bodied in a picture called " The White Moth," in
the Royal Academy Exhibition for 1897.
t English Folk Rhymes.
\ Gentleman's Magazine.
PAGAN MYTHS AND CHRISTIAN FIGURES.
265
numerous procession was on the point of
starting, a person called out, 'Turn the bees,'
upon which a servant, who had no knowledge
of the custom, instead of turning the hives
about, lifted them up and then laid them
down on their sides. The bees, thus in-
vaded, quickly fastened upon the attendants,
and in a few moments the corpse was left
quite alone, hats and wigs were lost in the
confusion, and it was a long time before the
sufferers returned to their duty."*
In many tales the spirit of the departed
becomes a bird,! as in classical fable Progne
assumed the form of a swallow, Philomela
of a nightingale, and Ceyx and Halcyone of
kingfishers. In some modern French de-
votional pictures human souls in shape of
birds flutter around the Infant Saviour, and
in Raphael's " Madonna del Cardeleno " St.
John Baptist presents his Master with a gold-
finch. This belief, of the soul taking the
form of a bird, is alluded to in Byron's
beautiful Unes in the " Prisoner of Chillon":
A light broke in upon my brain,
It was the carol 01 a bird ;
It ceased, and then it came again.
The sweetest sound ear ever heard.
* *
And it was come to love me when
None lived to love me so again,
And cheering from my dungeon's brink
Had brought me back to feel and think.
I know not if it late were free
And broke its cage to perch on mine,
But knowing well captivity,
Sweet bird, I could not wish for thine.
Or if it were in winged guise
A visitant from Paradise :
For Heaven forgive the thought, the while
Which made me both to weep and smile,
I sometimes deemed that it might be
My brother's soul come back to me.
Somewhat similar in mind to the unfortu-
nate prisoner was the Worcester lady men-
tioned by the same noble author (in the
notes to the Bride of Abydos), who, "imagin-
ing her daughter to exist in the form of a
singing bird, literally furnished her j)ew in
Gentleman's Magazine, 1856.
t SeeGnww, " The Three Little Birds " (No. 96),
where, whenever one of the queen's children is
thrown into the river a little bird flies up singing :
and "The Juniper Tree" (47), in which the
muitiered stepchild takes the form of a bird and
informs the by-standers of his fate ; this last has, I
think, been widely current in England.
VOL. XXXVII.
the Cathedral with cages full of the kind."
Or the Duchess of St. Albans, who on her
death-bed said to her daughter. Lady Guil-
ford, " I am so happy to-day, your father's
spirit is breathing upon me : he has taken the
shape of a little bird singing at my window."
THE SOUL, FROM A WALL-PAINTING, "JUDGMENT
OF THE DEAD," BRITISH MUSEUM.
The Egyptians represented the soul as a
sparrow-hawk with a human head.* "The
hawk has soared " is a regular expression in
speaking of a death:! and Sadi, the Persian
poet, uses the following symbolism, " Now
that the falcon of his soul would tower into
the zenith of the sky, why hast thou burdened
his pinion with a load of covetousness ?
Hadst thou released his skirt from the talons
of carnal desires, he would have soared on
high into the angel Gabriel's abode." And
of Sadi himself it is written that it was at
Shiraz, in a.h. 690, "that the eagle of the
immaterial soul of Shaikh Sadi shook from
his plumage the dust of his body." Though
far away from Persia, the Indians near the
falls of St. Anthony, in Minnesota, believed
that the eagles frequenting the place were
the souls of their dead warriors : and all the
members of a certain Polish family are
popularly supposed to become eagles after
death.
Among the Romans a similar belief seems
to have prevailed, and to have been mani-
fested in their usual theatrical manner. At
the obsequies of an Emperor it was the
custom to have an eagle concealed at the top
of the funeral pile, and, as soon as the fire
Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, p. 84.
t Petrie, Egyptian Tales, vol. ii., p. 84.
2 L
a66
PAGAN MYTHS AND CHRISTIAN FIGURES.
was kindled, to let it fly, and as it mounted
to heaven it was believed to be, or to bear,
the soul of the Emperor, who was henceforth
worshipped among the gods.
Another Polish legend tells us that the
eldest daughters of the Pileck family are
transformed into doves if they die unmarried,
into owls if married.
Lew Trenchard House, the Rev. S. Baring-
Gould informs us, was haunted by a white
lady who went by the name of Madame
Gould, supposed to be the spirit of a lady
who died there in 1795. "A stone is shown
on the ' ramps ' of Lew Slate Quarry where
seven parsons met to lay the old madame,
a.id some say that the white owlj which
nightly flits to and fro in front of Lew
REPRESENTATION OF THE SOUL, FROM THE
SARCOPHAGUS OF ARTEMIDORUS.
