From Whinny-moore when thou may passe,
Every night and alle;
To Brig o' Dread thou comes at laste,
And Christe receive thy saule.
From Brig o' Dread when thou are paste,
Every night and alle;
To Purgatory Fire thou comes at laste,
And Christe receive thy saule.
If ever thou gave either milke or drink,
Every night and alle;
The fire shall never make thee shrinke,
And Christe receive thy saule.
But if milk nor drink thou never gave neean,
Every night and alle;
The fire shall burn thee to the bare beean
And Christe receive thy saule.'[1]
What reader, unacquainted with the old doctrine of offerings for the dead, could realize the meaning of its remnants
thus lingering in peasants' minds? The survivals from
ancient funeral ceremony may here again serve as warnings
against attempting to explain relics of intellectual antiquity by viewing them from the changed level of modern
opinion.
Having thus surveyed at large the theory of spirits or souls of objects, it remains to point out what, to general students, may seem the most important consideration belonging to it, namely, its close relation to one of the most
- ↑ From the collated and annotated text in J. C. Atkinson, Glossary of Cleveland Dialect,' p. 595 (a = one, neean = none, beean = bone). Other versions in Scott, 'Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' vol. ii. p. 367; Kelly, 'Indo-European Folk-lore,' p. 115; Brand, 'Pop. Ant.' vol. ii. p. 275. Two verses have perhaps been lost between the fifth and sixth. J. C. A. reads 'meate' in vv. 7 and 8; the usual reading 'milke' is retained here. The sense of these two verses may be that the liquor sacrificed in life will quench the fire: an idea parallel to that known to folklore, that he who gave bread in his lifetime will find it after death ready for him to cast into the hellhound's jaws (Mannhardt, 'Götterwelt der Deutschen and Nordischen Völker,' p. 319), a sop to Cerberus.
