A curious incident occurs in the legend of St. Columba, founder of Iona, which shows how deep a hold the old custom had taken. The original idea of a sacrifice to propitiate the earth was gone, but the idea that appropriation of a site was not possible without one took its place. The Saint is said to have buried one of his monks, Oran by name, alive, under the foundations of his new abbey, because, as fast as he built, the spirits of the soil demolished by night what he raised by day. In the life of the Saint by O’Donnell (Trias Thaumat.) the horrible truth is disguised. The story is told thus:--On arriving at Hy (Iona), St. Columba said, that whoever willed to die first would ratify the right of the community to the island by taking corporal possession of it. Then, for the good of the community, Oran consented to die. That is all told, the dismal sequel, the immuring of the living monk, is passed over. More recent legend, unable to understand the burial alive of a monk, explains it in another way. Columba interred him because he denied the resurrection. It is certain that the usage remained in practice long after Europe had become nominally Christian; how late it continued we shall be able to show presently. Grimm, in his “German Mythology,” says: “It was often considered necessary to build living animals, even human beings, into the foundations on which any edifice was reared, as an oblation to the earth to induce her to bear the superincumbent weight it was proposed to lay on her. By this horrible practice it was supposed that the stability of the structure was assured, as well as other advantages gained.” Good weather is still thought, in parts of Germany, to be secured by building a live cock into a wall, and cattle are prevented from straying by burying a living blind dog under the threshold of a stable. The animal is, of course, a substitute for a human victim, just as the bottle and coins are the modern substitute for the live beast. In France, among the peasantry, a new farmhouse is not entered on till a cock has been killed, and its blood sprinkled in the rooms. In Poitou, the explanation given is that if the living are to dwell in the house, the dead must have first passed through it. And in Germany, after the interment of a living being under a foundation was abandoned, it was customary till comparatively recently to place an empty coffin under the foundations of a house. This custom was by no means confined to Pagan Europe. We find traces of it elsewhere. It is alluded to by Joshua in his curse on Jericho which he had destroyed, “Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up, and buildeth this city Jericho: _he shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn_, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.” (Josh. vi. 26.)