House is the spirit of the old lady conjured
by the parsons into a bird."
The Duchess of Kendal thought that
George the First flew in at her window in the
form of a raven ; and m Swedish superstition
the night-raven screaming in the forest or on
a wild moor is supposed to be the soul of a
murdered man ; this ominous bird is ever
flying east, in the hope of reaching the Holy
Sepulchre, for when it arrives there it will
find rest." Probably the ravens represented
as accompanying St. Meinrad were origin-
ally an allusion to his murder he was killed
by thieves but afterwards the story of his
taking the nest was made to account for
them.
The dove was often supposed to be the
soul of some child or young person who had
met with foul play or died a violent death.
An English man-at-arms said that he saw a
snow-white dove rise from the flame when
Joan of Arc was burnt. A German legend
tells us of an old house at Weinheim, in the
end of the last century, where was a bedroom
in which, whenever the lights were put out, a
white pigeon fluttered along the wall on one
side of the room. At length the wall was
pulled down, when the skeleton of a newly
born child was discovered ; it was buried in
the churchyard, and the dove appeared no
more.
^Sir Henry Ellis, in his edition of Brand,
quotes (from the " Ballad of the Bloody
Gardener ") some delectable doggrcl de-
scribing the appearance to a young man of
the soul of his beloved in the form of a dove,
she having been murdered at the instigation
of his mother.*
As soon as he had clos'd his eyes to rest,
A milk-white dove did hover on his breast,
The fluttering wings did beat, which wak'd him
from his sleep.
Then the dove took flight and he was left.
To his mother's garden, then, he did repair.
For to lie, and lament himself there ;
When he again the dove did see sitting on a
myrtle-tree ;
With drooping wings it desolate appeared.
" Thou dove, so innocent, why dost thou come ?
O hast thou lost thy mate as I have done,
That thou dost dog me here all round the valleys
fair?"
When as he'd spoke, the dove came quickly down,
And on the virgin's grave did seem to go,
And on its milk-white breast the blood did flow ;
To the place he did repair, but no true love was
there.
In the Breton ballad of Lord Nann and
the Korrigan it is related of the faithful
husband, who would on no account break
his marriage troth, and of his broken-hearted
wife :
It was a marvel to see men say
The night that followed the day.
The lady in earth by her lord lay.
To see two oak-trees themselves rear
From the new-made grave into the air,
And on their branches two doves white.
Who were hopping gay and light.
Which sang when rose the morning ray,
And then towards heaven sped away.
* Brand, iii. 217.
PAGAN MYTHS AND CHRISTIAN FIGURES.
267
So again in the ballad of Count Nello of
Portugal, the Count loving and being beloved
by the Infanta, is put to death by the King
her father, and she dies of grief. The Count
is buried near the porch and the Infanta at
the foot of the altar. " On one grave grows
a cypress, on the other an orange-tree ; one
grows, the other grows ; their branches join
and kiss." The King, when he hears of it,
orders them both to be cut down. From
the cypress flows noble blood, from the
orange-tree blood royal ; from one flies forth
a dove, from the other a wood -pigeon.
When the King sits at table the birds perch
before him. " Ill-luck upon their fondness,"
he cries; "ill-luck upon their love! Neither
in life nor in death have I been able to
divide them."*
An old superstition connected with Mont
St. Michel, in Normandy, relates how the
betrothed of Montgomerie, one of the
followers of the Conqueror, watched from
the summit of the rock the fading form of
the vessel that bore away her beloved, and
when it was finally lost to sight, died heart
broken, and was buried on the spot. Every
year on the anniversary of her death a white
dove is seen by the fishermen to flit around
her resting-place.
In a Swabian story is an account of a
miserly woman who, whenever she was asked
for alms, put away in a chest what she might
otherwise have bestowed upon the suppliant,
and who, being cursed by a poor man wish-
ing that all the wealth she had hoarded
might turn to worms, found on opening the
chest that the curse had taken effect. Her
husband, seeing this, pushed her into the
coffer and locked it ; but on opening it at
a later time, everything it had contained
had disappeared, but her soul (redeemed
by suffering) flew out in the form of a
dove.
In Russia, when the Deacon Theodore
and his schismatic companions were burnt
in 1682, "the souls of the martyrs appeared
in the air as pigeons."
