The five ghost of John Lang.

I should have called this article The Five Texts of Fisher's Ghost and allowed the identity of the author, John Lang, to emerge from the discussion of the five ghosts. I want to examine and discuss the five texts of the story of Fisher's Ghost written in the early part of the nineteenth century. This account does not discuss the general references to the trial of George Worrell for the murder of Frederick Fisher in 1827. The whole of the legend of Fisher's ghost like most legends is surrounded by many ideas, reports and comments and it is difficult to separate fact from fiction. My five texts must be considered as fiction based on fact. The most famous of the texts is No. 5 The Ghost upon the Rail published in John Lang's book Botany Bay or True Tales of Early Australia. It has been reprinted many times.

To begin I should say a few words about John Lang the novelist Lang was the first Australian born novelist and was born in Parramatta in 1816 He was a second generation Australian born because his mother was aalso Australian born. His father was a Scottish trader who died in New South Wales before he was born. Lang was brought up in Sydney and went to school first at Cape's School and then at Sydney College where he distinguished himself especially in languages. Very early in his life he took to writing and he published his first book, a translation of the first satire of Horace, in 1835 and his first novel Violet; or, The Danseuse a Portraiture of Human Life and Passion published anonymously in England in 1836. He trained as a barrister in England and after an attempt at a legal career in Sydney retreated to India where he achieved fame as a barrister and conducted a very successful newspaper which he called The Mofussilite in which he published many of his novels, stories, poems, plays and translations.

That is a enough about John Lang. Now to turn to Fisher's Ghost and the five versions of the story. It is an account of the murder of Frederick Fisher an ex-convict who had been transported to Australia. He served his sentence and then had worked in a number of occupations including being Australia's first paper maker. He had taken up farming in the Campbelltown district and owned a number of town house properties and was considered quite wealthy. His next door neighbour and friend, George Worrell, was a less successful ex-convict. When Fisher disappeared Worrell put around the story that Fisher had decided to go to England. Worrell attempted to sell Fisher's property which he claimed had been left in his charge. Fisher's body was eventually found and George Worrell was found guilty of his murder and hanged. The trial was quite a sensation in Sydney in 1827. John Lang was a boy of eleven at the time.

THE FIRST GHOST of 1832 or Text No. 1 published in Hill's Life in New South Wales

The Legend of Fisher's ghost has now become one of the best known stories of early New South Wales The famous ghost first appeared in print in 1832 in a Sydney newspaper Hill's Life in New South Wales. It in a narrative verse called The Sprite of the Creek. There had been no written mention of a ghost until this verse appeared. There was no mention of the ghost at the trial of George Worrell. The official story of the murder claimed that the authorities were alerted to the evil deed by two boys crossing a paddock and noticing blood stains on a fence near Frederick Fisher's property.

The Sprite of the Creek however introduces a ghost sitting on the fence where the blood stains were located. The ghost was reported to a gentleman neighbour by John Farley another local farmer to whom the ghost appeared. From there the poem records how the murder was done, the body was found and the culprit taken and tried for murder.

The author of the poem in Hill's Life in New South Wales has so far not been found. As far as I can discover the narrative verse has not been attributed to any writer. The poem I now attribute to a young Sydney schoolboy, John Lang. I am not the first to make this attribution. At the time of the trial in 1827 Lang was a boy aged I l and the court case was extensively reported and most likely caught the attention of the imaginative school boy. While a pupil at Cape's school John Lang had a reputation for having poems published in Sydney newspapers. At Sydney College Lang was also known as being adept in composing original verses in Latin with great facility.

The names which have been given to the main characters sound very Italian such as Fredro for Frederick Fisher and Wurlow for George Worrell. They add to the flavour of a Romantic pseudo Italian style similar to but hardly of the quality of Lord Byron and other writers of the period slightly earlier than the poem in Hill's Life in New South Wales.

Lang was also known to have been a great reader of much early literature and books of history. His favourite poet was the great romantic writer Lord Byron. Lang's first novel Violet; or, The Danseuse is littered with quotations from many of these romantic writers mostly quoted in the original languages of French, German and Italian.

In addition Shakespeare was quoted frequently by Lang in his later works including his famous speech as a Barrister in India. The Sprite of the Creek is prefaced by a quotation from Shakespeare but no acknowledgement of the actual play is given.

   Blood will have blood
   Stones have been known to move and trees to speak
   Augure and understood relations have
   by magot pies, and choughs, and rocks brought forth
   The secret'st men of blood

   Shakespeare

The quotation was taken from a dramatic scene in Macbeth Act III scene 4 line 154 where Macbeth speaks to Lady Macbeth just after the appearance of Banquo's ghost at a feast. In Lang's final version (text No. 5) of the story of Fisher's Ghost entitled 'The Ghost upon the Rail' written in 1859 mentions Banquo's Ghost from Macbeth. Fisher's Ghost therefore can claim to be a direct descendant of Shakespeare's most famous ghost.

