Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/217

Rh Sir John Lubbock has traced this belief in the power of the soul to leave and return to the body to the inhabitants of Madagascar, the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Mangaujas of South and the Yorubans of West Africa, the Tongans, the Peruvians, and other tribes.

Frequently the soul in its mundane journeyings took the visible guise of some animal. Grimm tells us how King Gunthram's soul, while he slept on his faithful follower's lap, came out of his mouth in the form of a snake, and attempted to cross a stream. To aid the snake, the henchman bridges the stream with his sword, when it passes over, goes up a hill, and, after a little, returns and enters the king's mouth. Presently the king wakes, and relates how in a dream he had crossed an iron bridge, and entered a mountain filled with gold. Claud Paradin, in his "Symbola Heroica," has a variant of this wonderful dream, accompanying the legend with an engraving of a sword with a small animal—possibly a mouse—standing on the blade, and the motto "Sic sopor irrupit." In this variant the king returns to his palace and summons all the wise men of his kingdom to interpret the dream, and for once in the world's history the opinions of the savants were unanimous. A large treasure was concealed in the hill, and its existence was thus revealed by a miracle.

Hugh Miller illustrates the Celtic theory of dreams by a similar legend. Two young men sitting on a mossy bank overhanging a small cascade, one of them, overcome by the heat of the day, falls asleep, when his companion is surprised to see issue from his mouth a little indistinct form scarcely larger than a humble-bee, which disappears over the cascade. The watcher in alarm tries to waken his companion, but, before he succeeds, the cloud-like creature returns and enters the sleeper's mouth. Then he opens his eyes and relates a wonderful dream; how he crossed a broad river on a bridge of silver, and found on the further shore heaps of gold and jewels. It is more frequently the guise of a mouse that the wandering soul delights to masquerade in, though according to Grimm it is the devil's brides out of whose mouths the soul runs in the shape of a red mouse. Thus we are told that in Thuringia a servant-girl fell asleep while her companions were shelling nuts, when they observed a little red mouse creep out from her parted lips and run out of the window. One of those present then shook the sleeper, but, not succeeding in waking her, moved her to another place. Presently the mouse ran back to the former place, and dashed about, seeking the girl, but, not finding her, it vanished, when the girl instantly died. A miller, cutting fire-wood in the Black Forest, fell asleep over his work, when