Do not take it as a wrong,
Do not take it as a transgression.”
These quasi-human attributes of the soul being so complete, it is an easy stretch of the imagination to provide it with a house, which is generally in practice identified with the body of its owner, but may also be identified with any one of its temporary domiciles. Thus in the charm already quoted we read—
“Return to your own House and House-ladder,
To your own House-floor, of which the planks have started,
And your Roof-thatch ‘starred’ with holes.”
The state of disrepair into which the soul’s house (i.e. the sick man’s body) is described as having fallen, is here attributed to the soul’s absence.[68] The completeness of this figurative identification of the soul’s “house” with its owner’s body, and of the soul’s “sheath” or casing with both, is very clearly brought out in the following lines:—
“Cluck! cluck! Soul of this sick man, So-and-so!
Return into the Frame and Body of So-and-so,
To your own House and House-ladder, to your own Clearing and Yard,