I believe in ghosts. It’s not that I have any particular desire to believe in them, nor do I wish to indulge in superstition. Quite the contrary. I believe in ghosts for the pure and simple reason that I am haunted by them. I am haunted by them even though I have never seen them. This is especially true of the ghost of Evangeline. I’m not sure when I became aware that I was haunted by her. It probably dates from the first time I heard her story, which preceded my reading of Longfellow’s telling of her story in the epic poem in which she is the eponymous heroine.
I remember standing at her grave in the small town of St. Martinville, Louisiana, and being haunted by the vision of the faithful woman who spent her life on the quest to be reunited with her betrothed. For those who don’t know Evangeline’s story, as told by Longfellow, she and her betrothed, Gabriel Lajeunesse, are forcibly separated by British troops as their families gather to celebrate their marriage in the small village of Grand-Pré in Nova Scotia. The people of the village are then deported from Canada, as part of the “ethnic cleansing” of French-speaking natives from the British controlled parts of Canada and New England. Evangeline and Gabriel are separated in the confusion of the forced expulsion from their homes on what should have been their wedding day.
As for Longfellow’s epic poem, it begins with Evangeline’s haunting of “the forest primeval” which once had been her home:
This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.
It’s as though the natural world is haunted by the supernatural presence of the woman who had once graced it but had long since departed. The very trees, bearded with moss, are like the druids and bards of yore, playing their harps as they sing their haunting lament for the departed souls of the exiled villagers and for the exiled heart of Evangeline. And the ocean itself, recalling the fishing village which once had nestled along its shore, answers the lament of the forest with its own deep-voiced and disconsolate dirge, the sea joining the land in a threaded threnody for the souls of the faithful departed. As for us, we are meant to hearken to the song being sung:
Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,
Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman’s devotion,
List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest;
List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.
But what of those who refuse to listen? What of those who don’t hearken to the song because they will not hear? What of those who do not listen to the song because they cannot sing? What of those who can’t hear the song with their ears because they have no song in their hearts? In brief and in sum, what of those who don’t believe in ghosts?
Take, for instance, those who don’t believe that Evangeline is really buried in the grave in St. Martinville. Or those who refuse to believe that Evangeline ever really existed. Do they not know that she is not to be found in the grave because she is a ghost who lives? Do they not know that she exists in a more living sense than any number of real people who are dead or any number of living people who refuse to be alive?
Evangeline is the spirit of those thousands of Acadians who were expelled from their homes between 1755 and 1764. She is the spirit of those millions of people in multifarious cultures who have been expelled from their homes through ethnic cleansing or other acts of tyranny. She is the spirit of hope that endures and is patient. She is the spirit of the beauty and strength of woman’s devotion. She is one in spirit with Penelope and Beatrice. She is as alive as they. She sings across the centuries the same song that they sing. She haunts those who believe in ghosts.
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The featured image is “Evangeline Discovering Her Affianced in the Hospital” (c. 1889), by Samuel G. Richards, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
