"The herring loves the merry moonlight,The mackeral loves the wind.But the oyster loves the dredger's song,For he comes of a gentle kind."
"The herring loves the merry moonlight,The mackeral loves the wind.But the oyster loves the dredger's song,For he comes of a gentle kind."
At Bayeux, Normandy, a strong belief exists among the people of some hidden treasure in the ground beneath the ruined churches and castles so abundant in the neighborhood; but they are supposed to be guarded by supernaturalmeans. Even so late as 1827 persons were found credulous enough to follow the directions of a Douster-swivel and employ much time and labor uselessly in searching after imaginary riches beneath the stones in front of the Cathedral. This belief that the hidden or lost treasure is guarded by a spiritual attendant is very generally diffused. On this point Southey, in the "Doctor," observes: "The popular belief that places are haunted where money has been concealed, or where some great and undiscovered crime has been committed, shows how consistent this is with our natural sense of likelihood and fitness."
Dr. Carpenter states, in his "Comparative Physiology," that a grain of musk has been kept freely exposed to the air of a room, of which the door and window were constantly open, for ten years, during all which time the air, though constantly changed, was completely impregnated with the odor of musk, and yet at the end of that time the particle was found not to have sensibly diminished in weight.
Modern toys of acrobats are made to perform evolutions by the use of quicksilver. Dædalus, the famous Greek figure-maker, who is said to have lived about a thousand years before Christ, introduced quicksilver into a wooden image of Venus, thereby lending to it a sort of Chinese tumbling motion.—Dr. Doran.
It seems a little odd to us that the ancients used saffron as a perfume. Not only were halls, theatres and courts strewnwith the plant, but it entered into the composition of many spirituous extracts, which retained the scent. These costly smelling waters were often made to flow in small streams, which spread abroad their much admired odor. Luxurious people even moistened with them all those things with which they were desirous of surprising their guests in an agreeable manner, or with which they ornamented their appartment. From saffron, with the addition of wax and other ingredients, the Greeks and Romans prepared scented salves.
In Levoux's "Journal de Medicine" is an account of a very fat woman, twenty-eight years of age, who was found on fire in her chamber, where nothing else was burning. The neighbors heard a noise of something like frying, and when the body was removed it left a layer of black grease. The doctor conceived that the combustion began in the internal parts, and that the clothes were burned secondarily.
So perfect were the Egyptians in the manufacture of perfumes, that some of their ancient ointment, preserved in an alabaster vase in the museum at Alnwick, still retains a very powerful odor, though it must be almost three thousand years old.
The Indian magi, who are to invoke Yo He Wah, and meditate with the supreme holy fire that he may give seasonable rains, have a transparent stone of supposed great power in assisting to bring down the rain when it is put in a basin ofwater. It is reputed to possess divine virtue; it would suffer decay, they assert, were it even seen by their own laity; but if by foreigners, it would be utterly despoiled of its divine communicative power.
A reliable gentleman who witnessed an execution, wrote as follows: "It appears to be the best of all modes of inflicting the punishment of death, combining the greatest impression on the spectator with the least possible suffering to the victim. It is so rapid that I should doubt whether there was any suffering; but from the expression of the countenance, when the executioner held up the head, I am inclined to believe that sense and consciousness may remain for a few seconds after the head is off. The eyes seemed to retain speculation for a moment or two, and there was a look in the ghastly stare with which they stared upon the crowd, which implied that the head was aware of its ignominious situation."
During the Reign of Terror, M. de Chateaubrun was sentenced to death and sent to execution with twenty other prisoners; but after the fifteenth head had fallen, the guillotine got out of order, and a workman was required to repair it. The six remaining victims were left standing in front of the machine with their hands tied behind them. A French crowd is very curious, and the people kept pressing forward to see the man who was arranging the guillotine. By degrees M. de Chateaubrun, who was to the rear of his companions, found himself in the front line of the spectators, then in the second, and finally well behind those who had come to see his headcut off. Before the man could get the guillotine in working order night began to fall, and M. de Chateaubrun slipped away. When in the Champs Elysees he told a man that a wag had tied his hands and stole his hat, and this simple individual cut him free. A few days later M. de Chateaubrun escaped from France.
During the month of April, 1733, Sir Simon Stuart, of Hartley, England, while looking over some old writings, found on the back of one of them a memorandum noting that 1500 broad pieces were buried in a certain spot in an adjoining field. After a little digging the treasure was found in a pot, hidden there in the time of the civil wars by his grandfather, Sir Nicholas Stuart.
