256 MEETINGS. 



detached rocks on the beach. Near the south-western 

 extremity of the bay there is a species of crater which must 

 formerly have been a " creux." It has three entrances, that 

 on the north-western side being open and the others on the 

 north-eastern and south-western respectively being tunnels. 

 Near this spot the granitoid gneiss makes its appearance, the 

 schist persisting for some distance further in the form of 

 large lenticular inclusions in the gneiss. A vein of decom- 

 posed granitoid rock containing orthoclase felspar with 

 abundance of chlorite cuts both the schist and gneiss. 



C. G. De La Mare, Sec. Geo. Sect. 



REPORT OF THE FOLKLORE SECTION. 



Among the various local Folklore subjects that have 

 come under my notice during the past year, I may mention 

 some interesting examples of belief in the separable soul. 

 This belief in a distinct and divisable and second self, is, as 

 you know, one of the most widely diffused legends with which 

 Folklorists have to deal. It more especially affects uncivilised 

 or semi-civilised peoples ; but we also find occasional traces 

 of it lingering even among communities like ourselves. Its 

 commonest form is that the soul leaves the body during sleep, 

 and after wandering about for a time as a separate entity, it 

 returns to the body and re-animates it. Hence the not 

 unusual idea that it is unlucky or dangerous to suddenly 

 awake a sleeper, which is obviously based — though often 

 quite unconsciously — upon this curious old belief. The form 

 or shape in which the Guernsey legends represent the soul as 

 issuing from the mouth of the sleeper, is generally that of a 

 pale bluish phosphorescent flame, whose wanderings in the 

 night can be easily watched ; and which, after various 

 meanderings, returns and re-enters the sleeping body ; its 

 outside adventures meanwhile appearing to the sleeper to be 

 the experiences of a dream. 



Some years ago the late Sir Edgar MacCulloch gave me 

 several interesting local instances of this belief, and similar 

 narrations are still current, I find, in some of the low-lying 

 districts to the west of the island. Those marshy localities 

 may perhaps to some extent account for these alleged 

 appearances. Indeed, Sir Edgar's opinion seemed to be that 

 certain gaseous exhalations, more or less luminous — like the 

 traditional will-o'-the-wisp — might really have been seen by 

 the narrators of the stories, and then superstitious fear and 

 vivid imagination might easily have done the rest. 



