less monster,
howling in anger at their doors and claiming its yearly prey. No native
writer has as yet attempted to make vocal for us the immense dumb
sorrows of these fisher folks in the way Loti has done for the seafarers
of Brittany.

PHILOLOGY.

Jakobsen, the Danish philologist, spent some years recently in
collecting the remains of the old Norwegian speech that still linger in
the conversation and the place-names of the islanders. Perhaps the most
interesting point brought out by Jakobsen is the prevalence in
comparatively recent times of lucky words, which the fishermen used when
at the deep-sea fishing, and only then. This practice is undoubtedly a
relic of pagan ages when the sea-depths were regarded as the dominion of
dread water spirits, who keenly watched those who intruded in their
realms. The strange feature about this deep-sea speech is that its
expressions were purely Norse, whereas the home idiom of the fishers was
overwhelmingly English. The pagan beliefs respecting the hostile powers
of the sea found expression in old words handed down from a
pre-Christian epoch. These old words may have been originally liturgical
or worship words, for the sea was an object of veneration and awe to the
Norsemen who, in the conquering days, made their home on its angry
waters. It was believed that the jealous powers of the ocean were
vehemently hostile to Christianity, and hence the Shetland fishers, up
till quite recently, carefully avoided any direct mention of _church_
or _minister_ when on the water: the _haaf_ or lucky words being
respectively _benihoose_ (prayer-house) and _upstander_. Even the
domestic animals had special _haaf_ appellations. This conception of the
sea as filled with weird mysterious beings of unspeakable malignity,
ever ready to whelm the boat of an unwary intruder, carries the mind
back to the old alliterative lay of _Beowulf_, the contest of that hero
with the wallowing ocean-monsters, and the grim subterranean glow in the
sea-home of Grendel's mother. The Shetlanders have only too much reason
to brood over the cruelty of the sea. On July 20, 1881, during a
terrific squall, sixty-three breadwinners were engulfed in the thwarting
currents of the Sound of Yell.

A SANDWICK GENTLEMAN.

During all the foregoing discussion in the Cunningsburgh manse and
garden, our driver had been wondering what subjects of talk could
possibly be keeping us from continuing our journey to Sandwick. The two