The group of islands known as the Nicobars, situated about one hundred and fifty miles south of the Andamans, have been but little explored, though the manners and customs of the inhabitants of these islands offer interesting peculiarities. One of the most noticeable, and one which seriously affects the trade of the islands, is the passion for old hats which pervades the whole frame-work of society. No one is exempt, and young and old endeavor to outvie each other in the singularity of shape no less than in the number of the old hats they can acquire during a lifetime. On a fine morning at the Nicobars it is not unusual to see the surface of the ocean in the vicinity of the islands dotted over with canoes, in each of which the noble savage, with nothing whatever on but the conventional slip of cloth and a tall white hat with a black band, may be watched standing up and catching fish for hisdaily meal. Second-hand hats are more in request, new hats being looked upon with suspicion and disfavor. The passion is so well known that traders from Calcutta make annual excursions to the Nicobars with cargoes of old hats, which they barter for cocoanuts, the only product of the island, a good, tall white hat with a black band bringing from fifty-five to sixty-five good cocoanuts. Intense excitement pervades the island while the trade is going on. When the hats or the cocoanuts have come to an end, the trader generally lands a flask or two of rum, and the whole population, in their hats, get drunk without intermission until the rum also comes to an end.
The wedding-ring, symbolical of the perpetuity of the conjugal relation, has ever been the accepted accompaniment of marriage. Its being put on the fourth finger of the left hand has been continued from long-established usage, because of the fanciful conceit that from this finger a nerve went direct to the heart.
Paracelsus was the prince of charlatans; indeed he styled himself the "King of Physic." Although he professed to have discovered the "Elixir of Life," it did not seem to have been available in his own case, for he died at the early age of forty-eight years.
Dr. Fordyce contended that as one meal a day was enough for a lion, it ought to suffice for a man. Accordingly, for more than twenty years, the doctor used to eat only a dinner in the whole course of a day. A pound and a half of rumpsteak, half a broiled chicken, a plate of fish, a bottle of port, a tankard of strong ale, and a quarter of a pint of brandy satisfied his moderate wants. Dinner over, occupying an hour and a half, he returned home from the chop house to deliver his six o'clock lecture on anatomy and chemistry.
In the times of the renowned Radcliffe, the gold-headed cane was the sceptre of authority among the medical profession. Dignity dwelt in the mysterious symbol. It also protected the owner against contagious diseases, being filled with disinfecting herbs, which he applied to his nose when visiting patients.
He pursed his brows, then wink'd his eyes,Put his cane to his nose and look'd wise.
He pursed his brows, then wink'd his eyes,Put his cane to his nose and look'd wise.
From the army and navy diet scales of France and England, which, of course, are based upon the recognized necessities of large numbers of men in active life, it is inferred that about two and one-fourth pounds avordupois of dry food per day are required for each individual; of this amount three-fourths are vegetable and the rest animal. At the close of an entire year, the amount is upwards of eight hundred pounds. Enumerating under the title of water all the various drinks—coffee, tea, alcohol, wine, etc.—its estimated quantity is about fifteen hundred pounds per annum; that for the air received by breathing may be taken at eight hundred pounds. The food, water and air which a man consumes amount in the aggregate to more than three thousand pounds a year; that is, about a ton and a half, or more than twenty times his own weight.—Wells.
It was not until the end of the seventeenth century that tea was indulged in as a beverage. The first brewers of tea were often sorely perplexed with the preparation of the new mystery; after boiling the tea, "they sat down to eat the leaves with butter and salt." The Dutch were the first to discover the utility and value of the herb, and when, in 1666, it was first introduced into England, it sold at about three guineas per pound.—Salad for the Solitary.
It has been estimated that a single square inch of the scalp—the skin of the head—contains about seven hundred and forty-four hairs. This number, multiplied by one hundred and twenty square inches—the surface of the head—gives us eighty-nine thousand two hundred and eighty as the number of the hairs of the head. If a lady's hair is a half-yard in length, she will have one hundred and thirty three thousand nine hundred and twenty feet of hair. A man who has arrived at the age of fifty years will have lost, by hair cutting, about thirteen feet, which, multiplied by the number of hairs (eighty-nine thousand two hundred and eighty), will amount to one million one hundred and sixty thousand six hundred and forty feet of hair tubing, or about two hundred and twenty miles.
The bricks of Nineveh and Babylon, in the museums, show that they were selected by the ancients as the most lasting material. Plutarch thinks them superior to stone, if properly prepared; and it is admitted that the baths of Caracalla, those of Titus, and the Thermæ of Dioclesian, have withstood theeffects of time and fire better than the stone of the Colisseum or the marble of the Forum Trajan.
Long-toed shoes were invented by Fulk, Count of Anjou, to hide an excrescence on one of his feet. These toes were so long as to be fastened to the knees with gold chains, and carved at the extreme point with the representation of a church-window, a bird or some fantastic device.
In the "Gentleman's Magazine" for September, 1775, Mr. Clayton, a wealthy farmer of Berkshire, is related to have died at the extraordinary age of one hundred and fifteen years, during which time he rented the same farm for ninety years. An occupancy of so great duration, by one individual, is perhaps unequalled in the history of landlord and tenant.
