field for guessing as to their origin and meaning. It is but guess-work, as of course we possess but few data to give us any clue to the meaning of many opinions that have always had a firm hold on the minds of the ignorant in these islands, or to the purpose of many practices that obtain among them, whether these be of directly African origin or otherwise. They are amusing enough from their very absurdity. But he who would root them out of negro minds will find he has a harder task than he, bargained for. Many generations must pass; education must be much more widely diffused; and religion must become much more of a reality, before the hold of these notions can be even loosened, whether they be only West-Indian forms of European or American superstitions, or whether they be direct African importations. The writer has found great difficulty in inducing people who believed in these superstitions to tell them to him. They have a sort of feeling that these things are in themselves wrong, and therefore they shrink from telling them to "the parson." And they have an instinctive perception that you will laugh at them. Some superstitions, common in these parts, are not peculiarly West-Indian. They have been transplanted bodily, and the only thing to be remarked about them is that they find a congenial soil in the Caribbean Archipelago, and flourish as vigourously as in their native homes. Such, for example, is the belief about a parson's giving a vessel a bad passagea superstition that has evidently sprung from the bad results of Jonah's presence in a certain vessel. An old West-Indian skipper once told me that he had remarked that if you carried more than one parson at once you were all right. The old fellow thought that one acted as an antidote to the other. "The trouble is when you have only one, sir," he said to me; "no matter how favourable the wind has been, it is sure either to go dead ahead or to fall off entirely." Such another superstition, prevalent in almost every Christian land, is that thirteen is an unlucky number at dinner unlucky, at least, for the one who leaves the table first. This belief is by no means confined to the lower orders. There is no wonder it should be so widespread and so deeply rooted when its origin is remembered. Most know that it sprang from the fatal result which attended Judas, the first who left the table at that most wonderful supper ever known on earth the supper at which the Great Master and his chosen apostles made the thirteen. As might be expected, the most abundant of all West-Ind an superstitions are those connected with dead bodies and funerals. When one of our people has a sore or bruise of any description, he will on no account have anything to do with a dead body. The sore is made incurable thereby, or almost so. This notion is very prevalent both in St. Croix and Grenada, two islands widely different in every respect, as unlike in their physical conformation, in the habits and manners of their people, indeed in their character altogether, as two West-Indian islands can be. But in neither of them will any person who has a sore, follow a funeral. Even if the sore be on the leg or foot, and thus be covered, it matters not. Go to that funeral you must not, if you wish the sore to get well. Even if the deceased be so near of kin to you that you must needs be one of the funeral procession, beware how you have anything to do with getting the body ready for the grave. You must not be about the corpse in any way. Instances of the firm grasp this notion has on the negro mind can be readily. furnished by any clergyman in these islands. And it is far from being relaxed even in minds that have received some cultivation. I recollect a black min in the island of Grenada, who was very intelligent, and had read a good deal, and was also a member of the Grenada House of Assembly, who assigned a bruise on his foot as the reason of his absence from a funeral where I had expected to see him. He alluded to it as a matter of course, and was apparently astonished at my being unable to feel that his excuse was a good one. This was a min, who, though entirely self-taught, could quote Shakespeare, of whom he was very fond, with great accuracy, and at much length. Doubtless, even on that occasion, he consoled himself with his favourite author; and, although he did not say so, he thought that there were "more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in my philosophy." In St. Croix, a very slight bruise indeed is sufficient to make it highly dangerous for you to have any dealings with a dead body. At one of the first funerals I attended here, I was putting on my gown and bands at the house where the corpse lay, and I happened, in fastening the bands, to give my finger a prick with a pin, sufficient to draw a drop of blood. One of the people present earnestly entreated me not to go into the room where the dead body lay in the yet uncovered coffin. "You must not look upon the dead now, sir," said the woman a good woman too. Possibly this belief in the harmful powers of dead bodies may be connected with the Jewish notion of the uncleanness that came from touching the dead. Not that there is any repugnance in these countries to touching, or being with a dead body as such. Our people are only too ready to crowd in to see a dead body, to sit up with it at night, to wash it, or aught else, provided only there be no sore in the case. Then they give the corpse a wide berth. Even sore eyes are made much worse by looking on the dead. But yet, strange to say, the superstition in Barbados is that, if any rum be used in washing the corpse, the person who will use it afterwards for washing the eyes, may then and there dismiss all fear of bad eyes for the future. You are thus safe from cataract, or any other eye-ailment -such is the magic power of this disgusting remedy. And, verily, any one who could be found willing to go through such an ordeal ought to have his