Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1894 — SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SEA. [ARTICLE]

SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SEA.

Signs that Terrify Jack Tars Who Believe In Witchcraft. A sense of unreality, weirdness, and sometimes of uncanny feeliDg actuates nearly every one connected with the sea, this being particularly strong on a moonlight night, when the water of the ocean looks more cruel if, withal, more beautiful than at any other time. Then It Is that a riDg around the moon is frequently to be observed, and the sailors believe that this is.a sure sign of bad weather; while Longfellow, in his “Golden Legend,” interprets it thus: 1 pray thee put In yonder port, For I fear a hurricane: Last sight the moon had a golden ring, And to-night no moon we see. We have often noticed how quaint the fisher-folks are who live In solitary places near the ocean, and this is true to a greater or less extent of all dwellers by the sea. It is believed on Cape Cod and in many other districts along the New England coast that a sick man cannot die until the ebb tide begins to run. Watchers by beds of sickness anxiously note the change of the tide, and if the patient lives until the turn, he will live until the ebb. The best educated and most intelligent people on the New England coast are not entirely free from this superstition, and to them there is a vivid meaning in Dickens’ description of the death of Barkis, “And it being high water, he went out with the tide. ” The belief that the ninth or tenth wave was more powerful than the others has existed since Ovid’s time, who says: “The wave that is now coming o’ertpps all the others; ’tis the wave that comes after the ninth and be-, fore the tenth.” Even nowadays at the seashore you will hear people counting the waves and saying that the next one will he the biggest. Fishermen on our own coast think that the swell sometimes noticed during a fog is caused by It, and they call It the fog-swell, while in reality it is simply the incoming tide; but fog Is associated with such terrible disasters in the minds of fishermen that it is little wonder it is believed to have power to raise the waters of the sea. Woman, though bringing good luck to man on land, is proverbially the opposite on the sea, and at a certain place the waters of the ocean are reputed to enrage themselves at the sight of a woman. Storm-raising witches are quite well known to New England. There was Polly Twitchell, who lived In Casco Bay in the seventeenth century. She was said to raise storms, wreck ships, and put to sea in severe gales. Goody Cole, In Whittier’s “Wreck of Rivermouth,” prophesies disaster. The skipper Bays; I’m scary always to see her shake Her wicked head. The ballad recounts that she was jeered at by the pleasure party, and in revenge predicted the loss of the boat, which occurred soon after.— Boston Transcript.