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Title: Traditions, Superstitions and Folk-lore - (Chiefly Lancashire and the North of England:) Their - affinity to others in widely-distributed localities; Their - Eastern Origin and Mythical Significance.
Author: Hardwick, Charles
Language: English
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[Illustration: THE SPECTRE HUNTSMAN
C. Potter, Delt.
W. Morton, Sculpt.
_Page 153._]
TRADITIONS, SUPERSTITIONS,
AND
FOLK-LORE,
(CHIEFLY LANCASHIRE AND THE NORTH OF ENGLAND:)
=Their affinity to others in widely-distributed localities;=
THEIR
EASTERN ORIGIN AND MYTHICAL SIGNIFICANCE.
BY
CHARLES HARDWICK,
AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF PRESTON AND ITS ENVIRONS," "MANUAL FOR PATRONS AND
MEMBERS OF FRIENDLY SOCIETIES," ETC.
"Thou has hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast
revealed them unto babes."--_Matthew_, c. xi. v. 25.
"Every fiction that has ever laid strong hold of human belief is the
mistaken image of some great _truth_, to which reason will direct
its search, while half reason is content with laughing at the
superstition, and unreason with disbelieving it."--_Rev. J.
Martineau._
MANCHESTER:
A. IRELAND & CO., PALL MALL.
LONDON:
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO., STATIONERS' HALL COURT.
1872.
TO
HIS VERY DEAR AND EVER KIND FRIEND,
ELIZA COOK,
THIS WORK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED,
AS A VERY HUMBLE BUT SINCERE TRIBUTE
TO HER POETIC GENIUS
AND
HER PRIVATE WORTH,
BY ITS AUTHOR,
CHARLES HARDWICK.
PREFACE.
Our nursery legends and popular superstitions are fast becoming matters
of history, except in the more remote and secluded portions of the
country. The age of the steam engine, and the electric battery, and the
many other practical adaptations of the triumphs of physical science, is
apparently not the one in which such "waifs and strays" from the
mythical lore of the dim and distant Past are very likely to be much
sought after or honoured. But now that the light of modern
investigation, and especially that ray furnished by recent discoveries
in philological science, has been directed towards their deeper and more
hidden mysteries, profound philosophical historians have begun to
discover that from this apparently desolate literary region much
reliable knowledge may be extracted, leading to conclusions of the most
interesting and important kind, with reference to the early history of
our race. The labours of the brothers Grimm, Dr. Adalbert Kuhn,
Professor Max Müller, the Rev. G. W. Cox, and others, have recently
received considerable attention from philosophic enquirers into the
origin and early development of the people from whom nearly all of the
European, and some of the Asiatic, modern nationalities have sprung.
It is found that many of these imperfect, and sometimes grotesque,
traditions, legends, and superstitions are, in reality, not the
"despicable rubbish" which the "learned" have been in the habit of
regarding them, but rather the crude ore, which, when skilfully smelted
down, yields, abundantly, pure metal well worthy of the literary hammer
of the most profound student in general history, ethnology, or the
phenomena attendant upon psychological development.
Professor Henry Morley, in the chapter on Ethnology, in his "English
Writers," after noticing "how immediately and easily particular words,
common in their application, would become available for common use," and
"how often _images of the seen would become symbols of the unseen_,"
truly says, "The world about us is not simply mirrored, but _informed
with a true soul_, by all the tongues that syllable man's knowledge and
his wants. The subtlest harmonies of life and nature may lie hidden in
the very letters of the alphabet."
The subject has been but recently introduced, in a thoroughly popular
form, to the English reader. Dasent's "Popular Tales from the Norse,"
and occasional papers by local writers, intensified and extended the
interest taken in this species of research. The publication, in 1863, by
Mr. Walter K. Kelly, of his "Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and
Folk-Lore," however, may be said to have given a still greater impetus
to popular investigation in this direction. This is largely to be
attributed to the fact that he has summarised in a very pleasing manner
much of the abstruse learning of the German philologists and
mythologists to whom reference has already been made.
Whilst contemplating the publication of some "Supplementary Notes to the
History of Preston and its Environs," the early chapters of which, of
course, would necessarily deal with what is termed the "pre-historic
period," Mr. Kelly's work came into my hands. I was induced to
considerably enlarge my plan, in consequence of the value I immediately
placed upon its contents, and of the suggestion in the following
paragraph, which appears in its preface:
"In not a few instances I have been able to illustrate Dr. Kuhn's
principles by examples of the folk-lore of Great Britain and Ireland,
and would gladly have done so more copiously had matter for the purpose
been more accessible. My efforts in that direction have made me
painfully aware how much we are behind the Germans, not only as to our
insight into the meaning of such relics of the past, but also as to our
industry in collecting them. The latter defect is indeed a natural
consequence of the former, and it is to be hoped that our local
archæologists will no longer be content to labour under either of them
when once they have found what far-reaching knowledge may be extracted
out of old wives' tales and notions. Only four years ago the editor of
'Notes and Queries' spoke hypothetically (in the preface to 'Choice
Notes') of a time to come when the study of folk-lore (he was I believe
the inventor of that very expressive and sterling word) should have
risen from a pleasant pastime to the rank of a science. Already his
anticipation has been realised, and henceforth every careful collector
of a novel scrap of folk-lore, or of even a well-marked variety of an
old type, may entertain a reasonable hope that he has in some degree
subserved the purposes of the ethnologist and the philosophical
historian."
In 1865-6 I published a series of the "Supplementary Notes" referred to,
in the _Preston Guardian_ newspaper. The general favour with which they
were received, and the increasing interest I felt in the subject,
induced me to continue my researches, with the view to the ultimate
publication of the present volume. The original papers, as well as other
essays afterwards published elsewhere, have not only been carefully
revised, and, in some instances, rearranged, but the quantity of new
matter added in each chapter is such as to render the work in every
respect much more complete, and more worthy of being regarded as having,
in some small degree, "subserved the purposes of the ethnologist and the
philosophical historian." I would gladly persuade myself that I have, at
least, rendered what many regard as frivolous, and others as very
abstruse and very "dry reading," interesting, attractive, and
instructive to the general reader. If I succeed in this respect, my
chief object will have been accomplished.
The various authorities relied upon or quoted are sufficiently indicated
in the body of the work to render a catalogue of them here unnecessary.
I may add, however, that the principal portions of the papers
contributed by my friend, Mr. T. T. Wilkinson, F.R.A.S., to the
"Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Historic Society," have
since been incorporated with a portion of the collection of the late Mr.
Jno. Harland, F.S.A., and published in a volume by F. Warne and Co.,
entitled "Lancashire Folk Lore."
74, HALSTON STREET, HULME,
_Manchester, April, 1872._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF LANCASHIRE AND THE NEIGHBOURING COUNTIES, AND
REMAINS OF THEIR MYTHOLOGY AND LOCAL NOMENCLATURE.
Etymology. Philology. The Aryan theory of the common origin of most
of the European races of men. Sanscrit. The Rig Vedas. Probable
element of truth at the base of Geoffrey of Monmouth's mythical
History of the Britons. The Brigantes. The Phœnicians. The
Hyperboreans. Stonehenge. Bel or Baal, the sun-god. The Persian
Ormusd. Temple of Mithras in Northumberland. The "Bronze age." The
Cushites or Hamites of Ancient Arabia. Palæoliths, or ancient stone
weapons. The Belisama (Ribble). Altars dedicated to Belatucadrus in
the North of England. The Brigantes of the East, Spain, Ireland,
and the North of England. The Aryan fire-god Agni, and his
retainers, the Bhrigus, etc. Altars in the North of England
dedicated to Vitires, Vetiris, or Veteres. Vithris (Odin). Vritra
of the Hindoo Vedas. Altars dedicated to Cocidius, The Styx,
Acheron, and Cocytus of the Greeks. The Coccium of Antoninus, at
Walton, near Preston. Ancient local nomenclature. The Belisama. The
Irish god Samhan. The Aryan god Soma. The "heavenly soma." The
amrita or nectar, the "drink of the gods." Madhu. Mead. Brewing and
lightening. Bel, the luminous deity of the Britons. Deification of
rivers. The Wharf, the Lune, etc. The Solway and Eden (Ituna of
Ptolemy). Idunn, the goddess of youth and beauty. Swan maidens.
Eagle shirts. Frost giants, etc. The "Luck of Eden Hall." Phallic
symbols. The Dee (the Seteia of Ptolemy). Dêvas, deities, evil
spirits, devils. The Severn, Sabrina, Varuna. War between the dêvas
and the asuras. The Vedic serpent, Sesha. The chark. Churning the
sea, or brewing soma. The lake of Amara, or of the gods, and the
Sitanta mountains, at the head of the Nile. The second Avatâra of
Vishnu. The Setantii, ancient inhabitants of Lancashire. The Humber
(the Abus of Ptolemy). The Vedic Arbhus. The Elbe. Elemental
strife. The Wash (the Metaris of Ptolemy). The Vedic Mithra, the
friend of Varuna, the god of daylight. Figurative interpretation.
The origin of language. Page 1
CHAPTER II.
FIRE OR SUN WORSHIP AND ITS ATTENDANT SUPERSTITIONS.
Fire worship denounced by the earlier ecclesiastics. Remnant in
modern times. Allhalloween. Beltain fires. Derbyshire tindles and
Lancashire teanlas. African notions of the Sun and Moon. Bonfires.
The gunpowder plot. Midsummer fires. The elder Aryan fire-gods Agni
and Rudra, and their attendants. Prometheus, the fire-bringer, the
inventor of the chark, or earliest fire-kindling instrument.
Original or "need-fire." Cattle disease. Fire superstitions.
Burning wheels, etc. Sacrifices to the god Bel, and to the sun-god
Fro or Fricco, in the North of England, etc. The feast of St. John
the Baptist. Bone-fires. Dragons and serpents. Agni and the
Midsummer demons. Ahi and Kuyava the destroyers of vegetation. The
great Vedic serpent Sesha. St. George and other dragon slayers.
Dragons, fiery serpents, and huge worms of the North of England,
"blasters of the harvest." The Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf. The
monster Grendel, of Hartlepool. Dragons and imprisoned maidens, and
treasure hid in caves. Merlin's prophecy. Red and white dragons.
Dragon poison converted into medical balm. Figurative
interpretation. The thunderstorm reduces the heat, waters the
parched earth, and promotes vegetable growth. A modern hypothesis
as to the origin of dragon superstitions. Page 28
CHAPTER III.
CHRISTMAS AND YULE-TIDE SUPERSTITIONS AND OBSERVANCES.
Christmas amusements. Date of the nativity. Remnants of pagan
superstition denounced by the Church. Etymology of the word Yule.
Commencement of the year at the vernal equinox. Old and new styles.
Old style yet in use in Lancashire. Clerical denunciation of New
Year's gifts. Curious gifts on New Year's Day in Elizabeth's reign.
The wassail bowl. The Saxon "wacht heil" and "drinc heil." Singular
New Year's day superstitions. Meat, drink, money, and candles
interred with the dead. No fire-light or business credit given on
New Year's day. Recent instances in Lancashire. Divination at
Christmas. Red and dark-haired visitors on New Year's morn.
Antagonism of the Celtic and Teutonic races. Forecasting the
weather. Twelve days' sleep of the Vedic Ribhus in the house of the
sun-god Savitar. The mistletoe and other plants sprung from the
lightning. The oak and the ash. The heavenly asvattha, the _ficus
religiosa_, of the Aryan mythology, the prototype of the yggdrasil
or cloud-tree of the Scandinavians. Merlin's tree that covers Great
Britain and Ireland. Jack and the bean-stalk. Thorns blossoming on
old Christmas eve. German Christmas trees. The boar's head. The
boar an Aryan type of the wind. His tusks the lightning. Popular
belief that pigs can see the wind. Page 53
CHAPTER IV.
EASTER SUPERSTITIONS AND CEREMONIES.
Sun dancing on Easter morn. Etymology of the word Easter. Original or
need-fire. Easter eggs. The red or golden egg an Aryan sun-type.
Easter eggs protection against fire. Hand-ball playing by the
clergy. Easter mysteries, moralities, or miracle plays. Paschal or
"pace" eggs. Lancashire "pace-egging." Lifting of women on Easter
Monday, and of men on the following day, a custom still practised
in Lancashire. Cross-buns at Easter. Thor's hammer. Ancient
marriage oaks. Mid-lent or "mothering" Sunday. Simnel cakes.
Curious customs in Lancashire and Shropshire. Etymology of the word
"simnel." Braggat Sunday and Braggat ales. Lenten fare. Beans and
peas. Curious ancient and modern superstitions connected therewith.
Touching for the king's evil. Divine right of kings. Page 70
CHAPTER V.
MAY-DAY CEREMONIES AND SUPERSTITIONS.
Mock battle between summer and winter. The vernal equinox. Joy on the
return of Spring. Bell-ringing and horn-blowing. Midnight gathering
of wild flowers and green branches of trees. May-day garlands and
decorations. Rush-bearing in Lancashire. Well dressing in
Derbyshire. The Roman Floralia. May-poles denounced by the
Puritans. King James I. at Hoghton Tower, Lancashire. Speech about
"libertie to piping and honest recreation." Whitsun-ales and Morris
dances. Washington Irving's first sight of a May-pole at Chester.
Modern May-day ceremonies in Cheshire. Gathering hawthorn blossom.
The _Mimosa catechu_, or sacred thorn of India, sprung from the
lightning. The Glastonbury thorn. Singular superstition respecting
it. Children's love of wild flowers. May-day dew good for ladies'
complexions. May-day dew, the milk of the Aryan heavenly cows
(clouds), believed to increase the milk of their earthly
prototypes. Page 83
CHAPTER VI.
WITCHCRAFT.
The Lancashire witches--Dame Demdike, etc. Witch superstitions of
Aryan origin. Dethroned retainers of the elder gods. The Fates or
Destinies. Waxen and clay images. The doom of Meleager. Reginald
Scot on witchcraft in 1584. Opinions of Wierus, a German
physician, in 1563. Singular confessions of presumed witches.
Numbers put to death. The belief in witchcraft countenanced by the
church, the legislature, and the learned. Sir Kenelm Digby's
opinion. Singular medical superstitions. King James I. and Agnes
Simpson, the Scotch witch. The Lancashire witches and Charles I.
Witchcraft in Hertfordshire in 1761. Ralph Gardiner's Malicious
Invective. A Scotch witchfinder. Matthew Hopkins. Laws relating to
witchcraft in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Draci,
cloud-gods, or water-spirits, with hands perforated like colanders.
Singular tradition of the dun cow at Grimsargh, near Preston.
Witches' influence on the butter and milk of cows. Durham,
Yorkshire, and Warwick dun cow traditions. Red cow milk. Ushas, the
Vedic dawn-goddess. Red heifers set apart for sacrifice. Guy of
Warwick and his porridge pot. Black, white, and grey witches. The
Teutonic _deæ matres_, or mother goddesses. The three Fates. The
weird sisters of Shakspere. The "theatrical properties" of witches
of Aryan origin. The sieve, the cauldron, and the broom or besom.
Witches spirits of the air. Hecate the Pandemonium Diana.
Personifications of elemental strife. The brewing of storms. Aryan
root of these superstitions. Hares disguised witches. Boadicea's
hare. The goddess Freyja and her attendant hares. Singular hare
superstition in Cornwall. "Mad as a March hare." Cats weatherwise
animals. Sailors say a frisky cat has got "a gale of wind in her
tail." Sailors' prejudice against commencing a voyage on a Friday.
Singular charge against the Knights Templars. The broom or besom
represents the implement with which the Aryan demi-gods swept the
sky. A type of the winds. Curious Lancashire custom: hanging out a
besom when the lady of the house is absent, to announce to bachelor
friends that bachelor habits may be indulged in. The broom the
oldest wine-bush. Dutch broom-girls. Eight classes of witches.
Gipsies: their Eastern origin. Modern fortune tellers. The witch's
familiar. Singular Somerset, Middlesex, and Lancashire superstitions
at the present day. Witchcraft amongst the Maories, and in
Equatorial Africa. Deathbed of a Burnley witch, and transference
of her familiar spirit with her last breath. Page 96
CHAPTER VII.
FAIRIES AND BOGGARTS.
Puck or Robin Goodfellow. Peris, Pixies, and Ginns. Queen Mab.
Lancashire boggarts and fairies. The bargaist. The fairy of Mellor
Moor, Lancashire. Lumb Farm boggart, near Blackburn. "Boggart Ho'
Clough," near Manchester. George Cheetham's boggart. The devil made
a monk. The headless dog or woman at Preston. Raising the devil.
"Raw head and bloody bones." Edwin Waugh's account of the
Grislehurst boggart. The laying of boggarts. Driving a stake
through the body of a cock buried with the boggart. Sacred or
lightning birds. Superstitions about cocks and hens. Killing a
Lancashire wizard. Cruel sacrifice of chanticleer. Divining by
means of a cock. Boggarts scared by a cock crowing. The cock an
emblem of Æsculapius. The black cock crows in the Niflheim, or
"land of gloom." The lion afraid of a white cock. Father Morolla's
account of the revivification of a dead cock. The cockatrice. A
cruelly slaughtered cock and red cow's milk a sovereign remedy for
consumption. The Scandinavian golden coloured cock's crowing the
signal for the dawn of the Ragnarock, "the great day of arousing."
The Hindoos "cast out devils" by the aid of a cock slaughtered as a
sacrifice. Modern Jewish custom. Game cock feathers in the bed
cause a dying person to linger in pain. Hothersall Hall boggart,
Lancashire, laid beneath a laurel tree, watered with milk. Rowan,
ash, and red thread potential against boggarts, witches, and devils.
Scandinavian and German boggarts. The Hindoo pitris or fathers.
Zwergs, dwarfs, "ancients" or ancestors. Good fairies, elves, etc.
Lord Duffin transported by fairies from Scotland to Paris.
Classical ghost story. Singular superstition, of Eastern character,
at Darwen, Lancashire. A somewhat similar one in Australia. Fairy
rings, their imaginary and real origin. Page 124
CHAPTER VIII.
FERN-SEED AND ST. JOHN'S-WORT SUPERSTITIONS.
Human invisibility. The helmet of Hades or Pluto, and the Teutonic
"invisible cap." Modern references to this singular superstition.
Ferns, luck-bringing plants. Said to have sprung from the
lightning. St. John's-wort. German story of accidental
invisibility. St John's eve. Fern seed, a love charm. Samuel
Bamford's Lancashire story in "Boggart Ho' Clough," near
Manchester. St. John superseded the Scandinavian Baldr. The
_Osmunda regalis_. _Osmunda_, one of the appellations of Thor.
The vervain, a plant of spells and enchantments. The Sanscrit
parna and the modern fern. Origin of the name "Boggart
Ho' Clough." Page 143
CHAPTER IX.
THE SPECTRE HUNTSMAN AND THE FURIOUS HOST.
Hunting the white doe in the Vale of Todmorden, Lancashire. The
"Gabriel Ratchets." The wish-hounds. The "Gabriel hounds" in
Yorkshire. The classic Orion, "the mighty hunter." The classic
white doe and its mediæval descendants. The fair maid of Kent. A
fawn attendant on the Greek deities of the morning. Odin, the wild
huntsman, and the furious host. The Yule host of Iceland.
Personification of storm and tempest. Herod, the "Chasse Maccabei,"
and the Wandering Jew. The "seven whistlers" in Lancashire and
Yorkshire. Restless birds believed to be the souls of the damned
condemned to perpetual motion, on the Bosphorus. The wandering
Odin and his two ravens, representing Thought and Memory. The
Wandering Jew's last appearance in the flesh. Temporary death of
the weather-gods typical of the seasons. Odin slain by the wild
boar. Thammuz and the Greek Adonis. Odin lord of the gallows.
Odin's spear. Roland's "Durandal," the sword of Chrysâôr, of
Theseus, and of Sigurd. Arthur's "Excalibur" and others. Their
Aryan prototype, Indra's thunderbolt. Magic cudgels. The lad and
the "rascally innkeeper." Indra and Vritra, and the Panis. Long
Aryan winters. Hackelberg's coit throwing. King Arthur's similar
exploit in Northumberland. The devil's doings at Kirkby Lonsdale,
at Leyland church, and at Winwick. Etymology of the word "Winwick."
Odin buried in the cloud mountain. Heroes slumbering in caves.
Frederic Barbarossa, Henry the Fowler, Charlemagne, and the
renowned Arthur. Arthur's death and translation to Avalun. The
Eildon Hills and the Sewingshields castle traditions. The
"Helmwind," near Kirkoswald, Cumberland. Sir Tarquin's castle at
Manchester. Arthur's battles on the Douglas. Arthur still alive as
a raven. The Gjallar horn. A Cheshire legend says Arthur reposes in
the "Wizard's Cave," at Alderley Edge. Ancient reputation of
Britain for tempests and pestilential storms. The departure of the
genii. A similar superstition in equatorial Africa. Irish
superstitions. The furious host. Wandering souls of the unquiet
dead. The Aryan Maruts and Ribhus. The approach of the furious
host. The black coach legend. The yelping hound. The stray hound of
Odin. The Lancashire and Dorsetshire black dog fiends. The "Trash"
or "Skriker" of East Lancashire. Cerberus and the Vedic Sarvari.
Hermes and the Vedic Sârameyas. The howling dog, an embodiment of
the wind and herald of death. Recent example of the power of this
superstition in Lancashire. Acute sense of smell probably at the
root of this personification. Dogs supposed to be able to see
spirits. Dr. Marigold's dog and the approach of domestic storms.
Will-o'-whisps, or souls of unbaptised children. The Maruts after a
storm assume the form of new-born babes, as Hermes returned to his
cradle after tearing up the forests. Odin sometimes chases the wild
boar, sometimes Holda, or Bertha, his wife. The hell-hunt. Hell or
Hela, the goddess of death. The English hunt. England the realm of
Hela. Niflheim, the world of mists, and the Greek Hades. Nastrond
and the modern Hell. After death punishment for crimes done in the
body. Valhalla and the Gothic Hell and Devil. Contrast between the
Eastern and Northern notions of Hell, and Shakspere's powerful
description thereof. Wandering spirits of the Greek and Aryan
mythologies. Yorkshire ballad concerning the passage of the soul
over Whinney Moor. Cleveland belief in the efficacy of a gift of a
pair of shoes to a poor man. Salt placed on the stomach of a
corpse. Salt an emblem of eternity and immortality. Flights of
birds. The seven whistlers. The bellowing of cows. Odin and his
host carry off cows. The Milky-way or the _kaupat_ to heaven. The
Ashton heriot. Figurative character of Odin's accessories. Examples
from Greek archæic art of the gradual evolution of mythological
personification from physical phenomena. Orpheus the Aryan Arbhus.
The nightmare. The Maruts. The Valkyrs or wild riders of Germany.
The "Black Lad" of Ashton-under-Lyne. The wild rider. The demon
Tregeagle, or tyrant lord of Cornwall, and his endless labours.
Tam O'Shanter and the witches. Bottomless pools. Sir Francis Drake
and the hearse drawn by headless horses. The wish hounds. Poetic
sympathy. The Ashton "Black Lad" or tyrant lord. Bamford's poem
"The Wild Rider." Earthly heroes substituted for Odin. Page 153
CHAPTER X.
GIANTS, MYTHICAL AND OTHERWISE.
The Giant's Dance, Stonehenge. The Ramayana and giants of Ceylon. The
wild men of Hanno, the Carthaginian. Gorillas. The giants of
Lancashire, Shropshire, Cornwall, Ireland, and India compared.
Gogmagog and Corineus. The Cyclops. Patagonian and other modern
giants. Giants and monsters according to Pliny. Shakspere's
monsters. The Amorites. The giants Og and Sihon. Remains of the
ancient cities of Bashan. Sir Jno. Mandeville's Indian giants. Red
Indian traditions of giants and gigantic pachyderms. Discoveries of
huge fossil bones. Aryan Râkshasas or Atrins (devourers). Giants
and devils. Milton's fallen angels. The trolls and giants of
Scandinavia. Dethroned deities. The Æsir gods. Their overthrow by
the light of the Christian dispensation. Nikarr, an appellation of
Odin, the Old Nick of the present day. Giants degraded forms of
original Aryan personifications of the forces of nature. Ancient
and modern examples. Allegory. Lord Bacon's opinion. Passage into
the heroes of romance. The King Arthur legends. The Anglo-Saxon
poem, Beowulf. The monster Grendel of Hartlepool. The Arthur legend
of Tarquin and Sir Lancelot, at Manchester. The Round table.
Anachronisms in romance literature. The "Sangreal." Urien, the
Arthur of the North of England. The Welsh bards, Taliesin and
Llywarch Hen or the Old. Geoffrey of Monmouth and William of
Newbury. Walter Map. Giants' coits and erratic boulders. Lancashire
and Cheshire giants, near Stockport. Chivalry and the plundering
Barons of the middle ages. Mythical Dwarfs. Tom Thumb. Connection
of Druidical with Brahminical superstition. Page 197
CHAPTER XI.
WERE-WOLVES AND THE TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS.
Bodies of birds and animals supposed to be tenanted by the souls of
men. Instances from Shakspere. The Druids. The Egyptian,
Pythagorean, and the Hindoo Doctrines. The Taliesin romance. The
bell-tolling ox at Woolwich. Were-wolves. Irish were-wolves. King
John a were-wolf. Greek and Roman were-wolves. German were-wolves.
Swan shirts and eagle shirts. Irish Mermaids. Bears. Detection of
were-wolves. Vampires. Witches transformed into cats. Were-wolves,
like witches, burnt at the stake. The witches' magic bridle, which
transformed human beings into horses. Lancashire witches
transformed into greyhounds. Margery Grant, a recently deceased
Scotch witch, sometimes transformed into a pony, and sometimes into
a hare. Men transformed into crocodiles. Owl transformations. The
owl, the baker, and the baker's daughter. Bakers transformed into a
cuckoo and a woodpecker. The White Doe of Rylstone. The Manx wren,
the robin, the stork, etc., each supposed to enshrine the soul of a
human being. Men transformed into leopards, etc., in Africa. Greek
Lykanthropy. Aryan conception of the howling wind as a wolf. The
souls of the damned were-wolves in Hell. The wolf a personification
of the darkness of the Night. Greek forms of this myth in Apollo
and Latona his mother. Personifications of natural phenomena.
