Note 37 — II.—BIRTH, MARRIAGE AND DEATH.
Reading edition
Middle Kingdom, Vol. II. p. 262. This superstition appears to be perhaps the most wide-spread of any connected with death. When a death takes place, in many parts of Europe, all the doors and windows should be unfastened, as it is thought that the first pains of purgatory are inflicted by the soul squeezing through the closed doors. We have something like this in Swift’s “Journey from this World to the Next,” where the spirits, conversing on their way to the throne of “Micros,” relate to each other how they had to wait till an open door or window in the house in which the death had taken place, enabled them to get free from it. There is a curious superstition in Devonshire that the departure of life is delayed where any lock is closed in the dwelling or any bolt shot. See Popular Antiquities, Vol. II. p. 231. ↑