Page:A book of folk-lore (1913).djvu/118

Rh one night on the sands at Porth-Towan, when all was still save the monotonous fall of the light waves upon the sand, distinctly heard a voice from the sea, exclaiming,—

This was repeated three times, when a black figure, like that of a man, appeared on the top of the hill. It paused for a moment, then rushed impetuously down the steep incline, over the sands, and was lost in the sea.

Mr. Hunt says that this story is told in different forms all round the Cornish coast.

In Whydah, Africa, the king sends a young man annually to be thrown into the sea. In the Issefjord, a part of the Cattegat Strait, a sea-demon formerly dwelt who stopped every ship and demanded a man from it. But the priests exorcised it by exposing the head of St. Lucius, the pope.

When Xerxes, in the course of his conquests, came to the sea, he sacrificed a human life to the Hellespont; and at Artemisium the handsomest Greek captive was slain over the bows of the admiral’s ship.

Saxo Grammaticus tells how a Norseman’s ship was mysteriously stopped at sea until a man was thrown overboard. Kinloch says that in ancient Scotland, when a ship became