Children suckled by wolves. Page 224
CHAPTER XII.
SACRED AND OMINOUS BIRDS, ETC.
Sacred Birds. Beautiful Welsh legend of the robin. Stork legends in
Germany. Their nests built upon wheels (sun emblems) placed on the
roofs of houses. Remains in Danish "Kitchen middens." Birds of evil
omen. The owl. Shakspere's profound insight. Cuckoo superstitions.
Transformation of cuckoos into sparrowhawks. The cuckoo the
messenger of Thor. The wren hunted to death in the Isle of Man,
Ireland, and some parts of France. A sacred bird in England.
Swallows and crickets. Ravens, crows, jackdaws, etc., ominous birds.
Lancashire superstitions of this class. The "Seven Whistlers." The
Woodpecker. Picus and Pilumnus. Fire and soul bringers. Weather
prophets. The stormy petrel, the heron, and the crane. The
lady-bird. Rats leaving ships about to founder at sea. Page 242
CHAPTER XIII.
THE DIVINING OR "WISH"-ROD, AND SUPERSTITIONS RESPECTING TREES AND PLANTS.
Searching for hidden treasure at Cuerdale, near Preston. Midnight
excavations on the site of the Roman station at Walton, near
Preston. How to prepare a divining rod. The rowan tree. Divination
by upright rods. Recent attempt to discover metallic ores by the
divining rod. Anecdote of M. Linnæus. Form of the wish-rod. The
mystic number three. The mistletoe. Neptune's Trident. The
horseshoe, a divining instrument. Other divining instruments. The
mandrake. Resemblance in form to the human body. The caduceus or
the rod of Hermes. Modern conjurer's magic wands. The palasa tree
or the "imperial _mimosa_" of the East. Aryan legend of its
lightning origin. The mountain ash, the thorn, etc. Bishop Heber's
anecdote respecting the Hindoo form of the superstition. African
sacred trees. Recent instances of this superstition in England,
Scotland, and Australia. The pastoral crook, and the lituus, or
staff, of the ancient augurs, etc. Phallic symbols. Novel use of
the Bible. The divining rod but of recent importation into
Cornwall. Recent instances of divination or "dowzing" for water.
Finding drowned bodies. "Corpse candles." Page 252
CHAPTER XIV.
WELL WORSHIP AND SUPERSTITIONS CONNECTED WITH WATER.
Well worship. Medical virtues of water. Symbol of purity. Sacred
wells. St. Helen's well, at Brindle, near Preston. Curious examples
of local corruption of names. Pin dropping. Pin wells in France,
Wales, Scotland, Northumberland, and the West of England. A form of
divination. Protection against hanging. Other curious forms of this
superstition. Curing rickets in children and insanity. Reported
miraculous cures. Well dressing. Recent death of Margery Grant, a
"Scotch witch," who worked cures with holy water. The deification
of rivers and streams. Ancient lake dwellings, Healing lake in
Scotland. Bottomless pools. Stagnant water. Jenny Greenteeth.
"Nickar, the soulless." Scotch kelpies. Burns's "Address to the
Deil." Superstition on the Solway. African superstition of this
class. Page 267
CHAPTER XV.
CONCLUSION.
Antiquity of the superstitions commented upon. The common origin of
most of them. Tenacity of superstition and traditionary lore. Some
perhaps have resulted from similar conditions, without any
necessary connection with each other. Supposed communication of
America with Asia in ancient times. Phallic worship in Central
America. Singular custom in the Polynesian Islands. Migration of
the Miocene flora. The Atlantis of the Ancients. Superstitions in
Abyssinia and the Malay Archipelago. Traditions and superstitions
frequently glide into each other. Instances. Scotch warriors at
Preston. Sunken churches. Secret passages beneath rivers. All
ruined castles, abbeys, etc., said to have been battered by
Cromwell's cannon. Recent discoveries in Sanscrit. Max Müller's
interpretation of Greek myths. Anthropomorphism, or the
personification of natural forces. Growth of a myth. Vedic and
other examples. Wordsworth's interpretation of Greek myths.
Figurative expression, the groundwork of all poetry, at the root of
all language. Shakspere's appreciation of the poetic value of
popular mythology. Importance of the study of these despised
superstitions to philological, ethnological, and psychological
science, as well as to the sound philosophical interpretation of
general history. Page 283
TRADITIONS, SUPERSTITIONS,
AND
FOLK-LORE.
CHAPTER I.
THE EARLY INHABITANTS OF LANCASHIRE AND THE NEIGHBOURING COUNTIES, AND
REMAINS OF THEIR MYTHOLOGY AND LOCAL NOMENCLATURE.
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
_Shakspere._
On several occasions, when discussing obscure questions of early
topography or ancient nomenclature, although readily acknowledging the
value of all facts in connection with genuine etymological science, I
have recommended great caution in the use of this powerful but somewhat
capricious archæological ally. I yet retain a strong impression that
this caution is still a necessary condition of truly scientific
historical or antiquarian research. Consequently, several of the
presumed etymologies in the present work are advanced with diffidence,
and with a thorough conviction that some of them may prove to be
illusive. The suggestion of a probability, however, is a very different
thing to dogmatic assertion in such matters, a practice which cannot be
too much condemned.
It is not very many years since the writer of the article "Language," in
Knight's Cyclopædia, felt it his duty, in introducing the subject, to
use the following strong expressions:--
"That division of grammar which is called etymology has been disgraced
by such puerile trifling, and has been pursued with such an utter
disregard to anything like scientific principles, as to create in the
minds of many persons a suspicion against everything presented to their
notice under the name of etymology. Such persons have viewed etymology
as nothing else than a dexterous play upon words, and have looked upon
etymologists as little better than indifferent punsters. That the
generality of writers upon this subject scarcely deserve any better
appellation will hardly be denied by anyone who has studied etymology on
true philological principles; and, if any doubt were entertained upon
the point, it would only be necessary to refer to such works as Damm's
'Homeric Lexicon,' and Lennep's 'Etymology of the Greek Language,' which
are full of such wild conjectures and such extravagant etymologies, that
we cannot be surprised that a study which has produced such results
should have been considered ridiculous and absurd."
The writer afterwards refers to the extent, and explains the nature of
the progress which had been made during the twenty or thirty years
previous to the date of his own paper. (1839). He justly attributes this
progress to the "comparison of many languages with each other;" but he
especially insists that "nothing has perhaps contributed to this
improvement more than the discovery of Sanscrit (for as it has been
justly observed, it may properly be called a discovery), which was found
to bear such a striking resemblance both in its more important words and
in its grammatical forms to the Latin and Greek, the Teutonic and
Sclavonic languages, as to lead to the conclusion that all must have
been derived from a common source."
An able writer in the _Saturday Review_ truly describes the science of
comparative philology as "the great discovery of modern scholarship, the
discovery which more than any other unites distant ages and countries in
one tie of brotherhood." Hence its great value to antiquarian students
of every class.
Further investigation has fully demonstrated the truth of the views thus
expressed. Not only is the affinity of the languages now admitted
without dispute, but the consanguinity of the peoples and the identity
of many of their popular traditions and superstitions have been
demonstrated with scientific precision by such writers as the brothers
Grimm, Dr. Kuhn, Dr. Roth, Max Müller, Farrer, Dasent, the Rev. G. W.
Cox, and others, who have devoted special attention to the subject.
This common ancestry is sometimes styled Indo-European; but the phrase
being open to objection, as including more than the precise facts
justify, the term Aryan, or Arian, is now generally preferred. Some
writers regard the Aryans as descendants of Japhet, and the Semitic
tribes as the progeny of Shem. In the latter they include the Hebrews,
the Phœnicians, the Arabs, and Ethiopians; and their languages are
radically distinct from those of the Aryan family. The country about the
upper Oxus river, now mainly included in the dominions of the Khan of
Bockhara, is generally agreed upon as the locality from whence the
various members of the Aryan family originally migrated, some northward
and westward over Europe, and others southward and eastward into India.
The Kelts, the Teutons, the Greeks, Latins, Letts, and Sclaves are all
European branches of this original stock. The Persians and the high
caste Hindoos are the principal descendants of the southern and
south-eastern migration. The chief elements of the British population at
the present time are Keltic, represented by the Welsh, Irish, and Gaelic
tribes, and the Teutonic, which includes Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, and
Danish and Norse Scandinavians.
The non-Aryan races inhabiting Europe are not relatively very extensive
or important. The chief are the Magyars and the Turks. There are besides
some Tatars and Ugrians in Russia, a few Basques in the south-west of
France and on the neighbouring Spanish frontier, and the Laps and Fins
in Northern Europe.
The oldest writings extant in the Sanscrit branch of the Aryan tongue
are termed the "Vedas." These works include a collection of hymns
chanted or sung by the earlier south-eastern emigrants. It is believed
this collection was formed about fourteen hundred years before the birth
of Christ. According to ancient Hindoo authority, these hymns are coeval
with creation. It is asserted that Brahma breathed them from his own
mouth, or, in other words, that he milked them out from fire, air, and
the sun. Some traditions state that they wore scattered abroad or lost;
and that a great sage, "Vyasa, the arranger," collected them together
about 5,000 years ago. Vyasa, who was assisted in his labours by many
other sages, taught the Vedic literature or religion to four distinct
pupils. Payla learnt the Rig Veda, Vais'ampayana the Yajur Veda, Jaimini
the Sama Veda, and Sumantu the Atharvan'a. The three first-mentioned are
named collectively the sacred Trayi, or the Triad. These versions were
afterwards much extended and commented upon by after sages.
The term Veda is derived from the Sanscrit root _vid_, which signifies
to know. It implies the sum of all knowledge. By another etymology it is
held to imply revealed knowledge, or that species of wisdom which
contains within itself the evidence of its own truth. Rig is from the
root _rich_, to laud, and implies that the Vedic knowledge is delivered
in the form of hymns of praise.
Max Müller regards the Vedas as containing the key note of all
religion, natural as well as revealed. They exhibit a belief in God, a
perception of the difference between good and evil, and a conviction
that the Deity loveth the one and hateth the other. The degenerate
religion of the modern Hindoos, and especially the worship of Krishnah,
is described by a recent writer, as (in comparison with that of the
Vedas) "a moral plague, the ravages of which are as appalling as they
are astounding."
Walter Kelly says:--"The Sanscrit tongue, in which the Vedas are
written, is the sacred language of India; that is to say, the oldest
language, the one which was spoken, as the Hindoos believe, by the gods
themselves, when gods and men were in frequent fellowship with each
other, from the time when Yama descended from heaven to become the first
of mortals. This ancient tongue may not be the very one which was spoken
by the common ancestors of Hindoos and Europeans, but at least it is its
nearest and purest derivative; nor is there any reason to believe that
it is removed from it by more than a few degrees. Hence the supreme
importance of the Sanscrit vocabulary and literature as a key to the
languages and supernatural lore of ancient and modern Europe."
This discovery of the Sanscrit writings, and especially of the Vedas,
has already exercised considerable influence upon etymological science.
Before its introduction the main element in such inquiries consisted in
the tracing _backwards_ words corrupted or obscure in modern English to
their original roots in Keltic, Teutonic, Greek, or Latin. The Sanscrit,
however, being a _written_ form of one of the earliest of the varieties
of these cognate tongues, gives the etymological student the advantage
of a flank or rear position, by means of which he may sometimes decipher
the meaning of a doubtful term, by the inverse or _ascending_ process,
and thus gain some knowledge of its original meaning, perhaps long since
lost by the descendants of those who first introduced it into the
ancient language of Great Britain.[1]
It is by no means improbable that the idle historical legends related by
Nennius and Geoffrey of Monmouth, respecting the arrival of Brutus and
his Trojan followers in Britain, after the destruction of Priam's
imperial city by the allied Greeks, may have just so much foundation in
fact as might be furnished by a time-honoured tradition respecting the
eastern home from which our remote ancestors originally migrated. The
natives of Britain, on first coming in contact with the early merchants
and traders from the Mediterranean shores, would doubtless hear
something of the Iliad and the Æneid, with the heroes of which they
might innocently confound their own remote and vaguely conceived
demi-deities or warlike human ancestry. Notwithstanding the just
contempt in which these legends are held by modern historians, there
still exists a kind of instinctive faith that a very remote tradition,
however much it may have been overlaid and disfigured by relatively
modern inventions, lies at the base of the main story. Emigrants from
Iberia (situated between the Caspian and the Euxine Seas) are said to
have settled in Greece (the Pelasgi), and in Tuscany and Spain (the
Iberians). In Laurent's "Ancient Geography" is the following
passage:--"In the Caucasus were found the Bruchi, the modern Burtani or
Britani, a free tribe, rich in silver and gold." It is not improbable
that the advent of emigrants of this tribe in England may underlie the
legend of the Trojan Brutus and his followers. Eastern Albania too may
have contributed, along with its neighbours, to the migratory hordes
which passed to the west. The earliest name by which Britain was known
to the Greeks and Romans is Albion. The Gaels of Scotland still speak of
the island as Albin. In Merlin's famous prophecy, in Geoffrey of
Monmouth's British History, the country is frequently named Albania. The
universal tradition of the North German and Scandinavian tribes is that
they came from the neighbourhood of the Caucasus to the North West of
Europe. An early Odin is said to have introduced from the east the
worship of the sun. Another at the head of the Æsir warriors imported
the Runic alphabet. He is styled Mid Othin. Two other chiefs of this
name figure in their legendary history.
Dr. Leigh held the opinion that the Brigantes, and especially the
Setantii, or the Lancashire portion of the then population, were a mixed
race, consisting of Kelts, Phœnicians, and Armenians. His only
reason for this conjecture appears to have been based on the fact that
one of the chief rivers was named Belisama, which, he says, "in the
Phœnician language, signifies the Moon or the Goddess of Heaven," and
that Ribel, now the name of the same river, in the Armenian tongue
signifies Heaven. Mr. Thornber says "Belisama means Queen of Heaven, and
that the Romans paid divine honours to the Ribble under the title of
Minerva Belisama." This conjecture apparently rests on the statement of
Leigh, and the fact that the Roman temple at Ribchester was dedicated to
Minerva. There appears to be, however, some error here respecting the
sex of Bel. The Phœnician "Queen of Heaven," or "Queen of the Stars,"
was named Astroarche or Astarte. She is supposed by some to be identical
with the Greek Juno, or Selene (the moon), by others she is regarded as
the planet Venus. The Armenians were a branch of the Aryan family, and
the Phœnicians, as I have before said, were of the Semitic stock.[2]
Sanchuniathon, the ancient Phœnician historian, says that the
Phœnicians worshipped the sun as "the only lord of heaven," under the
name Beelsamen, which was equivalent to the Greek Zeus or the Latin
Jupiter. Baal is formed from a root which signifies, and is literally
equivalent to, lord or owner. A Maltese inscription "Malkereth Baal
Tsor," is interpreted "King of the city, Lord of Tyre." In the
Septuagint Baal is called Hercules; in the Phœnician language Orcul,
light of all. One writer adds "Baal was Saturn; others have considered
Baal to be the planet Jupiter. A supreme idol might easily be compared
with those of other nations; hence arose this variety of opinions."
Amongst the many conjectures as to the origin of Stonehenge is one put
forth by Godfrey Higgins, that it was built by Druids, "the priests of
Oriental colonies, who emigrated from India." Mr. Davis, the author of
"Celtic Researches," refers to a passage in Diodorus Siculus, in which
it is stated, on the authority of Hecatæus, that a round temple existed
in Britain dedicated to Apollo. Mr. Davis conjectures that Stonehenge is
the edifice referred to.
The late Rev. John Williams, Archdeacon of Cardigan, in "Essays,"
published in 1858, strongly advocates the "Hyperborean theory," founded
on the passage in Diodorus referred to. This view of the case implies
that the Hyperboreans migrated mainly by water from Central Asia, not
long after the days of Noah; that they eventually occupied Great
Britain, Spain, and Gaul, west of the Alps; that the Druid priests of
Stonehenge were in sympathy and constant communication with those of
Delphi; that they were civilised to a large extent, and were intimately
related by blood with the Pelasgians of Ancient Greece.
The ancient name of this remarkable relic of the past is unfortunately
lost, "Stonehenge" being evidently of Saxon origin, and in no way
connected with its architects; the tale told by Nennius, about the
murder of four hundred and sixty British nobles, through the treachery
of Hengist, being a later romance invented to account for its Saxon
name, Stanhengist. W. G. Palgrave, in his "Central and Eastern Arabia,"
describes the ruins of a "structure" which so nearly resembles the
famous Wiltshire relic, that he calls it an "Arabian Stonehenge." He
adds that the natives spoke of a similar ancient edifice as still
existing in a part of the country which he did not visit.
Sir John Lubbock in his "Pre-historic Times," after alluding to the
mythical character of the expedition to Ireland of Aurelius Ambrosius
and Merlin, as related by Geoffrey of Monmouth, in search of the sacred
materials employed in the erection of the megalithic edifice, says the
larger stones are evidently similar in lithological character to the
immense numbers yet strewn over Salisbury plain, and locally termed
"Sarcens." He adds,--
"Stonehenge is generally considered to mean the hanging stones, as
indeed was long ago suggested by Wace, an Anglo-Norman poet, who says:
Stanhengues ont mom Englois
Pieres pandues en Francois,
but it is surely more natural to derive the last syllable from the
Anglo-Saxon word 'ing,' a field; as we have Keston, originally
Kyst-staning, the field of stone coffins. What more natural than that a
new race, finding this magnificent ruin, standing in solitary grandeur
on Salisbury Plain, and able to learn nothing of its origin, should call
it simply the _place of stones_? What more unnatural than that they
should do so, if they knew the name of him in whose honour it was
erected?"
After disposing of some other arguments in favour of a post-Roman date
for the edifice, and expressing his conviction that this structure and
its kindred one at Abury were used as temples for worship, Sir John
Lubbock says,--
"Stonehenge may then I think be regarded as a monument of the Bronze
Age, though apparently it was not all erected at one time, the inner
circle of small unwrought blue stones being probably older than the
rest; as regards Abury, since the stones are all in their natural
condition, while those of Stonehenge are roughly hewn, it seems
reasonable to conclude that Abury is the older of the two, and belongs
either to the close of the Stone Age, or to the commencement of that of
Bronze."
Some writers regard the British or Keltic god Bel or Beil as not
immediately the Belus or Baal of the Asiatic nations, but that it
"designates _an exalted luminous deity_, peculiar to the Celts." This is
the view of Jacob Grimm, and it is endorsed by W. K. Kelly. Another
writer thinks that "the general character of Asiatic idolatry renders it
likely that Baal meant originally the true lord of the universe, _and
that his worship degenerated_ into the worship of a powerful body in the
material world."
The origin of the not yet entirely exploded superstition respecting the
"divine right of kings" may have something to do with this primæval sun
or fire worship. The Anglo-Saxon princes claimed descent from Odin or
Woden, who, as will afterwards be shown, is evidently the Teutonic
representative of the Aryan Indra, or the luminous or lightning-god. A
recent writer in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ says:--
"Every king of Egypt considered himself a direct descendant of the sun,
and over his name was 'Son of the Sun;' and as the sun was Phrè, so each
king was called Phrè. As in the East at the present time, the Ottoman
Emperor is termed by the Arabs, 'Sooltan ebn Sooltan'--Emperor son of an
Emperor. The king considered that his authority and the virtues and
powers of his rule were direct emanations from the solar disc. This idea
is beautifully set forth in a device from a tomb in the cemetery of El
Emarna, where may be observed Ammophis, with his queen and their
children, standing at a window or gallery of their palace, and are all
engaged in throwing to their subjects, who are standing below with hands
upraised to receive them, collars of distinction, vases, rings of money,
symbols of life, and other blessings. These gifts the disc of the sun,
which is represented above, is in the act of bestowing upon them. The
king and his family were the only media of communication between the
sun, the source of all blessings, and the people. This is significantly
set forth by the rays which projected life into their mouths, and
infused into their hearts courage, wisdom, and justice."
Frances Power Cobbe, in her "Cities of the Past," after visiting the
ruins of Baalbec, quotes several beautiful passages from Du Perron's
_Zend Avesta_, illustrative of the purity of the sentiment of the
earlier fire-worshippers. She says:--
"In what degree this high Persian faith (still existing in no ignoble
type among the Parsees of India) was connected with the sun-worship of
the gross Phœnician mythology, it is hard to conjecture. Perhaps
there was no relation at all, and Baal (or Bel), the sun-god, never
received in his impure fanes the homage of a true worshipper of Ormusd,
the supremely wise Lord, of whom the _Zend Avesta_ only tells us his
light is hidden under all that shines. At least the faith of which
Heliogabalus was hierophant had fallen as low as ever the religious
sentiment of human nature may be debased. Yet does the 'golden star,'
Zoroaster, throw a mysterious halo over the fire worship of East and
West; that faith which blazed out in the Bactrian plains before the dawn
of history, and which lights yet its memorial fires each midsummer eve
in the vales of the Christian Scotland and Ireland."
She might have added, at least until very recently, the hills and dales
of Lancashire and some other parts of England.
It is not improbable that before the corruption referred to took place,
the Keltic emigrants to this country may have arrived at their western
home, and so have introduced the worship of Baal or Bel in something
like its pristine purity; and hence the distinction between the famous
deity of Heliopolis and his presumed representative in Britain. A
semi-subterranean temple, dedicated to the worship of Mithras, the
Persian Sun or Apollo, was discovered in 1822 at Housesteads,
Northumberland (Borcovicus), on the line of the great Roman wall. Mr.
Hodgson describes it in detail in a contribution to the Arch. ÆL. O.S.,
vol. 1. This worship appears to have belonged to the debased form
referred to. It evoked edicts from several Roman emperors decreeing its
suppression, but without avail. This cruel and degrading superstition
was, however, not introduced into the western portion of the "old
world," until shortly before the advent of Christ. An altar, dedicated
to this deity, found in the cave temple at Housesteads, was erected A.D.
253. Remains of Mithraic worship have been found at York and Chester,
and other places, including Chesterholm (Vindolana), and Rutchester
(Vindobala), on the line of the great Roman wall. This worship of
Mithras is evidently but a corrupt descendant from the ancient Aryan
adoration of Mithra, the god of daylight.
From these and other reasons, yet to be advanced, I am inclined to
regard the introduction of the British god Bel or Beil as appertaining
to a much earlier epoch in our history than the advent of the
Phœnician merchants, who, most probably, did visit the Belisama,
Portus Setantiorum, and other harbours on the Lancashire and Cheshire
coast, for trading purposes, but at a relatively much more recent
period.
Mr. John Baldwin, in his "Pre-historic Nations," contends that the
"Bronze Age in Western Europe was introduced by a foreign people of the
Cushite race, culture, and religion, and that for a very long period it
was controlled and directed by their influence." He further adds:--
"The first settlements of the Arabian Cushites in Spain and Northern
Africa cannot have been later than 5,000 years before the Christian
era.... Probably the Cushite race, religion, and civilisation first went
to the ancient Finnic people of Britain, Gaul, and the Scandinavian
countries from Spain and Africa. The beginning of the Bronze Age in
these countries was much older than the period of Tyre. The Tyrian
establishments in those western countries seem to have been later than
the Aryan immigration that created the Keltic peoples and languages; and
it may be that the Tyrians introduced the 'Age of Iron' not long after
their arrival, for it was evidently much older than the time of the
Romans."
Professor Nilsson refers the ancient bronze instruments, etc., to
Phœnician influence, and describes some sculpture on two stones on a
tumulus near Kivik, which, Mr. Baldwin observes, "even Sir John Lubbock
admits, 'may fairly be said to have a Phœnician or Egyptian
appearance.'"
Mr. Baldwin traces to Arabian Cushite colonies the very ancient
civilisation of Egypt, Caldea, and the southern portion of India, as
well as Phœnicia and the western nations. Another stone, described by
Professor Nilsson, is an obelisk symbolising Baal. Referring to this
monument, Mr. Baldwin says:--
"The festival of Baal or Balder, celebrated on midsummer night in the
upper part of Norway, reveals the Cushite race, for the midnight fire in
presence of the midnight sun did not originate in that latitude. This
festival of Baal was celebrated in the British Islands until recent
times. Baal has given such names as Baltic, Great and Little Belt,
Belteburga, Baleshangen, and the like." He asks, "What other people
could have brought the worship of Baal to Western Europe in pre-historic
times? We see them in the stone circles, in the ruins at Abury and
Stonehenge, in the festival of Baal that lingered until our own times;
and there is something for consideration in the fact that Arabia has
still the ruins of ancient structures precisely like Stonehenge. It is
probable that the Arabians, or their representatives in Spain and North
Africa, went northward and began the Age of Bronze more than 2,000 years
before Gades [Cadiz] was built."
Mr. Baldwin draws a marked distinction between the modern Mohammedan
Semitic population of Arabia and their great Cushite, Hamite, or
Ethiopian predecessors. The former, he says, "are comparatively modern
in Arabia," they have "appropriated the reputation of the old race," and
have unduly occupied the chief attention of modern scholars.
Dr. Hooker, at the meeting of the British Association in 1868, described
a race of men in a district of Eastern Bengal, who erect, at the present
day, monuments similar to those termed, in Western Europe, Druidical.
With his own eyes he had seen "dolmens" and "cromlechs" not six months
old. He says that they call a stone by the same name as is given to it
in the Keltic idioms of Wales and Brittany, though, he adds, little of
the character of their language is yet known.
Sir John Lubbock, referring to the very ancient stone weapons found in
Denmark, Switzerland, France, England, and other countries, termed
_palæoliths_, says:--"Some implements of the same type have been found
in Spain, in Assyria, and in India. The latter have been described by
Mr. Bruce Foote; they were found in the Madras and North Arcot
districts, and are of quartzite, and in several cases were found by
Messrs. Foote and King, _in situ_, at depths of from three to ten feet.
