Note 98 — Chapter I · THE GODLINGS OF NATURE.

In the same connection may be noticed the very common prejudice which exists in India against saving drowning people. This is familiar in Western folk-lore. It is supposed to be alluded to in the “Twelfth Night” of Shakespeare, and the plot of Sir W. Scott’s “Pirate” turns upon it. Numerous instances of the same idea have been collected by Dr. Tylor and Mr. Conway.98 Dr. Tylor considers that it is based upon the belief that to snatch a victim from the very clutches of the water spirit is a rash defiance of the deity which would hardly pass unavenged. Mr. Black99 accounts for the idea on the ground that the spirits of people who have died a violent death may return to earth if they can find a substitute; hence the soul of the last dead man is insulted or injured by anyone preventing another from taking his place. This last theory is very common in Western folk-lore. Thus Lady Wilde writes from Ireland100:—“It is believed that the spirit of the dead last buried has to watch in the churchyard until another corpse is laid there, or to perform menial offices in the spirit world, such as carrying wood and water, till the next spirit comes from earth. They are also sent on messages to earth, chiefly to announce the coming death of some relative, and at this they are glad, for their own time of peace and rest will come at last.” So in Argyllshire,101 it was believed that the spirit of the last interred kept watch around the churchyard until the arrival of another occupant, to whom its custody was transmitted. This, as we shall see in connection with the custom of barring the return of the ghost, quite agrees with popular feeling in India, and furnishes an adequate explanation of the prejudice against rescuing the drowning and incurring the wrath of the former ghost, who is thus deprived of the chance of release by making over his functions to a substitute.