The Vision of Jane Cish which she saw being in a trance on the first of May 1780 being a copy from her own mouth...

THE EXTRAORDINARY MANUSCRIPT ACCOUNT OF THE YOUNG JANE CISH'S HALLUCINATORY VISIONS.

Manuscript in ink. 2500 word portion copied - almost exactly - from one of the rare printed accounts.

 

[written on the blank verso of]: 

 

Extract from the epistle of the Meeting for Sufferings in London, dated the sixth day of the seventh month, 1751. Broadside (approx 545mm  x 440 mm). First printed in Philadelphia and here "re-published by directions of a meeting for suffering, held in Philadelphia", in Trenton NJ by Issac Collins "by whom printing in general is done in a correct, neat and expeditious manner". 

 

The sheet is torn and chipped at the old fold lines with two significant holes in the centre of the sheet (deleting both the printed and the manuscript text), browned, stained and grubby; edges chipped and worn. Sealed between two thick plastic sheets (it is unclear if the broadside can be liberated from within this sturdy archival setting).

The extraordinary account of the young Jane Cish's hallucinatory visions.

 

Cish describes how, whilst in a trance, she saw her dead Mother who warned her that, despite living an outwardly pious life, she was in fact "unclean" in the sight of God. Following the death of her Father, and in another trance - "when I found myself seized with a kind of an easy sleepy, fainting fit; and founded my senses to alter and decline. I soon found myself disentangled from my body, and my senses amazingly enlarged" -  Jane sees the Garden of Eden, the expulsion of Adam and Eve, Cain murdering Abel, the birth of Jesus, his life and the crucifixion. 

 

The first recorded printed edition of Jane Cish's narrative survives in a single copy (lacking the title-page) at the American Antiquarian Society (thought to have been printed by George J Osborne in Newburyport, Mass c.1793). ESTC records a handful of other printings (in Philadelphia in the same year and in 1797 and 1798). All are rare.

 

The manuscript copies the printed text of the first edition closely up to the end of p.8 (approximately 65% of the full account). The text fills the entire sheet and so was quite possibly continued on a further sheet. The sheet is headed "In Ireland" and has the title "The Vision of Jane Cish which she saw being in a trance on the first of May 1780 being a copy from her own mouth and published at the [???]". 

 

The printed broadside describes the "Heathenish Names-and Customs" commonly given to the days of the week and the months. 

Stock Code: 231158