reward in eyes made strong enough to last him his lifetime. Some of the authorities in Barbados, however, hold that it is not necessary for the living to use the very rum which has been used for the dead, so the washing of the sore or weak eyes be performed in the presence of the dead body. In another respect, too, the Barbadian superstition about contact with a dead body differs from the St. Croisian. The touch of a dead hand has a wonderful effect upon all swellings and chronic pains. I believe that, even in Barbados, there ought to be no abrasion of the skin; but of this I am not quite sure. Anyhow, as regards the pain or swelling, any old Barbadian negro woman will tell you how to cure itay, even when the "great doctors" have given it up. You have only to get into the room at night with the corpse, take its hand, and pass it carefully over the swollen or painful place. You can then go away quite sure that the swelling will go down, or the pain diminish, contemporaneously with the decay of that dead body in the grave. But now comes the important point. You must go into the room alone, and remain in it alone all the time, or else there is no more virtue in your friend's dead hand than there was in his living one. Yes, alone you must encounter him. And what, then, will you do with the "duppies," as they call ghosts in Barbados, or "jumbies," as they say in St. Croix? It is true you can take a light when you go in to do the rubbing, and we all know that jumbies, or duppies, or whatever they are, can't bear light, except it be pale, dim moonlight. That will be a little help. But still there is a risk. Woe betide him who dares in Barbados, pass a light, whether lamp or candle, across a dead person's face, or even hold it over it! Such an outrageously venturesome person would soon have the lamp of his own life extinguished as the price of his temerity! Alluding, as I did just now, to the practice of washing the dead, reminds me of a custom prevailing in St. Croix among those who perform that unpleasant office, or who otherwise assist in preparing the body for the coffin. They are almost sure to take home with them, and keep in their own homes, something immediately connected with that body. It may be a lock of hair, or it may be some garment, or even a fragment of a garment. But be it what it may, something must be taken, if the spirit of the dead is to be prevented from molesting those daring ones who ventured to tamper with the place of its late habitation. Of course it is difficult to give the rationale of any particular superstition. This last may, however, he perhaps explained. At first thought, it seems most natural to believe that the surest way to prevent any visit from a dead man is to take nothing of his with you. But not so. A liberty has been taken with his body by one who is probably a total stranger, hired perhaps for the express purpose of preparing him for his coffin. Now, if you take something of his, something that is either a part of him, or has been on his person, you in a sense identify yourself with him; you establish, as it were, a kind of relationship, and thus the liberty you take with him must seem much less to him. Kinglake relates, in " Eöthen," a similar custom prevailing among the people of Constantinople. When an Osmanlee dies, one of his dresses is cut in pieces, and every one of his friends receives a small piece as a memorial of the deceased. If it be true that the infection of the plague is in clothes, then, as Kinglake observes, this is certainly a fatal present, for it not only forces the living to remember the dead, but often to follow and bear him company. The disgusting and heathenish practice of having dancing during the night, while a corpse is in the house, prevails among the negroes in many West-Indian islands. Revolting superstitions are probably connected with this custom, which seems at once to transplant us to lands where the light of the gospel has not yet penetrated. All old negroes, when asked about it, say that this custom came from Africa. We pass now to superstitions connected with funerals, where also we have a wide field-too wide, indeed, to be occupied within the limits of a single article. These are perhaps more plentiful in Grenada, St. Lucia, and Dominica, than in other West-Indian islands. In all the islands rain at a funeral, or on the day of a man's burial, is thought a good sign about him. The old superstition, expressed in the saying, " Blessed is the dead that the rain rains on," prevails here as in Europe. There is a curious practice, not uncommon among the very ignorant in Grenada. When a corpse is passing through the door on the way to interment, the bearers will let down the head of the coffin gently three times, tapping the threshold with it every time. I have been told that this was to let the dead bid farewell to his house in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. We say to let the dead bid farewell, for that the body is merely the tenement in which the man lived, the machine through which he acted, is an idea which the negroes have in no wise realized yet. They are far, generally speaking, from believing that the living, sentient man is gone, and is living for the present in a separate existence. The body to them is still the man. Sometimes a gourd, or a small cup, will be thrown into the grave just before the coffin is lowered. It is brought from the house of the deceased, and contains earth, or perhaps, if the people are Roman Catholics, it has holy water, brought from church on Good Friday, and kept hitherto as a great charm. I have in Grenada, seen the bearers of a corpse running at a tolerably quick pace, and, on remonstrating about the impropriety, I was told that the bearers could not help it, as the dead was running. Both the bearers and my informant firmly believed this; and he was a shrewd black man, who could read and write, who was thriving as a cocoa-planter on a small scale, and was