appeal addressed to the soul in the charm just quoted:—
“Do not bear grudges,
Do not bear malice,
Do not take it as a wrong,
Do not take it as a transgression.”These quasi-human attributes of the soul being so complete, it is an easy stretch
of the imagination to provide it with a house, which is generally in practice
identified with the body of its owner, but may also be identified with any one of
its temporary domiciles. Thus in the charm already quoted we read—
“Return to your own House and House-ladder,
To your own House-floor, of which the planks have started,
And your Roof-thatch ‘starred’ with holes.”The state of disrepair into which the soul’s house (i.e. the sick man’s body) is
described as having fallen, is here attributed to the soul’s absence.^68 The
completeness of this figurative identification of the soul’s “house” with its
owner’s body, and of the soul’s “sheath” or casing with both, is very clearly
brought out in the following lines:—
“Cluck! cluck! Soul of this sick man, So-and-so!
Return into the Frame and Body of So-and-so,
To your own House and House-ladder, to your own Clearing and Yard,
To your own Parents, to your own Casing.”And this is no mere chance expression, for in another charm the soul is adjured
in these words:—
“As you remember your own parents, remember me,
As you remember your own House and House-ladder, remember me.”^69The soul “appears to men (both waking and asleep) as a phantom separate from
the body of which it bears the likeness,” “manifests physical power,” and walks,
sits, and sleeps:—
“Cluck! cluck! Soul of So-and-so, come and walk with me,