Australian Tales - Setis

months; indeed, I was subject to periodical returns of the disorder for
years; but by degrees my nerves recovered their tone, and now — thank
God — I am as free from dread of old bogies as most adults are. But I
have not forgotten the occurrence, and it has made me very careful to
avoid exciting my children in a similar way; and also to be very watchful
over my nursemaids, for I have good reason to believe that children are
sometimes terrified by servants, as the following tragical incident will
prove.”
“A lady whom I knew very well,” resumed my informant, “was one
evening at a party at a friend's house, when suddenly she was impressed
with an unaccountable idea that some terrible disaster had befallen her
child, a little girl about five years of age, whom she had left in charge of
the nursemaid. The lady hastily departed for her home, and on reaching
it, ran up-stairs to the nursery, when to her horror, she beheld her darling
child lying in its little bed — dead. Its eyes were wide open, and were
directed with a ghastly stare to a hideous-looking figure at the foot of the
bed, which the lady speedily discovered was a broom, dressed up with a
black shawl and other sombre habiliments, to represent an ‘old bogy.’
The poor child had actually been frightened to death; and perhaps it was
well for her she was dead, for it is probable, had she lived, she would
have drivelled out her days in hopeless idiocy. That unpardonably cruel
trick had been perpetrated by the nursemaid, to make the child lie still,
and allow her to go to the servants' hall, and join in the revels, which
were there going on in the absence of the mistress of the house.”
I do not mean to insinuate that such barbarity is often practised by
nurse-maids in civilised life. I hope it is a very rare case, and I further
hope that if the foregoing fact should be read by persons who have the
charge of young children, that it may serve as a warning against the
dangerous expedient of quieting them by means of “old bogies,” tangible
or otherwise. Nurses would do well also, to beware how they instil into
young minds frightful tales of ghosts and goblins, which many children
have an eager desire to hear, or the consequences may be very serious;
and if not in many cases so disastrous as in those above related, it may
tend to mental imbecility and other evils of a life-long tenacity.
An old friend of mine has assured me, that though grey hairs are
frosting his brow, he has not forgotten the ghostly legends which were
crowded into his mind when he was a child. Even now, he is obliged
— when in certain positions — to keep a vigilant check on his
imagination, lest it should overpower his reason for a time, and surround
him with a host of self-created phantoms, horrible as the figure of death
itself. He further told me, that a schoolfellow had once declared to him,
that he had accidentally run up against his Uncle Bill's leg, as he was
crossing a country churchyard one dark night. The leg was sticking up
perpendicularly, with the toes bare. “That grossly absurd story,” added