2o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



his man saw a mouse creep out of his mouth and run away; 

 every one searched for the animal, but could not find it, and the 

 miller never awoke.* In Bohemia it was considered dangerous to 

 go to sleep while thirsty, as the soul was sure to wander abroad 

 in search of water. Baring-Gould f tells the story of three labor- 

 ers, having lost their way in the woods, and, parched with thirst, 

 seeking in vain for water. At last one of them lay down and fell 

 asleep, while the others continued their search until they found a 

 spring. After drinking they returned to their comrade, when 

 they saw a little white mouse run out of his mouth, go to the 

 sjjring, drink, and then return to the sleeper. In German super- 

 stition the souls of the dead assume the forms of mice, and when 

 the head of a house dies it is said that even the mice of the house 

 abandon it, and that, in general, every apparition of mice is con- 

 sidered a funereal presage ; the funeral of St. Gertrude, represented 

 surrounded by mice, being thus accounted for. J 



The position of the mouse in the folk-lore of the soul is not 

 quite clear. The Mojaves believe that curling upward with the 

 smoke from the funeral pyre the soul rises and floats eastward 

 to the region of the rising sun ; but, if its purity has been sullied 

 with crime or stained with human blood, it is transformed into a 

 rat and must remain four days in a rat-hole to be purified before 

 it can share the joys of heaven.* Mr. Ralston! tells us that in 

 the Nijogorod Government the Milky-Way is called the Mouse- 

 Path, the mouse being a well-known figure of the soul. Miss 

 Phipson^ says that the dormouse, from its awakening from sleep 

 with the return of spring, was sometimes employed in ecclesiasti- 

 cal art as a type of the resurrection. Per contra, Mr. Conway ^ 

 assures us that the shudder which some nervous persons feel at 

 the sight of even a harmless mouse is a survival of the time when 

 it was believed that in this form unshriven souls or unbaptized 

 children haunted their former homes, and from the many 

 legends that report the departure of unhallowed souls in the 

 shape of this timid creature. 



Birds vie with mice in the honor of being human soul-bearers. 

 The heathen Bohemians thought that the soul flew out of the 

 mouths of the dying in the shape of birds. Grimm % says such ideas 

 were common in pagan Scandinavia. In the Edda of Saemund it is 

 said that souls in the form of singed birds flit about the nether 

 world like SAvarms of flies. The Bohemians thought that bird- 

 shaped souls flew restlessly from tree to tree until the bodies were 



* Grimm, he. cit. ^ "Animal Lore," p. 131. 



•f " Curious Myths," p. 461. () " Demonology and Devil Lore," vol. i, p. 128. 



% De Gubernatis, " Zoological Mythology," vol. ii, p. 67. 



^ Bancroft, "Native Races of the Pacific Coast," vol. iii, p. 526. 



I " Songs of the Russian People," p. 109. % "Teutonic Mythology," vol. ii, p. 828. 



