Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/298

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(Vol. ix. p. 189.)

belief prevails among the Haidahs of Queen Charlotte Islands. The dying Haidah "sees a canoe manned by some of his bygone friends, who come with the tide to bid him welcome to their domain. . . . His friends call him and bid him come. They say : 'Come with us ; come into the land of light ; come into the land of great things ; wonderful things ; come into the land of plenty, where hunger is unknown ; come with us and rest for evermore. . . . Come with us now,' the spirits say, 'for the tide is about to ebb and we must depart.'" Rev. Charles Harrison, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xxi. p. 17. Is it not possible that the superstition in this country connecting the ebb-tide with death may have originally included a belief in a boat which conveyed the soul to the land of the Hereafter ? Procopius' story of the ferrymen of souls from Brittany to "Brittia" suggests this.

_____________ The following extract, treating of the legends which associate the devil with Lincoln Minster, is taken from the Lindsey and Lincolnshire Star, May 21st, 1898. Is it possible that the stories are genuine folk-tales uninfluenced either directly or remotely by book knowledge ? The connection between the Prince of Evil and Lincoln has long been proverbial, but the popular saying contains no allusion to Bishop Remigius.