The reader need scarcely be reminded that these death-shoes were laid by the side of the corpse on account of a popular superstition formerly very prevalent, of one form of which Aubrey has left us a curious record in the remarkable Yorkshire dirge so frequently printed[1]. He tells us that this superstition had its origin in the belief which obtained of the souls of the dead "having to pass through a great lande full of thornes and furzen;" and also that the custom of burying the dead in coffins, formed from the hollowed trunks of trees, and shaped like the boats or canoes they had been wont to use, sprung from a belief that in their passage to the realms of immortality the souls of the departed had to cross the waters which divided the world of the living from that of the dead[2].
In the belief that the one instance I have given will serve as well as twenty to prove the position I have advanced, namely, that great results may be looked for from our English archæologists consulting the writings of their fellow labourers on the continent, I will content myself with pointing out some few works which have come under my own observation, and seem to me deserving the attention of those who take an interest in the study of primeval antiquities.
Klemm's Handbuch der Germanischen Altherthumskunde[3] is a small octavo volume, rendered both useful and interesting from its numerous illustrations, and the abundant references in the foot notes to the writings of German antiquaries on every branch of the early antiquities of their country.
More peculiarly local in its specific object, but very useful