There is an old proverb still used by the English and Scotch rustics, which represent March as borrowing three days from April. In the "Complaynt of Scotland" they are thus described—
"The first it shall be wind and weet;The next it shall be snaw and sleet;The third it shall be sic a freezeShall gar the birds stick to the trees."
"The first it shall be wind and weet;The next it shall be snaw and sleet;The third it shall be sic a freezeShall gar the birds stick to the trees."
But it is disputed whether these "borrowed days" are the last three of March or the first three of April.
This word is said to have been originallynoon-shun, a meal partaken of by laborers in the fields atnoon, when they retire to the shade toshunthe noontide heat.
In old times a culprit, when at the gallows, was allowed to select a Psalm, which was then sung, thereby lengthening the chances for the arrival of a reprieve. It is reported of one of the chaplains to the famous Montrose, that being condemned in Scotland to die for attending his master in some of his exploits, he selected the 119th Psalm. It was well for him that he did so, for they had sung it half through before the reprieve came. A shorter Psalm, and he would have been hung.
Anciently, one of the utensils of the barber was a brass basin with a semi-circular gap in one side, to encompass a man's throat, by means of which, in applying the lather to the face, the clothes were not soiled. It will be recollected that Don Quixote crazily assumed a barber's basin as a helmet.
On the 30th of April, 1745, the battle of Fontenoy was fought between the allied armies of England, Holland and Austria, under the command of the Duke of Cumberland, and the French army under Marshal Count De Saxe. The battle was commenced with the formal politeness of a court minuet Captain Lord Charles Hay, of the English guards, advancedfrom the ranks with his hat off; at the same moment Lieutenant Count D'Auteroche, of the French guards, advanced also, uncovered, to meet him. Lord Charles bowed, and said: "Gentlemen of the French guards, fire!" The Count bowed to Lord Charles. "No, my lord," he answered, "we never fire first." They again bowed; each resumed his place in his own ranks, and after these testimonies of "high consideration," the bloody conflict commenced, ending with a loss of twelve thousand men on each side.
This question was officially decided in the affirmative in the Court of Queen's Bench, Dublin, on November 16th, 1855, in the case of Beamish vs. Beamish, where the point came into direct issue.
Burckhardt tells us of the strange mode of curing a vicious horse. He has seen, he says, vicious horses in Egypt cured of the habit of biting by presenting to them, while in the act of doing so, a leg of mutton just taken from the fire. The pain which the horse feels in biting through the hot meat causes it to abandon the practice.
William Howitt says that, by one of those acts, which neither science nor curiosity can excuse, the skull of Pope is now in the private collection made by a phrenologist. On some occasion of alteration in the church, or burial of some one in the same spot, the coffin of Pope was disinterred andopened to see the state of the remains. By a bribe to the sexton at the time, possession of the skull was obtained for a night, and another skull was returned instead of it, in the morning. Fifty pounds were paid to manage and carry out the transaction. Be that as it may, the skull of Pope figures in a private museum.
Among a list comprising the articles found in a pawn-broker's establishment in Glasgow, in 1836, were one hundred and two Bibles and forty-eight Waterloo medals.
John Zisca, general of the insurgents who took up arms in 1419 against the Emperor Sigismund, to revenge the deaths of John Huss and Jerome of Prague, who had been cruelly burned at the stake for their religious tenets, defeated the emperor in several pitched battles. He gave orders that, after his death, they should make a drum out of his skin. The order was most religiously obeyed, and those very remains of the enthusiastic Zisca proved, for many years, fatal to the emperor, who, with difficulty, in the space of sixteen years, recovered Bohemia, assisted by the forces of Germany. The insurgents were 40,000 in number, and well disciplined.
Groaning boards were the wonder in London in 1682. An elm plank was exhibited to the king, which, being touched by a hot iron, invariably produced a sound resembling deep groans. At the Bowman tavern, in Drury Lane, the mantelpiecegave forth like sounds, and was supposed to be part of the same elm tree. The dresser at the Queen's Arm Tavern, St. Martin le Grand, was found to possess the same quality. Strange times, when such things were deemed wonderful—so much so as to merit exhibition before the monarch.
A curious tradition exists among the Abyssinians concerning the origin of burial. They say that when Adam found the body of the murdered Abel he carried it about upon his shoulders for twenty days, not knowing how to dispose of it. The Almighty took pity on him and sent forth a crow with a dead young one on its back. The crow flew before Adam until it came to a tract of sandy ground, in which it dug a hole with its feet, and there buried its young one. When Adam saw this, he dug a grave in the sand and buried his dead boy in it.
Columella, Cato, Vitruvius and Pliny all had their notions of the advantage of cutting timber at certain ages of the moon—a piece of mummery which was long preserved in the royal ordonnances of France to the conservators of the forests, who were directed to fell oaks only "in the wane of the moon" and "when the wind was in the north."