For comparison of style and language of John Lang with the version in Hill's Life in New South Wales it is possible to consult three early poems by Lang. There is no need to attribute these three poetic works to Lang because they are all signed by him. The first is a published translation of the first satire of Horace published in Sydney in 1835. It was printed by lithography and is what might be called a 'free' translation.

The second 'poem' is a letter written by Lang to his mother in 1837 on board the ship which took him to England. There are accounts of some of the incidents which happened on the voyage. The letter is written in verse demonstrating his easy fluency' in verse making.

The third verse story is published in 1845 called Geraldine, a narrative ballad. Geraldine is a romantic tale about two lovers one the son of the local squire and the girl from a much lower or poorer class. It has a typical tragic ending. It fits easily into the romantic tale mode.

The style and language of these three poems exhibit many of the characteristics of The Sprite of the Creek but none of them have a ghost.

How does The Sprite of the Creek compare with what actually happened in the murder of Frederick Fisher? The story keeps fairly well to the facts as I have already described them as they were recorded at the trial.

The investigation and tracking down of the place where Fisher's body was buried introduced an Aboriginal tracker. The body of Fisher was found in a swamp or creek. George Worrell was accused of the murder of Fisher and evidence was provided. Worrell was tried and hanged. The poem and the actual events of the murder tally with each other except for the appearance of the ghost and also the leaving out of the more prosaic account of discovery of the blood stains on the fence by two boys.

That is the first appearance of the Ghost which was not mentioned, as I have said, at the trial of George Worrell or in the newspapers at the time-a surprising omission by them. One would have thought that if the ghost had actually been sighted the press would have been on to such a sensation.

My argument is that John Lang invented Fisher's Ghost for his poem, a much more dramatic and gory tale. For those who believe in ghosts my proposal does not preclude the possibility that there had been an oral tale about the ghost in Campbelltown at the time which John Lang may have heard about. I think it more likely that the imaginative schoolboy full of old tales about ghosts coming to reveal the murderer and to exact revenge as in the ghost in Shakespeare's Macbeth is the more likely explanation.

There was another mention of the Ghost in 1838 by Thomas L. Robinson who identified the clothing worn by Frederick Fisher when the body was discovered. He gave his account written ten years after the event when he speaks about Farley to whom the ghost appeared. Farley maintained that he did see the ghost but there is no record as to when Farley made this claim. It is Farley who achieved some local fame for having supposedly seen the ghost twice. It would be unusual for someone to deny his fame by saying that there was no such ghost. He would have continued to maintain his story and his fame to any one who asked him about it. Robinson was sceptical about the ghost and later Farley's wife claimed her husband had invented the ghost.

There is a further mention in R. Montgomery Martin's History of the British Colonies published in 1836. He may have gained his information from Robinson. From then on the Ghost of Frederick Fisher took off accumulating additional 'facts' as the years passed.

THE SECOND GHOST of 1836 or Text No. 2 published in Tegg's Monthly Magazine

The next appearance of Fisher's ghost in print was in a story in Tegg Monthly Magazine in 1836 called 'Fisher's Ghost a Legend of Campbelltown'. This Australian magazine contained a number of other Australian stories as well as some taken from British publications. A number of the Australian stories, including 'Fisher's Ghost' have been in the past attributed to William Kerr. The main source for these attributions is a copy of Tegg's Monthly Magazine in the Mitchell Library in Sydney. The magazine had been annotated by Mitchell with the names of the possible authors. These annotations were added many years later than 1836, the date of the first issue of the magazine. William Kerr is recorded as having arrived in the Colony of New South Wales about 1837. He could not possibly have written stories about Sydney and district to be published at the beginning of 1836. So all those attributions must be considered at best very doubtful. Whoever told Mitchell that the stories were by William Kerr probably guessed they were by him because Kerr went on to become a well known journalist and newspaper editor in Melbourne.

One other attribution in Tegg's Monthly Magazine is a story Sergeant O'Connor which is assigned to 'Dr. Lang' (John Dunmore Lang) an unlikely writer of the story about a man who lost his money by marrying as his second wife a stage actress. It is much more likely that the other John Lang (the novelist) would have been the author. He had theatrical ambitions and James Larra lived with Lang's mother after he lost his money to his third wife who was a stage actress. This story is obviously by John Lang the novelist and he based the character of Sergeant O'Connor on James Larra. Some of the other stories in Tegg's Magazine in 1836 are also by John Lang and not William Kerr. This includes this second Text or version of the story about Fisher's ghost by John Lang.

How does the version in Tegg's Magazine compare with 'The Sprite of the Creek'? In the first place it is written in prose not in verse. Like many stories at the time it has a long introductory section which describes the location and is unlike later versions which plunge more quickly into the action. The long introduction might have been there to confuse the censor. The government opposed the publication of stories about convicts as well as any accounts written by convicts. It was not politic to let convicts know that they might prosper in New South Wales and even become rich. The colony was supposed to be a deterrent for people not to commit crimes in England. Otherwise the story follows the account of the murder of Fisher by his friend Worrell and the discovery of the body by an Aboriginal tracker. This is followed briefly by the trial and hanging.