The white dove occurs often in the Lives
of the Saints. One issued from a wound in
the side of St. Polycarp, soared above the
flames which consumed him, and winged
Essays in the Study of Folk-songs, p. 25.
its way to heaven.* St. Benedict, three
days after his last parting from the sister
whom he so dearly loved St. Scholastica
" being at the window of his cell, had a
vision, in which he saw his sister entering
heaven under the form of a dove." St.
Eulalia is represented in art with a dove
issuing from her mouth, as says the account
of her martyrdom : " Her soul sped from her,
and entered the Paradise of God, as a dove
flies to its nest."t
The first time that St. Dunstan, as Arch-
bishop, said Mass in Canterbury Cathedral,
a white dove appeared fluttering above his
head, and afterwards perched on the tomb
of Archbishop Odo, his predecessor. In the
Swedish story of St. Botvid a white dove
appears to his brother Bjorn and leads him
to the spot where the corpse of the saint is
lying ; and of St. Kenelm, the boy King of
the Mercians, who was murdered through
the machinations of his sister, it is written,
" Milk-white in innocence and pure as when
born fell the head of St. Kenelm, and from
it a milk-white dove with golden pinions
soared to heaven. "|
In the folk-tales of many countries we find
a princess who, having a pin thrust into her
head by an unscrupulous and ambitious
waiting-maid, takes the form of a white dove
until caught and the pin removed, when she
regains her human shape.
In the county Mayo it is believed that
virgins remarkable for the purity of their
lives are after death enshrined in the form
of swans (the shape into which the children
of Lir were transformed) ; and in Nidderdale
the country people say that souls of un-
baptized infants are embodied in the night-
jar. Certain birds which may be observed
flitting backwards and forwards over the
Bosphorus in the twilight of early morning
are believed by the Turks to be the souls of
the damned, condemned to fly forever over
the face of the restless waters ; and on the
I believe this is a misreading of the Acts, but
it is just as valuable as showing the belief in the
soul taking the form of a bird.
+ Possibly in these cases the saintly soul taking
the form of a dove may be in allusion to the words
of Ps. Iv. 6, " O that I had wings like a dove, for
then would I flee away and be at rest."
X Florence of Worcester.
Ethnology in Folklore, p. 159.
3 L 2
268
PAGAN MYTHS AND CHRISTIAN FIGURES.
Amazon the melancholy cry of a bird heard
by night is said to be that of a lost soul.
In Volhynia dead children are supposed to
come back to their native villages in the form
of swallows ; and in some districts of Russia
the peasantry believe that the departed in the
form of birds hover round their old homes
for six weeks and watch the grief of the
survivors, after which they fly away to the
other world ; while to the inhabitants of
Finland and Lithuania the Milky -way is
known as the "bird street" or "path,"
because the souls of the dead are supposed
to flutter along it in the form of birds. This
bird form of the soul is retained in some
modern verse. Pope makes the dying
Christian say, " Lend, lend your wings, I
mount, I fly." And, again, the very popular
hymn " Nearer to Thee " says :
Or if on joyful wing, cleaving the sky,
Sun, moon, and stars forgot, upwards I fly.
From being a soul the bird becomes
naturally a visitant from the other world ;
thus in Germany the stork is supposed to
bring the souls of babes about to make their
entry into the world (they may be seen on
German Christmas or birthday-cards bearing
small infants in their beaks, or between their
snowy pinions) ; and as they brought souls,
they came as the messengers of heaven to
call them away. " It was an ancient belief
in many countries that the birds knew all
things, and, as Ovid says, announce the will
of the gods because they are near them
that is, they fly to heaven, or, as Seneca
expresses it, birds are inspired by the divini-
ties."* "It does not come for nothing,"
is a common saying when any wild bird
becomes suddenly tame and enters, or endea-
vours to enter, the house. In this instance,
again, doves or pigeons are often the agents.
" Do you see those doves more white than
snow?" said Duke Louis of Thuringia (the
husband of St. Elizabeth of Hungary) on his
deathbed, adding, after a little while, " I
must fly away with those brilliant doves."
Having said this, he fell asleep in peace.
Then his almoner Berthold perceived doves
flying away to the east, and followed them
with his eyes.
In a Swedish folk-song a maiden, who
refuses to yield to the King's desires, is
enclosed (after the manner of Regulus) in
Leland, Etrusco-Roman Remains.
a spiked cask, and rolled to death by his
servants :
" With that from heaven descended
Two doves as bright as day ;
They took Carin the maiden,
And there were three straightway."
