Another rhyme begins with the call Bishop, bishop, which has puzzled various commentators. I venture to suggest that the word be read Beeship, and that it indicates the boat that sailed across heaven bearing the souls of the dead, who were figured as bees. For the spirits of those who passed away, viewed under one aspect, were bees, and the ship that conveyed the dead in Norsk saga was actually designated as the _Bŷskip_. Mannhardt, in illustration, cites a line which the skald Egil Skallagrimssonr, whose date is between 902 and 980, sang on his son that had been drowned:-- Byrr es bŷskips i boe kominn kvanar son. "In the beeship there has gone the son of my wife." Our commentators inaccurately translate the expression as "City of the Hive" (C. P., I, 546). According to a fancy of the Welsh bards, Britain was peopled with bees before the arrival of man, and this was held to account for its name, the "Isle of Honey." A Prussian ladybird rhyme also mentions the boat that sailed across heaven. In Dantzig they sing:-- Herrgotspferdchen, fliege weg, Dein Häuschen brennt, dein Kähnchen schwimmt, Deine Kinder schreien nach Butterbrod; Herrgotspferdchen, fliege weg. (M., 349.) "God Almighty's little horse, fly away, thy house is on fire, thy boat is afloat, thy children cry for bread and butter." From an early period the sun was supposed to be conveyed in a boat, and boats were associated with divinities half the world over. Tacitus was acquainted with the boat of the goddess Isis that was conveyed about in Alexandria, and he described the boat that was taken about in procession by the heathen Germans in their cult of Hertha, as the boat of Isis (Gr., p. 214). The sun-boat of Ra in Egypt conveyed the dead to heaven. So did the golden ship of Odin in Scandinavia, which conveyed the bodies of the fallen warriors to Valhalla. The remembrance of this sun-boat probably gave rise to the story how Ikaros invented sails. It may linger still in the "beeship" of our rhymes, and in the "Kähnchen" of the corresponding German ladybird rhyme. CHAPTER X RIDDLE-RHYMES