Franklin and the Ghostly Drummer of Tedworth

tT HE supernatural in seventeenth-century English folklore is well illustrated by the legend of the Drummer of Tedworth. The story of the regular appearances of a ghostly drummer in the south of England during the seventeenth century stirred such contemporary philosophical minds as Henry More and Joseph Glanvill as well as the unlearnedly credulous. Glanvill, after conducting a personal investigation at the scene of the appearances, wrote a frenzied vindication of the genuineness of the phenomenon. Some years later the incident provided Joseph Addison title and plot for a not very successful comedy, The Drummer; or, the Haunted-House. In the I730's the legend as well as the noisy spirit himself migrated to Pennsylvania, where the exploits of a supernatural drummer in the outskirts of Philadelphia were described in the pages of Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette. In England the drummer appeared first of all at Wiltshire to plague a certain John Mompesson of Tedworth, who had had difficulties with a human drummer in March, i66i. Hearing a drum beating in a neighboring town, Ludgarshal, he had investigated and discovered that a drummer with forged papers had been collecting money under false pretences. The drummer was ordered for trial, his drum confiscated and retained by the constable until April, when the bailiff sent it to Mompesson. From that time on, Mompesson was incessantly disturbed by thumpings and knockings throughout his house. During the time of his wife's labor in childbirth, the drummer politely desisted, but afterwards returned with increased fury. He began beating tunes on the children's bedsteads, lifting them out of their beds, and following them around the room. Once a servant, seeing a moving board in the room, asked that the spirit give him the object. The spirit thrust it into his hand, the servant returned it, and it was passed back and forth twenty times, until the servant stopped under his master's orders. When the spirit departed that morning, it left behind an offensive sulphurous smell

Archaeology · Art · Drummer · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · History