The presence of pigeon or game feathers is said to be another hindrance to the exit of the soul; and, occasionally, in order to facilitate its departure, the peasantry in many parts of England will lay a dying man on the floor. A Sussex nurse once told the wife of a clergyman that ‘never did she see anyone die so hard as Master Short; and at last she thought—though his daughter said there were none—that there must be game feathers in the bed. So she tried to pull it from under him, but he was a heavy man, and she could not manage it alone, and there was none with him but herself, and so she got a rope and tied it round him, and pulled him right off the bed, and he went off in a minute quite comfortable, just like a lamb.’[17] In Lancashire, this belief is so deep-rooted that some persons will not allow sick persons to lie on a feather-bed; while in Yorkshire the same is said of cocks’ feathers. Shakespeare alludes to the practice where Timon says[18]—
Pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads.
And Grose remarks: ‘It is impossible for a person to die whilst resting on a pillow stuffed with the feathers of a dove, for he will struggle with death in the most exquisite torture.’ This is also a Hindu and Mohammedan belief, and in India ‘the dying are always taken from their beds and laid on the ground, it being held that no one can die peaceably except when laid on mother earth.’[19] In Russia, too, there is a strong feeling against the use of pigeon feathers in beds.
The summons for the soul to quit its earthly tenement has been thought to be announced, from early times, by certain strange sounds, a belief which Flatman has embodied in some pretty lines:
My soul, just now about to take her flight
Into the regions of eternal night,
Methinks I hear some gentle spirit say,
‘Be not fearful, come away!’
Pope speaks in the same strain:
Hark! they whisper, angels say,
‘Sister spirit, come away!’
And in ‘Troilus and Cressida’ (iv. 4), the former says:
Hark! you are called; some say, the Genius so
Cries ‘Come!’ to him that instantly must die.