Some living object, however, either vegetable or animal, was the usual repository of the external soul. A familiar folk-tale tells of a giant whose heart was in a swan, and who could not be killed while the swan lived. Hunting was a favourite occupation among the inhabitants of the Western Isles; but on the mountain Finchra, in Rum, no deer was killed by any member of the Lachlan family, as it was believed that the life of that family was in some way linked with the life of these animals. A curious superstition is mentioned by Camden in his "Britannia." In a pond near the Abbey of St. Maurice, in Burgundy, were put as many fish as there were monks. When any monk was taken ill, one of the fish was seen to float half-dead on the surface of the pond. If the fish died the monk died too, the death of the former giving warning of the fate of the latter. In this case the external soul was thought of as stowed away in a fish. As is well known, the Arms of the City of Glasgow are a bell, a tree, a fish with a ring in its mouth, and a bird. The popular explanation of these emblems connects them with certain miracles, wrought by Kentigern, the patron saint of the burgh. May we not hold that an explanation of their symbolism is to be sought in a principle, that formed an article in the beliefs of men, long before Kentigern was born, as well as during his time and since? The bell, it is true, had, doubtless, an ecclesiastical association; but the other three symbols point, perhaps, to some superstitious notion like the above. In various folk-tales, as well as in Christian art, the soul is sometimes typified by a bird. As we have just seen, it has been associated with trees and fish. We are entitled therefore to ask whether the three symbols may not express one and the same idea under different forms. It is, of course, open to anyone to say that there were fish in the river, on whose banks Kentigern took up his abode, and quite a forest with birds singing in it around his cell, and that no further explanation of the symbolism need be sought. All these, it is true, existed within the saint's environment, but may they not have been regarded as types of the soul under the guise of objects familiar to all, and afterwards grouped together in the burgh Arms? On this hypothesis, the symbols have survived the belief that gave them birth, and serve to connect the practical life of to-day, with the vague visions and crude conjectures of the past. CHAPTER XV. CHARM-STONES IN AND OUT OF WATER.