om
these rocky coasts, calling the drowned men by their simple, homely
names of field and cottage use from under the grey waters, how often
the waiting women have been comforted or strengthened by a despairing
certainty, we cannot know or realize who do not live and die by the sea.

Apart from those customs and practices, which contain the germ of some
very ancient ritual or primitive belief, there is another class of
tradition which is purely fantastic, such as ghosts, witches who change
into rabbits and cats, fairies, dragons, and strange portents. Of such
kind is the story of the Ghost of Porlock Weir, a buccaneer named
Lucott, and no unlikely personage to haunt any of these seaside
hamlets. He was a malicious and obstinate ghost who appeared boldly a
week after his funeral--when the inhabitants might reasonably have
supposed they had at last got rid of the bad old man--and though he was
exorcised by no less than eleven clergymen he refused to be laid. At
last the Vicar of Porlock tamed him with a consecrated wafer, compelled
him to ride with him to Watchet, and there imprisoned him in a small
box, which was straight-way thrown into the sea, and he was seen no
more.

There are elements in this story like that of Anstey's novel, where a
genie is imprisoned in a brass pot, which is fished up out of the sea
and opened, with startling results to a quiet modern community; and it
is to be hoped that nobody will bring Lucott ashore again, along with a
catch of fish.

There is another strange tale, also, concerning one John Strange of
Porlock, who, on August 23 of 1499, was hewing wood, and upon sitting
down to his midday meal on a log at the edge of the clearing, and
cutting a piece of bread, observed blood to flow from the incision. He
went to his neighbours about it, and with them to his parish priest,
and the matter became one of importance, for I find that a Commission
was appointed and recorded in the Register of Wells, to inquire into
this strange occurrence. Witnesses were called and examined, oaths
taken, the learned Commission sat upon it as solemnly as if it had been
a case of heresy. John Strange, summoned from his little cottage at
Porlock, was, we can well imagine, a half-unwilling hero. Nobody seems
to have arrived at any conclusion, and nobody seems to have suggested
that perhaps John Strange had cut his finger!

There is an even stranger and more splendidly fantastic story in
Westcote's "View of