Untitled - Centrostudirpinia.it

CEOSSING THE WATEE. 833
whom it falls on any night, go to bed at dusk ; at midnight they
hear a knocking at their door, and muffled voices calling. Im
mediately they rise, go to the shore, and there see empty boats,
not their own but strange ones, they go on board and seize the
oars. When the boat is under way, they perceive that she is laden
choke-full, with her gunwales hardly a finger s breadth above
water. Yet they see no one, and in an hour s time they touch
land, which one of their own craft would take a day and a night
to do. Arrived at Brittia, the boat speedily unloads, and be
comes so light that she only dips her keel in the wave. Neither
on the voyage nor at landing do they see any one, but they hear
a voice loudly asking each one his name and country. Women
that have crossed give their husbands names.
Procopius s Brittia lies no farther than 200 stadia (25 miles)
from the mainland, between Britannia and Thule, opposite the
Rhine mouth, and three nations live in it, Angles, Frisians and
Britons. By Britannia he means the NW. coast of Gaul, one
end of which is still called Bretagne, but in the 6th century
the name included the subsequent Norman and Flemish- Frisian
country up to the mouths of Scheldt and Rhine ;
his Brittia is
Great Britain, his Thule Scandinavia.
Whereabouts the passage was made, whether along the whole
of the Gallic coast, I leave undetermined. Villemarque (Barzas
breiz 1, 136) places it near Raz, at the farthest point of Armorica,
where we find a bay of souls (baie des ames, boe ann anavo) .
On the R. Treguier in Bretagne, commune JPlouguel, it is said
to be the custom to this day, to convey the dead to the church
yard in a boatjjzvQr a small arm of the sea called passage de
Z ?yi/gr.Jnstead of taking the shorter way by land; besides, the
people all over Armorica believe that souls at the moment of
parting repair to the parson of Braspar, whose dog escorts them
to Britain : up in the air you hear the creaking wheels of a
waggon overloaded with souls, it is covered with a white pall,
and is called carr an ancou, carrikel an ancou, soul s car (Mem.
de 1 acad. celt. 3, 141). Purely adaptations to suit the views of
As Christians, they could no longer ferry their dead
the people.
Kronos asleep on the holy island far away, with his retinue of servants, is like
a Wuotan enchanted in a mountain, conf. Humboldt in Herm. Miiller p. -440-1.
Welcker s Kl. schr. 2, 177.