even a communicant of my own church. He proceeded on that occasion, in proof of his statement, to relate to me many cases he had known of this wonderful desire on the part of a corpse to have a run, as also some in which the corpse had almost refused to go, from an objection to some one of the bearers. It had, of course, been always found that, on the substitution of some one else for the obnoxious bearer, the dead min had gone to his grave cheerfully enough. This is another proof how far from the negro mind is any notion of the person, the individual "I," being anything else than the body itself. It must be remarked, however, that corpses do not play these funny tricks in every island. I have never known them in St. Croix for example, to have any decided propensity either to run or to stand still, so the bearers have an easier time of of it. In measuring a dead body for the coffin, the thing generally used in Grenada is one of those reeds called "wild canes." These grow in swampy places, and are very common in Grenada. A clump of them looks from a distance exceedingly like sugar-canes. But whether it be the wild cane or any other stick, the measuring-rod is taken to the grave, and thrown in on the coffin as soon as this is lowered. It is worth while knowing, too, that to take the rod that has measured a dead body and measure yourself against it is certain death at no long interval. The custom common in St. Croix, and all but universal in Grenada and some other islands, for every person present at a funeral to cast in at least one handful of earth on the coffin, after the funeral service is over, has been variously explained to me, as an asking for the dead person's prayers, as an act of praying for him, as a formal taking leave of him, or as a helping to do the last act for himviz., make his grave. I think the second is the prominent idea in most negro minds, for I have often heard a "God bless you," or a "God rest you," accompanying the act. I have also myself heard, along with the throwing-in of the earth, the request made for the dead man's prayers. Among the more educated of our lower orders, the last is perhaps the reason-the taking a share in making up your friend's last resting-place. Whether this throwing in earth is an imitation of any ceremony in use among the illustrious body of Freemasons, who cer tainly cast things into graves, the writer, in his utter ignorance of their tenets, cannot determine. Next in our course, we naturally enough come to the superstitions connected with illness. And it is wonderful to think of the risks we run through ignorance, or through our obstinate unbelief of the queer stories we hear. In these cases, one can be one's own doctor, even though you "have a fool for your patient." But there are some horrible troubles, in which you need the aid of an adept. Such, for example, is the presence in the body of bits of broken glass, old nails, and such like, which can be drawn out, rubbed out, squeezed out, or got out somehow through the sufferer's The only thing more wonderful is the skin by the man or woman supposed to beautiful simplicity of some remedies possess some mysterious power. Hard remedies not to be met with in any phar- as it may be of belief, it is nevertheless macopoeia, or any doctor's book whatever. true, that not more than two years ago an Only think that a few hard red seeds of instance occurred in the chief town of St. one of the leguminous plants common Croix, of two old negroes, natives of the here, worn round the neck, will prevent island, one of whom was foolish enough a "rush of blood to the head," whatever to fetch in from the country an Antiguan that terrible expression means! Only negro man, to rub nails out of his wife's think, too, that a little bit of scarlet cloth leg. The Antiguan man was well paid for round the neck, no matter how narrow a the job, and after a great deal of soaping, strip it may be, will keep off the whoop- he got an immense number of nails ing-cough. Perhaps the sanguineous col- through the old woman's skin. They our of the seeds is a sort of homoeopathic dropped from her leg freely through his remedy-like curing like; but why the hands into a basin, an indefinite number cloth cures the whooping-cough, and why having been, of course, provided for the it must be scarlet, who can say? occasion by him. If he had not been interrupted by the entrance of an unbeliever, in the person of the old woman's son, who caused him to make a hasty exit through the window, there is no telling what he might have drawn out of her, as nothing was too hard for him to do, or for his victims to believe. Simplest of all cures, however, is a small bit of paper, carefully made in the form of a cross, then wet, and stuck on a baby's forehead, to take away the hiccoughs. This is a true homoeopathic remedy in another way. It can't hurt you, even if it do you no good. In the island of Nevis there is an unfailing cure for warts. They must be rubbed with a bit of stolen meat. The peculiarity about this remedy is that it does not matter what the meat is, whether pork or mutton, beef, veal, or venison, or anything else. It is true it must not be fowl or fish, but meat. But the virtue is in the theft. The meat must be stolen, or you may rub with it until you rub it all away, and no result will follow. All West-Indians are familiar with the virtue of the wedding-ring for rubbing a "stye," as those disagreeable little boils on the eyelid are called. One can understand the use of the friction or of the heat that is produced thereby. But the thing is that the ring must be a wedding-ring. Not every plain gold ring will do. The reason probably is that a wedding-ring is something which, once given, can never be taken back. It is therefore regarded as a suitable antidote to these styes or "cat-boils," as the Barbadian negro calls them, for, in my small-boy days, it was firmly believed by my old black nurse, and so taught to me, that if