1893.] S. C. Mitra — Browning and Drowned Persons. 107 



stition by saying that such reluctance is only a relic of the ancient belief 

 that the water-spirit very naturally used to get angry on being deprived 

 of his intended victim and, consequently, bore ill-will towards the per- 

 sons who ventured so to deprive him, and would try to wreak vengeance 

 on him at the first opportunity. 



There is another class of popular beliefs as regards the time when 

 the body of a drowned man would float up. In past times, it was 

 popularly believed that the body of a drowned man would float up on„ 

 the ninth day. This belief is prevalent in the county of Durham, 

 as we are informed, on the authority of Mr. Henderson. Sir Thomas 

 Browne, the author of the " Hydriotaphia " and the " Religio Medici,'* 

 has also discussed this popular belief in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica. 



In ancient times, people believed that the spirits of those persons 

 who had been drowned in the sea, wandered for one hundred years, 

 owing to their corpses not having been properly buried with all the 

 rites of sepulture. Relics of this belief are to be found even at the 

 present day. The belief still lingers among ignorant fisherfolk in some 

 parts of England, that the spirits of those sailors who have been drowned 

 by shipwreck frequent those parts of the shores near which the ship- 

 wreck took place, and some of them even assert that they have heard 

 the spirits of the drowned sailors "hailing their own names." Hunt, 

 in his " Romances of the West of England," refers to this belief, and says, 

 that fisherfolks are afraid of walking in such localities after nightfall. 

 This belief is similar to the Bengali superstition, described above, that 

 the spirits of drowned persons haunt those tanks and wells in which 

 they have been drowned, and has its counterpart among other races of 

 people all over the world. 



Lastly, there are some curious popular beliefs about the methods by 

 which the corpses of drowned persons may be discovered. One of these 

 methods is to tie up a loaf of ryebread in the shirt of the drowned per- 

 son and set it afloat in the water, near the place where the person was 

 drowned. It is believed that the loaf of bread will float until it reaches 

 the spot where the body of the drowned person lies, and then sink 

 The Indian Mirror of Thursday, the 29th September 1892, gives the 

 following account of a search, in the aforesaid way, after the body of a 

 drowned boy : — 



" A novel method was adopted at Springfield, Illinois (United 

 States of North America), in searching for the body of a drowned boy. 

 The searchers tied up a loaf of ryebread in the lost boy's shirt and set 

 it adrift in the water above the place whore the lad was drowned, the 

 theory being that the loaf would float until it came close to the body. 

 The package in this case is said to have floated uutil it reached a certain 



