44 Transactions. 
happened to visit the workshop, and the apprentice, unnoticed 
by his master, pounced upon the bird and slipped it into the 
coffin. Shortly afterwards master and apprentice carried the 
coffin to its destination. No sooner had the lid been unscrewed 
than the sparrow took to flight, to the evident discomposure of 
the assembled friends, who looked upon the bird as the disem- 
bodied soul of the deceased. 
Very different were the manifestations associated in the 
popular mind with the death of the wicked. Our local annals 
supply us with at least one example in which exaggeration has 
been carried to the verge of the ridiculous. We refer to the 
stories told in connection with the death of the notorious 
prosecutor Lag. Thus it is said that shortly before he died he 
was actually experiencing on earth a foretaste of the penalties 
that had been prepared for him in the world to come. So terrible 
was the agony he endured that he prayed for bucketfuls of water 
to be thrown over him to ccol the burning heat of his body, a 
heat which must have been terrible indeed, for we are told that 
when he spat on the floor his spittal “frizzed” for several seconds 
on the spot where it fell, and left thereon an indelible impress. 
Even death did not terminate these unwonted manifestations, for 
a black dog and a raven were seen to accompany the funeral 
cortege all the way to the grave, while the four horses which were 
engaged in the unhallowed work of taking him thither all shortly 
afterwards perished in the same mysterious fashion. I have 
myself conversed with a woman who heard a sound as of chains 
rattling, and saw long spectral shadows flit fitfully past as she 
stood by the “nettle neuk ” where the hated prosecutor lay. 
Happily, death is not always, or even frequently, accompanied 
by cantrips of this kind, and it is almost with a sense of relief we 
turn to the more ordinary associations of this the most solemn 
period in man’s chequered history. When a person died it was a 
common practice to stop the clock, and to cover the mirror with 
a cloth, while on the breast of the dead a vessel of salt was placed 
as a protection against evil influences. Napier suggests that this 
latter custom had its origin in the rites of the ‘sin eaters,” who, 
having placed a plate of salt and one of bread on the breast of 
the corpse, repeated a series of incantations and afterwards 
devoured the contents of the plates, by which means the deceased 
person was supposed to be relieved of such sins as would have 
