INDEX.
361
containing game or pigeon’s feathers or cock’s feathers; easy on floor—a Hindoo custom, 60; occurs by threes, 61—this noticed among the cardinals, 62; a token of Divine wrath which rests on the house until clergyman’s visit, 63; spirits restless until the third day after, 333
Death, divinations of: from footprints among ashes of deceased person’s straw bed; by watching in church porch on St. Mark’s eve, 51; by cauff-riddling, 52
Death, portents of: breaking a wedding ring, 42; meeting a funeral; sun shining on face at a funeral; hearing the mould falling on coffin from a distance; a crowing hen, 43–4; Border presages:—sound of bells at night; chirping of crickets; lights in the air; voice of absent person; grip of invisible hand; howling of dogs; brood of hen birds; double yolks; deformed lambs; chirping of fish; sounds in the house; magpies flying round a house or ravens croaking near it; swords falling out of scabbards; and one’s own wraith by daylight, 45; “shell fire:” light from the bodies of sick persons (Sussex), ib.; building or rebuilding a house (Lancashire), ib.; wraiths, waffs, swarths, or fetches, 46; howling of dogs; jackdaws or swallows descending chimney; three butterflies; “winding sheet” or “dead spale” in candle; three mysterious raps, 48; an Albino mole; thirteen persons at a repast; crowing of cock at dead of night; hovering of birds near a house and resting, 49; a robin “weeping” (Suffolk); rattling of the church door (Sussex); heavy sound of funeral bell; the cry of screech owl; three caws of a can-ion crow; breaking a looking glass; a dead body not stiffening; taking the first snowdrop or primrose into a house—or broom in May—or blackthorn bloom; Sussex couplet on sweeping with broom in May, 50
Death, usages after: saining or blessing a corpse; rite termed Dishaloof practised with lights, salt, dishes, and sieve; verses used, 53; the attendants tell fortunes, then dance, sing, &c.; candle used obtained of witch or physically unlucky person; of old made of human fat; kept burning throughout the night; the cat turned out of doors during the ceremony; corpse watched by a kinsman and a stranger until burial; gatherings of neighbours—by day “a sitting;” by night, a “lykewake;” Scripture reading in Wales; songs and games in Scotland, 54; old song quoted; Bishop Voysey’s injunction against such solemn nightwatches or drinkings in Cornwall; on Borders, cards played on the coffin; the watcher must touch the corpse with his hand; rising of a corpse on removal of the plate of salt—laid again with the aid of a pious old woman, 55; death of a watcher and disappearance of the corpse, 56; the looking-glass shrouded and clock stopped, ib.; the plate of salt on breast of corpse used in England, ib.; chorus of the lykewake dirge, ib.; custom of opening the door at death widespread, ib.—rhyme used by Meg Merriles, 57; poor of Durham expect visitors to touch the corpse, ib.—grew probably from the notion that bleeding would follow murderer’s touch, ib.; looking-glass covered lest a spirit should appear in it or lest corpse should look over gazer’s shoulder (Devon), ib.; trinkets not buried with a woman, ib.; living persons’ clothes not buried with a corpse (Denmark), ib.; nor tears allowed to fall on the dying (Denmark), ib.; head of married woman bound
