soul, he could not die ony way, till neighbour
Puttick found out how it wer. 'Muster S——— ,'
says he, 'ye be lying on geame feathers, mon,
surely;' and so he wer. So we took'n out o'
bed and laid'n on the floore, and he pretty soon
died then!" The last thing a man longs to eat
seems to be pigeon. A very respectable farmer's
wife being applied to for some pigeons which a
sick man fancied he could eat, said, "Ah! poor
fellow, is he so far gone? A pigeon is generally
almost the last thing they want. I have supplied
many a one for the like purpose." If a pigeon
is seen sitting on a tree, or enters a house, or
from being wild grows tame, that is a sign of
death. If any bird flies into a room and out
again by an open window, that is a sign of
death among the inmates of the house. The
soul may be seen going out as a steam or a blue
vapour about five minutes after death. Then
every lock in the house, of boxes as well as of
doors, should be unfastened. It used to be
thought that the first pains of purgatory were
inflicted by the squeezing of the soul between
the hinges, and that leaving doors and lids
unlocked and open caused to the departing a free,
painless escape. The lingering look of a mother's
love upon a dying child, prevents the fleeting of
its soul, and the child struggles in vain to die,
till the compassionate eyes of the mother are
averted.

That is an eye of holiness; but there is also
the evil eye, which causes death. An old woman
had a rosary of lucky stones that is to say, of
stones with holes in them hung up in her
cottage. She owned unwillingly to a friendly
lady that it was meant for protection against (he
evil eye. "Why, Nanny," said the lady, "you
surely don't believe in witches now-a-days?"
"No'! I don't say 'at I do; but certainly i'
former times there was wizzards and buzzards,
and them sort o' things." "Well," answered
the lady, laughing, "but you surely don't think
there are any now?" "No! I don't say 'at
ther' are; but I do believe in a yevil eye." As
to the old lady's buzzards, there is a story in
Yorkshire of an ignorant person being asked if
he ever said his prayers, who repeated them as
follows:

  "From witches and wizards and long-tail'd
               buzzards,
   And creeping things that run in hedge-bottoms,
                           Good Lord deliver us."

Then again there are to be remembered, as part
of the popular faith of the ignorant, the legends
still attached to rocks, and streams, and churches.
Breedon church, in Lincolnshire, stands alone on
the top of a high hill with the village at its foot.
They began building it within the village till
they changed the site, because every night the
stones laid during the day were carried up
to the lull top by doves. The site and name of
Winwick church was decided by a pig who every
night came crying wee-wick! wee-wick! and
carried the stones in his mouth from the wrong
place selected, to the ground hallowed by St.
Oswald's death. The devil built, the bridge at
Kirkby Lonsdale, and the picturesque stones in
the stream below are those which he was
carrying in his apron when its string broke. At
Peel, in the Isle of Man, a witch with a basin
of water said once that the herring fleet would
not return. Every ship was lost, and she was
rolled down hill in a barrel set with spikes. The
grass has never grown since, on the barrel's
track, and to this day you may "see the mark
all down." The Welsh peasant hears spirit-
hounds, the Cron Annwn, when the storm sounds
over the mountains. Sometimes swelling like
the bay of a bloodhound, the nearer they are to
a man the less their voice, and the further the
louder. The shriek of the Cyoeraeth is often
heard. She is the hag of the mist, who sits in
the mountain fog, with torn dishevelled hair,
lank arms and claws, long black teeth in her
corpse-like face, and leathery bat's-wings. Her
name means cold grief, and her wail freezes the
blood of those who hear it. Sometimes she
flaps her wings against the window-pane, and
moans the name of one within who has been
marked for death. It is this hag who cuts the
torrent beds by dropping, when she is about to
settle on a mountain, the huge stones she
carries in her cloak as ballast when she flies. In
some parts of South Wales, this hag has no sway,
but it is Brenhin Llwyd, the grey king, who
sits ever silent in the mist. There is a Welsh
fairy, the Pwcca, that is seen constantly upon
the moor in the form of a handful of loose dried
grass rolling before the wind. Even upon a
wisp of dead grass will the fancy be set rolling.
Miss Costello tells a Pyrenean legend which
detects the spirit of the Lord of Orthez in two
straws moving on the floor.

The fancy must and will work. The
whole world is full of wonders that reveal
the divine glory and goodness. Life is full
of strange problems, of entanglements of
love and enmity, of days of mirth and weeping,
that engross attention from all powers
of the mind and soul. While we are ignorant,
we link religion to such fanciful opinions as
those of which a handful has been shaken out
on this leaf of paper. Teach folks a little
better; let their fancy, thriving upon diet wholesome
and abundant, be the steady helper to
them, that it may add its quickening influence
to their pleasure and their work here, and
become their hope for the hereafter. Superstition
will soon vanish. All that is poetry in folklore
may abide while there is literature in our
country. As superstition, it degrades: as poetry,
it raises us. For,

    Shakspeare's self, with ev'ry garland crown'd,
          Flew to those fairy climes his fancy sheen,
     In musing hour; his wayward sisters found,
          And with their terrors drest the magic scene.
     From them he sung, when, 'mid his bold design,
          Before the Scot, afflicted and aghast,
     The shadowy kings of Banquo's fated line
          Through the dark cave in gleamy pageant passed.

But it is not worth while to drag a dying man
out of his bed because we fancy he is lying upon
game feathers, or to go into a church at