There is a tradition that Poussin, the French painter, unable to depict the foam on a horse's mouth in a picture he was finishing, angrily threw his sponge at the canvas, and thus accidentally produced the desired effect. It is a pityto spoil such an effective story, but it was told of Apelles, the Greek painter, nearly two thousand years before Poussin was born.
A Peri, according to the mythical lore of the East, is a being begotten by fallen spirits, which spends its life in all imaginable delights. It is immortal, but is forever excluded from the joys of Paradise. It takes an intermediate place between angels and demons, and is either male or female. One of the finest compliments to be paid to a Persian lady is to speak of her asPerizadeh—born of a Peri.
The following is an account of the destruction of game in Bohemia, by a hunting party of which the Emperor Francis made one, in 1755. There were twenty-three persons in the party, three of whom were ladies, among the latter the Princess Charlotte of Lorraine. The chase lasted eighteen days, and during that time they killed 47,950 head of game. 19 stags, 77 roebucks, 10 foxes, 18,243 hares, 19,545 partridges, 9499 pheasants, 114 larks, 353 quails, 454 other birds. The emperor fired 9798 shots, and the princess 9010; in all there were 116,209 shots fired.
The Mahometans are very superstitious touching the beard. They bury the hairs which come off in combing it, and break them first, because they believe that angels have charge of every hair, and that they gain them their dismissal by breaking it. They used to wear pasteboard covers over their beardsat night, lest they should turn upon them and rumple them in their sleep. The famous Raskolniki Schismatics had a similar superstition about the beard. They believed that the divine image of man resided in it.
When the King of Naples (the greatest sportsman of Europe) was in Germany, about the year 1792, it was said in the German papers that he had killed, in Austria, Bohemia and Moravia, 5 bears, 1,820 wild boars, 1,968 stags, 13 wolves, 354 foxes, 15,350 pheasants, 1,121 rabbits, 16,354 hares, 1,625 she-goats, 1,625 roebucks and 12,435 partridges.
In the "Histoire Generale de l'Empire du Mogol," compiled by Catrou the Jesuit, this perfume is said to have been discovered by accident. "Nur-Jahan, the favorite wife of the Mogul Jahan-Ghur, among her other luxuries, had a small canal of rose water. As she was walking with the Mogul upon its banks, they perceived a thin film upon the water, which was an essential oil made by the heat of the sun. They were delighted with its exquisite odor, and means were immediately taken for preparing by art a substance like that which had been thus fortuitously produced."
Van Helmont tells a story of a person who applied to Taliacotius to have his nose restored. This person, having a dread of an incision being made in his own arm, for the purpose of removing enough skin therefrom for a nose, induceda laborer, for a remuneration, to allow the skin for the nose to be taken from his arm. About thirteen months after the adscititious nose suddenly became cold, and, after a few days, dropped off, in a state of putrefaction. The cause of this unexpected occurrence was investigated, when it was discovered that, at the same moment in which the nose grew cold, the laborer at Bologna expired.
On the very summit of Cader Idris there is an excavation in the solid rock, resembling a couch; and the residents of the vicinity say that whoever rests for the night in the couch, will be found in the morning dead, or raving mad, or endued with supernatural genius.
Centuries ago shoes were made, as now, "rights and lefts." The shoes found in the tomb of Bernard, King of Italy, were "rights and lefts." Shakespeare describes his smith as—
"Standing on slippers, which his nimble haste,Had falselythrust upon contrary feet."
"Standing on slippers, which his nimble haste,Had falselythrust upon contrary feet."
Scott, in his "Discoverie of Witchcraft," observes, "that he who receiveth a mischance will consider whether he put not on his shirt wrong side outwards, or hisleftshoe on hisrightfoot."
There is a church connected with the convent at Chartreux, Provence. It was dedicated to St. John, and over the portico were colossal statues of the four evangelists, which have beenthrown down, and the fragments lie scattered about. When Miss Plumptre and her party visited the spot, they observed a woman upon her knees over a fragment of stone, muttering to herself. When asked whether there was any particular virtue in the stone, she replied, in French: "Ah, yes? 'Tis a piece of St. John." She seemed to think that the saint's intercession in her behalf, mutilated as he was, might still avail her.
The quantity of provisions consumed at the coronations of some of the English kings was extraordinary. For that of King EdwardI., February 10th, 1274, the different sheriffs of twelve of the counties were ordered to deliver, at Windsor, a total of 440 oxen, 743 swine, 430 sheep and 22,560 fowls.
The "baker's dozen" is an old saying. In "The Witch," written by Thomas Middleton, about 1620, we find the following:—
Firestone.—"May you not have one o'clock into the dozen, mother?"
Witch.—"No."
Firestone.—"Your spirits are the more unconscionable thanbaker's."
