which the earth-bound, fleeting character of the Fetch appears very clearly.

'They perceived that Hallfred was sore hurt, and led him to the after-part of the ship, and there made a couch for him, and asked how he fared: at which he chanted a verse, signifying that he must die. Then saw they how a woman followed the ship, of great stature, and armed with a breast-plate: she walked upon the billows as though she had been on dry land. Hallfred looked at her, and saw she was his Fetch. Then he said, "Thou and I are parted for ever." She answered, Thorold, wilt thou have me to thine own?" But he said, “Nay.” Then said the younger Hallfred, "I will take thee to be mine.' With that she disappeared. Shortly afterwards Hallfred died.'

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Or it took the form of some animal which the doomed man loved; but the most unerring token was a horse: Who sees a horse sees his Fetch,' was proverbial; and thus, when Sightwat dreamed that his favourite horse, Folski, came into the banquet-hall, and said, 'Why feastest thou here, and offerest me nothing to eat or drink?' and proceeded to devour all that was on the table, he knew that he had seen his Fetch, and that his hour was come, and at once set his house in order. There are many other strange beliefs about the power that some possessed of visiting distant places in the spirit, while what seemed to be the body remained behind: but we are not now giving an exhaustive account of doubles and werewolves: we only wish to make it clear that at the time when ghosts of the departed were frequent visitors, an inferior part of the living man had an independent existence, and was in the constant habit of manifesting itself.

We now come to consider the effect produced on man by death. The soul, that is to say, all that

part of man which is capable of infinite growth in good or evil, at once sets forth on its long journey to the dwelling of Odin or Freya, of Thor or Hela, thence never to return till

That great day, the twilight of the gods, When Muspell's children shall beleaguer Heaven.

What shall be the morrow of that day when heaven and earth shall be consumed by fire from hell,. can be but dimly guessed: for across the smoke and din of the battle the prophetess can only faintly discern a brighter dawn: but till then the soul has its own occupations, its own bliss or bale, and can no more come back to comfort or to disquiet the associates of its earthly interests. The Fetch meanwhile lingers on the earth among the objects in which it has been wont to take delight: and we now see how it is that the boldest man may well shudder at the thought of meeting the Fetch, or, as he would call it, the ghost of his departed friend. For the apparition is not the man himself; it is but the unworthiest part of him, now wholly severed from its nobler comrade, the soul, but still, as in lifetime, able at times to clothe itself in bodily form. The ghost bears a fantastic resemblance to the departed: it acts as he would act if some wicked power cursed him with the gift of a giant's strength, while it took from him reason and conscience, and left him to the guidance of his lowest feelings or momentary passion. If the man has been good or great, the ghost still retains some shadowy likeness to the noble soul with which it has been so long associated, and will take some pleasure in furthering the objects which the man while on earth had at heart. While these objects are still subsisting, the ghost will from time to time interpose, and when they have ceased to

be, the ghost also shall pass away. Thus it will watch over his descendants, warn them of danger, and do battle in their behalf against the fiends and Fetches that support their enemies' quarrel. It is keenly alive to the honour of the family, and severe in its reproofs towards a degenerate clansman :

Art thou a soldier that leadest men into battle, and dost thou shrink from standing up against nine warriors? Shall not We stand by thy side, We who watch over thy house?'

But if the family honour were seriously endangered, these selfconstituted guardians cut away the rotten branches with reckless and unsparing hand; as in the instance of Thidrand, who was about to fall away from the faith of his fathers: 'Hall was about to hold high festival at Yule; and among the company was a seer named Thorhall, who was observed to take no part in the revel. His host asked him why he was sad, and he answered:

"It is borne in on my mind, that during this festival a seer must be slain.' "I can tell you the meaning of this," replied the host: "I have a ten-year old ox whom I call the Seer, because he is wiser than the rest of the cattle; him will I slaughter for the festival, and there shall be no occasion for sadness: or, I will even put off the entertainment." "It avails not," rejoined

the seer, "what is to be shall surely come to pass." So the festival was made ready; but few came that had been bidden, for the weather was rough and unfavourable. In the evening, when men were sitting down to table, Thorhall said, "I pray all men to take heed to what I say: let none go out of the house this night, or much ill will come of it: what tokens soever there may

be, let none regard them: harm will come if any answer." At midnight, when most men were asleep, there came a knock at the door: all made as if they heard it not: but when it came the third time, up sprang Thidrand, the son of the host, and cried-"Shame on you to feign sleep when guests are at the door!" Then he took his sword and went out. As he saw no one, he went on farther to see what had become of them that had knocked, and then he heard a riding from the north,' and was aware of nine women in dark gar ments with drawn swords in their hands: at the same moment he heard a riding from the south, and beheld nine women, all in bright garments, mounted upon white horses. Then he would have turned back to tell his friends what he had seen, but the dark-clothed women made at him, he stoutly defending himself the while. A long time afterwards Thorhall awoke, and asked for Thidrand, but there was no answer. Then said he, "Too long has been our sleep." Then they went out into the frosty moonlight, and found Thidrand sorely hurt, and carried him in; and be told them all that had befallen him. At dawn that morning he died, and a mound was piled over him after the heathen fashion. Then Hall asked Thorhall the meaning of these strange things. He answered, "Well may I guess these women were nothing else but the Fetches of your kinsmen: the old religion is about to pass away, and a better faith is coming in its place: but these family spirits cleave to the old religion, and know that it must pass away, and that you and yours will cast them off: they were, therefore, determined to take their toll of you; wherefore thy son have they carried off to be their own:

now the better spirits would fain have helped him, but for this time they had no power: howbeit they will ever stand by you and yours when ye shall have taken to you that unknown faith which they foreshadow and defend.""

The monk to whom we are indebted for this story moralises upon it at some length. He sees in it a daring attempt of the fiend to retain his dominion over Iceland, which he had hitherto justly regarded as his own private property. With

deference we think this view is incorrect, and that Thorhall was right; these women were not demons, but misguided ghosts of the departed, full of the passions of their former life, and acting just as any Icelandic gentleman would have expected. Christianity was at that time illegal, and so disgraceful that a whole clan was put to shame if one member embraced what was then considered an impious and womanly superstition. The short-sighted ghosts felt keenly the impending infamy, and could not be expected to be much wiser than their living relations, for their actions were always wild and unreasoning, their efforts constantly misdirected, and their warnings for the most part unavailing. Beings of the same order as those spectres who slew Thidrand in the story just related made a fruitless attempt to help his brother.

'This vision did Thurstane the son of Hall behold the night before he was slain. At midnight three women stood by his bed in dark garments, and with faces bathed in tears. And she that stood nearest to his head thus spake to him, Sleepest thou, Thurstane? Thine Irish thrall seeketh thy life, because thou didst mutilate him. Up, betake thee to thy weapons. Whither shall we go when thou art dead?" "Ye shall go to my son Magnus," replied he. "We may not tarry long with him," said they.' Despite the warning, the Irishman had his

revenge that night. We are not distinctly told so, but we gather that Magnus was not really the son of Thurstane, and that this was why the family Fetches could not tarry with him.

These are instances of the ghosts of men who in their life-time were devoted to wide and unselfish interests. But most men while on earth take pleasure in lower and more transitory objects, and the ghost will follow out the tastes it has been suffered to acquire, but in a more unrestrained and whimsical fashion; for the soul is gone, and with it all care for self-respect, for man's opinion, or the vengeance of Heaven. Thus the savage Asmund was laid solemnly in his tomb, and beside him his hound and his horse, while his foster-brother sat watching the body. But in the night the dead man arose and devoured the horse, and tried to take the life of his foster-brother, thus perpetrating two foul outrages of which he would have been incapable while still controlled by the soul. Thorleif, the poet, came out of his grave and taught an illiterate shepherd to compose a verse in his honour; a singular reproduction of the legendary origin of Bedæ venerabilis ossa.' The ghost of the sociable Beli sits all night on his tomb and gossips with his friend across the water; while the spectre of the plundering rover, Soti, lurks in his grave to watch his treasure, murders the visitor, and cowers like a dastard before the soldier who resists. The dead miser crouches upon his gold in the form of a yellow serpent whom no one can approach, and the warrior still prizes the arms and trophies which were laid beside him.

But if a man has been thoroughly bad and selfish, caring nothing for family honour or the good opinion of his neighbours, his Fetch will in this life gain unnatural power, and after death will become a hideous

exaggeration of all that was most repulsive in the character of the living man. Thus the spiteful ghost delights in purposeless mischief, the tyrannical chief continues to harass his subordinates, and he who has taken undue delight in this world's goods, haunts the homestead which was once his own, and will not allow his successor to enjoy it. After the death of FightingStyr, who murdered his guests in the bath, and killed many a poor fellow without paying damages to the injured family, his body was laid for a night in a farm-house on its way home. In the middle of the night the farmer's two daughters got up to look at the body of the famous soldier, when the malicious ghost, watching his opportunity to do evil, caused the blood-stained corpse to arise and say 'Welcome, girls, welcome to me in the dead man's home,' whereupon one girl was seized with frenzy, and died before daylight. When the head of a family died it was no unusual circumstance for the widow to go round to the neighbours and say, 'My husband is dead at last, but bad as was our plight while he lived, it is far worse now, for he comes back to his bed every night; some of us hath he maddened, and others he hath slain; none of us dare look upon him, and all the servants talk of leaving unless some remedy be found, and that speedily; we pray you help us in this strait.' The death of a man of violent and rapacious character was seldom a sufficient riddance to the neighbourhood, as will be seen in the following story, which shows very curiously how firm was the belief that the ghost ordinarily lingered amid the scenes of its former life.

Hrapp, an Icelander of evil and quarrelsome life, waxed old and took to his bed, then he called his wife and said, "I have never been a lie-a-bed, so I suppose we are about to part; now I should like to have

a grave dug for me at the front door, and I will be let down into it standing on my feet, that I may the more conveniently see what is going on in the house." With that he died, and it was done as he had desired, but ill as he had been to deal with while living, he became much worse now he was dead; for he walked a great deal, some say he killed many of the servants, and caused much annoyance to the neighbours, so the family had to leave the house.' They dug hin up and buried him elsewhere, bu his son who afterwards took pos session of the house went mad.

But not all re-appearances showed the dead to be bad men; many ac cidental circumstances, or states of mind at the moment of death, might induce the ghost to return to his home. For instance, when men were drowned it showed the soul had been honourably received by Ran, the goddess who entertained them who perished at sea, if the Fetches returned to take part in their own funeral banquet, and a belief in this habit of the drowned was still in force after faith in the goddess herself had been dispel by Christianity.

'On the evening of the day o which Thurkell and his men wer drowned, this event happened a Holy fell. Gudrun was on her way to church when men were gone! their beds and as she entered t churchyard-gate she saw before her a goblin: he bowed to her and scil. "Great news, Gudrun." She an swered, Hold thy peace, fon creature," and passed on to th church. When she got to it s seemed to see Thurkell and Es mates standing before it, with se water dripping from their clothes She did not speak to them, b went on to the church and ther remained awhile, and then returne to the house, where she expected find them: but they were not there. All this amazed her greatly. T

days afterwards arrived news of the shipwreck.'

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Now the baser part of man's nature may attach itself to a great variety of low and transitory objects, but one thing it is sure to prize highly, and that is the body and all that immediately concerns it after the Fetch has long ceased to care for family or lands, it retains vital force enough to cling as desperately as ever to the loathsome corpse in which is gathered all that now remains to it of life: and those who have chased away the restless spectre which haunted their paths, or made their homes horrible, may find that their tormentor still lives if they track him to his last visiting-place, the grave. From the wealth of anecdotes on this head which abound in all Northern literature we select two, which are interesting from their strange mutual agreement and contradiction.

Gudrun was very religious: she was the first woman in Iceland who learned the psalter; and she would often be at her prayers in church by night, and her granddaughter Hardis along with her. Now it is said that one night Hardis dreamed that a woman came to her wrapped in a mantle, and of an ill countenance, who said, "Tell thy grandmother I am ill-pleased with her; for she lies grovelling upon me all night long, and lets such hot drops fall upon me that I am all in a blaze." Next morning Gudrun had the pavement of the church floor where she had been used to kneel taken up, and deep in the earth they found black ugly bones, and a place made ready for the working of spells: so they were sure this was the tomb of a wise woman;

and the bones were removed to a place where never man came.'

The second shows the behaviour of a good ghost under similar circumstances; in the shape in which it has come down to us it is of later origin, and seems to have been tampered with by the monk who tells it. As will be seen, the ghost, in this instance, is not the Fetch but the soul for the old belief in the double nature of the body's tenant was fading away.

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There was a man named Haldor, who was a good Christian: now it seemed to him, one spring night, that a man of bright and glorious appearance stood beside him, and spake thus to him: "I have something to say unto thee, Haldor: it sore misliketh me that thy handmaid, as she cometh in from the milking, is wont ever to dry her feet over my grave: moreover, it is

known to me that thou art about to build a church here in the homestead; now it is my wish that this church do stand over my bones." Then in his sleep Haldor asked who this man might be. He answered, "My name is Asolf: I came to this country when it was first taken possession of, and I was a good Christian, as thou wilt have heard. Almighty God has permitted me to tell thee of my burialplace." When Haldor awoke he straitly charged his handmaiden to dry her feet elsewhere.'

As the belief in the reality of spectres faded away, the Fetch tended more and more to become a modern ghost, until at last the soul of Gudrun, the terrible heroine of the Volsunga saga, actually returns from the spirit world to caution one of her descendants.