SPECK] A MOHEGAX-PEQUOT DIARY 263 



flames at the horse's flanks until he passed the swamp. A white 

 horse's head has been seen lying there, too, but when the person 

 ajjproached it it moved farther along, just keeping ahead of him. 

 Women who have gone through the bars near the swamp at night 

 have felt hands holding onto their skirts, and even herds of pigs 

 have dashed out to terrify belated travelers at night. Some Indians 

 claim to have felt hands grasping their feet as they went by." 



Mrs. Fielding was aroused one night by a light that shone from 

 the hill above her house, and while she stood watching it from her 

 window she saw it ascend the hill to a small heap of rocks, where it 

 blazed up high and subsided. Then it moved to another rock and 

 blazed high again, subsiding as before in a few moments. She had 

 reason to be certain that no one was in the pasture, and the next 

 morning she found no evidence of burning about the rocks. The 

 thing was repeated a number of times, and she considered herself 

 to have been visited by spirits.^ 



The will-o'-the-wisp, known as ga'ckatcaqg, presents a term 

 possibly derived from ga'ckatca (Natick, quslikodteau), "he crosses 

 or passes over (something)," which would give us the plausible mean- 

 ing "that which passes over." 



"Fox fire," the phosphorescent glow emanating from damp rotten 

 wood, is locally djibai wa'qkcas, " ghost, or spirit, fox," but beyond 

 relating occasions when it has been seen the Indians have little to 

 record of its development in folklore. Nevertheless this name has 

 been one of the most persistent survivals among the feeble remnants 

 of the New England tribes. At Mashpee, the Nauset and Wampanoag 

 descendants remember tci''pai wa'rjkcas, "spirit fox," as a sign of death 

 to the beholder, and upon the little reservation at Middleboro, Mass., 

 Charlotte Mitchell, a survivor of the Massachusetts, gives tci''pai 

 wa'rjkcas as "devil," all of which bear witness to a widespread belief 

 in the East, especially when we encounter a similar belief under the 

 name djibai' skwuda', " spirit fire," among the St. Francis Abenaki, 

 whose ancestry embraces bands of refugees from Massachusetts and 

 Maine. At Penobscot the corresponding term is djibai' skwude. 



' Quoted from ref. i, p. 202. 