On the 14th day of October, 1766, Mr. Wildman, of Plymouth, who had made himself famous throughout the west of England for his command over bees, was sent for to wait on Lord Spencer, at his seat at Wimbledon, in Surrey, andhe attended accordingly. Several of the nobility and persons of fashion were assembled, and the countess had provided three stocks of bees. The first of his performances was with one hive of bees hanging on his hat, which he carried in his hand, and the hive they came out of in his other hand; this was to show that he could take honey and wax without destroying the bees. Then he returned to his room, and came out with them hanging on his chin with a very venerable beard. After showing them to the company, he took them out upon the grass walk facing the windows, where, a table and a table-cloth being provided, he set the hive upon the table and made the bees hive therein. Then he made them come out again and swarm in the air, the ladies and nobility standing amongst them, and no person stung by them. He made them go on the table and took them up by handfuls, and tossed them up and down like so many peas; he then made them go into the hive at the word of command.
At five o'clock in the afternoon he exhibited again with the three swarms of bees, one on his head, one on his breast, and the other on his arm, and waited on Lord Spencer in his room, who had been too much indisposed to see the former experiment; the hives which the bees had been taken from were carried by one of the servants. After this exhibition he withdrew, but returned once more to the room with the bees all over his head, face and eyes, and was led blind before his lordship's window. One of his lordship's horses being brought out in his body clothes, Mr. Wildman mounted the horse, with the bees all over his head and face (except his eyes); they likewise covered his breast and left arm: he held a whip in his right hand, and a groom led the horse backwards and forwards before his lordship's window for some time. Mr. W. afterwards took the reins in his hand, rode round the house, dismounted, and at his word of command the bees sought their hives. The performance surprised and gratifiedthe earl and countess and all the spectators who assembled to witness the bee-master's extraordinary exhibition.—Annual Register, 1766.
Gübner mentions that a Jew once presented himself before Duke Albrecht, of Saxony, and offered him a charm, engraved with rare signs and characters, which should render him invulnerable. The duke, determined to try it, had the Jew led out in the field, with his charm round his neck; he then drew his sword, and at the first thrust ran the Jew through.
Waldron, in his "Description of the Isle of Man" (1731), speaking of a crypt or subterranean chapel near Peel Castle, says: "Within are thirteen pillars, on which the whole chapel is supported. They have a superstition that whatsoever stranger goes to see this cavern out of curiosity, and omits to count the pillars, shall do something to occasion his being confined there."
This famous hawthorn, which grew on a hill in the church-yard of Glastonbury Abbey, was said to have sprung from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, who, having fixed it in the ground with his own hand on Christmas day, the staff took root immediately, put forth leaves, and thenextday was covered with milk-white blossoms. It was declared that this thorn continued to blow every Christmas day during a long series of years, and that slips from the original plant are still preserved, and continue to blow every Christmas day to the present time.There certainly was in the abbey church-yard a hawthorne-tree which blossomed in winter, and was cut down in the time of the civil wars; but that it always blossomed on Christmas day was a mere tale of the monks, calculated to inspire the vulgar with notions of the sanctity of the place.
There was a singular custom at Rome in connection with the purchase of provisions. Purchaser and vendor simultaneously closed, and then suddenly opened, one of their hands or some of their fingers. If the number of fingers on both sides was even, the vendor obtained the price which he had previously asked: but if the number was uneven, the buyer received the goods for the sum he had just tendered.
In the Leverian Museum were deposited "Orbicular sparry bodies, commonly called fairies' money, from the banks of the Tyne, Northumberland." Ramon, a character in the play of "The Fatal Dowry," 1632, says—
But not a word of it, 'tis fairies' treasure;Which but reveal'd, brings on the babbler's ruine.
But not a word of it, 'tis fairies' treasure;Which but reveal'd, brings on the babbler's ruine.
A writer in the "Gentleman's Magazine," 1746, says: "In June, 1718, as I was walking in the fields, I stopt in Clerkenwell church-yard to see a grave-digger at work. He had dug pretty deep, and was come to a coffin which had lain so long that it was quite rotten, and the plate eaten so with rust that he could not read anything of the inscription. In cleaningaway the rotten pieces of wood, the grave-digger found an hour-glass close to the left side of the skull, with sand in it, the wood of which was so rotten that, it broke where he took hold of it. Being a lover of antiquity, I bought it of him, and made a drawing of it as it then appeared. Some time after, mentioning this affair in company of some antiquarians, they told me that it was an ancient custom to put an hour-glass into the coffin as an emblem of the sand of life being run out; others conjectured that little hour-glasses were anciently given at funerals, like rosemary, and by the friends of the dead put in the coffin or thrown into the grave."
