soul catchern.

?1660 T. Thompson Life Mother Shipton v. iv. 45 Ha! heres my soul catcher!

1799 G. S. Carey Balnea 50 You'd forgot, then, that cunning old soul-catcher, Nick.

1868 Every Sat. 23 May 666/2 Thou knowest, Marmi, it is only women who are soul-catchers.

1885 Judy 21 Oct. 200/2 The fanatical soul-catchers [sc. the Salvation Army]..continue to desecrate the Sabbath..with their impious clamourings.

1892 St. Nicholas May 485/2 ‘What of the box—the soul-catcher?’ ‘It is but a picture-box,’ said the wizard.

1921 A. G. Whyte Wonder World we live In vii. 170 The soul-catcher fetches some article..in which he says the lost soul has made its home. He rubs this article on the head of the sick man.

1988 B. Walker Woman's Dict. Symbols & Sacred Objects 145/2 Because of the once universal belief that one's reflection is a vital part of one's soul, mirrors..were long regarded as soul-catchers.

2010 A. Noël Radiance xi. 73 The Council already told me I'd be trained as a Soul Catcher, one who catches earthbound souls and makes them move on.

1891 Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc. 29 191 Soul catcher k'angitlkigya = breast dancing ornament.

1896 F. B. Jevons Introd. Hist. Relig. v. 45 The Haidah Indians have soul-catchers, bone implements for catching the patient's soul when it tries to fly away.

1932 D. Jenness Indians of Canada 333 Peculiar to the medicine-men of the Haida, Tlinkit, and Tsimshian was the use of a special ‘soul-catcher’, a bone tube, generally carved, for capturing the wandering souls of the sick and restoring them to their bodies.

1969 Times 22 Sept. 14/2 One invariably sees a face in the centre of a soul-catcher, a tube of hollowed bone into which the shaman [of the Tsimshian Indians] sucked the soul of a sick man—to keep it safe from harm while the illness lasted.

2006 Times Colonist (Victoria, Brit. Columbia) (Nexis) 21 Dec. d7 [In] the Exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art... cases hold wooden rattles, mother-of-pearl inlaid frontlets and ivory soul-catchers.