hical demon of the deep. Lieutenant
Bassett thought that the locker might be the whale's belly in which
Jonah found refuge; but this is hardly in harmony with the meaning of
the phrase. In the sense in which it is thus used, locker does not mean
a temporary resting-place or submarine harbour of refuge, but a place of
final deposit. It is possible, indeed, to find the origin of the word
locker as here applied in Loki, the personification of evil in the
Scandinavian mythology. Loki, like Deva, was not always an evil spirit,
but he became eventually identified with Satan. He became a flame-demon,
a sort of incarnate spirit of fire.

There is good reason for believing in this theory of the Scandinavian
origin of the word 'locker' as used in the connection we are
considering. It is to be remembered that, in olden times, death by
drowning was even more dreaded than now, because drowned bodies were
supposed to be debarred from the Resurrection. Going far back, we find
that the sea was the abode of Typhoeus, who, besides being a
hurricane-raising, was also a fire-breathing, demon, and was feared as
the quencher of the sun, who sank at night into his bosom. The legend of
St. Brandan and his burning islands preserved the idea that Hades was
very near to the bottom of the ocean. Thus, then, we may readily
perceive the conception of Loki having his receptacle for drowned
mariners in the bed of the sea. A belief prevailed long into the Middle
Ages that the sea-bottom was the abode of many demons, who lay in wait
for passengers, to drag them down to the infernal depths.

Thus, then, Davy Jones's Locker became, by a mixture of theogonies, 'the
ocean, the deep sea-bottom, the place to which the body was committed,
and to which the souls of the wicked fled.'

This meaning is now somewhat modified. Sailors do not, as Smollett says
they did in his day, regard Davy Jones as the fiend who presides over
all the evil spirits of the deep, and who is seen in various shapes,
warning the devoted wretches of death and woe. In fact, it is not Davy
Jones they think of at all now, but his Locker; for to go to Davy's
Locker is to be lost at sea and to find a watery grave.

There is, however, a curious survival of the personal element still to
be traced in some of the sailors' chanties. Take, for instance, that
remarkable one about 'Burying the Dead Horse,' which still puzzles the
passengers on board the packets sailing to the Antipodes. Without goi