The specimens figured will show how closely they resemble our European
specimens, and it is interesting that in the words of Mr. Foote, 'the
area, over which the lateritic formations were spread, has undergone, as
already stated, great changes since their deposition. A great part of
the formation has been removed by denudation, and deep valleys cut into
them are now occupied by the alluvium of various rivers.'"
In several parts of Britain, and especially in Cumberland, altars have
been found dedicated by Roman legionaries or their auxiliaries to a god
named Belatucadrus. Mr. Thomas Wright (Celt, Roman, and Saxon, p. 292),
after referring to a small one erected at Ellanborough by Julius
Civilis, says:--
"Several others dedicated to this deity have been found at Netherby,
Castlesteads, Burgh-on-the-sands, Bankshead, and other places. In some
instances, as in an altar found at Drumburgh, the deity is addressed by
the epithet, DEO SANCTO BELATVCADRO. In some altars he is identified
with Mars, as on one found at Plumpton Wall, dedicated DEO MARTI
BELATVCADRI ET NVMINIB AVGG. Several attempts have been made to derive
the name from Hebrew, Welsh, or Irish, and it has been hastily taken for
granted that this god was identical with the Phœnician Baal. Altars
to Belatucadrus have been found at Kirkby Thore, at Welp Castle, and at
Brougham, in Westmorland. The one at Brougham was dedicated by a man
named Andagus, which sounds like a Teutonic name."
Since the preceding paragraphs were written, I have seen in the
Manchester Natural History Museum, a rude altar dedicated to this god,
which, I am informed, was found some years ago at Ribchester, on the
Ribble. As I had not previously seen or heard of it, it is not mentioned
in my published "History of Preston and its Environs." The inscription
is somewhat defaced, but the DEO MARTI BELATVCADRI is very distinct. It
appears, like the one found at Plumpton Wall, to have been dedicated to
this god, and to the gods of the emperor (NVMINIB AVGG), or, as some
think, to the reigning emperor himself. The dedicator is Julius
Augustalis, the prefect of some military corps, the name of which I
cannot, at present, satisfactorily decipher.
The compounding of the name of _Baal_ or _Bel_ with other words is
common, as in the ancient name of the Ribble--_Belisama_. This
_Belatucadrus_ appears to belong to this class, at least so far as
_cadrus_ is concerned, for at Risingham, in Northumberland, an altar was
found dedicated to MOGONT CAD, which may perhaps mean, when written in
full, in the nominative case, MOGONTIS CADRUS. Horsley imagined it
probable that the CAD had reference to the _Gadeni_, a Caledonian tribe;
but Mr. Wright regards this as very doubtful. The Welsh word _cad_ means
war, battle, tumult, etc. May not CADRUS, therefore, be a Keltic synonym
for Mars?
Other altars have been found dedicated to gods that may probably be
traced to an Eastern origin. One found at Birrens, in Scotland, exhibits
a winged deity, holding a spear in her right hand and a globe in her
left. The dedication is to the goddess _Brigantia_. Mr. Wright says:--
"It was supposed this was the deity of the Brigantes, but I am not aware
that this country was ever called _Brigantia_, and it is not probable
the conqueror would worship the deity of a vanquished tribe. I feel more
inclined to think the name was taken from _Brigantium_, in Switzerland,
a town which occupied the site of the modern Bregentz. An altar found at
Chester was dedicated DEAE NYMPHAE BRIG, which in this case would be 'To
the Nymph Goddess of Brigantium.'"
Another ancient city styled Brigantium, now Briançon, was situated on an
opposite spur of the Alps, in the country of the Taurini, now Piedmont.
Ancient geographers speak of a tribe of Thracians, who were styled
Briges. In Laurent's work, the river at present named the Barrow, in
Ireland, is termed the Birgus. A people on the eastern coast of Ireland
were called Brigantes, and the name Brigantina is still retained in the
province of Gallicia, in Spain. Some authorities contend that the
Gaedhels or Gaels, the Gaelic or Erse element of our population,
originally entered Ireland and the south-west of England from Spain.
From Ireland they spread, northward, to the western isles and highlands
of Scotland, and westward, to the Isle of Man and the North of England
and Wales. In one of the preserved extracts from the lost book of Drom
Sneachta, supposed to have been written before the advent of St.
Patrick, is what is termed "the Prime Story of Irruption and Migration."
From this we learn that the ancient Milesian inhabitants themselves had
traditions respecting their advent from Spain, which referred to the
prior occupation of the country by two other branches of the Gaelic
race, viz., the Firbolgs and the Tuatha dé Dannan. The story says the
Milesians left Scythia for Egypt, but returned, and afterwards migrated
to Spain by way of Greece. After a long residence in the peninsula, they
built the city of Bragantia. About 1700 B.C., a colony of them landed at
the mouth of the Slaney, in Wexford, under the command of the eight sons
of Milesias or Galamah. In two battles they defeated their predecessors,
and divided the country amongst themselves. The Cymri, another branch of
the Keltic stock, on the contrary, entered Britain from Gaul, and were,
eventually, to a considerable extent, driven upon the Gaelic tribes in
the West of England and Wales by the pressure of their Teutonic
successors. Professor H. Morley says that that portion of the population
"in the North of England, who battled against the gradual progress of
expulsion," was "known as Briganted, fighting thieves. Brigant is Welsh
for thief and highlander." Brig and Brigant meaning top or summit, in
modern Welsh, and Brigantwys the people of the summit, Brigantes has
doubtless only originally meant the dwellers in the hilly country. The
habits of the brigands of Greece, Spain, and Italy, of the present day,
sufficiently account for its application to mountain hordes organised
for the purposes of plunder and bloodshed.
Perhaps the Aryan mythology will supply a common source for all these
local appellations. Walter K. Kelly ("Curiosities of Indo-European
Tradition") says:--"Agni, the god of fire (Latin, _ignis_), has for
retainers the Bhrigus and the Angirases. They are his priests on earth
whilst they dwell there in mortal form; and after death they are his
friends and companions in heaven. They are also the companions of the
clouds and storms"--in other words, personifications of some
characteristics of clouds and storms. He afterwards speaks of "_Bhrigu,
the father of a mythological family of that name_." The root of the word
means "_fulgent burning_." The Bhrigus and a kindred mythical race, the
Phlegyans, incurred the displeasure of the gods. The latter were
condemned to the torments of Tartarus. Bhrigu, being an ancestor of the
Brahmans, was more leniently treated. His father, Varuna, however, sent
him "on a penitential tour to several hells, that he might see how the
wicked are punished, and be warned by their fate."
The clouds and storms of the Alpine mountains and the Lancashire and
Yorkshire hills would amply justify the appellation of the term
Brigantium, or the country of the Brigantes, in the minds of Aryan
emigrants, to both localities. The Bhrigus, according to Dr. Kuhn, were
"brewers" of storms, or yielders of the heavenly soma, the drink of the
gods; in other words, the distillers of rain water, which rendered the
earth fruitful. The country of the Brigantes is the term given by the
Roman historians to that part of England which lies north of the Humber
and the Mersey, and includes the lesser tribes named the Volantii and
the Setantii, or Sistuntii, which occupied the western or Lancashire
coast, and perhaps that of Cumberland.
Another very common name on altars in the north of England is Vitires,
Vetiris, or Veteres. Mr. Thomas Wright regards this as a "foreign
deity," and thinks "it must have belonged to a national mythology." But
he adds, "As the altars were dedicated apparently by people of widely
different countries, they give us no assistance in appropriating this
deity. The word has been supposed to be identical with Vithris, one of
the names of the northern Odin, the Woden of the Germans." This name for
Odin has evidently some relationship to the Vritra (or Ahi, the dragon)
of the Hindoo Vedas.
Some altars have been found at Lancaster and in Cumberland, dedicated to
Cocidius or Cocideus. According to the Ravenna manuscript, it is
probable a temple to this god existed near the Roman Wall, of sufficient
importance to name the place Fanococidi. The name of this god may
probably be traced to an Aryan source. I can, however, at present, offer
no better suggestion than that it may have some reference to the Stygian
ferryman, which is of Aryan origin. The river or arm of the sea over
which the dead are ferried, by Charon, is variously named by the Greeks
as the Styx, the Acheron, and the Cocytus. Perhaps the latter term may
likewise furnish a clue to the derivation of the name Coccium of the
Itineraries, which I and others have placed at Walton, near Preston.[3]
It has previously been suggested by others that this station may have
been named after either the god Cocidius or the Emperor Cocceius Nerva.
The assumption that it was derived from Cocytus or Cocidius would in no
way vitiate the truthfulness of the usual derivation from the Keltic
_coch gwi_, or red water, from the red rock in the Ribble, as it is easy
to imagine such a description to have been given to the "river of
death." That the station was named after Cocceius Nerva is improbable,
as all the known evidence, including the site, coins, and the British
foundation beneath the Roman remains, indicate it to have been one of
Agricola's posts. He entered Lancashire in the year 79, and Nerva did
not commence his reign until 96. He only reigned about two years.
A very large proportion of the names of mountains and streams in any
part of Britain are corruptions, in a greater or lesser degree, of words
belonging to the aboriginal or Keltic tongue. With the aid of the Welsh,
the Gaelic, and the Irish, the meaning of many can be satisfactorily
ascertained, such as the Darwen (Dwrgwen, white, or beautiful stream),
Wyre (gwyr, pure, lively), Old Man (alt maen, high hill), Pennygent
(Penygwyn, white head or summit), or, which I think better, Pen y gwynt,
windy head or summit, from its exposed situation. Others are, however,
by no means so satisfactorily explained on similar grounds. Mr. Davies
in a very able contribution to the Philological Society's Transactions,
on "The Races of Lancashire," with reference to the Ribble, says:--
"The name of this well known river has much perplexed antiquarian
philologists. I can only venture to suggest that it may be compounded of
rhe (active, fleet), and bala (a shooting out, a discharge, the outlet
of a lake), and may refer to its rapid course as an estuary."
With our knowledge, from Ptolemy, of the existence of a "Belisama
Estuarium" on the Lancashire coast, in the second century, and which can
be otherwise shown, on the best available evidence, to apply to the
Ribble, the Rhi-bell, or River Bell, is a much more satisfactory
derivation; and more especially so as a god _bel_ or _beil_ of the
_beltain_ fires is conceded (as I have previously shown) to the early
Keltic inhabitants of Britain. The altar, recently found at Ribchester,
dedicated to the British god Belatucadrus, proves, at least, that
votaries of that deity dwelt in the Ribble valley, as well as in
Cumberland, &c.
Godfrey Higgins, in his "Celtic Druids," speaks of Samhan or Saman as
"one of the gods, the most revered in Ireland." He says:--"An annual
solemnity was instituted to his honour, which is yet celebrated on the
evening of the first day of November, which yet at this day is called
the _Oidhche Samhna_, or the night of _Samhan_." He further informs us
that he was "also called _Bal-Sab_ or Lord of Death," and that "_Samhan_
was also the sun, or rather the image of the sun," and adds:--
"These attributes of _Samhan_ seem at first contradictory, but they are
not unusual amongst the heathen gods. With the Greeks, Dionysos, the
good Demiurge, is identified with Hades. In Egypt, Osiris was the lord
of Death; with the Scandinavians, Odin, the god beneficent, was, at the
same time, King of the infernal regions. This deity was above all the
others whom we have named, but he was below the supreme being Baal. If
Samhan were the sun, as we see he was, he answers to Mithra of the
Persians, who was the middle link between Oromasdes and
Arimanes--between the Creator and the Destroyer, and was called the
_Preserver_."[4]
With the aid of the Hindoo Vedas, perhaps some light may be thrown on
this subject, as well as upon the origin of the names of some other
rivers in the neighbourhood, which have hitherto eluded satisfactory
explanation.
The gods of the Vedas appear to have been, more or less,
personifications of what were termed "the elements." The sun, the moon,
the sky or firmament, the dawn and evening twilight, the sea, lightning,
clouds, rain, wind, frost, fire, &c., and their attendant active
phenomena, contributed mainly to the construction of their mythological
edifice. Indra was god of the firmament, the earliest thunderer, the
forerunner of Zeus, Jupiter and Thor; Agni was the god of fire, and Soma
was the deity who brought down to earth the celestial liquor, the "drink
of the gods," the amrita of the Vedas, the nectar of the Greeks. Soma
was so designated because the "soma plant, which the Hindoos now
identify with the _Asclepias acida_ or _Sarcostemma viminale_,"
contained "a milky juice of a sweetish sub-acid flavour, which, being
mixed with honey and other ingredients, yielded to the enraptured
Aryans the first fermented liquor their race had ever known." All
celestial or atmospheric phenomena were named from earthly objects.
Clouds were called rocks and cows, and the mountain streams of the
former and the milk of the latter were the liquid nourishers and
fertilisers of the soil. The lightning-god was believed to pierce the
rock or the rain cloud, and so water the parched earth. Walter Kelly
says:--
"The identity of the heavenly soma with the cloud-water, and the close
connection in which fire and soma are brought in various Aryan legends,
prove that the drink of the gods was conceived to be a product of the
storm. It appears also that the earthly soma was boiled or brewed before
it was fermented, whence it must have followed, as a matter of course,
that its divine counterpart should be supposed to undergo the same
process. Hence it is manifest that we cannot claim for any of the later
ages the credit of having invented the metaphor involved in the common
saying, 'It's brewing a storm.' In that phrase, as in many others, we
only repeat the thoughts of our primæval ancestors."
Dr. Kuhn identifies the modern word _brew_ with the _brajj_ of the Rig
Veda, which has reference to the roasting of barley for brewing
purposes, and is intimately connected with the Bhrigus, beings who
"brewed and lightened" the heavenly soma out of the stormy phenomena of
the mountain regions. In the Welsh of the present day, _brygu_ means to
grow out, to overspread. One modern Welsh word, _brwysg_, means drunk,
and another _brwys_, fertile, luxuriant. The double use of the term at
the present time, is, therefore, in singular harmony with the hypothesis
of Kuhn, and adds much to its probability. Kelly says:--"One of the
synonyms of soma is _madhu_, which means a mixed drink; and this word is
the _methu_ of the Greeks, and the _mead_ of our own Saxon, Norse, and
Celto-British ancestors."
Near Rutchester, in Northumberland, the ancient Vindobala, is an
excavation made in the solid rock, the cause or use of which is not with
certainty known. It is 12 feet long, 4½ feet broad, and 2 feet deep,
"and has a hole close to the bottom at one end." It is locally named the
"Giant's Grave." It is not improbable, from remains discovered near it,
that it has had some connection with a temple dedicated to the worship
of Mithras. A manuscript by Sir David Smith, preserved in Alnwick
Castle, referring to this singular excavation, says:--"The old peasants
here have a tradition that the Romans made a beverage somewhat like beer
of the bells of heather (heath), and that this trough was used in the
process of making such drink." Dr. Collingwood Bruce, commenting on the
above, says:--"The opinion long prevailed in Northumberland that the
_Picts_ had the art of preparing an intoxicating liquor from
heather-bells, and that the secret died with them."
The names of the gods underwent much change as time advanced, and the
race was scattered. Bel became the _luminous deity_ of some of the
settlers in Britain; Soma became a higher deity in importance than Indra
or Agni, and absorbed their attributes. In the Zend version the drink
soma is spelled haoma. The hymns addressed to Soma, in a later age, are
styled Sama Vedas. Hence it may easily be inferred the Belisama of
Ptolemy is a Latinised form of the British words which indicated that
the Ribble water was the "liquor of the gods" furnished by Bel and Sama
for the fertilisation of the earth. The hoary rocky mountains of
Pennygent, Ingleborough, and Pendle, and the storm-clouds that contended
with lightning about their summits, furnish sufficiently characteristic
natural phenomena to justify the appropriateness of the appellation.
This deification of rivers was by no means an uncommon occurrence. Sir
William Betham, in his "Gael and Cymbri," says, expressly, "the Celtæ
were much addicted to the worship of fountains and rivers as divinities.
They had a deity called Divona, or the river god." The Wharf, which
springs not far from the source of the Ribble, received these honours
from legionaries of Rome or some of their auxiliaries, who appear to
have worshipped the stream as the water-goddess "Verbeia." The Roman
name appears to be merely a Latin form of the ancient British word of
which the modern name Wharf is a corruption. The Lune, too, appears to
have had similar honours conferred upon it, as is evidenced by an altar
found at Skerton, near Lancaster, inscribed DEO JALONO. The word _Lune_
was anciently written _Lone_, and the hundred is still named Lonsdale.
Indeed, the personification of rivers is not yet extinct. We speak of
"Old Father Thames" to this day.
The Ituna Estuarium of Ptolemy is universally assigned to the Solway,
the chief river entering it being called the Eden at the present time.
As _t_ and _d_ are convertible, and the Latin _i_ was pronounced _e_, as
on the continent now, Eduna most probably expresses to our ears the
ancient sound, which is the exact counterpart of the modern one, the
Latin terminal letter not entering into the question. Does the Vedic and
Teutonic mythologies throw any light on the derivation of this name?
Kelly says:--
"The cloud-maidens are known in the Vedas as _Apas_ (waters), and are
styled brides of the gods (Dêvapatnis) and _Návyah_, _i.e._, navigators
of the celestial sea. Nearly related to them, but less divine, are the
_Apsarases_; damsels whose habitat is between the earth and the sun.
They are the houris of the Vedic paradise, destined to delight the souls
of heroes. Their name means either 'the formless' or 'the water going,'
and they appear to have been personifications of the manifold but
ill-defined forms of the mists; but other natural phenomena may also
have been represented under their image."
Kelly further informs us that these inferior cloud-maidens possessed
raiment or "shirts of swan plumage," by means of which they "transformed
themselves into water-fowl, especially swans." He adds that "the Persian
peris, and the German swan-maidens, changed their forms in the same way,
and by the same means." Indeed, they are "the originals" of these
"swan-maidens," and are closely related to the Elves, Mahrs, and
Valkyries, of the Teutonic mythology. The same writer further states
that "Odin's Valkyries (riders in the wild hunt) had their swan-shirts,
and the Norse goddess Freyja" (from whence our Friday), "had her
falcon-shirt,[5] which she lent to Loki, when he went in quest of Thor's
stolen hammer, and to rescue Idunn," (elsewhere spelled Idhunn) "the
goddess of youth, from captivity among the frost giants. Thiassi, who
kept her in custody, had an eagle-shirt, and his follow giant, Suttungr,
had another, in which he pursued Odin."
These wild riders of the stormy sky, like their prototypes in the Vedas,
personify or typify "rain senders." Mr. Kelly says, in the Teutonic form
of the myth, the manes of their horses "dropped dew upon the earth,
filled the drinking horns for the gods and the warriors in Odin's hall;
and like them, white maidens, elves, and witches offer full goblets and
horns to thankless mortals, who usually run away with the beaker after
spilling its contents on the ground."
It is a somewhat singular circumstance that the most celebrated relict
of this old pagan superstition, or myth, is preserved at Edenhall, on
the bank of the very river to which I am referring. Tradition says the
goblet was secured, in the orthodox way, by an ancestor of the
Musgraves, or one of his retainers, ages ago. Sir Walter Scott has
rendered the story immortal. He makes the following distich salute the
ears of the bold plunderer, as he hurriedly decamps from the fairy
revel:--
If this glass do break or fall,
Farewell the luck of Edenhall.
The "Luck of Edenhall," as the very ancient glass vessel is styled, is
believed to be of Venetian manufacture, and dates, probably, from the
century preceding the Norman conquest.
The Rev. G. W. Cox, in his valuable work on the "Mythology of the Aryan
Nations," ranks this cup amongst the numerous phallic symbols. Referring
to this subject, he says:--"We have seen the myth starting from its
crude and undisguised form, assume the more harmless shape of goblets or
horns of plenty and fertility; of rings and crosses, of rods and spears,
of mirrors and lamps. It has brought before us the mysterious ships
endowed with the powers of thought and speech, beautiful cups in which
the wearied sun sinks to rest, the staff of wealth and plenty with which
Hermes guides the cattle of Helios across the blue pastures of heaven,
the cup of Dêmetêr into which the ripe fruit casts itself by an
irresistible impulse. We have seen the symbols assume the character of
talismanic tests, by which the refreshing draught is dashed from the
lips of the guilty; and, finally, in the exquisite legend of the
Sangreal the symbols have become a sacred thing, only the pure in heart
may see and touch."
The goddess of youth (Idunn), with her attendant swans and water-fowl,
is not an inapt personification of the lovely Eden, in its lower course;
while the wild moors and crags, where the eagles nestled, and amongst
which its many tributary streamlets spring, aptly enough answers to the
homes of the frost giants, who, in severe winters, held captive the
congealed waters.
It may be thought that this, being a Teutonic etymology, is not so
satisfactory as if it were Keltic. But its pertinence is corroborated by
the fact that, in the Welsh of the present day, _edn_ means fowl or
bird, _edyn_ winged one, and _ednyw_ spirit, essence.
Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his work on "First Principles," when treating of
"Laws in General," argues elaborately on the order in which the sense of
law, or a recognition of "that constant course of procedure" which the
term implies, was gradually developed in the human intellect. After
showing that there are several derivative principles, some earlier
arrived at than others from the relative frequency of the occurring
phenomena and their immediate influence upon, or of "personal concern"
to, the aboriginal savage, he has some observations very pertinent to
the present question. He says:--"The solidification of water at a low
temperature is a phenomenon that is simple, concrete, and of much
personal concern. But it is neither so frequent as those which we saw
are earliest generalised, nor is the _presence of the antecedent so
uniformly conspicuous_. Though in all but tropical climates, mid-winter
displays the relation between cold and freezing with tolerable
constancy; yet, during the spring and autumn, the occasional appearance
of ice in the mornings has not very manifest connection with the
coldness of the weather. Sensation being so inaccurate a measure, it is
not possible for the savage to experience the definite relation between
a temperature of 32° and the congealing of water; and hence the
long-continued conception of _personal_ agency. Similarly, but still
more clearly, with the winds, the absence of regularity, and the
inconspicuousness of the antecedents, allowing the mythological
explanation to survive for a great period."
The names of the Severn and the Dee, and some other rivers or estuaries,
will admit of similar interpretation from similar sources. Mr. Kelly
says:--"The collective appellation of the Vedic gods is Dêvas, and this
name has passed into most of the Indo-European languages; for
corresponding to the Sanscrit _dêva_ is the Latin _deus_, Greek _theós_,
Lithuanian _déwas_, Lettish _dews_, Old Prussian _deiws_, Irish _dia_,
Welsh _duw_, Cornish _duy_. Amongst the German races the word _dêva_
survives only in the Norse plural _tìvar_, gods; and amongst those of
the Sclave stock the Servians alone preserve a trace of it in the word
_diw_, giant. The daêvas of the Medes and Persians were in early times
degraded from the rank of gods to that of demons by a religious
revolution, just as the heathen gods of the Germans were declared by the
Christian missionaries to be devils; and the modern Persian _div_, and
Armenian _dev_, mean an evil spirit. Dêva is derived from _div_, heaven
(properly 'the shining'), and means the heavenly being."
This appears to be a satisfactory and conclusive answer to a very
pertinent question put by George Borrow in the last chapter of his work
on "Wild Wales." He says:--"How is it that the Sanscrit _devila_ stands
for what is wise and virtuous, and the English devil for all that is
desperate and wicked?" A similar answer is given to this question by the
fate which the Teutonic gods of Western Europe underwent on the final
triumph of Christianity. Dasent says:--"They were cast down from honour,
but not from power. They lost their genial kindly influence as the
protectors of men and the origin of all things good; but their existence
was tolerated; they became powerful for ill, and degenerated into
malignant demons."
In the Hindoo mythology, it appears revolutions took place at a very
early date. In the early Vedic hymns Dêva is "addressed as Dyanish pitâ,
_i.e._, Heaven Father, and his wife is Mata Prithivi, Mother Earth. He
is the Zeus Pater of the Greeks, the Jupiter of the Romans, the German
Tius, and the Norse Tyr. Dyanish pitâ was the god of the blue firmament,
but even in the Vedic times his grandeur was considerably on the wane.
Indra, the new lord of the firmament, had left him little more than a
titular sovereignty in his own domain, while Varuna, another heavenly
monarch, who was still in the plenitude of his power, commanded more
respect than the _roi fainéant_, his neighbour. The all-covering
Varuna,[6] the Uranos of the Greeks, was lord of the celestial sea and
of the realm of light above it, that highest heaven in which the Fathers
dwelt with their King Yama. After the southern branch of the Aryans had
entered India, Varuna was brought down from the upper regions, to be
thenceforth the god of the earthly sea, which had then for the first
time become known to his votaries."
May not this Varun be possibly the true root of the name Severn?
Etymologists are not at all agreed as to its derivation. Some say it was
anciently called Hafren, and that this term is identical with Severn,
the latter being merely a corruption of the former. This is the
prevalent opinion. The Severn, indeed, yet retains the name Hafren, from
its source to Llanidloes. Its principal upper tributary which enters it
a little below Welshpool is called the Vyrnwy. May not this be the true
Welsh root of the word? If such be the case, there is nothing improbable
in the conjecture that Hafren is a Keltic corruption of the Sanscrit
Varun, especially as the _f_ and _v_ are readily "convertible." The Se
may be a prefix, of which more anon.[7]
Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his "British History," states that King Locrin
divorced his queen Guendolœna, and married a beautiful captive named
Estrildis. On the death of the king, the divorced queen commanded
"Estrildis and her daughter Sabre to be thrown into the river now called
the Severn, and published an edict through all Britain that the river
should bear the damsel's name, hoping by this to perpetuate her memory,
and by that the infamy of her husband. So that to this day the river is
called in the British tongue Sabren, which by the corruption of the name
is, in another language, Sabrina."