Why do I attribute the stories in Tegg's Magazine to an unknown young man, a currency lad, rather than a young immigrant just possibly arrived in the Colony? John Lang was only a boy at Sydney College but he had had published also in 1836, his first novel called Violet; or, The Danseuse which became a best seller and went through a number of editions in London, Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt as well as in Boston and Philadelphia in the United States. It appeared anonymously and Lang never officially claimed it as his own work. He did publish Violet in his Indian newspaper The Mofussilite as a serial in 1847 and he wrote an introduction in French in the French translation of the novel in which he gave a series of clues as to the identity of himself as the author. These clues all fit a description of John Lang and not any of the other proposed authors which have been mentioned over the years. It therefore would be not unusual for stories in Tegg's Monthly Magazine to have been written by the young successful novelist although his success was not known except possibly by James Tegg. I have written more extensively about this novel in my recent biography of John Lang. Australia's Larrikin Writer.

There is little question that the second Text of Fisher's Ghost published in Tegg's Magazine is by John Lang.

THE THIRD GHOST of 1845 or Text No. 3 published in The Mofussilite in 1845

There is no doubt about the third story about Fisher's ghost being written by John Lang. It was published in the first edition of John Lang's newspaper The Mofussilite in Calcutta in 1845 and called simply 'A Ghost story'. Lang had gone to India to practice as a Barrister but briefs were scarce in Calcutta in an India ruled by the East India Company so he established a newspaper and published in it many of his stories, articles, novels, poems and translations.

Lang claimed he had the ghost story and the murder and trial of Fisher from Mr. Justice Forbes. He did not want to identify himself too closely with New South Wales while in India and this story is one of the few pieces set in Australia published in The Mofussilite. He distanced himself from the knowledge that he would undoubtedly have had of the story even if he had not written the two earlier literary versions.

This Indian version was a more expanded story than the two earlier versions and now gave further details about Fisher and Worrell as well as the man who supposedly saw the ghost. It gave greater emphasis to the character of the men involved. It also gave more details about Aboriginals and their uncanny ability at tracking people. It had become a much more complete short story.

THE FOURTH GHOST of 1853 or Text No. 4 published in Household Words in 1853

The fourth Ghost is the one which had wide spread distribution. This one called 'Fisher's Ghost' was published in Dickens's magazine Household Words in 1853. The payment for this story is noted in the Household Words Office Book and was made to John Lang. That makes it certain that it was written by Lang. Not only that but it is word for word a reprint of Lang's version published in 1845 in The Mofussilite. There are a few editorial changes and at least one of the characters has been given a different name. This does not change the story in any real way.

This version had a wide distribution in Britain, Europe, North America and Australia because Household Words was one of the most popular magazines in the middle of the nineteenth century. In addition there were reprints of the story in Harper's New Monthly Magazine in the United States and in the Anglo-American Magazine in Canada. There was a French language adaptation of the story in the French magazine L 'Ami de la Maison. It was not a translation of Lang's story but was based on it. This French story sets the story in Penrith as did Lang's story in Household Words. The French story differs from the Lang's versions in that it was illustrated by line drawings. Amusingly the ghost does not sit on the fence but leans against it. It is difficult and not very comfortable to sit on a picket fence. The illustrator did not seem realise perhaps that a ghost would not feel this at all uncomfortable. The illustrations are fairly authentic except the scenery which is more like a view of Tahiti.

Thus the fourth Ghost achieved a world wide distributions, making Fisher's Ghost one of the most popular and best known of Australian stories.

THE FIFTH GHOST of 1959 or Text No. 5 published in Botany Bay or True Stories of Early Australia

That brings us to the fifth Ghost this time called 'The Ghost upon the Rail'. This title indicates that it is a typical Australian story for the ghost is seen sitting on a typical posts and rail fence and certainly not a picket fence. John Lang was writing an Australian story and in a way emphasising that he was an Australian writer. Although the first appearance of the ghost in literature was as a romantic verse story it has developed into a well rounded fictional story published in Lang's famous book Botany Bay or True stories of Early Australia. The book Botany Bay has been in print for many years both in its English editions and somewhat later in Australian editions by publishers such as Walsh in Tasmania and by Cole of the famous Cole's Book Arcade in Melbourne. Lang's book Botany Bay is still in print in Australia and also available on the web.

Not only in print in Lang's Botany Bay but 'The Ghost upon the Rail' has been republished in many anthologies of Australian short stories down to the present day. It can be considered Australia's first classic story. It was published in a recent volume The World Classic Ghost Stories of Victorian and Edwardian Times and thus Lang's story becomes a world classic.

In fact the whole of the book Botany Bay or True Tales of Early Australia can be regarded as Australia's Canterbury Tales a group of wonderful stories about a fascinating collection of Australian characters.

Did John Lang invent Fisher's Ghost? I am sure if you read and investigate the texts of the five versions of Fisher's Ghost I think you will agree that he did invent the ghost. With his tales of five Ghosts he made a wonderful and enduring story of the ghost of Frederick Fisher. Not only did he invent the ghost he continued to promote his ghost by his different versions until Fisher's ghost became an Australian legend--Australia's most famous ghost story.