The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-07-23
yo1Ec IN THE AIR.
Sounds That Have Given Rise to Many
 Strange Superstitions.

sounds That Have Given Rise to Many Strange Superstitions.
 In the stillest nights there are some times sounds that are literally audible for which we cannot account. From the earliest times superstition has made such sounds her own. says the London Globe; she has dealt seriously witt them, and framed mythologies from their mystery, cries of a weird shrill- ness, and fancy has imagined the spirits of the dead passing on the lone ly wind: shepherds watching in soli- tude at night and sailors on the wide sea well know such cries.
 Celtic poetry Is full of them; but their folklore is not limited to Celtic lands. At other times the cries are thicker and sharper, sounds as of shouting, yeping, barking. with wild rush and hurry; listeners have pictured a phantom huntsman passing with panting hounds and horses. Other records tell of sounds like a clash of armies meeting in the air, and the phenomenon has all ways been taken as significant of com- ing war.
 Teutonic folklore is full of myths founded upon mysterious voices In the Hartz district there is the demon huntsmani we read of him in Burgers ballad. Every glade of German Wood- lands has its spirit, such as the Erl. king and his turing daughter, who be- gulles the verx child from his fathers arms. There was also the strange pi- per of Hamelin tale that belongs not only to poetry, but to actual chronicle; what was the pipe that so magically drew first the rats and then the child ren?
 There Is kindred legend of a strang- CT who came into the Hartz district, bearing bagpipe. For every tune that he played a maiden died. Death has continually been associated with the crying of the wind, or the solitary voice ot birds, or with a strange mysterious music that trembling listeners have not
 been able to identify Even extreme forms of orthodox faith have adopted the same popular fancies, converting
 the sounds into the voice of angels nAdersens Dying Child' and Tenny- son s May Queen hear this celestial music. and understands its summons
 My Baring-Gould tells of a Yorkshire farmer who spoke of hearing angel voices calling a dying girl when t'aingels gang that road they're bound fO f9lk' hairnsb sat,ls ,xri, Ja,,, Goy,n. times the voice has not come to draw the child to paradise but to allure into an under world of fairies, such as that reached by "bonny Kilmeny." German peasants used to caution their little ones not to listen to the voices they might hear or they would be carried off by forest spirits.
 IA times there have been strange voices heard at ford--the cry of dead souls of those who have been drowned there, or 1t may be that the ferryman has been reused at night by summon- ing call, and has been compelled to row an invisible company across the stream his boat sinking low and his arm strain ing, yet seeing no man. In like manner the keepers of toll gates have been aroused at nights, and called to open. Every lonely road, Indeed has its cries, especially such a road as, once busy, Is now deserted tho echoing foot steps of passers long dead can still be heard by those who listen anght. There are hollow places also whore a sound of buried bells comes as from the centre of the earth, and stories of lost churches are told, or the chimes are heard by the sea coast, and fishers tell of bells that have been lost in the
 waters, or of church towers sucked down among the shingle and weed.
 On Dartmoor there are the Wish
 Hounds. chasing the souls of unbap.
 tised babes across the bogs and tors; the moorman closes his door trembling, the mother presses her child passion ately to her breast
 On the sea coast there are hollow caverns to emit curious noises, and the surface of the water itself con convex sounds from long distances. In Corn wall the fisher folk say that where there have been wreoks the dead sailors may be heard "hailing their owr names" Sometimes when fisher wife thinks that her man may be drowned
 she goes down to the shore and calls his name. If he is dead, she hears an answer. Similar fancies finger among the Breton peasantry.