Milton, speaking of Sabrina as the goddess of the river, styles her "the
daughter of Locrine, that had the sceptre from his father Brute." As the
mythical or rather non-historical character of Brute and his progeny is
now almost universally conceded, it is not improbable that the river
named the maiden (if she ever existed in the flesh) rather than that her
immersion changed its designation. Sabrina, or Savrina (for the _b_ and
_v_ are convertible), may therefore but be the Latinised form of the old
Welsh Hafren and the Sanscrit Varuna, with the prefix _se_ added
thereto.
The Dee is described as the Seteia Estuarium by Ptolemy. The Roman city
Deva (Chester) was situated on its banks. The _se_ is generally regarded
as a prefix in this case, and it may likewise be so in the word Severn.
_D_ and _t_ being convertible, the names of the river and city evidently
spring from one root. The Rev. John Whitaker, the historian of
Manchester, in interpreting the term Se-tan-tiu, says it may mean "the
inferior or southerly country of water, and express the particular
position of Lancashire with respect to the Volantii and the sea."[8]
The Se, in these cases, may have a somewhat similar import, or it may
have reference to the Vedic great serpent Sesha, concerning which there
is a curious story in the Hindoo poems. The Dêvas had been at war with
their enemies, the Asuras, and, being thirsty with the work (or the
country needing rain), a truce was agreed upon, and both sides joined
their efforts "in churning the ocean to procure amrita" (or soma) "the
drink of immortality. They took Mount Mandara for a churning stick, and
wrapping the great serpent Sesha round it for a rope, they made the
mountain spin round to and fro, the Dêvas pulling at the serpent's tail,
and the Asuras at its head. Mount Mandara was more anciently written
Manthara, and Manthara is the Sanscrit name of the churning stick which
is used by every dairy in India."[9] The purely figurative character of
this is easily seen. It is but another form of expressing the
fertilisation of the earth by means of the rain which is engendered by
the "strife of the elements." The churning stick and cord are but
another form of the Hindoo pramantha, or fire churn, "or chark," by
which the sacred or "need-fire" was produced amongst the Greeks and
Romans, as well as the Keltæ and other Aryan tribes, before the
discovery of the use of flint and steel. The "chark" represented the
power of the sun, and it is not impossible our remote Eastern ancestors
were aware that the sun really does, in a sense, "churn" or "brew" the
ocean water, and distribute its vapours over mountain and plain, and by
this means convert even an otherwise barren wilderness into a fertile
garden, making it literally "blossom like the rose."
That this superstition has not yet become extinct in India is attested
by the following paragraph, which appeared in the newspapers in the year
1869:--"The inhabitants of Burmah have an idea that pulling at a rope
will produce rain. Two parties tug against each other. One is a raining
party, the other is a fair weather party. By previous arrangement the
rain party are allowed to be victorious. On the occasion of the late
continued drought this proceeding was attended with the happiest
results."
Geoffrey of Monmouth says that an "invading king of the Huns, named
Humber, was defeated by Locrin on the banks of that river, and drowned
in its flood, on account of which it has since borne his name." This, of
course, is merely idle romance. Some writers contend that the name was
originally Chumber, that Northumberland means North Cumri-land, of which
the present Cumberland is a relic. It is not improbable that the Mersey
derived its name from Mercia, or the territory from the boundary river.
It, in conjunction with the Humber, divided Northumbria from Mercia
during the heptarchy. The Mersey is still called the Cheshire Waters by
some of the inhabitants on the south-west of Manchester.
It is somewhat singular that no Roman writer or Itinerary mentions the
Humber. Ptolemy speaks of a river Abus, which is generally identified
with that stream, but this helps us not to the etymology of the modern
name. It is not altogether improbable, however, that the Aryan mythology
may throw some light upon the ancient appellations. We are informed by
Max Müller that, previous to the dispersion of the Aryan tribes, the
Ribhus were called Arbhus, and that this latter term is identical with
the Greek Orpheus. From this root likewise is derived the German Alb or
Alp; plural _Elbe_ or Elfen; English Elf, with its plural Elves. In the
modern Welsh the word _elod_ means intelligence, spirit, _elaeth_
spiritual being, and _elford_ both demon and intellectual existence. The
Rev. G. W. Cox says that Alpheios, the mythic huntsman, "is the child of
the waters.... He is, in short, the Elf, or water sprite, whose
birth-place is the Elbe, or flowing stream." If the name of the German
river _Elbe_ (Albis) be derived from this source, the probability is
heightened that the Abus of Ptolemy may have intimate relationship to
the Aryan Arbhus, or Ribhus. These mystic beings were followers, like
the Bhrigus and the Maruts, of Agni and Indra, "personifications of fire
and firmament." Kelly says:--"The element of the Ribhus is rather that
of the sunbeams or the lightning, though they too rule the winds, and
sing, like the Maruts, the loud song of the storm.[10] Their name means
the 'artificers,' and not even the divine workman of Olympus was more
skilled than they in all kinds of handicraft. The armour and weapons of
the gods, the chariots of the Asvins (deities of the dawn), the
thunderbolt and the lightning steed of Indra, were of their workmanship.
They made their old decrepid parents young and supple-jointed again. But
the feat for which they were most renowned is the revival of the
slaughtered cow on which the gods had feasted. Out of the hide alone
these wonder-working Ribhus reproduced the perfect living animal; and
this they did not once, but again and again. _In other words, out of a
small portion of the imperishable cloud that had melted away in rain
and seemed destroyed, they reproduced its whole form and substance._"
Similar feats were ascribed to the Northern thunder-god, Thor, whose
practice it was to kill the two buck goats that drew his car, cook them
for supper, and bring them to life again next morning by touching them
with his hammer.
Kelly further adds that in "the gloomy season of the winter solstice the
Ribhus _sleep for twelve days in the house of the sun-god Savitar_; then
they _wake up and prepare the earth to clothe itself anew with
vegetation, and the_ FROZEN WATERS TO FLOW _again_."
The tributaries of the Humber are remarkable on account of their
liabilities to sudden floods; and their constant recurrence, after long
periods of drought, would suggest to a primæval people the interference
of celestial beings which possessed the attributes assigned to these
Arbhus or Ribhus. Referring to the Greek form of this myth, Kelly
says:--
"We see how the cruder idea of the Ribhus sweeping trees and rocks in
wild dance before them by the force of their stormy song grew under the
beautifying touch of the Hellenic imagination into the legend of that
master of the lyre whose magic tones made _torrents pause and listen,
rocks and trees descend with delight from their mountain beds_, and
moved even Pluto's unrelenting heart to pity."
The estuary on the opposite coast of Britain to the Severn, now known as
the Wash, is called by Ptolemy, Metaris. May not this name have had,
originally, some connection with Varuna's friend Mithra? Kelly says:--
"When the sun was still a wheel, a store of gold, a swan or a flamingo,
an eagle, falcon, horse, and many other things, it was also the eye of
Varuna; just as amongst the Anglo-Saxons and other Germans it was held
to be the eye of Woden. Varuna and Mithra (the friend), _the god of
daylight_, used to sit together at morning on a golden throne, and
journey at even in a brazen car."
The sun, at the dawn at least, gilded the waves of the eastern estuary,
and shed its ruddier glow at evening on the western or Severn sea. Under
any interpretation, the coincidence of so many names and half-hidden
characteristics, to say the least, is very remarkable.
There is nothing extravagant in this attempt to show that the terms thus
applied conveyed both a literal, or earthly, as well as a figurative, or
celestial, meaning. All mythology is fashioned out of such materials.
Primitive languages are limited in the number of their words, and, of
necessity, are highly figurative. The tongues of all the North American
Indians, as well as those of the tribes of Aryan and Semitic origin,
markedly exhibit this peculiarity. Farrer, in his essay on the "Origin
of Language," says:--
"To call things which we have never seen before by the name of that
which most nearly resembles them is a practice of every-day life. That
children at first call all men 'father' and all women 'mother' is an
observation as old as Aristotle. The Romans gave the name of Lucanian
_ox_ to the elephant, and _camelopardus_ to the giraffe, just as the New
Zealanders are stated to have called horses _large dogs_. The astonished
Caffers gave the name of _cloud_ to the first parasol which they had
seen; and similar instances might be adduced almost indefinitely. They
prove that it is an instinct, if it be not a necessity, to borrow for
the unknown the names already used for things known."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The _Pall Mall Gazette_, of January, 1867, contained a paragraph
announcing the success which had attended the labours of M. Lejean, who
had been sent by the French government "on a journey of scientific
exploration to India and the Persian Gulf." M. Lejean, in a letter from
Abushehr (Bendershehr), reports to the French Minister of Public
Instruction, discoveries "of so extraordinary a nature," that the writer
in the _Gazette_ "scarcely likes to repeat them without further
confirmation." Amongst other matters, he says:--"They extend from the
oldest times to the Alexandrine period, and from the Arians to Buddhism.
He speaks of having discovered ante-Sanscrit idioms (_langues
paléo-ariennes_) 'still spoken between Kashmir and Afghanistan by the
mountain tribes,' and he undertakes to prove 'that these languages have
a more direct connection with the European languages than Sanscrit.'"
Should this prove correct, a careful analysis of this speech or tongue
may throw much light, either confirmative or otherwise, on many of the
more recondite questions discussed in this work.
[2] Baldwin, however, in his recent work, "Pre-historic Nations,"
contends that the Phœnicians, as well as the ancient Egyptians and
others, were descended from the old Cushite Arabs, and were therefore
"Hamitic" rather than "Semitic" in their origin.
[3] History of Preston and its Environs, p. 36.
[4] The Hindoo Trimürtti or Triad, namely, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva,
likewise represents the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer.
[5] The falcon, as well as the eagle, was a "fire-bringer or
lightning-bird."
[6] "Varuna and the demon Vitri both derive their names from var, vri,
to cover, to enfold."
[7] Since the above was written, the Rev. G. W. Cox's "Mythology of the
Aryan Nations" has been published. At page 78, vol. 2, speaking of the
youth of Paris, the seducer of Helen, he says:--"In his early life he
has the love of Oinônê, the child of the river-god Kebrên, and thus a
being akin to the bright maidens who, like Athenê and Aphroditê, are
born from the waters." In a note he adds "that this name Kebrên is
probably the same as Severn, the intermediate forms leave little room
for doubting."
[8] Since the above was written, I have seen, in Captain Speke's
"Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile," the map of Eastern
Equatorial Africa, which accompanied a paper, published in the third
volume of "Asiatic Researches, in 1801." Speke, referring to this paper,
says:--"It was written by Lieutenant Wilford, from the 'Purans' of the
ancient Hindus.... It is remarkable that the Hindus have christened the
source of the Nile _Amara_, which is the name of a country at the
north-east corner of the Victoria N'yanza. This, I think, shows clearly,
that the ancient Hindus must have had some kind of communication with
both the northern and southern ends of the Victoria N'yanza." I find on
this map, on the west side of the inland sea styled "Lake of Amara or of
the Gods," a range of hills named "_Sitanta M^ts_." They are in close
contiguity to the "_Soma Giri_" or "Mountains of the Moon," and seem to
be a lower or inferior branch of that range, bordering upon the waters
of the great lake. This appears to be a further confirmation of the high
probability which exists that some of the very ancient local
nomenclature of Britain and Western Europe is of Eastern origin. Ptolemy
speaks not only of a people inhabiting the district of which Lancashire
forms a part, which he names the _Setantii_, but of a harbour on the
coast, the _Portus Setantiorum_, which I and others have fixed at the
Wyre. [See "History of Preston and its Environs." p. 36.]
[9] The second "Avatâra" of Vishnu was in the form of a tortoise, when
Vishnu placed himself under the mountain Mandara, while the gods and
demons churned the Milky Sea for ambrosia. This incarnation is called
the _Kurma_. This churning appears to have produced other miraculous
results. Amongst the "gifts" of the ocean on this auspicious occasion,
two especially fell to the share of Vishnu himself, namely, a miraculous
jewel, named _Kaustubha_, and S'rî, the goddess of Beauty and
Prosperity. The Venus of the Greeks was said to have been produced from
the foam of the sea, in the neighbourhood of the island _Cythera_, hence
one of the numerous appellations of the goddess--_Cytherea_.
[10] The modern Welsh word _aban_ signifies din, tumult, uproar.
CHAPTER II.
FIRE OR SUN WORSHIP AND ITS ATTENDANT SUPERSTITIONS.
Most glorious orb! thou wert a worship, ere
The mystery of thy making was reveal'd!
Thou earliest minister of the Almighty,
Which gladden'd, on their mountain tops, the hearts
Of the Chaldean shepherds, till they pour'd
Themselves in orisons! Thou material God!
And representative of the Unknown--
Who chose thee for his shadow!
_Byron._
Let us meditate on the adorable light of the divine ruler,
(Savitri, the sun); may it guide our intellects.
_Vedic Hymn._
In his own image the Creator made,
His own pure sunbeam quicken'd, thee, O man!
Thou breathing dial! Since thy day began
The present hour was ever markt with shade.
_W. Savage Landor._
I have said that some remains of the fire worship of Bel or Beil, until
very recently, might be found in Lancashire and the North of England, as
well as at present in Scotland and Ireland. Indeed, I am inclined to
think certain English customs of the peasantry, at the present day, may,
with perfect truthfulness, be referred to this source, although the
original objects of the ceremonies may have been, either wholly or in
part, obliterated by time, or obscured by the action of more recent
rites and traditional observances.
Amongst these may be instanced a superstition prevalent in the North of
England and many other places, that a funeral procession, when arrived
at the churchyard, must move in the sun's course; that is, from east to
west; otherwise evil resulted to the spirit of the departed. This
sentiment is not confined to religious ceremonies, but is respected when
passing the bottle in convivial assemblies; and in several other matters
of ordinary every-day life. The fact that Brand, and most of the earlier
writers after the Reformation, speak of these superstitions as "Popish,"
in no way invalidates the assignment to them of an Aryan origin. As
early as the eleventh century, in the reign of Canute the Great, we
find laws strictly prohibiting the people from worshipping, or
venerating, "the sun, moon, sacred groves and woods, and hallowed hills
and fountains." Decrees were again and again pronounced in vain against
many of these practices by the ecclesiastical authorities. In the canons
of the Northumberland clergy, quoted by Wilkins and Hallam, we read as
follows:--
"If a king's thane deny this (_the practice of heathen superstition_),
let twelve be appointed for him, and let him take twelve of his kindred
(or equals, _maga_), and twelve British strangers; and if he fail, then
let him pay for his breach of law, twelve half-marcs: if a landowner (or
lesser thane) deny the charge, let as many of his equals and as many
strangers be taken as for a royal thane; and if he fail, let him pay six
half-marcs: If a ceorl deny it, let as many of his equals and as many
strangers be taken for him as for the others; and if he fail, let him
pay twelve oræ for his breach of law."
This demonstrates that all classes, whatever their rank, found it
difficult to shake off the superstitions of their forefathers. Some of
them became amalgamated with more modern festive ceremonies, and were
eventually intermingled with the formulæ of the Christian worship
itself. Sir Jno. Lubbock, in his recent work, "The Origin of
Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man," endorses this view. He
says: "When man, either by natural progress, or the influence of a more
advanced race, rises to the conception of a higher religion, _he still
retains his old beliefs, which long linger on, side by side with_, and
yet in utter opposition to, the higher creed. The new and more powerful
spirit is an addition to the old Pantheon, and diminishes the importance
of the older deities; gradually, the worship of the latter sinks in the
social scale, and becomes confined to the ignorant and the young. Thus a
belief in witchcraft still flourishes among our agricultural labourers
and the lowest classes in our great cities, and the deities of our
ancestors survive in the nursery tales of our children. We must,
therefore, expect to find in each race, traces--nay, more than
traces--of lower religions."
In the Irish Glossary of Cormac, Archbishop of Cashel, written in the
beginning of the tenth century, the author says, in his time "four great
fires were lighted up on the four great festivals of the Druids, viz.,
in February, May, August, and November." General Valancey says the Irish
have discontinued their November fires and substituted candles; while
the Welsh, though they retain the fire, "can give no reason for the
illumination." All Saints' Day is on the first of November, and its
vigil is termed Allhalloween, or Nutcrack night. Those festivals had
all reference to the seasons, and their influence on the fruitfulness of
the earth. Brand says "it is customary on this night with young people
in the north of England to dive for apples, or catch at them, when stuck
upon one end of a kind of hanging beam, at the other extremity of which
is fixed a lighted candle, and that with their mouths only, their hands
being tied behind their backs." Robert Burns tells us that Halloween is
thought to be a "night when witches, devils, and other mischief making
beings, are all abroad on their baneful midnight errands; particularly
those ærial people, the fairies, are said on that night to hold a grand
anniversary." Scotch girls, on this evening, pull, blindfolded, cabbage
stalks, in order to divine the size and figure of their future husbands.
Nuts are roasted or flung into the fire for a similar purpose both in
Scotland and England. Gay describes the latter ceremony as follows:--
Two hazel nuts I threw into the flame,
And to each nut I gave a sweetheart's name;
This with the _loudest bounce_ me sore amazed,
That in a _flame of brightest colour_ blazed;
_As blazed the nut so may thy passion grow_,
For 'twas thy nut that did so brightly glow!
We possess some interesting accounts of these gatherings in various
parts of Scotland during the latter portion of the last century. In
Perthshire, heath, broom, and dressings of flax were tied to poles,
lighted, and carried round the villages and fields. One minister says
the people "set up bonfires in every village. When the bonfire is
consumed, the ashes are carefully collected into the form of a circle.
There is a stone put in near the circumference, for every person of the
several families interested in the bonfire; and whatever stone is
removed out of its place or injured before the next morning, the person
represented by that stone is devoted, or _fey_, and is supposed not to
live twelve months from that day. The people received the consecrated
fire from the Druid priests next morning, the virtues of which were
supposed to continue a year." A similar authority says, "the custom of
making a fire in the fields, baking a consecrated cake, &c., on the 1st
of May is not yet quite worn out."
In Derbyshire these fires were called _Tindles_, and were kindled at the
close of the last century. In some localities the ceremony is called a
_Tinley_. Sir William Dugdale says, "On All-Hallow Even the master of
the family anciently used to carry a bunch of straw, fired, about his
corne, saying--
"Fire and red low
Light on my _teen low_."
In Lancashire they are called _tandles_ and _teanlas_. In Ireland
May-day eve is called _neen na Bealtina_, the eve of Bael fires. The
practice of divination by the roasting of nuts is yet common in
Lancashire. The hollow cinder, too, which leaps from a coal fire, is
supposed to augur wealth or death to the person against whom it strikes,
in proportion as its shape nearest resembles a purse or a coffin.
Mr. Thornber, the historian of Blackpool, and Mr. T. T. Wilkinson, of
Burnley, author of a series of valuable papers on Lancashire
superstitions published in the "Transactions of the Lancashire and
Cheshire Historic Society," have furnished some curious information of a
local character with reference to this ancient fire-worship. The latter
says:--"Such fires are still lighted in Lancashire, on Hallowe'en, under
the names of Beltains or Teanleas; and even the _cakes_ which the Jews
are said to have made in honour of the Queen of Heaven, are yet to be
found at this season amongst the inhabitants of the banks of the
Ribble.... Both the fires and cakes, however, are now connected with
superstitious notions respecting purgatory, &c., but their origin and
perpetuation will scarcely admit of doubt." He further observes:--"The
practice of 'causing children to pass through the fire to Moloch,' so
strongly reprobated by the prophet of old, may be cited as an instance
in which Christianity has not yet been able to efface all traces of one
of the oldest forms of heathen worship."
Mr. Thornber says:--"The conjoint worship of the sun and moon, the Samen
and Sama, husband and wife of nature, has been from these early times so
firmly implanted that ages have not uprooted it. Christianity has not
banished it.... In my youth, on Hallowe'en, under the name of Teanla
fires, I have seen the hills throughout the country illuminated with
sacred flames, and I can point out many a cairn of fire-broken
stones--the high places of the votaries of Bel--where his rites have
been performed on the borders of the Ribble age after age. Nor at this
day are these mysteries silenced; with a burning whisp of straw at the
point of a fork on Sama's festival at the eve of All-hallows, the farmer
in some districts of the Fylde encircles his field to protect the coming
crop from noxious weeds, the tare and darnel; the old wife refuses to
sit the eggs under her crackling hen after sunset; the ignorant boy sits
astride a stile, as he looks at the new moon; the bride walks not
widdershins to church on her nuptial moon; and if the aged parent
addresses not the young pair in the words of Hanno, the Carthaginian in
the Pœnula of Plautus, 'O that the good Bel-Samen may favour them,'
or, like the Irish peasant, 'The blessing of Sama and Bel go with you;'
still, we have often heard the benediction, 'May the sun shine bright
upon you,' in accordance with the old adage,
'Blest is the corpse the rain fell on,
Blest the bride on whom the sun shone.'"
M. Du Chaillu, in his recent "Journey into Ashango-land and further
penetration into Equatorial Africa," speaks of a certain superstitious
reverence for fire and faith in its medical virtues by the inhabitants
of the region he traversed. He relates the following beautiful story
respecting their astronomical notions:--"I was not always so solitary in
taking my nightly observations, for sometimes one and another of my men
or Mayola" (the king or chief), "would stand by me. Of course, I could
never make them comprehend what I was doing. Sometimes I used to be
amused by their ideas about the heavenly bodies. Like all other
remarkable natural objects, they are the subject of whimsical myths
amongst them. According to them, the sun and moon are of the same age,
but the sun brings daylight and gladness and the moon brings darkness,
witchcraft, and death--for death comes from sleep, and sleep commences
in darkness. The sun and moon, they say, once got angry with each other,
each one claiming to be the eldest. The moon said, 'Who are you, to dare
to speak to me? You are alone; you have no people. What! are you to
consider yourself equal to me? Look at me,' she continued, showing the
stars shining around her, 'these are my people; I am not alone in the
world like you.' The sun answered, 'Oh, moon, you bring witchcraft, and
it is you have killed all my people, or I should have as many attendants
as you.' According to the negroes, people are more liable to die when
the moon first makes her appearance and when she is last visible. They
say that she calls the people her insects and devours them. The moon
with them is the emblem of time and death."
The Teutonic tribes appear, contrary to the general faith of their Aryan
kindred, to have regarded the sun as a female and the moon as a male
deity. Palgrave, in his "History of the Anglo-Saxons," says:--"They had
an odd notion that if they addressed that power as a goddess, their
wives would be their masters."
I am strongly inclined to think that the continuance of the practice of
lighting bonfires on the 5th of November owes quite as much to the
associations connected with the ancient teanla fires of Allhalloween, as
to any present Protestant horror of the treason of Guy Fawkes and his
band of conspirators. It may be quite true that the House of Commons, in
February, 1605-6 did ordain that the 5th of November should be kept as
"_a holiday_ FOR EVER in thankfulness to God for our deliverance, and
detestation of the Papists;" but ordinances of this class seldom produce
more than a temporary excitement amongst large masses of the people. I
remember, in my youth, "assisting" at the celebration of several
"bonfire days" in Preston and its neighbourhood, sometimes as amateur
pyrotechnic artist, when we enjoyed our "fun" without any reference to
Protestant or Catholic proclivities. Few, except the better educated,
knew what the "Gunpowder Plot" really meant. Some associated it mainly
with our own pyrotechnic efforts and other attendant consumption of the
explosive compound, on the then special occasion. I rather fancy the
ancient November "Allhallow fires" have in their decadence, merged into
the modern "Gunpowder Plot" bonfires; and hence the reason why, in some
rural districts, they yet abound, while they are fast disappearing from
our more populous towns. I was surprised to find, when riding on an
omnibus from Manchester for about five miles on the Bury-road, on the
evening of a recent anniversary of this "holiday," that I could count,
near and on the horizon, fires of this description by the dozen, and
yet, while in Manchester, I had remained ignorant of the fact that
bonfire associations were influencing the conduct of any section of
society. The merging of one superstition, custom, habit, or tradition,
into another, is one of the most ordinary facts of history.
Mr. Richard Edwards, in his "Land's End District," gives a very graphic
account of the bonfires lighted up in Cornwall on _Midsummer eve_. Some
of the details sufficiently resemble those of our northern "gunpowder
plot" demonstrations to prove that a Guy Fawkes and an Act of Parliament
are not absolutely necessary to make a bonfire festivity attractive to
the descendants of the fire-worshippers of old. He says:--
"On these eves a line of tar barrels, relieved occasionally by large
bonfires, is seen in the centre of each of the principal streets in
Penzance. On either side of this line, young men and women pass up and
down, swinging round their heads heavy torches made of large pieces of
folded canvas steeped in tar, and nailed to the ends of sticks between
three and four feet long; the flames of some of these almost equal those
of the tar barrels. Rows of lighted candles, also, when the air is calm,
are fixed outside the windows or along the sides of the streets. In St.
Just and other mining parishes, the young miners, mimicking their
father's employments, bore rows of holes in the rocks, load them with
gunpowder, and explode them in rapid succession by trains of the same
substance. As the holes are not deep enough to split the rocks, the same
little batteries serve for many years.... In the early part of the
evening, children may be seen wreathing wreaths of flowers,--a custom in
all probability originating from the ancient use of these ornaments when
they danced around the fires. At the close of the fireworks in Penzance,
a great number of persons of both sexes, chiefly from the neighbourhood
of the quay, used always, until within the last few years, to join hand
in hand, forming a long string, and run through the streets, playing
'thread the needle,' heedless of the fireworks showered upon them, and
ofttimes leaping over the yet glowing embers. I have, on these
occasions, seen boys following one another, jumping through flames
higher than themselves. But while this is now done innocently, in every
sense of the word, we all know that the passing of children through fire
was a very common act of idolatry; and the heathen believed that all
persons, and all living things, submitted to this ordeal, would be
preserved from evil throughout the year."
I remember well the bonfire processions during election periods, at
Preston, above forty years ago, in the palmy days of the late Mr. Henry
Hunt. It is not improbable that a remnant of the old superstition
hovered about them; and that a latent belief in the "luck-bringing"
qualities of fire, to a slight extent, influenced their promoters.
