginning with Di which are not what he wants.

The final allusion in the extract calls for a somewhat longer comment. A script written by Mrs. Holland in 1907 contains the words " To fly to find Euripides Philemon." The script is quoted by Mr. Piddington in Volume XXII. of the Proceedings (p. 215), and the source of the reference to Euripides and Philemon given — namely, Browning's Aristophanes' Apology or the Last Adventure of Balaustion.

In Aristophanes' Apology [writes Mr. Piddington] Balaustion tells to Philemon the story of how, on the night on which news of the death of Euripides reached Athens, Aristophanes, flushed with wine and with the success of his Thesmophoriazousce came to her house and there justified his attacks on the dead poet ; and of how, the apology ended, Balaustion read to Aristophanes and the assembled company the Hercules Furens, the original tablets of which Euripides had presented to her as a parting gift. The poem ends by Balaustion telling Philemon that she sent the original tablets to Dionysius, tyrant of Sicily, who placed them in a temple of Apollo with this inscription:

" I also loved The poet, Free Athenai cheaply prized — King Dionusios, — Archelaos like." Balaustion then asks Philemon "If he too have not made a votive verse ! " and Philemon replies:

" Grant, in good sooth, our great dead, all the same, Retain their sense, as certain wise men say, Fd hang myself — to see Euripides/'

Mrs. Willet has not read Aristophanes' 'Apology. She had, however, seen the Holland Script, and recognised at that time that her own script had borrowed from it. She had also read parts of Vol. XXII. of the Proceedings, and may have seen the passage I have just quoted. From the evidential point of view we must assume that she had seen it, and that she may thus have become aware of a connection between Browning's Philemon and the tyrant Dionysius. On the other hand, it would not be legitimate to infer that this literary contribution to the subject in hand must have proceeded from her own mental activities unprompted by any external influence. Whatever view we take of the genuineness or otherwise of the supposed communicators and communications, it is clear that what is already in the mind, conscious or subconscious, of the automatist, will also be that which will most easily emerge in automatic speech or writing.

In any case the reference to Browning's poem is aptly chosen. Not only does it bring in Dionysius the Tyrant in the manner described, but also, though indirectly, the two other main topics alluded to in the script, namely, the Athenian expedition against Syracuse, and the stone-quarries where the Athenian prisoners worked until they were sold as slaves or released because they were able to recite Euripides. The second " Adventure " of Balaustion inevitably recalls the first, related in the companion poem ; and the first adventure starts from the defeat of the Athenian Expedition, and ends with Balaustion seeking safety for herself and her whole ship's company from the threatened hostility of the Syracusans by the exercise of a similar gift of recitation.

One other point is perhaps worthy of mention. Browning's line 1

" I'd hang myself — to see Euripides." is misquoted by Mrs. Holland, and after her by

i-This line is an almost literal translation from a fragment of Philemon which has come down to us.

Mrs. Willett in the form " To fly to find Euripides." I owe to Mrs. Verrall the suggestion that the remark in the Willett Script, about " this sort of thing " being " more difficult to do than it looked/' is due to a recognition by the communicator of the misquotation — a misquotation which in his life-time Dr. Verrall, " who was much interested in Mrs. Holland's allusion to Lucus and Philemon, never failed to note and regret."

So far all is plain sailing. The reproduction of what Dr. Verrall said to Mrs. Verrall anent the Ear of Dionysius it is possible to explain in the manner I have suggested. The other allusions, historical, geographical and literary, have a natural connection; and all of them might be supposed, without any rude violation of probability, to have been at one time or another within the normal knowledge of the automatist. But up to now we have only been laying foundations for what is to follow. In the succeeding scripts the plot begins to thicken.

Before I enter upon these further developments it will not be out of place to make a brief statement concerning the conditions in which the Willett Scripts are produced. Many of these are written when the automatist is alone, awake, and fully aware of her surroundings. The remainder, produced in the presence of a " sitter,'' x fall mainly into two classes. Either the automatist is in a normal or nearly normal state of consciousness, much as when she writes scripts by herself, or else she is in a condition of trance. There have been a few intermediate cases, when it is hard to say whether the sensitive is in trance or not. But these are a very small number: in general there is no difficulty whatever in distinguishing. Scripts obtained in a normal state of consciousness, whether in presence of a sitter or alone, are always annotated by Mrs. Willett shortly after they have been produced. The originals are carefully preserved in the custody of the investigating group; but she keeps copies to which she can at any time refer. Of scripts produced in trance, on the other hand, she remembers nothing, even immediately after waking; and the contents are carefully kept from her knowledge. The script of Aug. 26, 1910, in which the first reference to the Ear of Dionysius occurred, was a trance-script. That of Jan. 10, 19 14, from which Extract A has been taken, was written in

a A few of Mrs. Willett's scripts have been produced in the presence of some member of her family, and two in the presence of a friend who does not belong to the investigating group. Apart from these rare occasions, she has never sat for automatic writing save with Mrs. Verrall, Sir Oliver Lodge, or myself; and never at any time in the presence of more than one person.

