ng
into the question of the song and its attendant ceremonies just now,
the following lines may be quoted as bearing on our subject:

'You poor old horse, what brought you here,
After carrying turf for many a year?
From Bantry Bay to Ballyack,
When you fell down and broke your back?
You died from blows and sore abuse,
And were salted down for the sailors' use.
The sailors they the meat despise;
They turned you over and ---- your eyes;
They ate the meat and picked the bones,
And gave the rest to Davy Jones.'

All the offal of a ship is thrown over to Davy Jones--doubtless because
there is nothing else to be done with it.

The favourite demon, if one may use the expression, of British sailors
is now Old Nick, and one may trace his origin even more easily than that
of Davy Jones. We can follow him through Saxon, German, Danish and
Norwegian transitions to one of the names of Odin--Hnickar--for even
All-father Odin shared the fate of his Oriental predecessors, and became
demonized. Others, again, have carried the name Hnickar back still
further to the Egyptian Nika, the serpent of the lower world, 'the
Typhonic enemy of the Sun in his night-journey.'

It is to the same root that we owe the Necken of the Baltic, and the
Nixies--the water-fays--of the German legends. It is to the Norwegian
Noekke, also, that we owe the Wild Huntsman of the Sea, on which the
story of the _Flying Dutchman_ and a host of other legends of demon
vessels and demon mariners are founded.

There is, however, some confusion in the nautical mythology between the
original Old Nick and the popular Saint Nicholas. This saint became the
Christian successor of Neptune, as the protector of seamen. 'This
saintly Poseidon,' says Mr. Conway, 'the patron of fishermen, in time
became associated with the demon whom the British sailor feared if he
feared nothing else. He was also of old the patron of pirates; and
robbers were called "St. Nicholas' clerks."'

It is certainly one of the curiosities of plutology that the patron
saint of children who is still honoured at Christmas as Santa Claus
should be the same as the dreaded Old Nick of the seafarers.

These investigations are extremely interesting, and may lead us far; but
our present purpose is merely to find an explanation of a popular
phrase.

It is more difficult to explain a number of other marine personalities,
who are as lively to-day on shipboard as they were generations a