Thus, then, Davy Jones's Locker became, by a mixture of theogonies, 'the ocean, the deep sea-bottom, the place to which the body was committed, and to which the souls of the wicked fled.'
This meaning is now somewhat modified. Sailors do not, as Smollett says they did in his day, regard Davy Jones as the fiend who presides over all the evil spirits of the deep, and who is seen in various shapes, warning the devoted wretches of death and woe. In fact, it is not Davy Jones they think of at all now, but his Locker; for to go to Davy's Locker is to be lost at sea and to find a watery grave.
There is, however, a curious survival of the personal element still to be traced in some of the sailors' chanties. Take, for instance, that remarkable one about 'Burying the Dead Horse,' which still puzzles the passengers on board the packets sailing to the Antipodes. Without going into the question of the song and its attendant ceremonies just now, the following lines may be quoted as bearing on our subject:
'You poor old horse, what brought you here,
After carrying turf for many a year?
From Bantry Bay to Ballyack,
When you fell down and broke your back?
You died from blows and sore abuse,
And were salted down for the sailors' use.
The sailors they the meat despise;
They turned you over and —— your eyes;
They ate the meat and picked the bones,
And gave the rest to Davy Jones.'
All the offal of a ship is thrown over to Davy Jones—doubtless because there is nothing else to be done with it.
The favourite demon, if one may use the expression, of British sailors is now Old Nick, and one may trace his origin even more easily than that of Davy Jones. We can follow him through Saxon, German, Danish and Norwegian transitions to one of the names of Odin—Hnickar—for even All-father Odin shared the fate of his Oriental predecessors, and became demonized. Others, again, have carried the name Hnickar back still further to the Egyptian Nika, the serpent of the lower world, 'the Typhonic enemy of the Sun in his night-journey.'
It is to the same root that we owe the Necken of the Baltic, and the Nixies—the water-fays—of the German legends. It is to the Norwegian Nökke, also, that we owe the Wild Huntsman of the Sea, on which the story of the Flying Dutchman and a host of other legends of demon vessels and demon mariners are founded.
There is, however, some confusion in the nautical mythology between the original Old Nick and the popular Saint Nicholas. This saint became the Christian successor of Neptune, as the protector of seamen. 'This saintly Poseidon,' says Mr. Conway, 'the patron of fishermen, in time became associated with the demon whom the British sailor feared if he feared nothing else. He was also of old the patron of pirates; and robbers were called "St. Nicholas' clerks."'
It is certainly one of the curiosities of plutology that the patron saint of children who is still honoured at Christmas as Santa Claus should be the same as the dreaded Old Nick of the seafarers.
These investigations are extremely interesting, and may lead us far; but our present purpose is merely to find an explanation of a popular phrase.