'

Without offering here any comment on, or explanation of, the Scriptural
narrative, let us compare it with the following remarkable story, which
that indefatigable delver after old-world wonders, Charles Kirkpatrick
Sharpe, reproduced.

Somewhere about midsummer of the year 1480, a ship, sailing out of the
Forth for a port in Holland, was assailed by a furious tempest, which
increased to such a remarkable degree for the mild season of the year,
that the sailors were overcome with fear, and gave themselves up for
lost. At length an old woman, who was a passenger by the vessel, came on
deck and entreated them to throw her overboard as the only means of
preserving their own lives, saying that she had long been haunted by an
'incubus' in the shape of a man, from whose grasp she could not free
herself. Fortunately for all parties there was another passenger on
board--a priest--who was called to the rescue. After a long admonition,
and many sighs and prayers, 'there issued forth of the pumpe of the
ship,' says Hollinshed, 'a foul and evil-favoured blacke cloud, with a
mightie terrible noise, flame, smoke, and stinke, which presentlie fell
into the sea, and suddenlie, thereupon, the tempest ceassed, and the
ship passing in great quiet the residue of her journie, arrived in
safetie at the place whither she was bound.'

There is doubtless some association between this class of superstition
and the old Talmudic legend, according to which the devils were
specially angered when, at the creation, man received dominion over the
things of the sea. This was a realm of unrest and tempest, which the
devils claimed as belonging to themselves. But, says the legend,
although denied control of the life that is in the sea, the devils were
permitted a large degree of power over its waters, while over the winds
their rule was supreme.

There is scarcely a current legend or superstition which cannot be
traced to very remote sources. Thus, in the Chaldaeo-Babylonian
cosmogony there was a Triad which ruled the three zones of the
universe: the heaven, by Anu; the surface of the earth and the
atmosphere, by Bel; and the under-world, by Nonah. Now, Nonah is held to
be both the same as the Assyrian Hea, or Saviour, and as the Noah of the
Bible. So when Tiamat, the dragon, or leviathan, opens 'the fountains of
the great deep,' and Anu, 'the windows of heaven,' it is Hea, or Noah,
who saves the life of man.

This legend is supposed by M. Francoi