The law of Clan Macduff was a privilege of immunity for homicide anciently enjoyed by those who could claim kindred with Macduff, Earl of Fife, within the ninth degree. Macduff's cross stood on the march or boundary between Fife and Strathearn, above Newburg. Any homicide possessed of the right of clanship who could reach it, and who gave nine kye (cows) and a clopindash (a young cow) was free of the slaughter committed by him.
It is a singular fact that on one occasion the lives of thousands of the Irish Protestants were saved by a clever device of a woman.
At the latter end of Queen Mary's reign a commission was signed for the purpose of punishing the heretics in that kingdom, and Dr. Cole, Dean of St. Paul's, was honored with the appointment, to execute which he set off with great alacrity. On his arrival at Chester, he sent for the mayor to supwith him, and, in the course of conversation, related his business. Going to his cloak-bag, he took out the box containing the commission, and, having shown it, with great joy exclaimed: "This will lash the heretics of Ireland." Mrs. Edmonds, the landlady, overheard this discourse, and having several relations in Ireland who were Protestant, as well as herself, resolved to play a trick upon the doctor, and while he went to attend the magistrate to the door, took the commission out of the box, and in its room placed a pack of cards, with the knave of clubs uppermost. The zealous doctor, suspecting nothing of the matter, put up his box, took shipping and arriving safe in Dublin, went immediately to the viceroy. A council was called, and, after a speech, the doctor delivered his box, which being opened by the secretary, the first thing that presented itself was the knave of clubs. The sight surprised the viceroy and the council, but much more the doctor, who assured them that he had received a commission from the queen, but what had become of it he could not tell. "Well, well," replied the viceroy, "you must go back for another, and we will shuffle the cards in the meantime." The doctor hastened across the channel, but at Holyhead he received the intelligence of the queen's death, and the accession of Elizabeth, who settled on Mrs. Edmonds a pension of forty pounds a year for saving her Protestant subjects in Ireland.
An old gentleman recently died at Brussels who has solved in his will a problem which his friends could never quite unravel. He came home after a few years absence abroad, some time ago, with plenty of pecuniary means, though when he left Brussels he went literally to seek his fortune, since he had none on starting. In his will, before he specifies his bequests,of which there are several very liberal ones to friends, relatives, and also to charitable institutions, he tells for the first time how he became possessed of his wealth. He went to Asia and engaged himself as a day laborer in the mines, and while working there found a diamond of large size and great value. He at once made a deep cut in the calf of his leg, where he secreted the gem. Of course, the limb became very sore and lame, and led to his being permitted to leave the mine unsuspected. Having reached a safe locality, he removed the stone and the sore healed up. He worked his way to Amsterdam, where he sold the diamond for $80,000. This money, put at interest, not only afforded him a good living, but enabled him to go on accumulating. The precious stone is now one of the crown diamonds of Russia.
The French papers, in the autumn of 1821, mention that a man named Desjardins was tried, on his own confession, as an accomplice with Louvel, the assassin of the Duke de Berri. But on his defense, Desjardins contended that his confession ought not to be believed because he was so notorious for falsehood that nobody would give credit to a word he said. In support of this, he produced a host of witnesses, his friend and relatives, who all swore that the excessively bad character which he had given of himself was true, and he was declared not guilty.
Before that a similar instance occurred in Ireland. A man was charged with highway robbery. In the course of the trial the prisoner roared out from the dock that he was guilty, but the jury, in their verdict, pronounced him "not guilty." "Good heavens, gentlemen!" exclaimed the astonished judge, "did you not hear the man himself declare that he was guilty?" The foreman answered: "We did,my lord, and that was the very reason we acquitted him, for weknewthe fellow to be such a notorious liar that he never told a word of truth in his life."
A peasant saw his dog attacked by a strange and ferocious mastiff. He tried to separate the animals, and received a bite from his own dog, which instantly ran off through the fields. The wound was healed in a few days, and the dog was not to be found, and the peasant after some time began to feel symptoms of nervous agitation. He conceived that the dog, from disappearing, was mad, and within a day or two after this idea had struck him, he began to feel symptoms of hydrophobia. They grew hourly more violent; he raved, and had all the evidence of a violent distemper.
As he was lying with the door open to let in the last air he was to breathe, he heard his dog bark. The animal ran up to the bedside and frolicked about the room; it was clear that he at least was in perfect health. The peasant's mind was relieved at the instant; he got up with renewed strength, dressed himself, plunged his head into a basin of water, and thus refreshed walked into the room to his astonished family.—Prof. Barrantini.
The annexed story is gravely recorded in "Dodsley's Annual Register:" "The following extraordinary affair happened at Ferrybridge, in 1767. The wife of one Thomas Benson, being suddenly taken ill, she, to all appearances, expired, and continued without any symptoms of life the whole day, and every proper requisite was ordered for her burial; but the husband, hoping for consolation in his distress, bysome money which he had reason to believe she had secreted from him in her lifetime, began a rummage for it, and found seven pounds ten shillings in crown pieces concealed in an old box; but, upon his attempting to take it away, he was surprised by his wife, who was just then recovered, and met him and terribly frightened him by appearing as if nothing had happened."
