phenomenon is thus accounted for in the Athenian Oracle: "The Blood is congealed in the Body for two or three Days, and then becomes liquid again in its tendency to corruption. The Air being heated by many persons coming about the Body, is the same thing to it as motion is. 'Tis observed that dead Bodies will bleed in a concourse of people, when Murderers are absent as well as present, yet Legislators have thought fit to authorise it, and use this Tryal as an Argument at least, to frighten, though 'tis no conclusive one to condemn them." At Hertford Assizes, holden in the fourth year of Charles I., Sir John Maynard, Serjeant-at-Law, took down the deposition of the minister of the parish in which a murder had been committed

"That the Body being taken out of the Grave thirty Days after the party's death, and lying on the Grass, and the four Defendants (suspected of murdering her) being required, each of them touched the dead Body, whereupon the Brow of the dead, which before was of a livid and carrion colour, began to have a dew, or gentle sweat arise on it, which encreased by degrees, till the sweat ran down on drops in the face; the brow turn'd to a lively and fresh colour; and the deceased opened one of her Eyes, and shut it again three several times: she likewise thrust out the Ring or Marriage Finger three times, and pulled it in again, and the Finger dropt blood on the Grass."

The minister of the adjoining parish, who also was present, gave on oath exactly similar testimony.

Park quotes from the Chrestoleros of Bastard, an early English epigrammatist (1598), a sarcastic reference to this topic

"Phisition Lanio never will forsake

His golden Patiente while his Head doth ake :
When he is dead, farewell. He comes not there;
He hath nor cause, nor courage to appear-
He will not looke upon the face of Death,

Nor bring the dead unto her mother Earth.

I will not say, but if he did the deede,

He must be absent-lest the Corpse should bleed."

66

So, Doctor, I see you

To this might be added the jocular, albeit ill-timed, remark addressed to a physician attending a funeral: ire going home with your work!?

Copley's Wits, Fits, and Fancies (1595) contains an anecdote in ›oint. A lady, it is related, went to church so disguised that she hought no one could know her. It chanced, however, that her lover net her and, recognising her, addressed her. "Sir," she exclaimed, 'you mistake me. How know ye me?" "All too well," was the eply; "for so soon as I met you, behold my wounds fell fresh ableedng. Oh! hereof you only are guilty."

Scot testifies, on credible report," of the wound of a murdered ian renewing its bleeding in the presence either of a dear friend or f a mortal enemy. "Divers also write," he proceeds, "that if one ass by a murthered body (though unknown), he shall be stricken ith fear, and feel in himself some alteration by Nature."

According to Grose, three loud and distinc. knocks at the head of

the bed of a sick person, or at the bed's head or the door of any of his relations, are ominous of death; and the "dead ruttle," a particular kind of noise made in respiring by one in the extremity of illness, still continues to be so regarded in the north, as well as in other parts, of England.

Among the superstitions associated with death may be ranked the popular notion, to which we have before adverted, that a pillow stuffed with the feathers of a pigeon prevents an easy expiry ;-"if they lie upon pigeon's feathers, they will be languishing and never die, but be in pain and torment." This the British Apollo (1710) contemptuously dismisses as an old woman's story, with the explanation: "but the scent of Pigeons' Feathers is so strong that they are not fit to make Beds with, insomuch that the offence of their smell may be said (like other strong smells) to revive any Body dying, and if troubled with hysteric Fits. But as common practice, by reason of the nauseousness of the smell, has introduced a disuse of Pigeons' Feathers to make Beds, so no experience doth or hath ever given us any example of the reality of the fact."

The withering of bay trees was, we gather from Shakespeare, a funeral omen. Thus we read in Richard II.—

"'Tis thought the King is dead: we will not stay;
The bay trees in our country are all wither'd.'

On this passage Steevens observes that Holinshed confirms the representation, attesting: "In this yeare, in a manner throughout all the realme of England, old baie trees withered;" and that it was esteemed a bad omen the commentator on Shakespeare decides on the authority of Lupton's Book of Notable Things, in which we are instructed that "neyther falling sycknes, neyther devyll, wyll infest or hurt one in that place whereas a bay tree is. The Romaynes calle it the plant of the good Angell." Lupton, it may be added, quotes Servius in behalf of the statement that if a fir-tree be touched. withered, or burnt by lightning, it premonstrates the speedy death of the master or mistress thereof. Other "most certaine tokens of death," we are told, are the waxing red of the forehead of the sick, the falling down of the brows, the waxing sharp and cold of the nose, the diminishing of the left eye with a running at the corner, turning to the wall, coldness of the ears, impatience of brightness, falling of the womb, pulling straw or the bedclothes, frequent picking of the nostrik with the fingers, and overwakefulness.