Miss Peacock, in the Antiquary* men-
tions the conviction of her "grandfather's
housekeeper, a Lincolnshire woman, who
had spent all her life in the country," that
a pigeon which perched on his window-sill
during his last illness was an unmistakable
" warning." The elder people, too, could
tell how the doves settled round the feet of
her grandfather as he sat in the garden, their
unwonted familiarity being soon explained
by his death. And she quotes (from Notes
and Queries) a ludicrous incident of the
connection of the pigeon with death. " The
following," says the writer, "will probably
be new to some of your readers as it was
to myself. On applying the other day to a
highly respectable farmer's wife to know if
she had any pigeons ready to eat, as a sick
person had expressed a longing for one, she
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."
An equally absurd occurrence was men-
tioned to the present writer as having taken
place in Warwickshire in recent years. A
robin flew into the house, whereupon it was
concluded that the aged grandsire of the
family was summoned hence ; so he was
straightway put to bed and a doctor called.
Great was the astonishment of the medical
man, as there was no sign of disease ; but he
was assured that the old man must die, as a
robin had, uninvited, entered the dwelling.
The appearance of a white-breasted bird
is believed in Devonshire to be the pre-
cursor of death. The death-bird of the
Oxenham family has been often mentioned ;
it is a strange bird of unknown species, with
a white breast, said, when any of the family
were in extremis, to flutter about the bed,
and then suddenly to vanish. The following
curious allusion to it is said to occur in
HoweiPs Familiar Letters^ under date of
July I, 1684 :t
April, 1895.
t Communicated to the Gentleman's Magazine,
1822.
PAGAN MYTHS AND CHRISTIAN FIGURES.
269
" Near St. Dunstan's Church, Fleet Street,
I stepped into a Stone Cutter's, and cast-
ing my eyes up and down, I spied a huge
marble, with a large inscription upon it,
which was thus :
1, " ' Here lies John Oxenham, a goodly
young man, in whose chamber, as he was
struggling with the pangs of death, a bird
with a white breast was seen fluttering about
his bed, and so vanished !'
2. " * Here lies also Mary Oxenham, a
sister of the above John, who died next day,
and the same apparition was in the room.' "
Another sister is spoken of then. And
the fourth inscription is as follows :
" ' Here lies, hard by, James Oxenham,
son of the said John, who died a child in
his cradle, a little after, and such a bird was
seen fluttering about his head a little before
he expired, which vanished afterwards.' "
The bird is said, by an old ballad, to have
flown over the head of Margaret, daughter
and heiress of Sir James Oxenham, on her
bridal eve, just as her father was returning
thanks to the guests for their good wishes.
The next day she met her death from a dis-
carded lover.
Round her hovering flies
The Phantom bird for her last breath,
To bear it to the skies.*
The writer of the above -quoted com-
munication says : " The white bird in presage
of death is a traditionary agent that super-
stition has made use of for centuries . . .
especially in the families of seafaring people."
Whenever a white owl is perched on the
ancestral home of the Arundels of VVardour,
it is believed to be a certain sign that some
of the family will be called away.f Even so
late as 1893, at Caistor in Lincolnshire, two
birds of a species unknown in the district,
haunting the neighbourhood of a house
where the owner lay dying, were believed
to be connected with his state, it being re-
membered that they had appeared on several
previous occasions as precursors of a death.
To stray for one moment again into legend
of a different class, we find beautiful heavenly
Thiselton Dyer, Ghost World, p. 98.
t The death -bird of the Magyars is a kind of
small owl. If a death-bird settles on a roof and
cries out three times "kuvic," somebody will die
in the house. In one Irish family, according to
Lady Wilde, a cuckoo always appears before a
death.
maidens who, in the shape of snow-white
swans, swoop down upon earth, and, divest-
ing themselves of their plumage, bathe their
fair forms in some limpid lake. (Even so
Zeus himself, for the love of Leda, took the
form of a swan.) These damsels are not,
however, always swans ; they are sometimes
spoonbills, geese, or ducks, even peahens
in the latter case the water, of course, is
absent but they are visitants from some
strange, unearthly, far-off land. In some
stories, however, they are doves, and the
spring or lake is present, as in the Magyar
story of The Fairy Elizabeth, where "three
pigeons come every noontide to a great
white lake, where they turn somersaults and
are transformed into girls." " In the Bahar
Danush a merchant's son perceives four doves
alight at sunset by a piece of water, and, re-
suming their natural form (for they are
Peries), forthwith undress and plunge into
its depths."*
{To be concluded^
C6e JTasting aitl of
^cbmirjtoeilet in tbe ^ijcteentb
Centutp.
By William E. A. Axon, Hon. LL.D., F.R.S.L.