A few years ago I visited, in company with Mr. Thornber, a field at
Hardhorn, near Poulton, and was shown by that gentleman some of the
stones yet remaining of what he has for many years regarded as the
remains of a very ancient Teanlea cairn. Some of the stones bore marks
of fire. The mound must, however, have been neglected for a length of
time, inasmuch as the shrewd old farmer who had destroyed it had no
recollection or traditionary knowledge respecting the use to which it
had been appropriated. But from the ashes and other indications of fire
which the upper portion of the cairn presented, the worthy husbandman
felt confident that "it hed bin a blacksmith's forge i' th' olden time."
Godfrey Higgins in his "Celtic Druids," asserts, on the authority of
Hayman Rooke, that "so late as the year 1786, the custom of lighting
fires was continued at the Druid temple at Bramham, near Harrowgate,
Yorkshire, on the eve of the summer solstice." The Bramham crags
referred to present a singularly curious specimen of the partial
disintegration of huge rocks belonging to the millstone grit series.
Their present peculiar forms are not now attributed by the learned to
human agency, in any marked degree at least, but to the denuding action
of water, frost, and other geological conditions or phenomena.
Nevertheless, from the wild and even weird aspect of the group and its
elevated site, it is by no means improbable that it has been used in
early times as a place of worship, or as the locality for the
performance of superstitious rites of the class referred to. Doubtless,
other localities of a similar character might be pointed out. "Beacon
Fell," near "Parlick Pike," and the "Tandle Hills," near Rochdale, may
have been used as places of public assembly, and for the performance of
similar superstitious observances. The same may be said of Ingleborough,
which yet exhibits remains of Keltic occupation.
This fire-worship, amongst a barbarous people, appears to have had by no
means a strange or unnatural origin. Mr. Walter Kelly, after a very
elaborate analysis, concludes that the Prometheus of the Greeks and the
Vedic Mâtarisvan are "essentially the same." "The elder fire-gods, Agni
and Rudra," he says, "had a troop of fire-kindling attendants, called
Pramathas or Pramâthas," and he regards Prometheus as the Greek form of
this word. He calls attention to the fact that Diodorus says of the
celebrated Titan, that "according to the mythographers he stole fire
from the gods, but that in reality he was the inventor of the
fire-making instrument." The discoverer of the chark, or "fire-drill,"
an instrument for obtaining fire by artificial means, would be so great
a benefactor to a people that had to suffer all the inconveniences
resulting from occasional fireless hearths, that we may well understand
why he should be invested by his astonished and delighted fellow-savages
with miraculous or supernatural powers.[11] Doubtless the production of
fire by the rubbing together of two pieces of dry timber preceded this
discovery, but, under many circumstances, the operation must have been a
most laborious one, and ofttimes impracticable. But with the "chark" the
result was nearly as certain as when flint, steel, and tinder were
employed for this purpose. It was a very simple instrument indeed, but
it has nevertheless exercised a marvellous influence on the destinies of
mankind. It consisted merely of a piece of soft dry wood with a hole
drilled in its centre, into which a rod of hard wood, ash, or oak, was
placed, and caused to revolve with rapidity by a cord, passed round it,
being pulled and slackened at each end alternately. A wheel and its axle
have hence become types of the sun and the thunderbolt. Fire produced in
this original way was considered sacred. Even the Greeks and Romans, as
well as the Kelts, and some Christian populations until recent times,
adopted the same or a similar process in the lighting of fires connected
with religious ceremonies. Mr. Kelly says "the Church has not quite yet
succeeded in effacing the vestiges of their heathen origin. This is
especially evident in the usages of many districts, where the purity of
the Easter fire (an idea borrowed from Pagan tradition) is secured by
deriving the kindling flame either from the consecrated Easter candles,
or from the new-born and perfectly pure element produced by the priest
from flint and steel." The Vedic chark was made from the wood of two
sacred trees; "the sami sprang from heavenly fire sent down to earth,
and the asvattha from the vessel which contained it." Kelly adds:--"The
idea of marriage, suggested by such a union of the two trees, is also
developed in the Veda with great amplitude and minuteness of detail, and
is a very prominent element in the whole cycle of myths connected with
the chark." Doubtless, we have here exposed the root of the entire
system of phallic worship, stripped of much, if not all, of the
grossness afterwards attendant upon it. It appears that amongst the
Peruvians, who were sun-worshippers, the great national festival was
held at the summer solstice. They collected the rays of that luminary in
a concave mirror, by which means they rekindled their fires. Sometimes,
indeed, they obtained their "need-fire" by friction of wood. Amongst the
Mexicans likewise grand religious celebrations took place at the close
of the fifty-second year, when the extinguished fires were rekindled "by
the friction of sticks." This is a very general practice amongst savage
tribes at the present day. Mr. Angus says some of the western tribes of
Australia "have no means of kindling fire. They say that it formerly
came from the north." Should that of one tribe unfortunately become
extinguished, there was nothing for it but journeying to a neighbouring
encampment and borrowing a light. The Tasmanians are in the same
predicament. The Fegeeans obtain fire by friction. So do other South Sea
Islanders, as well as many of the North American Indians. The Dacotahs
and Iroquois use an instrument not unlike the drilling bow at present
employed for a certain class of work in Europe. According to Father
Gabian, fire was utterly unknown to the natives of the Ladrone Islands
"till Magellan, provoked by their repeated thefts, burned one of their
villages. When they saw their wooden houses blazing, they first thought
the fire a beast which fed upon wood, and some of them, who came too
near, being burnt, the rest stood afar off, lest they should be devoured
or poisoned by this powerful animal."
The practice of kindling original or "need-fire" from a superstitious
reverence of its sacred character, is yet very common in various parts
of Germany, Scotland, and Ireland, and even in England. Mr. Kemble
quotes, from the Lanercost Chronicle, of the year 1268, a denunciation
by the pious writer, of a practice which "certain bestial persons, monks
in garb but not in mind," had taught the ignorant peasantry. This
practice consisted in the extraction of fire from wood by friction, and
the setting up of what he styles a "simulacrum Priapi," with a view to
protect their cattle from disease. This image of Priapus is supposed to
refer to the sun-god Fro or Fricco, who, according to Wolf, was
worshipped until a very recent period in Belgium, under the form of
Priapus. Priapus, the god of gardens or fertility, was the son of
Bacchus and Venus. In the more mountainous portions of Wales a remnant
of evidently heathen image-worship, of a somewhat similar character,
survived till relatively modern times. In the reign of Henry the Eighth,
an idol, or what old Fuller calls "a great lubberly image," was removed
from the diocese of St. Asaph, and publicly burnt in Smithfield. This
image was known by the name of "Darvell Gatheron;" and it was said that
the country people were in the habit of sacrificing oxen and sheep to
it. Hence its condemnation by the church authorities.
Grimm refers to a remarkable instance of this superstition, which
occurred in the island of Mull as recently as 1767, which vividly
illustrates the "toughness" of tradition, as Dasent expresses it. He
says:--"In consequence of a disease amongst the black cattle, the people
agreed to perform an incantation, though they esteemed it a wicked
thing. They carried to the top of Carnmoor a wheel and nine spindles,
long enough to produce fire by friction. If the fire were not produced
before noon, the incantation lost its effect. They failed for several
days running. They attributed this failure to the obstinacy of one
householder, who would not let his fires be put out for what he
considered so wrong a purpose. However, by bribing his servants, they
contrived to have them extinguished, and on that morning raised their
fire. They then sacrificed a heifer, cutting in pieces and burning,
while yet alive, the diseased part. They then lighted their own hearths
from the pile, and ended by feasting on the remains. Words of
incantation were repeated by an old man from Morven, who came as the
master of the ceremonies, and who continued speaking all the time the
fire was being raised. This man was living a beggar at Bellochroy. Asked
to repeat the spell, he said the sin of repeating it once had brought
him to beggary, and that he dared not say those words again." Many other
instances might be cited in Scotland and Ireland: but the one most to
the present purpose is related by Mr. T. T. Wilkinson, in which a
Lancashire man "unconsciously resorted to the old worship of Baal, and
consumed a live calf in a fire, in order to counteract the influences of
his unknown enemies." This individual was well known to Mr. Wilkinson.
He firmly believed that witchcraft was at the root of all his troubles,
and that his cattle had died in consequence of its spells. It appears he
had previously tried the famous Lancashire expedient to render his
stables and shippons proof against his supernatural enemies--the nailing
of horseshoes on all his doors--without obtaining the desired result;
so, in desperation, knowing the tradition, he sacrificed a living calf
to the fire-god Bel!
The following paragraph appeared in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, on the 29th
of June, 1867:--
"The accounts given by the Irish newspapers of the extent to which the
old superstition of fire-lighting on Midsummer eve still prevails show
how slowly the relics of Paganism disappear among country people, and
how natural it was that the old idolatries should come at last to be
known as the creed of the 'Pagana,' the dwellers in villages. These
Midsummer fires, lighted annually on the hills, are simply relics of the
worship of Bel. Beltane-day, or Belteine, is still a May-day as well as
a Midsummer festival in the more ignorant districts of Scotland as well
as of Ireland, and similar superstitious practices are connected with
the lighting of the fires; and, what is still more remarkable, the word
is still used in some Scotch almanacs as a term well-known to everybody.
In a number of the _Scotsman_ a few years ago appeared the announcement
that 'On Beltane-day Mr. Robertson was elected convener of the Trades of
Cannongate in Edinburgh.' The next year the following is to be
found:--'On Beltane-day the weavers, dyers, etc., of the Cannongate
re-elected their office bearers.'"[12]
The records of the Presbytery of Dingwall show that as recently as the
latter portion of the seventeenth century, on the island of Innis Maree,
in Loch Maree, bulls were offered up as a sacrifice, and milk offered on
the hill sides as a libation. In the year 1678, the Presbytery took
action against some of the Mackenzie family, "for sacrificing a bull in
a heathenish manner, in the island of St. Rufus, for the recovery of the
health of Cirstane Mackenzie, who was formerly sick and valetudinarie."
Mr. Henderson, in his "Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties," mentions an
instance, "within fifteen years ago," of "a herd of cattle, in that
county (Moray) being attacked with fever," when, "one of them was
sacrificed by burning alive, as a propitiatory offering for the rest."
Mr. Robert Hunt, in his "Drolls, Traditions, and Superstitions of Old
Cornwall," published in 1865, says that he has been informed "that
within the last few years a calf has been thus sacrificed by a farmer in
a district where churches, chapels, and schools abound." He afterwards
adds:--"While correcting these sheets I am informed of two recent
instances of this superstition. One of them was the sacrifice of a calf
by a farmer near Pontreath, for the purpose of removing a disease which
had long followed his horses and cows. The other was the burning of a
living lamb, to save, as the farmer said, 'his flocks from spells which
had been cast on 'em.'"
The Midsummer fires, at the vigil of St. John the Baptist, and the yule
log ceremonies at Christmas, may be referred to a similar origin. Brand
says:--"The Pagan rites of this festival (Midsummer Eve) at the summer
solstice may be considered as a counterpart of those used at the winter
solstice at Yule-tide." The wheel, the type of the sun, was common to
both festivities. Darand describes the practice, at the feast of St.
John, of rolling about a wheel, "to signify that the sun, then occupying
the highest place in the zodiac, was beginning to descend." The old
poet, Naogeorgus, describes the wheel as being covered with straw, which
was set on fire at the top of a high mountain, and then despatched on
its downward course. He adds that the people imagined all their ill luck
accompanied the wheel in its descent.
The writer of the old homily _De Festo Sancti Johannis Baptistæ_, when
referring to these observances, speaks of three fires being kindled, one
of which was called "a Bone fire; another is clene woode and no bones,
and that is called a Wode fire, for people to sit and wake thereby; the
third is made of wode and bones, and is called Saynt Johanny's Fyre.[13]
The first fyre, as a great clerke, Johan Belleth, telleth he saw in a
certayne countrey, so in the countrey there was soo greate hete the
which causid that dragons to go together in tokenynge that Johan dyed in
brennynge love and charyté of God and man.... Then as these dragons
flewe in th' ayre, they shed down to the water froth of ther Kynde, and
so envenymed the waters, and caused moche people for to take theyr deth
thereby, and many dyverse sykenesse. Wyse clerkes knoweth well that
dragons hate nothyng more than the stenche of brennynge bones, and
therefore they gaderyd as many as they mighte fynde, and brent them; and
so with the stenche thereof they drove away the dragons, and so they
were brought out of greete dysease."
Brand regards this as a "pleasant piece of absurdity;" but it appears
that the quaint old writer, after all, is but relating that which was
believed to be true in his own age, and which after-gained knowledge
enables us to distinguish as a remnant of the old Aryan superstition or
myth, in a mediæval dress. These rolling fiery wheels, burning brands,
bonfires, and processions round fields, &c., are common to both the
Keltic and Teutonic branches of the Aryan race, and have evidently a
similar origin. Kemble quotes an ancient Latin MS., which he found
among the Harleian collection, which gives a precisely similar
description of the St. John's fires. It is not improbable that it may
have been written by the "learned clerke Johan Belleth," to whom the
writer of the homily refers. Walter Kelly, speaking of it says, "Here we
have again the primitive Aryan dragon Ahi, at his old work in the sultry
midsummer weather." He contends that all the details referred to, as
attendant on the St. John's fires, have been demonstrated by Dr. Kuhn to
be "in striking accordance with the Vedic legend of Indra's fight with
the midsummer demons. The passage quoted by Kemble, besides stating
expressly that the course of the blazing wheel was meant to represent
the descent of the sun from its solstitial height, brings the St. John's
fires in immediate connection with the dragons that poison the waters,
just as did the demon Vritra, otherwise called Ahi, the dragon. He
possessed himself of the sun-wheel and the treasures of Heaven, seized
the (white) women, kept them prisoners in his cavern, and laid a curse
on the waters, until Indra released the captives and took off the curse.
The same conception is repeated in countless legends of mountains that
open on St. John's day, when the imprisoned white women come forth, and
the hour approaches in which the spell laid upon them and upon the
buried treasures will be broken.... Here we see at once that the German"
(and Keltic) "custom was nothing else than a dramatic representation of
the great elemental battle portrayed in the sacred books of the southern
Aryans. In the one the blazing wheel stands on the top of the hill, in
the other the sun stands on the summit of the cloud mountain. Both
descend from their heights, and both are extinguished, the sun in the
cloud sea, behind the cloud mountain, the wheel in the river at the foot
of the hill." One name given to a combatant on the dragon's side is
Kuyava, which is interpreted the "harvest spoiler, or the spoiled
harvest." The following passage in the Rig Veda is uttered by Indra,
when he resolves to destroy the monster,--"Friend Vishnu, stride vastly;
sky give room for the thunderbolt to strike; let us slay Vritra and let
loose the waters." His worshippers likewise exclaim,--"When, thunderer,
thou didst by thy might slay Vritra, who stopped up the streams, then
thy dear steeds grew."
The Rev. G. W. Cox says:--"The Nemean lion is the offspring of Typhon,
Orthros, or Echidna; in other words it is sprung from Vritra, the dark
thief, and Ahi, the throttling snake of darkness, and it is as surely
slain by Heracles as the snakes which had assaulted him in his cradle.
Another child of the same horrid parents is the Lernaian Hydra, its
very name denoting a monster who, like the Sphinx or the Panis, shuts up
the waters and causes drought. It has many heads, one being immortal, as
the storm must constantly supply new clouds, while the vapours are
driven off by the sun into space. Hence the story went that although
Heracles could burn away its mortal heads, as the sun burns up the
clouds, still he can but hide away the mist or vapour itself, which at
its appointed time must again darken the sky."
Dr. Kuhn contends that the clothing of wheels with straw and the
extinguishing of them when set on fire by immersion in a river, as is
done in the vine-growing districts of Germany, with the view to secure a
good harvest, is to be referred to this source. In support of his view,
he enters into an elaborate philological argument to show that _yava_
must have originally meant grass in general, afterwards cereal grasses,
and that its root gave birth to the name of the grain from which the
oldest bread-stuff known was made. He says--"But I go still further, and
I believe that _Kuyava_ was also regarded as the spoiler of vegetation
in general, who parched up the plants used in making the fermented
liquor, soma, and amongst these plants the Hindus included _yava_,
which, in this case, meant barley or rice. It will be seen in the sequel
that the demon possesses himself also of the heavenly soma (the moisture
of the clouds), that he is robbed of it by Indra, and that the like
conception is found also among the Greeks and the Germans. This, then,
sufficiently explains the hope of a good wine year, which was associated
with the victory in the above-described German customs."
The Venerable Bede, in his treatise on the "Nature of Things," gives us
what may be termed the scientific view respecting rain and lightning
which obtained about his time. It is singularly in accordance with Dr.
Kuhn's interpretation of the myth now under consideration. He says:--
"Lightning is produced by the rubbing together of clouds, after the
manner of flints struck together, the thunder occurring at the same
time, but sound reaches the ears more slowly than light the eyes. For
all things the collision creates fire. Some say that while air draws
water in vapour from the depths, it draws also fire heat-wise, and by
their contact the horrid crash of thunder is produced; and _if the fire
conquer, it will be injurious to fruits; if water beneficial_; but that
the fire of lightning has so much the more penetrative power, from being
made of subtler elements than that which is in use by us."
It is merely necessary that the rhetorical figure, personification, be
freely applied to this passage, with due reverence towards the ancient
superstitions, and the mythic element which lies at the root of these
singular customs is reproduced.
It is evident the whole have reference to the influence of the burning
heat of the midsummer sun, which induces long droughts, and parches the
soil and the vegetation; and to the delight engendered when that heat is
mitigated, and the scorched earth is again rendered fruitful by copious
showers, the product of the thunderstorm. And to this source, Mr. Kelly
justly contends, may be referred all the supernatural dragon stories of
our nurseries, whether fought "by Pagan or Christian champions, from
Apollo, Hercules, and Siegfried, down to St. George, and to that modern
worthy More, of Morehall,
Who slew the dragon of Wantley."
The learned Pettingall has shown that the dragon slain by the English
champion and patron, St. George, was, by the ancient Orientals, engraved
on amulets, and that it was intended to symbolise the virtues of
Mithras, the sun. He says, "From the Pagans the use of these charms
passed to the Basilidians, and in their Abraxas, the traces of the
antient Mithras and the more modern St. George, are equally visible. In
the dark ages, the Christians borrowed their superstitions from the
heretics, but they disguised the origin of them, and transformed into
the saint the sun of the Persians and the archangel of the
Gnostics."[14]
Dr. Wilson, when speaking of the art examples pertaining to what is
termed, in Western Europe, the "Stone age," says,--
"In no single case is any attempt made to imitate leaf or flower, bird,
beast, or any simple, natural object; and when in the bronze work of the
later Iron period, imitative forms at length appear, they are chiefly
the snake and dragon shapes and patterns, borrowed seemingly by Celtic
and Teutonic wanderers, with the wild fancies of their mythology, from
the far Eastern cradle-land of their birth."
Marsden, in his "History of Sumatra," says that during an eclipse, the
natives make "a loud noise with sounding instruments, to prevent one
luminary from devouring the other, as the Chinese, to frighten away the
dragon, a superstition that has its source in the ancient systems of
astronomy (particularly the Hindu), where the nodes of the moon are
identified with the dragon's head and tail."
The dragon was the standard of the West Saxons, and of the English
previous to the Norman Conquest. It formed one of the supporters of the
Royal arms borne by all our Tudor monarchs, with the exception of Queen
Mary, who substituted the eagle. Several of the Plantagenet kings and
princes inscribed a figure of the dragon on their banners and shields.
Peter Langtoffe says, at the battle of Lewis, fought in 1264:--
"The King (Henry III.) schewed forth his schild his Dragon full
austere."
Another authority says the said king ordered to be made "a dragon in the
manner of a banner, of a certain red silk embroidered with gold; its
tongue like a flaming fire must always seem to be moving; its eyes must
be made of sapphire, or of some other stone suitable for that purpose."
Notwithstanding the transformations which several of them may have
undergone from relatively modern local influences, there can be little
doubt the fiery-dragon and the numerous huge-worm traditions of the
North of England enshrine relics of Aryan superstitions. Besides the
dragon Ahi, we have the Vedic great serpent Sesha, to which reference
has been made in the first chapter of this work. We find the Dêvas, when
at war with their enemies the Asuras, agreed to a truce in order that
they might "churn the ocean," and so procure some soma or drink of the
gods, or milk the heavenly cows (the clouds) wherewith to slake their
grievous thirst. They coiled this great serpent around a hill or
mountain in the sea, and used him as a rope under whose action the hill
spun rapidly round until the heavenly liquor (rain water) was procured
in sufficient quantity. The famous Lambton worm, when coiled round a
hill, was pacified with copious draughts of milk, and his blood flowed
freely when he was pierced by the spear heads attached to the armour of
the returned crusader.[15] The Linton worm coiled itself round a hill,
and by its poisonous breath, destroyed the neighbouring animal and
vegetable life. The knight who destroyed it used burning pitch in the
operation. The contractions of this huge worm in dying, are said to have
left indented spiral lines on the sides of Warmington hill. The Pollard
worm is described as "a venomous serpent which did much harm to man and
beast," while that of Stockburn is designated as the "worm, _dragon, or
fiery flying serpent_ which destroyed man, woman, and child." These
worms were said to have been slain by the spears or swords of knights,
evidently modern substitutes for the thunderbolt of Indra, the ancient
Aryan "god of the firmament." A _bonâ fide_ slain worm, however, seems
from the records to have been a very small affair in comparison with the
gigantic monsters of the Durham traditions. Towards the end of the
seventeenth century, a writer of the family history of the Somervilles,
referring to the worm which John Somerville slew, in the reign of
William the Lion, avers that it was "in length three Scots yards, and
somewhat bigger than an ordinary man's leg, with a head more
proportionable to its length than greatness, in form and colour like to
our common muir-edders." As the valour of Indra fertilised the earth; so
virtue of a similar quality in a high degree procured broad lands for
the earthly champion, from his grateful sovereign.
It is by no means improbable, if, as Mr. D. Haigh contends, in his
"Conquest of Britain by the Saxons," the scene of the fine old
Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, was near Hartlepool, in the county of Durham,
that these monster worm traditions of the north of England may be the
remains of the mythic superstitions therein embodied.[16] The giant and
sprite Grendel, the "Ghost-slayer," and his equally sanguinary mother,
are evidently personifications of evil influences. After Beowulf had
despatched the male monster, he proceeded to the pool, in the _depths of
which_ he successfully contended with the female. As he and his
followers sat in the deep shadow of the wood overhanging the
"_bottomless_" pool "they saw along the water many of the _worm-kind_,
strange _sea dragons_, also in clefts of the ness Nickers lying."
Professor Henry Morley, in his "English Writers," gives a summary of the
poem, the following passage in which demonstrates the great antiquity of
this superstition:--
"Afterward the broad land came under the sway of Beowulf. He held it
well for fifty winters, until in the dark nights a dragon, which in a
stone mound watched a hoard of gold and cups, won mastery. It was a
hoard heaped up in sin, its lords were long since dead; the last earl,
before dying, hid it in the earth-cave, and for three hundred winters
the _great scather_ held the cave, until some man, finding by chance a
rich cup, took it to his lord. Then the den was searched while the worm
slept; again and again when the dragon awoke there had been theft. He
found not the man, but _wasted the whole land with fire_; nightly, the
_fiendish air-flyer made fire grow hateful_ to the sight of men. Then it
was told to Beowulf.... He sought out the dragon's den and fought with
him in awful strife. One wound the poison-worm struck in the flesh of
Beowulf.... Then, while the warrior-king sat deathsick on a stone, he
sent his thanes to see the cups and dishes in the den of the dread
twilight-flyer.... He said, 'I for this gold have wisely sold my life;
let others care now for the people's need. I may be here no longer.'"
Mr. John Mitchell Kemble, who published an amended prose translation of
Beowulf, in 1833, considered the poem to be founded upon legends which
existed anterior to the conquest of the northern part of Britain by the
Angles. Beowulf he regarded as the name of a god, one of the ancestors
of Woden, and who appears in the poem "as a defender, a protecting and
redeeming being." The hero belonged to the tribe of Geáts or Goths. This
word etymologists trace to the Anglo-Saxon geótan and geát, which imply
a pouring forth. One of Odin's names amongst the gods, according to the
Edda, was Gautr, the god of abundance. The monster Grendel is thus
described in the English summary of the poem by Professor Henry
Morley:--
"The grim guest was Grendel, he that held the moors, the fen, and
fastness. Forbidden the homes of mankind, the daughters of Cain brought
forth in darkness misshapen giants, elves, and orkens, such giants as
long warred with God, and he was one of these." The reference to the
daughters of Cain would seem to suggest an interpolation by a
transcriber after the introduction of Christianity.
Geoffrey of Monmouth relates a story of a certain mythic King of
Northumbria named Morvidus, who was less fortunate than Beowulf,
inasmuch as he lost his life, and gained nothing for his people by its
sacrifice. But then, we are informed, he "was a most cruel tyrant." It
appears that the land north of the Humber was invaded in great force by
a king of the Moreni (near Boulogne). He was defeated by Morvidus, who
abused his victory by the most monstrous acts of cruelty. Whilst thus
engaged, Geoffrey informs us that "there came from the coasts of the
Irish Sea a most cruel monster, that was continually devouring the
people upon the sea coasts. As soon as he heard of it, he ventured to go
and encounter it alone. When he had in vain spent all his darts upon it,
the monster rushed upon him, and with open jaws swallowed him up like a
small fish."
