NEWSPAPER FOLK LORE.
The following paragraph is now going the round of the newspapers without reference to the source of information. I copy it from the Morning Chronicle of Friday, December 9.
"Escape of a Snake from a Man's Mouth.—An extraordinary circumstance occurred a few days ago to Jonathan Smith, gunner's mate, who was paid off at Portsmouth on the 6th of May last, from her Majesty's ship Hastings, 72 guns, on her return to England from the East Indies. He obtained six weeks' leave. On the expiration of that time, after seeing his friends at Chatham, he joined the Excellent, gunnery-ship at Portsmouth. After some time he was taken unwell, his illness increased, and he exhibited a swelling in his stomach and limbs. The surgeon considering that it arose from dropsy, he was removed into Haslar Hospital, and after much painful suffering, although he had every attention paid to him by the medical officers of the establishment, he died. Two hours before his death a living snake, nine inches in length, came out of his mouth, causing considerable surprise. How the reptile got into his stomach is a mystery. It is supposed that the deceased must have swallowed the reptile when it was young, drinking water when the Hastings was out in India, as the ship laid for some time at Trincomalee, and close to a small island called Snake Island. The crew used very often to find snakes on board. The way they used to get into the ship was by the cable, and through the hawsers into the forecastle. The deceased was forty years of age. He was interred in Kingston churchyard. His remains were followed to the grave by the ship's company of the Excellent."
The proverbial wisdom of the serpent is here clearly exemplified. It has long been well known among sailors that rats have the sense to change their quarters when a vessel becomes cranky; whence I believe arises the epithet "rat," which is sometimes scurrilously applied to a politic man who removes to the opposition benches when he perceives symptoms of dissolution in the ministry. The snake, in the simple narrative above quoted, was evidently guided by some such prudential motive when he quitted the stomach of the dying sailor, which could not continue for any great length of time to afford protection and support to the cunning reptile.
I have an amiable friend who habitually swallows with avidity the tales of sea-serpents which are periodically imported into this country on American bottoms, and I have sufficient credulity myself to receive, without strict examination into evidence, the account of the swarming of the snakes up the cables into a ship; but I cannot so readily believe that "considerable surprise" was caused in the mind of any rational biped by the fact that a living snake, which had attained to the length of nine inches, took the very natural precaution to come out of a dying man's mouth.
How the reptile got into his stomach is a mystery which the newspaper writer has attempted to clear up, but he has not attempted to explain how the reptile managed to live during many months in so unusual a habitation as a man's stomach.
Some obliging correspondent of "N. & Q." will perhaps have the kindness to explain this remarkable fact in natural history.
A Londoner.