The wife of the consul of Cologne, Retchmuth, apparently died of the plague, in 1571. A ring of great value, buried with her, tempted the cupidity of the grave-digger, and was the cause of many future years of happiness. At night the purloiner marched to his plunder, and she revived. She lived to be the mother of three children, and, when really dead, she was reburied in the same church, where a monument was erected, upon which the above particulars are recited in German verse.—Edmund Fillingham King.
When a man has dreamed a bad dream in China he need not despair, for an interpreter of dreams is ready to supply him with a mystic scroll, which will avert the impending calamity. It is written on red or yellow paper, and the interpreter rolls it up in the form of a triangle and attaches it to the dress of his client. The dreamer is then made to look toward the east, with a sword in his right hand and his mouth full of spring water. In this position he ejects the water from his mouth, and beats the air with the sword, repeating in an imperative tone certain words, of which the following is an interpretation: "As quickly and with as much strength as rises the sun in the east, do thou, charm or mystic scroll, avertall the evil influences which are likely to result from my bad dream. As quickly as lightning passes through the air, O charm, cause impending evils to disappear."—Credulities Past and Present.
At Bayeux, in Normandy, one of the superstitions still current relates to a being called a letiche. It is an animal whose form is scarcely defined—of dazzling whiteness—which is only seen in the night time, and disappears the moment any one attempts to touch it. The letiches are believed to be the souls of infants who died without baptism. Most probably this pretty little spirit was no other than the agile and timid ermine of Normandy and Brittany.—Summer Among the Bocages.
These were vast stones formerly used for covering graves,helicinbeing the Saxon for "to cover" or conceal. In Dorsetshire is one of these stones; and the tradition is, that the devil flung it from Portland Pike to its present position, as he was playing at quoits.
In 1593 it was reported that a Silesian child, seven years old, had lost all its teeth, and that a golden tooth had grown in the place of a natural double one. In 1595 Horstius, professor of medicine in the University of Helmstadt, wrote the history of this golden tooth. He said it was partly a natural event and partly miraculous, and that God had sent it to the child to console the Christians for their persecution by the Turks. In the same year Rullandus drew up another accountof the golden tooth. Two years afterwards, Ingosteterus, another learned man, wrote against the opinion which Rullandus had given on this golden tooth. Rullandus immediately replied in a most elegant and erudite dissertation. Libavius, a very learned man, compiled all that had been said relative to this tooth, and subjoined his remarks upon it. Nothing was wanting to recommend these erudite writings to posterity but proof that the tooth was gold. A goldsmith examined it, and found it a natural tooth artificially gilt.
The Ophites were a sect who, like most Gnostics, regarded the Jehovah of the Old Testament with great abhorrence. Regarding the emancipation of man from the power and control of Jehovah as the most important end, they considered the serpent who tempted Eve and introduced "knowledge" and "revolt" into the world, to have been the great benefactor of the human race. They worshipped the serpent, and sought to engraft Ophism upon Christianity by causing the bread designed for the Eucharistic sacrifice to be licked by a serpent which was kept in a cave for the purpose, and which the communicants kissed after receiving the Eucharist.
This is a term applied to the nine of diamonds in a pack of playing cards. Much uncertainty prevails respecting the origin of the phrase. The most probable explanation is that it refers to the detestation entertained in Scotland toward John Dalrymple, first Earl of Stair, on account of his connection with the Massacre of Glencoe, for which he had toresign office in 1695. The heraldic bearing of this person consisted of nine lozenges on a field of azure. These nine lozenges resembled the nine of diamonds, and hence the popular phrase, the "Curse of Scotland."
Southey, in his "Common-place Book," has traced the outlines of what might be worked up into a very effective story of "citation" for those who unjustly and cruelly put others to death. "The Philipsons of Colgarth coveted a field, like Ahab, and had the possessor hung for an offence which he had not committed. The night before his execution the old man (for he was very old) read the 109th Psalm as his solemn and dying commination, verses 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16." The verses contain a prayer for vengeance upon the "wicked and deceitful," who "have spoken with a lying tongue," and whose days are to be few, their children to be fatherless and continually vagabonds and beggars, and their posterity to be cut off. "The curse," Southey adds, "was fully accomplished; the family were cut off, and the only daughter who remained sold laces and bobbins about the country."
A story is told of an inventor whose skill was the occasion of his own death. An immense bell, with the twelve hours carved upon it, had been hung in a high tower. A female figure was so arranged as to glide from her hiding place and strike each hour on the bell with a huge hammer. Everything was in its place, and it had been previously arranged with the concourse below, who had assembled to hear the bell strike, that it should sound the hour of one. Forgetfulthat the hour approached, the artist was still at work upon the carving of the bell, with his head near it, when the female figure, true to the machinery that moved it, glided from its place, and, hammer in hand, struck a fatal blow upon the head of the workman.