These dragon monsters are often found in connection with imprisoned
maidens, and treasures buried in caves or the inner recesses of
mountains. Some mythographers regard the maiden as a personification of
the dawn imprisoned by the darkness of the night, and afterwards freed
by the rays of the sun. In the Vedic myths, besides Ahi, the throttling
snake, and Vritra, the dragon, there is Pani, the thief and seducer, who
stole the cows of Indra from their heavenly pastures, hid them in his
dark cloud cave, and attempted to corrupt Sarama (the dawn), when, at
the bidding of the lightning-god, she demanded the restoration of the
plundered cattle. Max Müller, the Rev. G. W. Cox, and others, contend
that these incidents underlie most of the mythical epics of all the
Aryan nations. They say that the siege of Troy, even, "is a reflection
of the daily siege of the East by the solar powers that every evening
are robbed of their brightest treasures in the West."
The celebrated mediæval metrical romance, "Kyng Alisaunder," translated
into English verse, in the thirteenth century, by an unknown author, is
a complete _repertoire_ of these dragon, worm, and monster
superstitions. According to it, the hero was the son of a magician who
appeared to his mother in the form of a great dragon of the air. At his
birth "the earth shook, the sea became green, the sun ceased to shine,
the moon appeared and became black, the thunder crashed." The original
is said to have been written by Simeon Seth, keeper of the imperial
wardrobe at Constantinople, about the year 1060. It is founded on
Oriental legends, and was translated and enlarged into Latin and French
before the English version appeared. Many of its monstrosities are
evidently degraded forms of Grecian and other Aryan myths.
The celebrated prophecy of Merlin, in Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History of
Britain," is full of malignant dragons, white and red, which fight
furiously, and "cast forth fire with their breath." The red dragon, in
one instance, the prophet says, "shall return to his proper manners, and
turn his rage upon himself. Therefore shall the _revenge of the
Thunderer show itself, for every field shall disappoint the husbandman_.
Mortality shall snatch away the people, and make a desolation over all
countries."
Dragons, huge worms, and serpents appear frequently to be confounded in
Merlin's prophecy.[17] One sentence reads thus: "She shall be
encompassed with the adder of Lincoln, who with a horrible hiss shall
give notice of his presence to a multitude of dragons. Then shall the
dragons encounter and tear one another to pieces. The winged shall
oppress that which wants wings, and fasten its claws into the poisonous
cheeks." In another instance, the Aryan dragon, or harvest destroyer, is
very apparent. Merlin says:--"To him shall succeed a husbandman of
Albania, at whose back shall be a serpent. He shall be employed in
ploughing the ground, that the country may become white with corn. _The
serpent shall endeavour to diffuse his poison, in order to blast the
harvest._" Again he says:--"There shall be a miserable desolation of the
kingdom, and the floors of the harvests shall return to the fruitful
forests. The white dragon shall rise again, and invite over a daughter
of Germany. Our gardens shall be again replenished with foreign seed,
and the red one shall pine away at the end of the pond. After that shall
the German worm be crowned, and the brazen prince buried." Merlin's red
and white dragons are intended directly to personify the British and
Saxon races of men, as the red and white roses in after time served as
emblems of the houses of Lancaster and York; but the origin of the
mythic form of expression is very apparent.
The _Saxon Chronicle_ contains a paragraph under the date 793, which
illustrates the power of this superstition in the North of England at
that period. The passage itself likewise supplies sufficient evidence to
connect its interpretation with the Aryan myth under consideration. We
read: "A. 793. This year dire forewarnings came over the land of the
North-humbrians, and miserably terrified the people; these were
excessive whirlwinds and _lightnings_; and _fiery dragons_ were seen
flying in the air. _A great famine soon followed these tokens._"
Mr. Baring-Gould says,--"In a Slovakian legend the dragon sleeps in a
mountain cave through the winter months, but at the equinox bursts
forth. 'In a moment the heaven was darkened and became black as pitch,
only illumined by the fire which flashed from the dragon's jaws and
eyes. The earth shuddered, the stones rattled down the mountain sides
into the glens; right and left, left and right, did the dragon lash his
tail, overthrowing pines and bushes, and snapping them as reeds. He
evacuated such floods of water that the mountain torrents were full. But
after a while his power was exhausted; he lashed no more with his tail,
ejected no more water, and spat no more fire.'" Mr. Gould adds,--"I
think it impossible not to see in this description a spring-tide
thunderstorm."
The following paragraph, published in the _Calcutta Englishman_ last
year (1871), demonstrates that this class of superstition still lingers
in India:--
"AN ASTRONOMICAL PREDICTION.--The _Urdu Akhbar_ says that Maulvi
Mohammed Salimuz-yaman, the famous astronomer of Rampur, whose
deductions have generally turned out right, has foretold that in the
coming year (1872) a blaze of light resembling a shooting star, the like
of which no mortal has yet seen, will be visible in the sky. 'It will
dazzle the eyes of the people of particular places with lustre, and,
after remaining for a _ghari_ (_i.e._, 24 minutes), will vanish. The
direction in which it will make its appearance will be the North Pole,
and accordingly the people of northern countries will see it distinctly.
Probably the natives of China and Persia will likewise have a sight of
it. The effect of this meteor will be that the extent of the globe over
which its light will fall will be visited by famine during the year, and
a large number of the people inhabiting it will be destroyed, while
vegetation will be also scanty.'"
Veritable comets appear to have at times been confounded with these
fiery dragons. On the death of Aurelius Ambrosius, brother to Uther,
father of the renowned Arthur, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth,
"there appeared a star of wonderful magnitude and brightness, darting
forth a ray, at the end of which was a globe of fire, in form of a
dragon, out of whose mouth issued two rays, one of which seemed to
stretch out itself beyond the extent of Gaul, the other towards the
Irish sea, and ended in seven lesser rays."
Geoffrey further informs us that, after Uther's first great victory,
"remembering the explanation which Merlin had made of the star above
mentioned, he commanded two dragons to be made of gold, in likeness of
the dragon which he had seen at the ray of the star. As soon as they
were finished, which was done with wonderful nicety of workmanship, he
made a present of one to the cathedral church of Winchester, but
reserved the other for himself to be carried along with him to his wars.
From this time, therefore, he was called Uther Pendragon, which, in the
British tongue, signifies the dragon's head; the occasion of this
appellation being Merlin's prediction, from the appearance of the
dragon, that he should be king." The same "historical" romancer likewise
informs us that the redoubtable Arthur himself, after he had embarked at
Southampton, on his expedition against Rome, about midnight, during a
brisk gale, in a dream, "saw a bear flying in the air, at the noise of
which all the shores trembled; also a terrible dragon flying from the
west, which enlightened the country with the brightness of its eyes.
When these two met they began a dreadful fight; but the dragon, with its
fiery breath, burned the bear which often assaulted him, and threw him
down scorched to the ground." This, of course, was interpreted to augur
Arthur's victory over the Emperor. Singularly enough, as has been before
observed, we find, in authentic history, that the "Golden Dragon" was
the standard of the _Saxon_ kings of Wessex. When Cuthred defeated
"Ethelbald the Proud," King of Mercia, at Beorgforda (Burford, in
Oxfordshire), in 752, "the golden dragon, the ensign of Wessex," was
borne by his general, Ethelhun, termed "the presumptuous alderman,"
owing to a previous unsuccessful act of rebellion.
Dragon superstitions appear to have been earnestly believed by mediæval
alchemists, and even early chemists and physicians. An old German work
on alchemy (1625) informs us, as "a great wonder and very strange," that
the dragon contains the greatest "medicament," and that "there is a
dragon lives in the forest who has no want of poison; when he sees the
sun or fire he spits venom, which flies about fearfully. No living
animal can be cured of it; even the basilisk does not equal him. He who
can properly kill this serpent has overcome all his danger. His colours
increase in death; physic is produced from his poison, which he
entirely consumes, and eats his own venomous tail. This must be
accomplished by him, in order to produce the noblest balm. Such great
virtue as we will point out herein that all the learned shall rejoice."
The poison spitted out on sight of the sun or fire is evidently
analogous to the breath of the Aryan dragon Ahi, who scorched the earth.
The conqueror of the said dragon takes the place of Indra, who, by
discharging his lightning spear into the rain cloud, subdues the
monster, and converts his poison (excessive heat), into a medicine or
balm, which aids in the fertilisation of the earth.
This is in accordance with the Greek legend, which asserted that
Æsculapius or Asklêpios, the god of medicine, "wrought his wonderful
cures through the blood of Gorgo." Hence the serpent became his symbol.
At Epidaurus the god was supposed to manifest himself in the form of a
yellowish brown snake, abundant in that neighbourhood. It frequented the
temple, was large in size, but harmless and easily tamed. The Rev. G. W.
Cox, says, "throughout Hellas, Asklêpios remained the healer and
restorer of life, and accordingly the serpent is everywhere his special
emblem, as the mythology of the Linga would lead us to expect." Again he
says, "the symbol of the Phallos in its physical characteristics
suggested the form of the serpent, which thus became the emblem of life
and healing, and as such appears by the side of the Hellenic Asklêpios,
and in the brazen crucified serpent venerated by the Jewish people until
it was destroyed by Hezekiah."
According to the Edda, the Scandinavians believed that after the various
gods had, for a considerable time, alternately overthrown each other,
the "fiery snake" would consume "universal nature with all-destroying
flames." The word "Edda" means "Mother of Poetry." The contents of the
Edda have been styled "half oriental and half northern."
Remains of ancient serpent worship have been recently discovered in
America and in Scotland. Some writers indeed regard the temples at Abury
and Stonehenge as belonging to this class. One in North America,
described by Mr. Squier, is a mound 700 feet long, fashioned in the form
of a serpent. At the recent meeting of the British Association in
Edinburgh, Mr. John S. Phené, F.G.S., described a mound of this
character, which he had discovered in Argyleshire. A large cairn forms
the head of the monster, which is 300 feet in length. The spinal column,
with its sinuous windings, is distinctly marked out by carefully
adjusted stones, now covered with peat. To detect the exact form of the
entire reptile, it is necessary that the whole should be seen at one
view from above. A megalithic chamber was found beneath the head of the
serpent, or saurian, which contained burnt earth and bones, charcoal,
and charred nutshells, and a flint implement with the edge serrated like
a saw. The mound is described as being in a remarkably perfect
condition, considering its great antiquity.
Some writers, and notably one, some years ago in "Chambers's Journal,"
discoursing on dragon superstitions, have suggested, as remains of the
traditionary Moa of New Zealand is still said to be found in some
portions of the islands, that our early ancestors may have had a slight
knowledge of the existence of some of the huge saurian reptiles, known
to us geologically in the fossil condition. This attempt to give a
naturalistic solution of the problem at first sight is very plausible;
but it falls to the ground at once, when the nature of geological time
is taken into consideration. The earliest remains of man, including the
flint implements in the higher river gravels, pertain to what Lyell
terms the post-pliocene period. The huge lizards or saurians of the
oolitic period had become extinct countless ages previously. The same
may be said, though in a relatively lesser degree, of the huge
Dinotherium found in the Upper Miocene formation. Some writers, indeed,
who advocate the hypothesis of man's descent by "natural selection" or
"evolution," from the lower animals, contend that some antitype of
humanity _may_ have lived in the Miocene period, but of this we have no
evidence. The extinct gigantic animals, found in connection with the
oldest known remains of man, are pachyderms, which in no way resemble,
either in their habits, or by the most strained metaphor, in their
forms, the dragons and serpents of the Aryan mythology or their modern
descendants in British history and tradition. The discovery of their
bones has undoubtedly had something to do with giants and other monsters
of the mythic class, of which more will be said in another chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Du Chaillu, in his "Journey to Ashango-land," relates a story in
which he suddenly struck a light with a lucifer match, to the
astonishment of the benighted Africans, who regarded the feat as an
additional proof of his being the "Oguisi" or "spirit" they had declared
him to be.
[12] The _Dundee Advertiser_, Nov. 1869, contained the following
paragraph:--
HALLOWE'EN AT BALMORAL CASTLE.--This time-honoured festival was duly
celebrated at Balmoral Castle on Saturday evening, in a manner not soon
to be forgotten by those who took part in the enjoyments of the evening.
As the shades of evening were closing in upon the Strath, numbers of
torch-lights were observed approaching the Castle, both from the
cottages on the eastern portion of the estate and also those on the
west. The torches from the western side were probably the more numerous,
and as the different groups gathered together the effect was very fine.
Both parties met in front of the Castle, the torch-bearers numbering
nearly one hundred. Along with those bearing the torches were a great
many people belonging to the neighbourhood. Dancing was commenced by the
torch-bearers dancing a "Huachan" in fine style, to the lilting strains
of Mr. Ross, the Queen's piper. The effect was greatly heightened by the
display of bright lights of various colours from the top of the
staircase of the Tower. After dancing for some time, the torch-bearers
proceeded round the Castle in martial order, and as they were proceeding
down the granite staircase at the northwest corner of the Castle, the
procession presented a singularly beautiful and romantic appearance.
Having made the circuit of the Castle, the remainder of the torches were
thrown in a pile at the south-west corner, thus forming a large bonfire,
which was speedily augmented with other combustibles until it formed a
burning mass of huge proportions, round which dancing was spiritedly
carried on. Her Majesty witnessed the proceedings with apparent interest
for some time, and the company enjoyed themselves none the less heartily
on that account. Mr. Begg, distiller, Lochnagar, had also a splendid
bonfire on Cairnbeg, round which merry groups danced torch in hand.
[13] I have not met with a thoroughly satisfactory etymology of the word
bonfire. It may mean good fire, that is sacred fire, or bone-fire, as
the old writer suggests; but I am inclined to think _boon_ fire is worth
consideration, as the ceremonies and sacrifices were performed in order
to extract a boon, a gift, or favour from the god Bel. Free service
rendered by a tenant to his lord, as part of his tenure, was called boon
work. Dr. Hibbert Ware records an old saying in the north of England to
the effect that when a man has been working for nothing he has "been
served like a boon-shearer."
[14] Since the above was written the following paragraph has appeared in
the newspapers:--
_An Apology for Fire Worship._--Tuesday, the 21st March, 1866, being the
entrance of Sol into the zodiacal sign of the Ram, there was held at the
Persian Embassy, Avenue d'Autin, Paris, the festival of Nourous
Sultaniez, or New Year's Day of the Shah. His Excellency Hassan Ali Khan
presided over a large assemblage of distinguished guests, and informed
them in the course of the festivity that they were celebrating a
red-letter day as old as nineteen centuries before the birth of Christ,
first instituted by Djemchid, of the dynasty of Pischdadiens, who
originated the solar computation of years. His excellency proceeded to
recall the fire-worship of his country, which sprang from the primæval
idolatry having for object that great luminary. It was still to fire
that he fondly looked for the regeneration of Persia. Fire had changed
the face of Europe. With the steam engine, the railroad, the electric
spark, the screw or paddle ship, far more than in gunpowder or rifled
cannon, fire was the great benefactor that would bless one day the land
of his forefathers, who had instinctively worshipped that element in
secret anticipation of what was to come. The remarks of his excellency
were cordially received.
[15] Sir Bernard Burke says the legend asserts that the knight consulted
a witch as to the best method of attacking the monster serpent or
dragon, as this worm is sometimes styled. The witch duly instructed him,
and he was victorious in the combat which followed. A condition,
however, was attached, namely that the knight should follow up the
achievement by slaying as a kind of sacrifice the first living thing he
met. If he failed in this, "for nine generations the lords of Lambton
would never die in their beds." It was intended that a dog should be
placed so as to immediately attract the eye of the conqueror, but
unfortunately the plot was accidentally marred, and the knight's father
first confronted him. Lambton refused to fulfil the condition, under
such circumstances. It is stated to be a fact that afterwards nine
successive lords of Lambton died otherwise than in their beds.
[16] Mr. Haigh fixes Heorot, the site of the mead-hall, or banqueting
home of Hrothgar, chief or king of the Scyldings, at Hartlepool. King
Oswy, brother and successor of St. Oswald, consecrated his daughter
Elfleda to the service of God as a nun, as an act of thanksgiving for
his victory over the pagan Mercian King Penda, at Winwidfield, near
Leeds (some say near Winwick, Lancashire.) Elfleda was placed in the
monastery called Herut-ed (Hartlepool), which is believed to be the
Heorot of the oldest Anglo-Saxon poem extant.
[17] Professor Owen (Palæontology, page 312) gives "slow-worms,
serpents," as the English equivalent of _Ophidia_, the name of his
eleventh order of the class _Reptilia_. Hence the confusion of
traditionary worms, serpents, and dragons is not quite so absurd as
modern non-scientific persons generally imagine. The Rev. G. W. Cox,
referring to the Greek aspect of these mythic monsters, says:--"When the
word Dragon, which is only another form of Dorkas, the clear-eyed
gazelle, became the name for serpents, these mythical beings were
necessarily transformed into snakes."
CHAPTER III.
CHRISTMAS AND YULE-TIDE SUPERSTITIONS AND OBSERVANCES.
Here's merry Christmas come again,
With all it ever used to bring;
The mistletoe and carol strain,
The holly in the window pane,
And all the bloom from hill and plain
That Winter's chilly hand can fling.
. . . . .
It comes with roar of city bells;
It comes with many a village chime;
And many a village grand-dame tells
Of places where the white ghost dwells,
Of demon forms and robbers' cells,
And all the tales for Christmas time.
_Eliza Cook._
If there by any possibility existed a doubt that the religion of the
Messiah was one of _love_ and not of _gloom_, the sunny side of the
argument would be amply vindicated by the fact that, from the earliest
Christian times, the anniversary of the advent of the Saviour was always
celebrated with becoming social enjoyment. "Merrie Christmas," indeed,
in spite of hail and rain, and sleet, and snow, the blustering of old
Boreas, and the frigid embrace of "Jack Frost," has passed into a
proverb. The mass of the British people, notwithstanding their
characteristic constitutional phlegm, contrive to become conspicuously
social at Christmas tide. They appear to have been too closely occupied
with business affairs during the greater portion of the year to indulge
much in the hearty humour and frank good-will which unquestionably form
important elements in the national idiosyncrasy. Their habitual
taciturnity, however, influenced by some law whose action is
diametrically opposed to that which determines the elemental routine,
generally _thaws_ on the approach of Christmas. It is not too much to
say that, at this period of the year, the manly generous side of the
English character is seen to most advantage. Under the genial influence
of Christmas associations, even stern, plodding "men of business" leave
their well-worn official stools and well-thumbed ledgers, and enjoy
heartily the Christmas meal of roast beef and plum pudding in company
with their relatives and friends. Nay, at this festive season, we have
seen the veriest old "money-grubbers" of the city, the most cool and
calculating of the _habitués_ of the stock-exchange, dance and frolic,
and aid the juveniles of their social circles in the perpetration of
practical Christmas jokes, the compounding of "snap-dragon," the
fashioning of mistletoe bushes, etc., to the infinite delight of the
youngsters and their own evident personal gratification. There is,
undoubtedly, a time and a season for all things; and the British public
especially appear for ages to have resolved that "Christmas time" is the
season for the exercise of grateful memories, for the interchange of
social loudness, the propagation of the great principle of progressive
civilisation, "peace and good-will to man,"--yes, and likewise, for the
temperate indulgence in harmless mirth, and hearty, jovial laughter.
Christmas is the season in which pantomimes flourish. By the bye, who
ever heard of a pantomime that was not a "Christmas" one? I am certain I
would not myself,--and I feel certain the most boisterous of the young
imps who giggle themselves into a frightful condition of side-ache and
cheek-ache when witnessing the tricks and jokes, stale or otherwise, of
clown and pantaloon, and the perpetually unfortunate policeman, would
endorse the sentiment,--I would not walk two streets' length, no, not
two yards, to witness the best pantomime in the world on Midsummer's
eve! One would as soon think of asking the cook, as a special mark of
her personal regard, to give us a turn or two on the spit, accompanied
by a copious basting with rancid butter! But it is quite a different
affair on Christmas Eve, or "boxing night." The pantomime is, in every
sense, unquestionably the property of "dear old Christmas," and then,
and then only, can its rollicking fun, farce, fancy, and fairy marvels
be thoroughly understood or enjoyed.
Pantomime, among the Greeks and Romans, as well as the Chinese,
Persians, and other Oriental peoples, was a dramatic performance, in
which action and gesticulation formed the most prominent features. The
modern _ballet_ is, perhaps, its most legitimate descendant at the
present day. The name, however, is derived from two Greek words, which
signify mimicry or "imitation of everything." The modern pantomime,
therefore, with its universal hash of fun and frolic, of fairies and
fiends, deities and dragons, of ghosts, goblins, and giants, of
burlesque and ballet, painting and punning, of music and mountebanking,
responds most accurately to the classical etymon.
Although the profuse but somewhat indiscriminate hospitality, and some
of the ruder of the Christmas games and ceremonies of our mediæval
ancestors, have declined or fallen into general disuse, the anniversary
of the advent of the founder of the national religion yet remains the
chief season set apart especially for genial social intercourse, the
gathering together of relatives and friends, the interchange of mutual
good-will, and of festive enjoyment.
After discussing the various opinions, facts, and conjectures advanced
by others respecting the origin of "yule logs" and Christmas fires,
Brand says: "However this may be, I am pretty confident that the yule
block will be found, in its first use, to have been only a counterpart
of the Midsummer fires, made within doors because of the cold weather at
this winter solstice, as those in the hot season at the summer one, are
kindled in the open air."
Precisely so; yet, as the Midsummer fires were not kindled for the sake
of the warmth they afforded, but as a kind of incantation or a
propitiatory sacrifice to the fire-god or the elements generally, if the
two had a common origin, we may reasonably expect to find a similar
principle or motive at the root of the Christmas observances. At the
summer solstice the sun's heat parched the earth and burnt the
vegetation. Hence the propitiatory ceremony of the fire worshippers. At
the winter solstice his feeble rays were insufficient to the
requirements of vegetable existence, and the severe cold added to the
privations of both and man and beast. Hence the existence of a
corresponding sentiment and corresponding ceremonial observances.
Brand further says: "On the night of this eve our ancestors were wont to
light up candles of _an uncommon size_, called Christmas candles, and
lay a log of wood upon the fire, called a yule-clog or Christmas block,
to illuminate the house, and, as it were, turn night into day. This
custom is, in some measure, still kept up in the north of England."
The early Christians were, and the learned of more modern times are,
divided in opinion as to the precise day of the Nativity. The feast of
the Passover and that of the Tabernacles have each found powerful
advocates. According to St. Chrysostom, the primitive Christians
celebrated the Christmas and Epiphany feasts at one and the same time.
They were not separated till the council of Nice, in the year 325.
Amongst the Armenians, notwithstanding, the two feasts were jointly
celebrated till as recently as the thirteenth century. It has been urged
by some that, as shepherds were watching their flocks by night in the
open air, the birth of Christ could scarcely have occurred in the
winter season. But so long as one time was accepted by the universal
Church, it appeared to be of little moment which theory was adopted. Sir
Isaac Newton, in his "Commentary on the Prophecies of Daniel," accounts
for the choice of the 25th December on the ground of its being the
winter solstice. He shows, likewise, that other feasts were originally
fixed at the cardinal points of the year. "The first calendars having
been so arranged by mathematicians at pleasure, without any ground in
tradition, the Christians afterwards took up what they found in the
calendars."
There can be little doubt that this view of the question is correct, and
that many of the curious customs and ceremonies, which were for
centuries religiously observed throughout the land, and many of which
still linger about the holiday celebrations of remote districts, have an
origin older than Christianity itself. The most orthodox and exemplary
writers of the middle ages acknowledge this, and contend that the
practice of the early Christians of appropriating the festive seasons of
their heathen converts was productive of good results.
The testimony of Thomas Warmstry, whose now rare tract, entitled "A
Vindication of the Solemnity of the Nativity of Christ," was published
in 1648, is strongly in favour of this view. He says: "If it doth
appeare that the time of this festival doth comply with the time of the
heathen's _Saturnalia_, this leaves no charge of impiety upon it: for
since things are best cured by their contraries, it was both wisdom and
piety in the ancient Christians (whose work it was to convert the
heathens from such as well as other superstitions and miscarriages) to
vindicate such times from the service of the devill, by appointing them
to the more solemne and especiall service of God. The _blazes_ are
foolish and vain, not countenanced by the church."
The "blazes" here referred to are evidently the yule logs and immense
candles, which the worthy pastor denounces with orthodox precision.
"Blazes" and "Pandemonium" are yet synonymous terms, in vulgar mouths,
in many parts of Lancashire. Some of the ceremonies of this period,
however, meet with his somewhat qualified approval. He says: "_Christmas
Kariles_, if they be such as are fit for the time, and of holy and sober
composures, and used with Christian sobriety and piety, they are not
unlawfull, and may be profitable if they be sung with grace in the
heart. _New Yeare's gifts_, if performed without superstition, may be
harmless provocations to Christian love and mutuall testimonies thereof
to good purpose, and never the worse because the heathens have had them
at the like times."
One important attribute of the Yule log resulted from the fact that each
succeeding brand received its kindling fire from the remains of its
predecessor; hence its supposed supernatural influences. Herrick
sings:--
_With the last year's brand
Light the new block_, and
For good success in his spending,
On your psaltries play,
That sweet luck may
Come while the log is a _teending_.
Etymologists have laboured hard to get at the root of the word Yule;
some of them, however, with but indifferent success. Brand says:--"I
have met with no word of which there are so many and such different
etymologies as this of Yule, of which there seems nothing certain but
that it means Christmas." Some writers, including the venerable Bede,
derive it from _hveol_, the Anglo-Saxon form of our modern English word
wheel, which, as I have already shown, is one of the Aryan types of the
sun. Bede, I think, assigns the true meaning to the term when he says it
is so named "because of the return of the sun's annual course, after the
winter solstice." According to Mr. Davies (Cel. Res. p. 191), the god
Bel or Beli was called Hu. Mallet in his "Northern Antiquities,"
says:--"All Celtic nations have been accustomed to the worship of the
sun; either as distinguished from Thor," (? Bel) "or as considered his
symbol. It was a custom that everywhere prevailed in ancient times to
celebrate a feast at the winter solstice, by which men testified their
joy at seeing this great luminary return again to this part of the
heavens. This was the greatest solemnity in the year. They called it in
many places _Yole_ or _Yuul_, from the word _Hiaul_ and _Houl_, which,
even at this day, signifies the SUN in the languages of Bass-Britagne
and Cornwall."