normal conditions of consciousness. All the remaining scripts I shall have occasion to quote in this Paper were trance-scripts. Until May of this year (1916), Mrs. Willett had never been shown any of them or any portion of any of them : there is no doubt in my own mind that in a normal state of consciousness she was totally ignorant of their contents. In that month I allowed her to see, not the entire scripts, but just those passages which I am about to cite, and which have been printed for distribution among the audience. The date of the last of these scripts was August 19, 191 5. It is clear, therefore, that Mrs. Willett's having been shown the extracts nine months later could in no way weaken any " evidential " value which the episode they relate to may be thought to possess.

I now proceed to read and comment on Extract B from the Willett sitting of Feb. 28, 191 4, at which I was myself present.

B.

(Extracts from Sitting of Feb. 28, 1914.) (Present: G. W. B.)

Some confusion may appear in the matter transmitted but there is now being started an experiment not a new experiment but a new subject and not exactly that but a new line which joins with a subject already got through

a little anatomy if you please

Add one to one

One Ear X [sic] one eye the one eyed Kingdom

No, in the K of the Blind the 1 eyed man is

King

It is about a 1 eyed man * 1 eyed The entrance to the Cave Arethusa Arethusa is only to indicate it does not belong

to the 1 eyed

A Fountain on the Hill Side

What about Baulastion [sic]

man " crossed out in the original.

[Laughs] Supposed to be a Wellington Boot 12 little nigger boys thinking not of Styx Some were eaten up and then there were Six Six.

[At this point Mrs. Willett ceased to write and began dictating to the Sitter.]

Some one said— Oh I'll try, I'll try. Oh! Some one's showing me a picture and talking at the same time.

Some one said to me, Homer — and some one said — I'm so confused, I'm all with things flitting past me; I don't seem to catch them. Oh dear!

Here where all winds are quiet. 1

Oh!

Edmund says, Powder first and jam afterwards. You see it seems a long time since I was here with them — and I want to talk to them and enjoy myself. And I've all the time to keep on working, and seeing and listening to such boring old—

Oh, ugh! [Expression of great disgust.]

Somebody said, Give her time, Give her time . . . Oh, if I could only say it quickly and get done with it. It's about a cave, and a group of men. Somebody then — a trident, rather like a toasting fork / think.

Poseidon, Poseidon.

1 Swinburne: The Garden of Proserpine^

Who was it said, It may be that the gulfs will wash us down — find the great Achilles that we knew? 1 He's got a flaming torch in his hand.

And then some one said to me, Can't you think of Noah and the grapes?

Optics — Oh! that, you know [putting a finger to her eye].

Oh, if I could only say what I hear! Oh, I will try, I will try.

Somebody said to me, Don't forget about Henry Sidgwick, that he pleased not himself. Do you know he used to work when he hated working. I mean sometimes he had to grind along without enjoying what he was doing. That's what I'm trying to do now.

Do you know that man with the glittering eyes I once saw? He hit me with one word now. [Here Mrs. Willett traced a word with one finger along the margin of the paper. I failed to make it out, and handed the pencil to her, whereupon she wrote]

Aristotle

[Dictation resumed] And Poetry, the language of the Gods. Somebody killed a President once and call out — something in Latin, and I only heard one word of it, Tironus, Tiranus, Tiranius — something about sic. 2

1 Tennyson : Ulysses.

2 Sic semper tyrannis — uttered by Booth when he murdered President Lincoln. The phrase had already appeared in Mrs. Piper's trance of Apr. 17, 1907. See Proceedings, Vol. XXIV., p. 30.

What is a tyrant?

Lots of wars — A Siege [spoken loud and with emphasis]. I hear the sound of chipping. [Here Mrs. W. struck the fingers of one hand repeatedly against the palm of the other.] It's on stone. Now, wait a minute. Oh, if I could only get that word.

Fin and something gleba. Find [pronounced as in the Latin finditur] — oh! it's got to do with the serf. It's about that man who said it was better — oh! a shade among the shades. Better to be a slave among the living, he said. 1

Oh, the toil — Woe to the vanquished.

That one eye has got something to do with the one ear. [Sighs] That's what they wanted me to say. There's such a mass of things, you see, rushing through my mind that I can't catch anything.

[A pause and then sobbing] He was turned into a fountain that sort of Stephen man, he was turned into a fountain. Why? that's the point: Why? . . .

Oh, dear me ! Now I seem to be walking about a school, and I meet a dark boy, and — it's the name of a Field Marshal I'm trying to get, a German name. And then something says, All this is only memories revived: it's got nothing to do with the purely literary — There are two people in that literary thing, chiefly concerned in it. They're very close friends — they've thought it all out together.

