Note 422 — Chapter V

Compare with this belief the Scotch superstition mentioned by Pennant, that if a dog or cat pass over a corpse the animal must be killed at once. As illustrative of this idea, Mr. Henderson states, on the authority of “an old Northumbrian hind,” that “in one case, just as a funeral was about to leave the house, the cat jumped over the coffin, and no one would move till the cat was destroyed.” In another, a colly dog jumped over a coffin which a funeral party had set on the ground while they rested. “It was felt by all that the dog must be killed, without hesitation, before they proceeded farther, and killed it was.” With us the custom survives; its explanation has been forgotten. See Henderson’s “Notes on the Folk Lore of the Northern Counties of England,” 1866, p. 43.