Brand objects to this etymology, on the ground that it "is giving a
Celtic derivation of a Gothic word (two languages extremely different.)"
This objection, however, falls to the ground with the discovery of the
fact that both languages have a common origin, and that the several
races and their superstitions are but separate developments of Aryan
blood and Aryan mythology. In modern Welsh _gwyl_ means a festival or
holiday, and this may be the true root of the word _gule_, in the phrase
"the _gule_ of August," or Lammas-day. But the Welsh _gwyl_ may itself
be derived from the same root as _yule_, which, to our ears, now only
signifies, as Brand says, "Christmas," or the festive season. _Heulo_,
in modern Welsh, means to "shine as the sun." In India the term _Huli_
festival is applied to the ceremonies attendant upon the sun's entering
into the spring quarter at the vernal equinox.
In ordinary life we meet with very few persons who are aware of the fact
that the practice of regarding the first of January as the commencement
of a new year is of very modern origin, in England, at least. Prior to
1752, in most legal or official matters, and in private records, the
year commenced on the 25th of March. At this time an Act of Parliament
was passed which "directed that the legal year which then commenced in
some parts of this country in March, and in others in January, should
universally be deemed to begin on the first of January." This will
appear to many as a strange species of legislation, savouring somewhat
of the vanity and irreverence for which Canute, the great Danish King of
England, rebuked his courtiers, when he ironically commanded the tide to
cease flowing, lest, forsooth, it should damp his royal shoe-leather.
The commencement of the year, as has been before observed, being not a
fact in physics, but a conventional or civil arrangement for human
convenience, is therefore a legitimate subject for legislative
interference, with the view to arrive at a uniformity of style, and so
facilitate business operations and the enquiries of historians and
students of science.
The practice of celebrating the new year's advent on the first of
January appears to have obtained to a considerable extent in England
long prior to its legal recognition. The famous Puritan writer, Prynne,
in his "Histrio-Mastrix, or a Scourge for Stage Players," published in
1632, has the following slashing tirade against the festive observances
of this period:--
"If we now parallel our grand disorderly Christmases with these Roman
Saturnals and heathen festivals, or our New Yeare's Day (a chiefe part
of Christmas), with their festivity of Janus, which was spent in
mummeries, stageplays, dancing, and such like enterludes, wherein
fidlers and others acted lascivious effeminate parts, and went about
their towns and cities in women's apparel; whence the whole Catholicke
Church (as Alchuvinus and others write), appointed a solemn publike
faste upon this our New Yeare's day (which fast it seems is now
forgotten), to bewail these heathenish enterludes, sports, and lewd
idolatrous practices which have been used on it; _prohibiting all
Christians, under pain of excommunication, from observing the calends,
or first of January (which we now call New Yeare's Day), as holy, and
from sending abroad New Yeare's Gifts upon it (a custom now too
frequent), it being a mere relique of paganisme and idolatry, derived
from the heathen Romans' feast of two-faced Janus_, and a practice so
execrable unto Christians that not only the whole Catholicke Church, but
even four famous Councils" [and an enormous quantity of other
authorities which it is useless to quote] "have positively _prohibited
the solemnization of New Yeare's Day, and the sending abroad of New
Yeare's Gifts, under an anathema and excommunication_."
Although there can be no doubt that the practices referred to were in
existence prior to the introduction of Christianity, yet the threat of
excommunication and anathema failed to root them out of the heart of the
mass of the population, and they survive to the present day. Some of the
gifts made to sovereign princes on the advent of the new year were not
only valuable, but often quaint in device, and sometimes, according to
modern ideas, in singularly bad taste. The accomplished scholar,
soldier, and courtier, Sir Philip Sidney, on the New Year's Day of 1578,
presented to Queen Elizabeth a "cambric chemise, its sleeves and collar
wrought with black work and edged with a small bone lace of gold and
silver. With it was a pair of ruffs interlaced with gold and silver, and
set with spangles which alone weighed four ounces." His friend Fulke
Greville likewise presented an embroidered chemise. On another occasion
of a similar character, (1581), "Sidney made three characteristic
presents--a gold-handled whip, a golden chain, a heart of gold, as
though in token of his entire subservience to her Majesty, and his
complete surrender of himself to the royal keeping." On one occasion,
the Earl of Ormond presented to the Queen "a golden phœnix, whose
wings and feet glittered with rubies and diamonds, and which rested on a
branch covered with other precious stones. Sir Christopher Hatton
tendered a cross of diamonds, furnished with a suitable motto; also a
gold fancy, imaging a dog leading a man over a bridge, and garnished
with many gems." Lord and Lady Cobham each presented a satin petticoat
elaborately ornamented. Her Majesty, on New Year's Day, it appears, did
not disdain to receive presents from her servants and tradesmen.
Nichols, in his "Royal Progresses," records that a laundress solicited
the Queen's acceptance of three pocket handkerchiefs and a "tooth
cloth." One domestic sought favour with a linen and another with a
cambric nightcap. Apothecaries presented packets of green ginger, orange
candy, and "that kind of stuff." A butler's offering consisted of a meat
knife, "with a bone handle and a motto carved thereon," while the
dustman tendered "two bolts of cambric," the head gardener a silver-gilt
porringer, with a "snail sticking to an oak-leaf for handle," and the
"sergeant of the pastry" a "great quince pie with gilt ornaments." The
Queen, in return, presented her courtiers, etc., with "gilt plate,
showing her esteem by the quantity of the article" apportioned to each
recipient. In his preface Nichols remarks that "the only remains of this
custom at court now is that the two chaplains in waiting, on New Year's
Day, have each a crown piece laid under their plates at dinner."
Old Thomas Warmstry, as we have seen, held much milder language on this
subject than Prynne. He regarded the gifts as "harmless provocations to
Christian love, and mutual testimonies thereof to good purpose,"
notwithstanding their heathen origin. The practice is by no means
extinct at the present time. In many towns shopkeepers present their
customers, on New Year's Day, with candles, nutmegs, spices, etc., in
token of good will.
Brand speaks of an ancient custom, which is yet retained in many places
on New Year's Eve: "Young women went about with a Wassail Bowl of spiced
ale, with some sort of verses that were sung by them as they went from
door to door." This liquor was sometimes called "Lamb's Wool," although
it is difficult to conjecture now for what reason. In the "olden time"
it appears to have been compounded of ale, sugar, nutmeg, toast, and
roasted apples or crabs. The wassail bowl originally meant a
health-drinking vessel, and is of very ancient origin. The name is
derived from two Anglo-Saxon words _wæs hæl_, which signify "be in
health," "wax (grow) in health," or in modern phrase, "good health."
Geoffrey of Monmouth refers to the Saxon practice of health drinking on
important occasions, when describing the visit of the British King
Vortigern to the palace of Hengist, the chieftain of the Teutonic
warriors then recently arrived in Britain. During the banquet, Rowena,
the beautiful daughter of Hengist, "came out of her chamber bearing a
golden cup of wine, with which she approached the King, and making a low
courtsey, said to him, 'Lanerd' (lord) 'King, wacht heil!' The King, at
the sight of the lady's face, was on a sudden both surprised and
inflamed with her beauty, and, calling to his interpreter, asked him
what she said, and what answer he should make her. 'She called you _Lord
King_,' said the interpreter, 'and offered to drink your health. Your
answer to her must be, '_Drinc heil_!' Vortigern accordingly answered
'Drinc heil!' and bade her drink; after which he took the cup from her
hand, kissed her, and drank himself. From that time to this it has been
the custom in Britain, that he who drinks to anyone says 'Wacht heil!'
and he that pledges him answers '_Drinc heil_?'"
In process of time, the practice of drinking healths on solemn or
festive occasions was confounded with ordinary tippling, and the term
wassail became applied indiscriminately to all festive intemperance.
Hamlet says, speaking of the drinking habits of the usurper, Claudius--
The King doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassel and the swaggering up-spring reels;
And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,
The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out
The triumph of his pledge.
The Antiquarian Repertory (1775) contains a rude wood-cut of a bowl
carved on an oaken beam, which had formed a portion of an ancient
chimney recess. The vessel rests on the branches of an apple tree,
alluding perhaps, Sir Henry Ellis suggests, to "part of the materials of
which the liquor was composed." On one side the word _Wass-heil_ is
inscribed, and on the other _Drinc-heile_. A commentator on this relic
informs us that it represents a Wassel Bowl, so beloved of yore by our
hardy ancestors, "who, on the vigil of the New Year, never failed to
assemble round the glowing hearth with their cheerful neighbours, and
then, in the spicy Wassel Bowl (which testified the goodness of their
hearts) drowned every former animosity--an example worthy of modern
imitation. _Wassel_ was the word, Wassel every guest returned, as he
took the circling goblet from his friend, whilst song and civil mirth
brought in the infant year."
A work entitled "Naogeorgus," but generally styled the "Popish Kingdom,"
published in 1570, and translated by Barnabe Googe, thus refers to the
New Year's Day ceremonies of the time:--
The next to this is New Yeare's Day, whereon to every frende
They costly presents in do bring, and Newe Yeare's giftes do sende;
These giftes the husband gives his wife, and father eke the child,
And maister on his men bestowes the like with favour milde;
And good beginning of the yeare they wishe and wishe againe,
According to the auncient guise of heathen people vaine.
These eight days no man doth require his dettes of any man,
Their tables do they furnish out with all the meate they can;
With march paynes, tartes, and custards great, they drink with
staring eyes,
They rowte and revell, feede and feaste, as merry all as pyes;
As if they should at th' entrance of this New Yeare hap to die,
Yet would they have their bellies full, and auncient friends allie.
I remember, very recently, at the conclusion of a public jubilee dinner,
within a very few miles from Manchester, one of the guests suddenly died
of apoplexy. This sad event, of course, caused the adjournment of the
festive gathering. The reason I refer to it here is merely to state
that I heard, to my surprise, one of the country visitors say, in a very
consolatory tone, "Well, poor Joe, God rest his soul! He has, at least,
gone to his long rest wi' a bally full o' good me-at, and that's some
consolation." This seems to illustrate the meaning of the last couplet
in the quotation from "Naogeorgus," the sentiment in which appears to
have some affinity to the Greek and Roman notions of providing the dead
with food and money to aid their passage across the Styx.
The Rev. S. Baring-Gould, in his "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages,"
says "it is a singular fact that only the other day I heard of a man in
Cleveland (Yorkshire) being buried two years ago with a candle, a penny,
and a bottle of wine in his coffin: the candle to light him along the
road, the penny to pay the ferry, and the wine to nourish him as he went
to the New Jerusalem. I was told this, and this explanation was given to
me by some rustics who professed to have attended the funeral. This
looks to me as though the shipping into the other land were not regarded
merely as a figure of speech, but as a reality."
One writer says the "high feast of Yule lasted until the twelve days be
passed," and consequently included our new year and twelfth night
festivities. During this period a strong superstition yet obtains in
Lancashire and Yorkshire respecting fire. A singular instance of this
recently occurred to a friend of mine within three miles of Manchester.
Seeing a cottage door open, he entered, and asked the good woman of the
house to give him a light for his cigar. He was somewhat astonished at
her inhospitable response: "Nay, nay, I know better than that." "Better
than what?" he inquired. "Why, better than give a light out of the house
on New Year's Day!" He contrived, notwithstanding, to ignite his cigar
without the woman's assistance, and she seemed content. She had
forgotten the best half of the condition, however, and committed the
very blunder she sought to avoid. According to Sir Henry Ellis, in the
North of England the superstition ordains that you "never allow any to
take a light out of your house on New Year's Day; a death in the
household, before the expiration of a year, is sure to occur if it be
allowed."
Sir Henry Ellis likewise mentions a curious superstition still existing
in Lincolnshire. It is considered unlucky to let anything be taken out
of the house on New Year's Day, before something has been brought into
it. The importation of the most insignificant article, even a piece of
coal, is, it appears, sufficient to prevent the misfortunes occurring,
which the contrary action, it is believed, would render inevitable
during some portion of the year. This sentiment is expressed in the
following popular rhyme:--
Take out, then take in,
Bad luck will begin;
Take in, then take out,
Good luck comes about.
A remarkable instance of the strength of the superstitious reverence for
this day, or rather of the popular belief in the prophetic character of
any incident occurring thereon, recently happened in Manchester. A
publican, name Tilley, refused to serve a glass of whisky _on credit_
during the New Year's Day's festivities, on the score that it was
"unlucky" so to do. He said he preferred making the man a present of the
liquor to the committal of any such act. The refusal so exasperated the
thirsty customer that he stabbed the landlord in the abdomen, and, as
the wound proved fatal, he was condemned to death for wilful murder, but
the sentence was afterwards commuted to penal servitude for life. Thus
the faith in the tradition produced a more tragic result than the most
superstitious could have dreaded from its ignoration. Singularly enough,
owing to the first day of the year happening on Sunday, the usual
festival was postponed till the following day; so it appears in this
instance the superstition accompanied the merry-making without reference
to the date.
This practice of "bringing in the New Year" with festive rejoicing is
still a very common one, especially in the north of England. A singular
superstition in connection with it is evidently of very ancient origin.
It is considered to be an unlucky omen if the first person who enters a
house on the morning of the first of January happens to be a female.
Another unlucky omen is yet very commonly respected in Lancashire and
elsewhere, even amongst comparatively educated people, at this festive
season. It is considered to bode misfortune if the first person who
enters your house on New Year's morning has a fair complexion and light
hair. I have never heard this very popular prejudice satisfactorily
accounted for. I can only suggest that it most probably arose from the
fact that amongst the Keltic tribes, or the earliest Aryan immigrants,
dark hair prevailed, as amongst the Welsh, Cornish, and Irish of the
present day; and that when they afterwards came in contact with the
Teutonic branch, as enemies, they found their mortal foes to possess
fair skins and light hair. They consequently regarded the intrusion into
their household, at the commencement of the year, of one of the hated
race, as a sinister omen. The beards and hair of the ancient Aryan gods
were golden or red, or fire-coloured. The Teutonic Thor, in this
respect, was the counterpart of Indra and Agni. Red hair, no doubt,
would have its admirers, where these gods were worshipped; and, of
course, it would fall into contempt when the reverse was the case. The
German early Christians, it appears, not only condemned Thor to the
lower regions, but carried their dislike to the very colour of his hair.
Hence the proverb, "Rother-bart, Teufelsart," or "Red-beard,
devil-steered." They went so far, indeed, as to assert, without any
other authority than the speciality of his personal character, that the
beard of the arch-traitor, Judas Iscariot, was of this obnoxious colour.
Dryden refers to it in the triplet which he despatched to Jacob Tonson,
as a specimen of his power as a satirist, and which caused the
celebrated publisher to deal more liberally than previously with the
poor and angry poet. Dryden's lines are:
With leering look, bull-faced, and freckled fair,
With two left legs, with _Judas_-coloured hair,
And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air.
Kelly says the prejudice is of German and not of Eastern origin. Hence
it is not improbable that the dethronement of the red-haired gods may
have been at the root of the German antipathy. But the true Kelt does
not simply abhor, on New Year's Day, the red hair of the Dane, but the
brown or flaxen, or amber locks of the German as well. Indeed, black or
dark hair and complexion are the chief objects of his concern in the
individual who first enters his domicile on the dawn of the New
Year.[18] Many householders feast their friends on New Year's Eve, and
send out shortly before midnight one of the party, with dark hair,
expressly "to bring in the New Year," as it is termed. I remember, some
time ago, the landlady of one of the Preston hotels, being unmarried,
was in the habit of rewarding the fortunate dark-haired gentleman with a
kiss for his propitious entrance into her hostelry on the morning of
this festivity. Of course, the fair one had nothing but frowns and harsh
words if a light-haired interloper happened to first cross her
threshold.
Mr. T. T. Wilkinson, in his "Popular Customs and Superstitions in
Lancashire," referring to the practice of divination at this season of
the year, says:--"When a Lancashire damsel desires to know what sort of
a husband she will have, on New Year's Eve she pours some melted lead
into a glass of water and observes what forms the drops assume. When
they resemble scissors, she concludes that she must rest satisfied with
a tailor; if they appear in the form of a hammer, he will be a smith or
a carpenter; and so of the others. I have met with many instances of
this class in which the example given did not admit of easy
contradiction."
The prophetic character of the weather during this period is a
superstition common to all the Aryan tribes. So strongly is this
characteristic of the season felt in Lancashire, at the present day,
that many country people may be met with who habitually found their
"forecast," as the late Admiral Fitzroy would term the operation, on the
appearance of the heavens on Old Christmas Day. Mr. T. T. Wilkinson
relates a singular instance of this superstition, which shows the
stubbornness of traditional lore, even when subjected to the power and
influence of legislative enactments. He says:--"The _use_ of the _old
style_ in effect is not yet extinct in Lancashire. The writer knows an
old man, R. H., of Habergham, about 77 years of age, who always reckons
the changes of the seasons in this manner. He alleges the practice of
his grandfather and father in support of his method, and states with
much confidence that 'Perliment didn't change t' seasons wen they
chang'd day o' t' month.'"
The New Year's advent is still believed to be a period especially
favourable for divination of various kinds. A work named the "Shepherd's
Kalender," published in 1709, soberly informs us that "if New Year's Day
in the morning open with dusky red clouds, it denotes strifes and
debates among great ones, and many robberies to happen that year."
The "weatherwise" placed much reliance on the prophetic aspect of the
heavens at this period. A clergyman at Kirkmichæl, quoted by Sir John
Sinclair, says, with reference to the practices of some of his
parishioners,--"On the first night of January they observe with anxious
attention the disposition of the atmosphere. As it is calm or
boisterous; as the wind blows from the north or the south, from the east
or the west, they prognosticate the nature of the weather till the
conclusion of the year. The first night of the new year when the wind
blows from the west they call _dar-na-coille_, the night of the
fecundation of the trees; and from the circumstance has been derived the
name in the Gaelic language. Their faith in the above signs is couched
in verses thus translated:--'The wind of the south will produce heat and
fertility; the wind of the west milk and fish; the wind of the north
cold and storm; the wind from the east fruit on the trees.'"
A curious custom of this class is mentioned by Sir Henry Ellis, termed
"Apple-howling," as being well known in Sussex, Devon, and elsewhere.
Troops of boys gather round the orchards on New Year's Eve, and chant
the following ditty:--
Stand fast root, bear well top,
Pray God send us a howling crop;
Every twig, apples big;
Every bough, apples enow;
Hats full, caps full,
Full quarter sacks full.
The practice of divining or "fore-casting" the character of the weather,
and influencing the vegetation of the coming year, by ceremonies and
observations of atmospheric effects, at its commencement, or on New
Year's Day, appears to be prefigured in the ancient Aryan mythology. On
this subject Walter Kelly says:--"In the gloomy season of the winter
solstice the Ribhus" (demi-gods, who aid in the ruling of the lightning
and storms) "sleep for twelve days in the house of the sun-god Savitar;
then they wake up and prepare the earth to clothe itself anew with
vegetation, and the frozen waters to flow again. It appears certain,
from some passages in the Vedas, that twelve nights about the winter
solstice were regarded as prefiguring the character of the weather for
the whole year. A Sanscrit text is noticed by Weber, which says
expressly, 'The twelve nights are an image of the year.' The very same
belief exists at this day in Northern Germany. The peasants say that the
calendar for the whole year is made in the twelve days between Christmas
and Epiphany, and that as the weather is on each of these days so will
it be on the corresponding month of the ensuing year. They believe also
that whatever one dreams on any of the twelve nights will come to pass
within the next year."
Before the introduction of the New Style, previously referred to, this
weather fore-casting was indulged in at the end of March. Brand gives an
old rhyme which demonstrates the truth of this:
March said to Aperill,
I see three hogs upon a hill;
But lend your first three days to me,
And I'll be bound to gar them dee.
The first it sall be wind an' weet,
The next it sall be snaw an' sleet,
The third it sall be sic a freeze,
Sall gar the birds stick to the trees.
But when the borrowed days were gane,
The three silly hogs came hirplin hame.
Mr. Henderson, in his recent work on the "Folk-Lore of the Northern
Counties," says, "Old people presage the weather of the coming season by
that of the last three days of March, which they call the 'borrowing
days,' and thus rhyme about:
"March borrowed from April
Three days, and they were ill;
The first o' them war wind an' weet,
The next o' them war snaw an' sleet,
The last o' them war wind an' rain,
Which gaed the silly pair ewes come toddling hame."
The mistletoe and the oak were both of sacred, or "lightning" origin
amongst the Aryans, and the medicinal, mythical, or magical character
yet attributed to the former both by the Teutons and Kelts, had,
doubtless, one common origin. Walter Kelly says the mistletoe
"possesses, in a high degree, all the virtues proper to botanic
lightning, as is implied in its Swiss name, _donnerbesen_,
'thunderbesom,' and its mode of growth is conformable in all particulars
to its exalted mythical character. It is a parasite, and like the
asvattha and the rowan, it is everywhere believed to spring from seed
deposited by birds on trees. When it was found on the oak, the Druids
ascribed its growth directly to the gods; they _chose_ the tree; and the
bird was their messenger, perhaps a god in disguise." The mistletoe was
supposed to protect the homestead from fire and other disaster; and,
like many other mysterious things, it was believed to be potent in
matters relating to courtship and matrimony. It is to this sentiment we
owe the practice of kissing under the bush formed of holly and mistletoe
during the Christmas festivities.
This matrimonial element in the mysticism which attaches to the
mistletoe is artistically presented in the Scandinavian mythology.
Freyja, the mother of Baldr, had rendered him invulnerable against all
things formed out of the then presumed four elements, fire, air, earth,
and water. The mistletoe was believed to grow from none of these
elements. Another version is that she swore all created things never to
hurt this the "whitest" and most loved of all the Æsir; but she
overlooked one insignificant branch of the mistletoe, and it was by an
arrow fashioned from it that the bright day-god, Baldr, the Scandinavian
counterpart of Apollo and Bel, was killed by the blind Hodr or Helder.
The gods, however, restored him to life, and dedicated the mistletoe to
his mother, who is regarded as the counterpart of the classical Venus.
Hence its importance in affairs of love and courtship. It is not
improbable that the far-famed dart of Cupid may have some relationship
to the mistletoe arrow to which the beautiful Baldr succumbed. In a
Vedic incantation, translated by Dr. Kuhn, this death-dealing power of
the mistletoe is ascribed to a branch of the _asvattha_.
The medicinal qualities of the mistletoe were also in high repute. "This
healing virtue, which the mistletoe shares with the ash," says Kelly,
"is a long-descended tradition, for '_the kustha the embodiment of the
soma_,' a healing plant of the highest renown among the Southern Aryans,
was one of those that grew beneath the heavenly asvattha." This heavenly
asvattha is the _ficus religiosa_, or "world tree," "out of which the
immortals shaped the heavens and the earth;" and it is supposed to be
the prototype of the yggdrasil, the cloud-tree of the Norsemen, "an ash
(Norse _askr_), the tree out of which the gods formed the first man, who
was thence called Askr. The ash was also among the Greeks, an image of
the clouds, and the mother of men." The Christmas tree of the Germans,
recently imported into this country, no doubt originated in these
ancient mythical superstitions.
The wide-spread traditionary belief in this world-overspreading tree is
confirmed by a passage in Merlin's celebrated prophecy. The magician
says, "After this shall be produced a tree upon the Tower of London,
which, having no more than three branches, shall overshadow the surface
of the whole island." Of course Merlin is speaking figuratively of the
future prospects of Britain, and refers to the domination of London as
the metropolitan city of the British empire. Nevertheless, the origin of
the mythical language used for this purpose appears to admit of no
doubt.
The famous bean-stalk up which the renowned "Jack," of nursery story,
climbed till he reached cloud-land, the abode of fairies and giants, is,
unquestionably, a remnant of the Scandinavian yggdrasil, or cloud-tree.
Beans and peas, as will be hereafter shown, in the Aryan myths, were
connected with celestial fire, and with departed spirits. This Gothic
skiey realm has likewise its counterpart in the Greek Phæakian domain,
or "cloudland geography," as Mr. Cox aptly expresses it.
A certain reverence for both the oak and the ash exists yet in the minds
of others better educated than the peasantry of England. The phrase,
"Our hearts of oak," may shortly be superseded by "Our iron-clads," but
the figure of speech, as applied to the fighting sailor, and not to the
craft, will long survive the era of the conversion of the ships. The oak
and the ash are weather-prophets at this day. An old rhyme says:--
If the oak's before the ash,
We shall only get a splash;
If the ash precede the oak,
We shall surely get a soak.
This, of course, refers to the priority in the time of budding or coming
into leaf.
Other Christmas customs and superstitions appear to distinctly exhibit
an Aryan origin. The white-thorn is supposed to possess supernatural
power, and certain trees of this class, in Lancashire called Christmas
thorns, are believed to blossom only on Old Christmas Day. Mr. Wilkinson
says that, in the neighbourhood of Burnley, many persons will yet travel
a considerable distance "at midnight, in order to witness the
blossoming." In the Arboretum at Kew gardens, Miss Pratt informs us, in
her "Flowers, and their Associations," there is a tree of this kind
which "is often covered with its clusters while the snow surrounds it."
The thorn, as I shall afterwards show, was an Aryan "lightning plant,"
and, therefore, supposed to be endowed with supernatural properties.
