THE BUTTERFLY IN FOLKLORE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 68, 14 December 1918, Page 8

THE BUTTERFLY IN FOLKLORE

In folkloro it is to the butterfly rather tlian to tbe uiotli that is assigned tho ghostly part. In Ireland they have a legend about a priest who had not believed that men had souls, but, on being converted, announced that a living thing would be seen soaring up from his body when luj died—in proof that his earlier 6cepticisin had been wrong. Sure enough, when ho lay dead, n beautiful creature "with four snow-white winga" rose from his body and fluttered round hisheud. "And this," wo are told, "was the first butterfly that was over seen in Ireland; and now all men lenow that tho butterflies ore tho souls of the dead waiting for the moment when they may enter Purgatory." In tho Solomon Islands, they say,' it used to bo the custom, when a liian was about to die, for him to announce that. lie was about to lie (runsmigrated into a butterfly or some other creature. Tho members of his family, on-meeting a butterfly afterwards, would exclaim, "This is papa," and offer him a cocoanut. Tim members of an English family in like circumstances would probably say, "Have a banana." In certain tribes of Assam tho dead are believed to return in the shape of butterflies or house flies, and fnr this reanon no one will kill them. On tho other hand, in Westphalia tho butterfly plays tho part given to tho scapegoat in other countries; and 011 St. Peter's J)ny, in February, it is publicly expelled with rhyme and ritual. Elsewhere, as in Samoa, the butterfly has been feared as a god, and to catch 0. butterfly was to rim the risk of lioiiiK struck dead.