Allan Ramsay, speaking of Edge-well Tree, describes it to be an oak growing beside a fine spring in the vicinity of Dalhousie, closely observed by the country people who give out that the death of one of the family is signified by the falling of a branch. "The old tree some few years ago fell altogether," writes the poet; "but another sprang from the same root, which is now (1721) tall and flourishing, and lang be 't sae!"

Werenfels refers to a widely diffused weakness. "The superstitious person could wish indeed that his estate might go to his next and best friends after his death," he writes; "but he had rather leave it t

anybody than make his will, for fear lest he should presently die after it."

A writer in the Athenian Chronicle, who inconsistently enough qualifies such talk as ordinarily being nonsense and as depending more upon fancy than anything else, asserts that he knew a family "never without one cricket before some one died out of it; another that had something like a wand struck upon the walls; and another where some bough always falls off a particular tree a little before death." In the same work we read of the death or beheading of a king or powerful noble as commonly being heralded by his picture or image suffering some considerable damage, occasioned by its falling from where it hung, "the string breaking by some strange invisible touch." Thus Heylin's Life of Laud records that upon the Archbishop entering his study, to which none save himself had access, he found "his own picture lying all along on its face, which extremely perplexed him, he looking upon it as ominous."

Our countrymen north of the Tweed regarded the "Deitht-thraw," or pain and contortion sometimes attending death, with superstitious horror; a thraw being taken as an obvious indication of a bad conscience. Leyden, in the glossary to the Complaynt of Scotland (1801), informs us that it used to be held, when a person was secretly murdered, that if the corpse were watched with certain mysterious ceremonies the death-thraws would be reversed on its visage, and it would denounce the perpetrators and circumstances of the murder. He gives a verse of a ballad, of which he had heard some fragments, on the subject of the murder of a lady by her lover. Her seven brothers

were watching the corpse; and the verse proceeded—

"'Twas at the middle o' the night

The cock began to craw;

And at the middle o' the night

The corpse began to thraw."

Heron's Journey (1799) notes that tales of ghosts, brownies, fairies and witches are the frequent entertainment of a winter's evening among the native peasantry of Kircudbrightshire; who commonly fancy that they see the "wraiths" of dying people, which are visible to one and not to others of the company. Belief in the wraith or spectral appearance of one about to die, indeed, is a firm article in the creed of Scottish superstition, nor is it strictly confined thereto. Although universally regarded as a premonition of the disembodied state, the wraith of a living person does not, says Jamieson, indicate that he shall soon die. The season of the natural day at which the spectre appears is understood to be a certain presage of the time of he person's departure. If it be early in the morning, it forebodes long ife, even arrival at old age; if in the evening, the propinquity of leath. Sometimes, Heron adds, the good and the bad angel of the ndividual are observed to be contending in the respective shapes of a white dog and a black; and only the ghosts of wicked people are upposed to return to visit and disturb their old acquaintance.

CORPSE-CANDles, fetch-lights, OR DEAD-MEN'S-CANDLES.