1 Spoken by the shade of Achilles to Ulysses in Hades.

Somebody said something about Father Cam walking arm in arm — with the Canongate?! What does that mean?

Oh! [sniffing] what a delicious scent!

No rosebud yet by dew empearled.

I'll try and say it. Hold me tight now while I try and say it. [Pause.]

It may take some considerable time to get the necessary references through. But let us peg away; and keep your provisional impressions to yourself. May 1 is to hear nothing of all this at present; because this is something good and worth doing, and my Aristotelian friend —

[At this point the subject is abruptly broken off and not referred to again until the very end, when E. G. (Gurney) intervenes to close the sitting.]

Enough for this time. There is sense in that which has been got through though some disentanglement, is needed. A Literary Association of ideas pointing to the influence of two discarnate minds.

You will doubtless have noticed the recurrence in this extract of most if not all of the topics already found in Extract A. I will briefly enumerate but need not dwell on them further. References are once more made to

The stone-quarries in which the vanquished Athenians worked; I i u May"=Mrs. Verrall.

Enna (by means of a quotation from The

Garden of Proserpine"; Syracuse ("Wars — a Siege," and " A're-

thusa"); The heel of Italy (Wellington Boot). The Adventures of Balaustion.

There is also, however, much in the Extract that is new.

We are now told that an " experiment " is being attempted ; and that this experiment consists in " a literary association of ideas," some of which have already appeared, w T hile others are now being introduced for the first time. Much importance is attached to the experiment : it is " something good and worth doing." There are additional references yet to come, which may take a " considerable time " to " get through." Meanwhile Mrs. Verrall (" May ") is not to be told about it : any provisional impressions the other investigators may form are to be kept to themselves.

The literary riddle — for such it proves ultimately to be — which is thus in the course of being propounded is the work, we are told, of two intimate friends no longer in the flesh. It is intended to be characteristic of them, and to serve as evidence of their personal survival.

The identity of the two friends, indicated without disguise in the later extracts, is made sufficiently clear even in the present one to anybody acquainted with previous Willett Scripts. They are Professor S. H. Butcher and Dr. A. W. Verrall. *

The " man with the glittering eyes I once saw," from whom proceeds the word Aristotle, is Professor Butcher, The incident referred to is a vision of Professor Butcher seen by Mrs. Willett on the night of Jan. 21, 191 1, a few weeks after his death. I quote the record of it made by Mrs. Willett on the day following:

" Last night after I had blown out my candle and was just going to sleep I became aware of the presence of a man, a stranger, and — almost at the same moment — knew it was Henry Butcher. I felt his personality very living, clear, strong, sweetness and strength combined. A piercing glance. He made no introduction, and said nothing. So I said to him : ' Are you Henry Butcher ? ' He said ' No, I am Henry Butcher's ghost/ I was rather shocked at his saying this and said, ' Oh, very well, I'm not at all afraid of ghosts or of the dead/ He said, ' Ask Verrall if he remembers our last conversation, and say the word to him :

Ek e tee/ "

1 Professor Butcher died in December, 1910, and Dr. Verrall in June, 1912.

A more detailed reference to this vision will be found in Extract D. I do not discuss it here further than to say that the name of the goddess Hecate — for that is apparently what is meant — has a significance in connection with Dr. Verrall which would have been known to Professor Butcher. In the present context the incident is apparently recalled only to serve as a clue to the identity of the man who says ' Aristotle.' The word 'Aristotle/ combined with 'Poetry/ is itself an additional clue; for Butcher wrote a work upon Aristotle's Poetics which is well known to all classical scholars. Hence the description of him as " my Aristotelian friend " given later on in the extract.

Two other symbolic references to Prof. Butcher are contained in Extract B. " Father Cam walking arm in arm with the Canongate " signifies the association, in the persons of Verrall and Butcher, of the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh. Butcher was himself a highly distinguished Cambridge man, and in later life represented his University in the House of Commons; but he was also for many years Professor of Greek at Edinburgh.

The Rose, and the perfume of the Rose are repeatedly used in Willett Scripts as symbols of Prof. Butcher, for a reason which his personal friends will readily understand. We shall come across the same symbols again in Extract D. Note that here the automatist seems to become conscious of the scent before she connects it with the flower. " No rosebuds yet by dew impearled " is a quotation from Swinburne's Etude Realiste, with the substitution of "dew" for "dawn."

Mrs. Willett, it may be as well to say, had never met Professor Butcher. She knew him, however, by name, and knew that he was a close friend of the Verralls.

As regards Dr. Verrall, there is only one direct allusion to him in Extract B apart from the Father Cam reference already mentioned; but that one is unmistakable. The automatist says she seems to be walking about a school and to meet a dark boy. She tries to get the name of a German Field Marshal. " Then something says, All this is only memories revived; it has nothing to do with the purely literary thing " in which the two friends are closely concerned.