HERE has been considerable con-
troversy as to the length of time
for which human life can be sus-
tained without food, and it is now
acknowledged that the limit at one time
recognised of eight or ten days is too short.
The fact that many cases of alleged fasting
are fraudulent perhaps led to the adoption
of the belief that human endurance could
not persist beyond ten days, but there is
evidence to show that life can be prolonged
without food for a much greater period.
The limit of abstinence will no doubt vary
with the constitution of the individual and
the climatic and other conditions of the
environment. Sometimes prolonged fasting
is accompanied by catalepsy, trance, or other
pathological conditions of sleep.
Prolonged fasts are recorded in the Bible.
Plato, at the close of his " Republic," tells us
* Hartland, Science of Fairy Tales, p. 260.
270
THE FASTING GTRL OF SCHMIDWETLER
of Er, the son of Armenius, who was supposed
to have been slain in battle, but revived on
the twelfth day when he was placed on the
funeral pile. Whilst unconscious he had a
vision of judgment and of the Elysian Fields.
St. Augustine mentions a man who had fasted
forty days. Cecilia de Rigeway is said to
have done the same in 1357. In 1463 John
Baret died during a prolonged fast. John
Scot, in the reign of Henry VIII., may be
called a professional faster ; forty, thirty-two,
and fifty days are named as his performances.
In the sixteenth century there were at least
seven famous fasting girls. In the seven-
teenth century we have George Fox, the
founder of the Quakers, Martha Taylor, the
'Nonsuch Wonder of the Peak," Samuel
Chilton, the wonderful sleeper, and the
Swedish Fasting Girl. The eighteenth century
saw Ann Walsh of Harrogate, Katharine
McLeod,and many others. In the last century
the detected impostures of Ann Moore of
Tutbury, of Mary Squirrel, the "Shottisham
Angel," and of Sarah Jacobs, cast discredit
on fasters. Dr. Henry Tanner's forty days'
abstinence in 1880 excited great curiosity
and controversy. Medical literature contains
ample data on the subject of prolonged fast-
ing and idiopathic sleep. This, however,
is not the place for a discussion of the
matter, and the cases cited are mentioned
only as an introduction to the following
narrative of the case of Katharine Binder,
or Cooper, of Schmidweiler. Of her fasting
there is an ample narrative in the black-letter
tract which is here reprinted :
Jt notable attb jjrobigioiis ^iatoric of a
^agben, toho for eunbrp gccrc0
ncgthcr eatcth, brinkcth, nor elcepcth,
neuther anowiJctk anu excrement, ani
Beftiueth.
c9^ A matter sufficiently opened and
auerred, by the proceedings, examinations,
and dilligent informations thereof, taken ex
officio by the Magistrate. And since by
the order of the said Magistrate Printed and
published in high Dutch, and after in French,
and nowe lastlie translated into English.
1589.
At Lxjndon,
c9^ Printed by John Woolfe.
Anno. M.D. Lxxxix.
An exact information and declaration of a
true Historie, importing : howe a Mayden of
the Towne of Schmidweiler, (scituate in the
jurisdiction of Colberberg, the demaines and
Lordship of the most noble Prince, the L.
Duke John Casimir, Countie Palatine of
Rhin, Tutor and administrator of the Pala-
tine Electorate) did neither eat or drink
anything in seuen yeres, and yet hath by
Gods grace in wonderful! manner beene
preserued aliue.
Whereas by commaundment of the most
noble Prince, my Lorde Duke John Casimir,
Countie Palatin of Rhin, Tutor and adminis-
trator of the Palatine Electorate, Duke of
Bauier, Conrad Colb of Wartemberg Esquire,
Governour for his highnes at Caiserlauter,
Adrian Lollemanne, superintendent of the
same place, Henrie Smith, and John James
Theodore, Doctors in Phisick, were deputed
and sent to see and visit the daughter of
Cun the Cooper of Schmidweiler, a Village
scituate within the jurisdiction of Colberberg,
our said Lords demaines and Lordship, who
is called Katerin, and is said not to haue
eaten, dronke, or voided anie thing out of
her body for these seauen yeeres : to the ende
also, exactlie, narrowly and truly to enquire
out the whole estate and matter of the saide
Maiden. In performance wherof, the said
Commissioners met at the said place of
Schmidweiler, upon Tuesday the 24. of
November, 1584, and there made enquirie
in manner as ensueth.
First, after the arrival of the said Com-
missioners at Colberberg toward evening the
23. of November, they sent for the said Cun
the Cooper, father of the said maiden, and
him admornshed, summoned, and adiured,
by his oath & duetie due unto his Lord,
freely to shew, and openly to confesse, upon