Corpse-candles are very common appearances, says Grose, in the counties of Cardigan, Caermarthen, and Pembroke, as well as in other parts of Wales; and they derive that appellation from their resembling not the body of the candle but the illumination or “fire;” which fire "doth as much resemble material candle-lights as eggs do eggs" (to use the language of an honest Welshman), save that these candles are irregular in their manifestations, sometimes visible and sometimes disappearing, especially if any one comes near them or in the way to meet them. On these occasions they vanish, but, presently reappearing behind the observer, hold on their course. If a little candle of a pale-bluish colour is seen, it is followed by the corpse of an abortion or an infant; if a large one, by the corpse of an adult. If two, three, or more, of various sizes (some big and some small) appear, then shall as many corpses pass together and of such ages or degrees. If two candles come from different places and be seen to meet, the corpses will do the same; and, if any one of these candles be observed to turn aside through some bypath conducting to the church, the attendant corpse will be found to take exactly the same way. Sometimes these candles indicate the places whereat people shall sicken and die. Moreover, they have appeared on the bellies of pregnant women previous to their delivery; and they have predicted the drowning of passengers over a ford. Another variety of fiery apparition peculiar to Wales is that called Tan-we or Tanwed. As Mr Davis (the honest Welshman aforesaid) testifies, "this appeareth to our seeming, in the lower region of the air, straight and long, not much unlike a glaive, mours or shoots directly and level (as who should say I'll hit) but far more slowly than falling stars. It lighteneth all the air and ground where it passeth, lasteth three or four miles or more for aught is known, because no man seeth the rising or beginning of it; and, when it falls to the ground, it sparkles and lighteth all about." The death of the freeholder on whose land it falls is commonly held to be announced thereby; and "you shall scarce bury any such with us," proceeds our authority, "be he but a lord of a house and garden, but you shall find some one at his burial that hath seen this fire fall on some part of his lands." Occasionally those whose death is thus foretold have personally witnessed the luminous apparition. Two such examples are recorded by Davis as having happened in his own family.

The Cambrian Register (1796) gives it as a notion widely current in the diocese of St David's that, shortly before death, a light is seen to issue from the house in which, sometimes even from the bed whereon, the sick person lies, and that it pursues its way to the church in which the body is to be interred, in the very track subsequently to be followed by the funeral; the name given to this light being Canwyll Corpt, or Corpse Candle.

Of the superstitious man Bishop Hall writes in his Characters of Vertues and Vices (1608): "Some wayes he will not go, and some be dares not; either there are Bugs, or he faineth them. Every Lanterna

is a Ghost, and every noise is of Chaines. He knowes not why, but his Custom is to go a little about, and to leave the Crosse still on the right hand."

OMENS AMONG SAILORS.

Petronius Arbiter notes a very singular marine superstition to the effect that no one on shipboard must pare his nails or cut his hair except in a storm. Usually the boldest of mankind, sailors nevertheless are often the most abject slaves of superstitious fear; thereby justifying the observation of Scot that "innumerable are the reports of accidents unto such as frequent the seas, as fishermen and sailors, who discourse of noises, flashes, shadows, echoes, and other visible appearances, nightly seen and heard upon the surface of the water." The union in sailors of the two extremes of superstition and profanity has been frequently dwelt upon. The man who dreads the stormy effects of drowning a cat, or of whistling a country-dance while leaning over the gunwale, will only too often, it has been observed, wantonly defy his Creator by the most daring execrations and the most licentious behaviour. A prejudice also prevails against the transport of corpses. Dr. Pegge refers the aversion to whistling to their singular estimate of the Devil's power and agency in stirring up the winds, and explains that they regard it as a mockery, and, consequently, an enraging of the Evil One. Even Zoroaster, we learn, believed in the existence of a Spirit of Evil, named Vato, capable of arousing violent storms of wind. The loss of a water-bucket or a mop is also reckoned very unlucky; but the presence of children is deemed auspicious to a ship. In spite of their dislike of whistling, it is to be remarked that they practise it themselves when there is a dead calm.

The appearance of dolphins and porpoises, Pennant writes, is far from being esteemed a favourable omen by seamen, their gambols in the water being taken as premonitory of an approaching gale; even as Willsford has it in his Nature's Secrets: "Porpoises, or Sea-Hogs, when observed to sport and chase one another about ships, expect then some stormy weather;" which tradition is preserved in Ravenscroft's comedy of Canterbury Guests (1695): "My heart begins to lean and play like a porpice before a storin." Willsford continues his list

"DOLPHINES, in fair and calm Weather persuing one another as one of their waterish pastimes, foreshews Wind, and from that part whence they fetch their frisks; but if they play thus when the Seas are rough and troubled, it is a sign of fair and calm Weather to ensue. CUTTLES, with their many Legs swimming on the top of the Water, and striving to be above the Waves, do presage a Storm. SEA-URCHINS, thrusting themselves into the Mud, or striving to cover their bodies with Sand, foreshews a Storm. COCKLES, and most Shell-Fish, are observed against a Tempest to have Gravel sticking hard unto their Shells, as a providence of Nature to stay or poise themselves, and to help weigh them down, if raised from the bottome by Surges. Fishes in general, both in salt and fresh Waters, are observed to sport most, and bite more eagerly, against Rain than at any other time."

Sir Thomas Browne refers to another topic