Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/430

388 I almost think .… saw what had happened. I feel no doubt myself that lead coffins could float. We know a large iron vessel will, without any wood casing, and I suppose the flood subsiding would move them. The vault had been walled up, so that no one could have been in it.'"

"Cambridge."

Here the lady makes a guess at the flotation of leaden coffins. An empty iron vessel can float, therefore a lot of leaden coffins can float, can be turned topsy turvy, and so on, when water enters a vault in a church. Perhaps Mr. Paley was justified in his scepticism on this point.

In any case the presence of "casual water" in quantities capable of displacing leaden coffins, cannot account for the repeated disturbances of one vault alone, in Barbadoes, on five occasions, in eight years. The water would have washed the sand on the floor about the coffins, and would have left other unmistakable traces of its action. Again, Barbadoes is not, apparently, within the seismic area; it was undisturbed by the destructive earthquakes of the last few years in the West Indies. Earthquakes so local as to disturb, five times, an area of a few feet, and nothing else in the island, are not credible earthquakes.

It is not possible for me to find the cause of the disturbances, but I ask, are the other narratives instances of mythically localising in various places a known set of facts, or, if not, what are they?

I should add that, while the Book of Christ Church, a contemporary record, verifies the Orderson list and dates of burials, the Book contains no reference to the disturbances. They had no business in the mortuary record.