As in days gone by so also at the present time, there is, perhaps, no superstition more generally received than the belief in what are popularly known as ‘death-warnings,’[20] reference to which we shall have occasion to make in a later chapter.
It has been urged again, that at the hour of death the soul is, as it were, on the confines of two worlds, and hence may possess a power which is both prospective and retrospective. In ‘Richard II.’ (ii. 1), the dying Gaunt exclaims, alluding to his nephew, the young and self-willed king:
Methinks I am a prophet, new inspired,
And thus expiring do foretell of him.
Nerissa says of Portia’s father in ‘Merchant of Venice’ (i. 2): ‘Your father was ever virtuous; and holy men at their death have good inspirations.’ This idea may be traced up to the time of Homer,[21] and Aristotle tells us that the soul, when on the point of death, foretells things about to happen; the belief still lingering on in Lancashire and other parts of England. According to another notion, it was generally supposed that when a man was on his death-bed, the devil or his agents tried to seize his soul, if it should happen that he died without receiving the ‘Eucharist,’ or without confessing his sins. In the old office books of the Church, these ‘busy meddling fiends’ are often represented with great anxiety besieging the dying man; but on the approach of the priest and his attendants they are represented as being dismayed. Douce[22] quotes from a manuscript book of devotion, of the time of Henry VI., the following prayer to St. George: ‘Judge for me when the most hedyous and damnable dragons of helle shall be redy to take my poore soule and engloute it into theyr infernall belyes.’ One object, it has been urged, of the ‘passing bell’ was to drive away the evil spirit that might be hovering about to seize the soul of the deceased, such as the king speaks of in 2 Henry VI. (iii. 3):
O, beat away the busy meddling fiend,
That lays strong siege unto this wretch’s soul,
And from his bosom purge this black despair.
We may find the same idea among the Northern Californians, who affirmed that when the soul first escaped from the body an evil spirit hovered near, ready to pounce upon it and carry it off.[23]
It is still a common belief with our seafaring community on the east coast of England, that the soul takes its departure during the falling of the tide. Everyone remembers the famous scene in ‘David Copperfield,’ where Barkis’s life ‘goes out with the tide.’ As Mr. Peggotty explained to David Copperfield by poor Barkis’s bedside, ‘People can’t die along the coast except when the tide’s pretty nigh out. He’s a-going out with the tide—he’s a-going out with the tide. It’s ebb at half arter three, slack water half an hour. If he lives till it turns he’ll hold his own till past the flood, and go out with the next tide.’ In the parish register of Heslidon, near Hartlepool, the subjoined extract of old date alludes to the state of the tide at the time of death: ‘The xith daye of Maye, A.D. 1595, at vi of ye clocke in the morninge, being full water, Mr. Henrye Mitford, of Hoolam, died at Newcastel, and was buried the xvi daie, being Sondaie. At evening prayer, the hired preacher made ye sermon.’ Mrs. Quickly in ‘Henry V.’ (ii. 3) speaking of Falstaff’s death says: ‘’A made a finer end and went away an it had been any christom child; ‘a parted even just between twelve and one, even at the turning o’ the tide.’ In Brittany, death claims its victim at ebb of the tide, and along the New England coast it is said a sick man cannot die until the ebb-tide begins to run. It has been suggested that there may be some slight foundation for this belief in the change of temperature which takes place on the change of tide, and which may act on the flickering spark of life, extinguishing it as the ebbing sea recedes.