you gave anything away, and then took it back, you were sure of a "cat-boil." In a multitude of instances the illness comes from the presence of some evil spirit. Rarely, if ever, do we find among negroes any such idea as that the spirits of the departed dead revisit earth with a good intent. Joined with the gross materialism of these people there is yet a strong conviction of the agency of spirits, but almost always as doing actual hurtas being an influence decidedly hostile to living people. The "jumbies" in some islands notably St. Croix-are evildisposed. The only innocent propensity they have in that island is to wear "jumbybeads." These are little red seeds, very bright, and with a black spot on every one. One would presume they are called "jumby-beads" because they are the "particular wanity" that the jumbies indulge in by way of ornamentation. The same seeds are called "crab's eyes" in Barbados, from their resemblance to the eyes of a very active little red crab well known there. The Barbadian ghosts are not so elaborately got up, it seems, as their St. Croisian brethren. The power of seeing jumbies is hardly one to be coveted; but it is possessed, whether they like it or not, by those indi viduals in these islands who are fortunate, | such a way as to preclude the possibility or unfortunate, enough to be born with of detection. that little membrane called a "caul," which sometimes encompasses a child when born. This membrane is generally kept by the family with the utmost care as long as it will last. Such is the power of jumbies to hurt little children, that I have been told by a mother whose child was ill that it could not recover, as "de spirits dem bin and walk over de child." But there is a wonderful charm in the mere outside of a Bible or a prayer-book. Put one of these under the pillow on which the baby's head lies, and you can keep off the most mischievous jumby. This will do for the daytime; and at night a bright light must be kept in the room. Otherwise, the jumbies will take advantage of the dark to do their evil deeds, to take their eccentric perambulations over the child, or to blow in its face. This last is quite a common jumby-trick. In Nevis, the poisoner is safe from being haunted by the ghost of his victim if he will go to his grave, dig down to his body, and drive a stake through it. An instance has been known in that island where the family of a man supposed to be poisoned have secretly watched his grave every night for ten nights, with the expectation of detecting his supposed murderer when he came to stake him. No one coming, the idea of foul play connected with the death was given up. With certain plants and with certain animals there always goes bad luck. The Stephanotus, rich in leaves and flowers though it is, is an unlucky plant in some mysterious way. But, considering of how slow growth it is, you have, at least, a very long time during which the storm is brewing before it actually bursts upon you. There is another plant, however, that brings much more serious trouble upon But they are poor, cowardly fellows, any house near to which it grows. And these West-Indian ghosts, after all. They this is of quick growth. It is the plant will never come near a door that has the which a Barbadian may be pardoned for "hag-bush" huug up over the threshold. thinking the most beauteous of all flowOr should any ghost, more courageousers. I mean the Poinciana pulcherrima, than the ordinary run, boldly pass under or "pride of Barbados," or "flowering the magic bush, you can still laugh at his fence," as it is also called. In St. Croix, arts if you have much of it hanging about where it goes by the unpoetical name in the room. The "hag-bush," with which "doodledoo," it is never used as a hedge. I am familiar, is the lilac. I have had, Exceeding beautiful as it is, it only before now, to refuse to baptize a sick springs up here and there, without cultichild on an estate in St. Croix until all the vation or care. People are unwilling to branches of lilac hanging around the room run the risk of the unknown troubles were thrown out, as I naturally felt a re- and all the more alarming because unpugnance to admit a child into the Chris-known - which will follow the planting of tian faith with emblems of heathenism it. hanging around it. I have never found out whether it is the scent or the sight of the lilac which is so disagreeable to jumbies, or whether the anti-jumby virtue is in something more intangible than sight or scent. Nor do I yet know if there is more than one "hagbush." Probably so, for the lilac is not abundant enough to furnish supply for the possible demand. Would that this were the worst use to which plants are put by some negroes in the West Indies! There is no doubt whatever that the medicinal properties of many common West-Indian herbs are known to them-herbs of whose deleterious or beneficial powers science as yet knows nothing. And it is sad to record my firm conviction that in many West-Indian islands murders are still committed sometimes by the administration of subtle and powerful vegetable poisons, given in That other splendid and most showy tree, the Poinciana regia-the "flamboyant or "flame tree," sometimes called in St. Croix "giant doodledoo," is not hurtful in itself, but it is remarkable as a tree under which jumbies like to sit. An old man, who transplanted a large one to my rectory, actually charged more for his work on account of the danger that he said attended the meddling with "such a jumby-tree." As regards animals, guinea-pigs may be mentioned as specially unlucky, at least in St. Croix. There are families there, among those from whom one would not expect such things, whose children would on no account be allowed to keep these pretty little pets. What precisely is the harm they do is not stated. All you can get out of any one is, "Oh, they always bring trouble to a house; they're very unlucky." And yet, if the writer of this was |