We are told that when St. Helena had discovered the true cross of Christ, she permitted various fragments to be taken from it, which were encased, some in gold and some in gems, and conveyed to Europe, leaving the main part of the wood in the charge of the Bishop of Jerusalem, who exhibited it annually at Easter, until Chosroes, King of Persia, plundered Jerusalem in the reign of Phocas, and took away the holy relic. Before this fatal event we are taught to believe, by Rigordus, an historian of the thirteenth century, that the mouths of Christians used to be supplied with thirty teeth, and in some instances, no doubt according to their faith, with thirty-two teeth; but thatafterthe cross was stolen by the infidels no mortal has ever been allowed more than twenty-three!
The Talmudists relate that Abraham, in traveling to Egypt, brought with him a chest. At the custom house the officers exacted the duties. Abraham would have readily paid them, but desired they would not open the chest. They first insisted on the duties for clothes, which Abraham consented to pay; but then they thought, by his ready acquiescence, that it might be gold; he consented to pay for gold. They then began to suspect it might contain silk, whereupon Abraham was willing to pay for silk or costly pearls; in short, he consented to pay as if the chest contained the most valuable ofthings. It was then resolved to open and examine the chest; and, behold! as soon as the chest was opened, that great lustre of human beauty broke out which made such a noise in the land of Egypt,—it was Sarah herself! The jealous Abraham, to conceal her beauty, had locked her up in the chest.
There is a beautiful tradition connected with the site on which the temple of Solomon was erected. It is said to have been occupied in common by two brothers, one of whom had a family and the other none. On the spot was a field of wheat. On the evening succeeding the harvest, the wheat having been gathered in shocks, the elder brother said to his wife, "My younger brother is unable to bear the burden and heat of the day; I will arise, take of my shocks, and place them with his, without his knowledge." The other brother, actuated by the same benevolent motives, said within himself, "My elder brother has a family, and I have none; I will contribute to their support; I will arise, take of my shocks, and place them with his, without his knowledge."
Judge of their mutual astonishment when, on the following morning, they found their respective shocks undiminished. This course of events transpired for several nights, when each resolved in his mind to stand guard and solve the mystery. They did so, and on the following night met each other halfway between the respective shocks, with their arms full.
The use of the magnet for the cure of diseases was known to the ancients. It was known to Aëtius, who lived as early as the year 500. He says: "We are assured that those who aretroubled with the gout in their hands or their feet, or with convulsions, find relief when they hold a magnet in their hands." Paracelsus recommended the magnet in a number of diseases, while Kircher tells us that it was worn around the neck as a preventive against convulsions and affections of the nerves. About the end of the seventeenth century magnetic tooth-picks were made, and extolled as a secret preventive against pains in the teeth, eyes and ears.
The "Morning Post," (England,) issued for the 2d day of May, 1791, states that the day before, "being the first of May, according to annual and superstitious custom, a number of persons went into the fields and bathed their faces with the dew on the grass, under the idea that it would render them beautiful."
The following extraordinary vow is performed by some of the Hindoos at their festival ofCharak Puja:Stretching himself on the ground on his back, the devotee takes a handful of moist earth, and placing it on his under lip, he plants in it some mustard seed, and exposes himself to the dews of the night and the heat of the day until the seeds germinate. In this posture the man must remain in a fixed, motionless condition, without food or drink, until the vegetable process liberates him, which will generally be about the fourth day.
That the devil has a "cloven foot," which he cannot hide if it be looked for, is a common belief with the vulgar. Thereis a popular superstition in England relative to goats, that they are never to be seen for twenty-four hours together, and that once in that space they pay a visit to the devil in order to have their beards combed.
On the 18th of May, 1664, the following public advertisement was issued for the healing of the people by King Charles II.:—
NOTICE.
His sacred majesty having declared it to be his royal will and purpose to continue the healing of his people for the evil during the month of May, and then give over till Michalmas next, I am commanded to give notice thereof, that the people may not come up to the town in the interim and lose their labour.
Newes, 1664.
Burns says that "burning the nuts is a favorite charm. They name the lad and lass to each particular nut, as they lay them in the fire; and accordingly, as they burn quietly together or start from beside one another, the course and issue of the courtship will be." In Ireland, when the young women would know if their lovers are faithful, they put three nuts upon the bars of the grates, naming the nuts after the lovers. If a nut cracks or jumps, the lover will prove unfaithful; if it begins to blaze or burn, he has a regard for the person making the trial. If the nuts, named after the girl and her lover, burn together, they will be married. This sort of divination is also practiced in England. Gay mentions it in his "Spell"—