The same omen is given in Westphalia by another herald of the spring. When a man sees the first swallow, he should look if there be a hair under his foot. If he find one, his future wife's hair will be of the same colour.* The swallow is everywhere a sacred bird, and in some places, like the stork, it preserves the house on which it builds its nest from fire and lightning. On the other hand, if the swallows do not return to their old nest, somebody will die in the house, or it will be burned down.† In Swabia, the man who kills a swallow will have his cows give red milk, or his house will be struck with lightning, and some believe that such a sacrilegious act will be followed by rain of four weeks' duration. § In Perigord, the swallow is "the messenger of life." The people call it la Poule de Dieu (just like the wren), and this bird and the cricket are regarded as members of the family. In Normandy, it is the subject of a tradition analogous to that concerning the woodpecker and the springwort, as will be seen hereafter. Its chestnut-red head and throat are probably not without significance; and it may be that, as in the case of the robin (p. 81), some old wife's tale, snatched from the oblivion to which * Kuhn, Westf. ii., 71. § D. M. 638. Ibid., pp. 70-72. DEPARTED SOULS AS BIRDS. 103 it is now hastening, will eventually complete the evidence upon which we shall be justified in assigning to this guest of summer no uncertain place among the fire-bringing birds. That the soul quits the dead body in the form of a bird is a wide-spread belief, and in Kuhn's opinion it is intimately connected with the tradition of birds as soul-bringers. The soul and the bird that brought it down to earth may have been supposed to become one, and to enter and quit the body together. Stories of disembodied souls appearing as doves are numerous, but lend only an ambiguous support to Kuhn's conjecture, since we cannot tell whether or not their origin is due, in part or wholly, to biblical and ecclesiastical ideas. We are on surer ground when we have to deal with such heathen, or at least non-Christian, instances as the following: In the Sæmundr Edda it is said that souls in the form of singed birds flit about the nether world like swarms of flies. According to the heathen Bohemians, the soul flew out of the mouth of the dying as a bird, and flitted from tree to tree until the body was burned, after which it had rest. The Finns, and also the Lithuanians, the latter an Indo-European people, call the Milky Way the 104 DEPARTED SOULS AS BIRDS. Birds' Way, i. e., the way of souls. In Poland it is said that every member of the Herburt family is turned into an eagle after death; and that the eldest daughters of the Pileck line are transformed into doves if they die unmarried, into owls if they die married, and that they give previous notice of their death to every member of their race by pecking a finger of each.* The people in North Germany believe that the soul of one who has died on shipboard passes into a bird,† and when it shows itself it is to foretell the death of another person. It is a local Irish tradition that the first father and mother of mankind exist as eagles in the island of Innis Bofin, at the mouth of Killery Bay, in Galway. + "Look, my dear," said S. S.'s wife to him one morning as he lay in bed. 'Look at that kite flying round the room." He saw nothing, but heard a noise like a large bird flapping its wings. A few minutes afterwards a sparrow came, dashed its bill against the window, and flew away again. “Oh,” said Mrs. S., "something is the matter with poor Edward" (her brother). She had hardly said the word when a man on horseback rode up and said, * D.M. 788. + Kuhn und Schwartz, Ndd. p. 436. Liebrecht, Gerv. Tilb. p. 115. when S. opened the door to him, "Don't frighten poor Mary; but master has just expired." The messenger had only ridden from Somers Town to Compton Street, Soho. I had this story from S. himself, who was possessed with a notion that the sparrow that tapped at his window was the soul of his brother-in-law. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE. This sheet was already in type and just going to press when I found, in the Times of September 3, 1863, the following corroboration of the conjecture offered in the last paragraph of page 100. At the meeting of the British Association at Newcastle-on-Tyne on the preceding day, the Rev. H. B. Tristram said : "The gentlemen of Durham and Northumberland believed that the hedgehog ate the partridge eggs; and so great was the ignorance of natural history that, a short time ago, when he remonstrated with a man for shooting a cuckoo, the defence was that it was well known that sparrowhawks turned into cuckoos in the summer." CHAPTER IV. THE DEAD-THEIR WORLD AND THE WAY TO IT-PSYCHOPOMP DOGS AND COWS-DEATH OMENS GIVEN BY DOGS AND COWS THE DEAD-SHOE-THE BRIG O' DREAD-SHIPS AND BOATS-THE FERRYMAN'S FEE-ENGLAND THE LAND OF THE DEAD-BERTHA-TEARS FOR THE DEAD-SOULS OF UNCHRISTENED BABES-ZWERGS CROSSING THE FERRY. It was the belief of the Aryans that the soulthat spark of heavenly fire-passed upwards after death, to mingle with the spirits of the winds, the clouds, the lightning, the sunbeams, and the stars, and to find its everlasting abode in the highest heaven. On its way thither it had to cross a vast river-the cloud-water-which flows between the world of men and the bright realm of Yama and the Pitris, or fathers. But it was not left to make the dread journey alone or unprotected; for, as the Vedas tell, it was taken up by a cow (i. e., a cloud) from the divine world, which conveyed it across the heavenly waters and over the Milky Way to Yama's dwelling. For this reason it was made a religious ordinance of the Hindus that the dying person |