The boar's head yet forms a prominent object amongst the traditionary
dishes of Christmas festivities. Amongst the impersonations of natural
phenomena in the Aryan mythology, the wild boar represented the "ravages
of the whirlwind that tore up the earth." The boar is an animal
connected with the storm and lightning, in all the Indo-European
mythologies. Kelly says:--"Boars are winds, and their white flashing
tusks were looked upon by the southern Aryans and the Greeks, as well as
by the Germans, as images of the lightning." There exists yet a
traditionary superstition very prevalent in Lancashire and its
neighbourhood to the effect that pigs can "_see the wind_." I
accidentally heard the observation made not long ago, in the city of
Manchester, in what is termed "respectable society," and no one present
audibly dissented. One or two individuals, indeed, remarked that they
had often heard such was the case, and seemed to regard the phenomenon
as related to the strong scent and other instincts peculiar to animals
of the chase. Indeed, Dr. Kuhn says that in Westphalia this phase of the
superstition is the prevalent one. There pigs are said to smell the
wind. No one except myself, in the Manchester instance referred to,
appeared to have any knowledge of the origin of the tradition, or that
it was, _at least_, between three and four thousand years old, and, in
all probability, very much older.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] Since the above was written, I have learned that, in some
localities, light-haired men are preferred. This superstition may,
therefore, perhaps, arise, as I have suggested, from prejudice of race,
and equally apply to Teuton and Kelt, and, consequently, subject to
local modification.
CHAPTER IV.
EASTER SUPERSTITIONS AND CEREMONIES.
Gentle Spring! in sunshine clad,
Well do'st thou thy power display!
For Winter maketh the light heart sad,
And thou, thou maketh the sad heart gay!
He sees thee, and calls to his gloomy train,
The sleet, and the snow, and the wind, and the rain,
And they shrink away, and they flee in fear,
When thy merry step draws near.
Winter giveth the fields and trees, so old,
Their beards of icicles and snow;
And the rain, it raineth so fast and cold,
We must cower over the embers low;
And snugly housed from the wind and weather,
Mope like birds that are changing feather;
But storm retires, and the sky grows clear,
When thy merry step draws near.
_Translation by Longfellow from the French of
Charles D'Orleans, XV. century._
Her feet beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice steal in and out,
As if they feared the light:
And, oh! she dances such a way,
No sun upon an Easter day
Is half so fine a sight.
_Sir John Suckling._
Many scarcely yet obsolete ceremonies and superstitions peculiar to the
spring time of the year may likewise be traced to the ancient fire or
sun worship, and other Aryan sources. That the sun rose on Easter-day,
and danced with delight in honour of the resurrection of Christ, is
evidently an ancient superstition engrafted on an orthodox Christian
tenet. This sun-dancing belief is thus rebuked in the "Athenian
Oracle":--
"Why does the sun at his rising play more on Easter-day than Whitsunday?
The matter of fact is an old weak, superstitious error, and the sun
neither plays nor works on Easter-day more than any other. It's true, it
may sometimes happen to shine brighter that morning than any other; but,
if it does, 'tis purely accidental. In some parts of England they call
it the lamb-playing, which they look for, as soon as the sun rises, in
some clear spring or water, and is nothing but the pretty reflection it
makes from the water, which they may find at any time, if the sun rises
clear and they themselves early, and unprejudiced with fancy."
Sir Thomas Browne, referring to this subject, says:--"We shall not, I
hope, disparage the Resurrection of our Redeemer if we say that the sun
doth not dance on Easter-day; and though we would willingly assent to
any sympathetical exultation, yet we cannot conceive therein any more
than a tropical expression."
These extracts are sufficient to show the "toughness" of the
traditionary belief, and that its probable origin is of an earlier date
than the Christian festivities of Easter. Some derive the term Easter
from the Saxon Oster, to rise; others "from one of the Saxon goddesses,
called Eastre, whom they always worshipped at this season." Others,
again, prefer the Anglo-Saxon root, signifying a storm, "the time of
Easter being subject to the continual recurrence of tempestuous
weather."
The procuring of original or "need-fire," from flint and steel at this
season, has been previously referred to. At Reading, in 1559, it appears
by the churchwardens' account, yet extant, that 5s. 8d. was "paid for
makynge of the Paschall and Funte Taper." Two years previously, one made
for the abbey church of Westminster weighed three hundred pounds!
A quaint old writer, in a work called "The Festival," published in 1511,
referring to these "need-fires," says:--"This day is called, in many
places, Godde's Sondaye: ye knowe well that it is the maner at this day
to do the fyre out of the hall, and the blacke wynter brandes, and all
thyngs that is foule with fume and smoke shall be done awaye, and there
the fyre was shall be gayly arayed with fayre floures, and strewed with
grene rysshes all aboute."
The coloured eggs thrown into the air or knocked against each other, at
Easter, by adults as well as children, are, doubtless, remnants of the
Aryan myth, which typified the renovated sun of the spring season by a
red or golden egg. Schwartz says it was a custom among the Parsees to
distribute red eggs at their spring festival. De Gebelin, in his
"Religious History of the Calendar," traces this Easter custom to the
ancient Egyptians, Persians, Gauls, Greeks, Romans, and others, "amongst
all of whom an egg was an emblem of the universe, the work of the
Supreme Divinity." In the nursery tale of "Jack and the Bean-stalk,"
evidently descended from an Aryan source, one of the hero's feats is the
abduction from the giant's castle in "cloudland" of the hen that, at
the bidding of its owner, laid golden eggs.
Brand says:--"Belithus, a ritualist of ancient times, tells us that it
was customary in some churches for the bishops and archbishops
themselves to play with the inferior clergy at _hand-ball_, and this, as
Durand asserts, even on Easter-day itself. Why they should play at
hand-ball at this time, rather than any other game, Bourne tells us he
has not been able to discover; certain it is, however, that the present
custom of playing at that game on Easter holidays for a tansy-cake has
been derived from thence. Erasmus, speaking of the proverb, _Mea est
pila_, that is, 'I got the ball,' tells us that it signifies 'I've
obtained the victory; I am master of my wishes.'"
Brand seems to have hit upon the most probable origin of this
ball-playing, which appears to be but another form of the Easter
egg-throwing; but, in consequence of his non-acquaintance with the
Sanscrit writings and the common Aryan origin of the greater portion of
the modern European populations, he sets it forth with great diffidence.
He says:--"It would, perhaps, be indulging fancy too far to suppose that
the bishops and governors of the churches, who used to play at hand-ball
at this season, did it _in a mystical way_, and with reference to the
_triumphal joy of the season_."
Mysteries, moralities, or miracle plays were performed at Easter, either
by, or with the sanction of, the ecclesiastical authorities. In the
"Sleaford-Gild Account Book" there is an entry, under the date 1480, as
follows:--"Payd for the Ryitiuall of ye play for the Ascencion, and the
wrytyng of spechys, and payntyng of a garment for God, iij. _s._ viij.
_d._"
In the Red Book of the Corporation of Kilkenny there is an entry at
Midsummer, in 1586, which states that one Richard Cogan played the part
of Christ. His fee for the performance is not stated, but Henry Moore
received eightpence for acting the Devil, while the Kilkenny baker was
only rewarded with sixpence for personating the Archangel Michael.
Similar observances obtained until recently at other spring festivals,
all having, doubtless, a common origin.[19] They evidently refer to the
increasing power of the sun, the passing away of the winter storms, and
the joy of the people at the prospect of an abundant supply of the
products of the earth. Reginald Scot, in his "Discovery of Witchcraft,"
published in 1584, says:--
"In some countries they run out of the doors in time of tempest,
blessing themselves with a cheese" (another sun emblem, owing to its
form), "whereupon was a cross made with a rope's end, upon Ascension
Day.--Item, to hang an egg, laid on Ascension Day, in the roof of the
house, preserveth the same from all hurts."
During the last thirty or forty years two Easter customs seem to have
declined rapidly in Lancashire and the North of England. Many _troupes_
of boys, and, in some instances, grown-up persons, not very long ago,
decorated themselves with ribbons, or party-coloured paper in the most
fantastic style, and sallied forth during Easter week "a pace-egging,"
as it was termed. One of their number rejoiced in the euphonious
cognomen of "Tosspot." His face was blacked with soot, and he carried a
basket on his arm for the purpose of receiving contributions in the
shape of "pace" or "Paschall" eggs. Of course, the sovereign substitute
for all commercial articles, current coin of the realm, was equally
acceptable to the dingy and somewhat diabolical-looking treasurer; for
the said "Tosspot" bore remarkable resemblance, both in complexion and
some other characteristics, to the "Old Nick" of the Norsemen. These
"pace-egging" gentry generally wore wooden swords, with which rival
_troupes_, meeting in the streets, occasionally entered into mimic
combat that was not always bloodless in its result. The _troupe_
sometimes played a kind of rude drama, in which I remember a certain
knight having mortally wounded an enemy, vociferously called out for a
"doctor," offering the sum of ten pounds as a special fee for his
immediate appearance. Others sang some barbarous rhymes, evidently
modern versions of older strains, in which Lords Nelson and Collingwood
figured conspicuously. I remember well, in my younger days, having taken
a part in more than one of these performances at Preston. In the
neighbourhood of Blackburn, men, with blackened faces, dressed in the
skins of animals and otherwise disfigured, paraded the streets and lanes
on these occasions, and, I suppose, obtained much "pace-egg" money, from
the terror they inspired. It is not very many years ago since I met a
_troupe_ of this class in the village of Walton-le-dale, near Preston,
that levied its "black-mail" with considerable success.
I am inclined to think that the mummery practised at Easter, in
Lancashire, resulted merely from the transfer of the May-day games, the
orgies of the "Lord of Misrule," the "hobby-horse," the Morris dancers,
&c., to this festival. The time of holding of holidays, and the
character of the amusements, vary in different localities, and they are
not unfrequently blended one with another, when the original purport of
each has ceased to be remembered or regarded in the light of a religious
festival. The May-day mummeries in London, in Brand's days, and even
yet, appear to have borne some resemblance to the Lancashire Easter
performances. He says:--
"The young chimney sweepers, some of whom are fantastically dressed in
girls' clothes, with a great profusion of brick-dust, by way of paint,
gilt paper, &c., making a noise with their shovels and brushes, are now
the most striking object in the celebration of May-day in the streets of
London."
The obtaining of alms, or rather "largesses," as they would term it in
"the olden time," appears to have been the chief object of both parties.
Indeed, this element in the performance it appears was not confined to
the sweeps of London or the "Tosspots" of Lancashire, for Brand further
observes:--
"I remember, too, that in walking that same morning, between Houndslow
and Brentford, I was met by two distinct parties of _girls_, with
garlands of flowers, who begged money of me, saying, 'Pray, sir,
remember the garland.'"
The other custom referred to consisted in the "lifting" of women by men
on Easter Monday, and the indulgence in a similar freak, on the
following day, by the fair sex, on their masculine friends, by way of
retaliation. It was commonly performed in the public streets, and caused
much amusement; but it was a rude and indelicate piece of practical
joking, which can very well be dispensed with, notwithstanding the faith
of some that the practice was originally intended to typify the
Resurrection of Christ.
Bayard Taylor, in his "Byeways of Europe," gives an interesting account
of Andorra, a little republic situated in the heart of the Pyrenees,
between France and Spain. This secluded state has enjoyed an independent
existence since the days of Charlemagne, and the manners and customs of
its inhabitants are of the most simple and primitive character. Mr.
Taylor refers to a singular custom that obtains amongst them, and which
bears some resemblance to the Lancashire one just referred to. He says,
"Before Easter, the unmarried people make bets, which are won by
whoever, on Easter morning, can first catch the other and cry out, 'It
is Easter, the eggs are mine!' Tricks, falsehoods, and deceptions of
all kinds are permitted; the young man may even surprise the maiden in
bed, if he can succeed in doing so. Afterwards they all assemble in
public, relate their tricks, eat their Easter eggs, and finish the day
with songs and dances."
Cakes and buns are baked at this season, which are supposed to possess
supernatural properties. Sir Henry Ellis says, "It is an old belief that
the observance of the custom of eating buns on Good Friday protects the
house from fire, and several other virtues are attributed to these
buns."
In "Poor Robin's Almanack" for 1733, is the following:--
Good Friday comes this month, the old woman runs
With one or two a penny hot cross-buns,
Whose virtue is, if you believe what's said,
They'll not grow mouldy like the common bread.
The baking of cross-buns at Easter is evidently but a legitimate
descendant of the cake baking of the olden festivities. Some consider
the cross on the buns as an addition since the introduction of
Christianity; others think it may be the remains of an older observance.
Dr. Kuhn, speaking of the crosses on ancient boundary and bridal oaks,
says an oak formerly grew in a wood near Dahle, around which
newly-married couples danced three times, and afterwards cut a cross on
it. This cross, he contends, originally represented "Thor's hammer, the
consecrator of marriage." The latter was unquestionably one form of the
many phallic symbols. Mr. Baring-Gould notices the prohibitions issued
at various times against the carrying about of ploughs and ships,
especially on Shrove Tuesday, because they were phallic symbols. A
writer in the _Quarterly Magazine_, although he considers the planting
of the old boundary oak as a Saxon institution, yet regards the placing
of the cross thereon as a withdrawal of the tree "from the dominion of
Thor or Odin." Kelly, in reply to this, says:--"More or less it did so
in Christian times, but previously to then the cross as well as the tree
may have belonged to Thor." The cross, in some of its varied forms, has
evidently been used as a mythical type from the earliest period of
traditional history. I remember, only a very few years ago, when on a
visit to Brampton, in Cumberland, being shown, in the neighbourhood, the
locality on which one of these ancient marriage oaks had grown for ages.
It had only recently been cut down, to the chagrin of many of the
neighbouring inhabitants.
A writer in "_Once a Week_," referring to this subject, says, "Do our
Ritualists eat hot cross-buns on Good Friday? Perhaps they do not, but
consider the consumption of such cakes to be a weak concession to the
childish appetites of those who would not duly observe their Lenten
fastings; and who, had they lived in the days of George III., would have
been among the crowds who clustered beneath the wooden porticos of the
two 'royal,' and rival, bun-houses at Chelsea. But there is the
cross-mark on the surface of the bun to commend it to the minds which
are favourably disposed to symbolism; and there is the history of the
cross-bun itself, which goes back to the time of Cecrops, and to the
_liba_ offered to Astarte, and to the Jewish passover cakes, and to the
eucharistic bread, or cross-marked wafers, mentioned in St. Chrysostom's
Liturgy, and thence adopted by the early Christians. So that the Good
Friday bun has antiquity and tradition to recommend it; and, indeed, its
very name of _bun_ is but the oblique _boun_, from _bous_, the sacred
ox, the semblance of whose horns was stamped upon the cake. There, too,
they also did duty for the horns of Astarte, in which word some
philologists would affect to trace a connection with Easter. The
substitution by the Greeks of the cross-mark in place of the horn-mark
would seem to have chiefly been for the easier division of the round bun
into four equal parts. Such cross-marked buns were found at
Herculaneum."
The "simnels" eaten on Mid-Lent, or "Mothering" Sunday, are, doubtless,
but modern representatives of the ancient festive cake. On Simnel Sunday
young persons especially visit their aged parents, and make them
presents of various kinds, but chiefly of rich cakes. It is said by some
to have been originally called "Mothering Sunday" from a practice which
formerly prevailed of visiting the mother church or cathedral, for the
purpose of making Easter or Lenten offerings.
The word "simnel" has given rise to much discussion amongst
etymologists. It is variously spelled _simnell_, _symnel_, or, in
Lancashire especially, _simbling_. It is not improbable that it
possesses some relationship to the Anglo-Saxon _symel_ or _symbel_, a
feast. Bailey and Dr. Cowell derive it from the Latin _simila_, fine
flour. The popular notion is that the father of Lambert Simnel, the
pretender to the throne in the reign of Henry VII., was a famous baker
of these cakes, and that they retain his name in consequence of his
great reputation in confectionery art. This, however, cannot be correct,
as simnels are referred to long before his time. It is far more probable
that the trade gave the name to the man, as in the cases of smith,
baker, tailor, glover, etc. These cakes, like brides'-cakes, are
generally profusely decorated.
It is not improbable that the name "simnel" was in Saxon times employed
to designate a finer or superior kind of bread or cake. It occurs in the
"Lay of Havelock the Dane," a French romance, abridged by Geoffroi
Gaimer, the Anglo-Norman trouvère. This "Le Lai de Aveloc," Professor
Morley says, belongs to the first half of the twelfth century. He
considers it to have been founded on "an English tradition that must
have been extant in Anglo-Saxon times, for Gaimer speaks of it as an
ancient story." The lay says that when the fisherman Grim, the founder
of the town of Grimsby, "caught the great lamprey, he carried it to
Lincoln, and brought home wastels, _simnels_, his bags full of meal and
corn, neats' flesh, sheep and swine's flesh, and hemp for the making of
more lines."
Since the above was written, the following paragraph on this subject
appeared in the _Gentleman's Magazine_:--
"SIMNEL CAKES.--A well-known Lancashire antiquary some time since stated
that this term 'originally meant the _very finest_ bread, _Pain demain_
is another term for it, on account of its having been used as _Sunday
bread_' (if a conjecture may be hazarded, it is possible there may be
some connexion with the shew bread and heathen votive offerings, as in
India and China) 'at the Sacrament. The name appears in Mediæval Latin
as _simanellus_, and may thus have been derived from the Latin
_simila_--fine flour. In Wright's 'Vocabularies' it appears thus:--'_Hic
artocopus--symnelle._' This form was in use during the fifteenth century.
In the 'Dictionarius' of John de Garlande, compiled at Paris in the
thirteenth century, it appears thus:--'_Simeneus--placentæ_--simnels.'
Such cakes were stamped with the figure of Christ or of the Virgin.' Is
it not a little singular that this custom of making these cakes, and
also the practice of assembling in one place to eat them, should be
confined to Bury? Such is the fact. No other town or district in the
United Kingdom is known to keep up such a custom.[20] As stated above,
much labour has been expended to trace its origin, but without
success."[21]
Mid-Lent Sunday is likewise called Braggat or Braggot Sunday, from the
custom of drinking "mulled" or spiced ale on that day. The word is
believed to be derived from the ancient British _bragawd_, which
signifies a liquor of this class. The Braggat ales drunk on Braggat
Sunday have, no doubt, intimate connection with the buns and cake of the
other spring festivities. The solid and fluid elements, in some form or
other, appear to be indispensable in all festive gatherings, religious
or otherwise. Bacchus and Ceres, or Dionysos and Dêmetêr, were jointly
honoured at the festivals attendant upon the celebration of the
Eleusinian mysteries. Shakspere makes Sir Toby Belch exclaim, on
Malvolio's interference with their noisy festive roystering, "Dost thou
think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"
In an old glossary of the Lancashire dialect, published in 1775,
"carlings" are described as "Peas boiled on Care Sunday, _i.e._, the
Sunday before Palm Sunday." "Parched" peas, or peas fried in pepper,
butter, and salt, form yet a favourite dish amongst the poorer classes
in the north of England on "Carling Sunday." A tradition, indeed, still
exists, which asserts that, during a very severe famine, a vessel
opportunely arrived in one of the ports, laden with a cargo of peas, to
the great delight of the inhabitants; and the "carling" feast is
regarded as a memorial of the event.
Peas and beans have had symbolical or sacred characteristics from the
earliest times. Beans were regarded by the Greeks and Romans, according
to Plutarch, as highly potent in the invocation of the _manes_ of the
departed. Brand says: "There is a great deal of learning in Erasmus's
Adages concerning the _religious use of beans_, which were thought to
belong to the dead. An observation which he gives us of Pliny,
concerning Pythagoras's interdiction of this pulse is highly remarkable.
It is '_that beans contain the souls of the dead_.' For which cause also
they were used in the PARENTALIA." He further adds: "Ridiculous and
absurd as these superstitions may appear, yet it is certain that our
carlings thence deduce their origin."
There is not, after all, anything very ridiculous or absurd about the
matter, when the common Aryan origin of these traditionary superstitions
is considered. May not the Roman _Parentalia_, or the offering of
oblations or sacrifices, consisting of liquors, victims, and garlands,
at stated periods, on the tombs of parents, have had some remote
connection with the "mothering" customs referred to, on Mid-Lent
Sunday? Amongst other objects of the Roman ceremonial, it appears that
of an atonement to the ghosts of the departed was included. The storing
of peas and beans for the Lenten season was carefully attended to in the
middle ages, especially at the religious houses. A French work, printed
at Paris, in 1565, entitled "Quadragesimale Spirituale," gives some
curious information on this subject. Speaking of the Lenten fare, the
writer says:--
"After salad we eat _fried beanes_, by which we understand confession.
When we would have _beanes well sooden, we lay them in steepe, otherwise
they will never seeth kindly_. Therefore, if we propose to amend our
faults, it is not sufficient barely to confess them at all adventure,
but we must let our confession lie in steepe in the water of
Meditation." He further adds: "River water, which continually moveth,
runneth and floweth, is _very good for the seething of pease_."
It appears that the modern Greeks have a custom of depositing _parboiled
wheat_ with the dead on interment. Gregory says the ceremony was
intended to "_signifie the resurrection of the body_." Referring to peas
as an element of the Aryan mythology, Walter Kelly says; "The plant and
the fruit are in some way or other related to celestial fire. It may be
that they were regarded in this light because they belong to the class
of creeping or climbing plants to which such relations were
pre-eminently attributed; at all events, the fact that they represented
something in the vegetation of the sky is substantiated by numerous
details in their mythical history."
According to Dr. Kuhn and Schwartz, the flying dragons that poison the
air and the waters let fall peas in such quantities that they filled the
wells and rendered the water so foul that cattle refused to partake
thereof. In the German traditions the Zwergs, the forgers of Thor's
lightning hammer, were so fond of peas that they plundered the fields of
the husbandman, after rendering themselves invisible by means of their
"caps of darkness." Peas with sour crout are yet eaten in Berlin on
Thursday (Thor's day), from immemorial habit. Mannhardt speaks of their
medical as well as mystical properties, and says that their relation to
the lightning is evidenced by the fact of their being used as hazel
nuts, and the thunderbolts (certain fossil shells and meteoric stones)
to augment the fertility of the corn seed.
A singular custom formerly existed on Maundy Thursday, or the Thursday
preceding Easter, when royal personages distributed alms to poor
persons. It was named Maundy Thursday from the baskets (or _maunds_)
which contained the gifts. In the "Festival," published in 1511, it is
said to have been likewise called "Shere Thursday," because "anciently
people would that day shere theyr hedes and clypp theyr berdes, and so
make them honest against Easter-day." After the distribution of the alms
in meat, drink, clothing, and money, it was customary for royalty, in
imitation of the humility of Jesus Christ, to wash the feet of the
recipients of their bounty. James II. was the last of our monarchs who
performed this ceremony in person. He was likewise the last who
successfully (?) "touched" for the cure of the "king's evil," a
conclusive reason to the old Jacobites that his successors were all
usurpers!
This, however, did not appear to have been the orthodox faith in earlier
times. Aubrey, in his "Miscellanies" (1696), gravely relates that the
manner in which the king's evil was cured by the "touch of the king does
much puzzle our philosophers (?); for, whether our kings were of the
house of York or Lancaster, it did the cure _for the most part_!" He
further informs us that the seventh son of a seventh son possessed the
regal power; but he qualifies the important fact by the condition that
it must be "a seventh son, and no daughter between, and in pure
wedlock." He likewise adds, "The touch of a dead hand hath wrought
wonderful effects." This last superstition is still current in
Lancashire. In the time of James II., the remedial power of the "king's
touch," in cases of scrofula, was firmly believed in by others than the
vulgar; for, it appears, the corporation of Preston voted the sum of
five shillings each to two poor women afflicted with this disease,
towards their expense in travelling to Chester, which city his Majesty
had honoured with a special visit at the time, to avail themselves of
the supposed potency inherent in the royal digits, under such
circumstances. This superstition was not entirely discountenanced by
those in authority until the reign of George III.
This belief in the supernatural authority of monarchs is but a remnant
of the long supposed "divine right" of kings to govern, which resulted
from the conviction that they could trace their pedigrees back to the
deities themselves. Shakspere, even, puts into the mouth of the murderer
and usurper, Claudius, King of Denmark, the following sentence:--
Let him go, Gertrude. Do not fear our person.
There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.
This superstition is by no means confined to civilised or semi-civilised
nations. It is almost a universal feeling amongst savage tribes. The
ignorant serf of Russia believed, and indeed yet believes, that if the
deity were to die the emperor would succeed to his power and authority.
Speke, referring to a very childish but nevertheless very great
potentate, who ruled the territory adjacent the Victoria N'yanza, says,
"I found that the Waganda have the same absurd notion here as the
Wangambo have in Karagué, of Kamrasi's supernatural power in being able
to divide the waters of the Nile in the same manner that Moses did the
Red Sea."
FOOTNOTES:
[19] The hawthorn, as will be shown in the following chapter, was
invested with much superstitious reverence, and especially in connection
with the spring festivals; and, singularly enough, Mr. John Ingram, in
his delightful "Flora Symbolica," informs us that the hawthorn is, in
"florigraphy," an emblem of Hope. This is, evidently, no accidental
coincidence.
[20] This is an error. Bury is certainly famous for its simnels, but
other towns in Lancashire, and elsewhere, both keep up the custom and
boast of the quality of their confectionery.
[21] The harshness and general painfulness of life in old times must
have been much relieved by certain simple and affectionate customs which
modern people have learned to dispense with. Amongst these was a
practice of going to see parents, and especially the female one, on the
mid Sunday of Lent, taking for them some little present, such as a cake
or a trinket. A youth engaged in this amiable act of duty was said to go
_a-mothering_, and thence the day itself came to be called Mothering
Sunday. One can readily imagine how, after a stripling or maiden had
gone to service, or launched in independent housekeeping, the old bonds
of filial love would be brightened by this pleasant annual visit,
signalised, as custom demanded it should be, by the excitement attending
some novel and perhaps surprising gift. Herrick, in a canzonet addressed
to Dianeme, says:--
"I'll to thee a _simnel_ bring,
'Gainst thou go a-mothering;
So that, when she blesses thee,
Half that blessing thou'lt give me."
He here obviously alludes to the sweet cakes which the young person
brought to the female parent as a gift; but it would appear that the
term "simnel" was in reality applicable to cakes which were in use all
through the time of Lent.... We learn from Ducange that it was usual in
early times to mark the simnels with a figure of Christ or of the Virgin
Mary, which would seem to show that they had a religious signification.
We know that the Anglo-Saxon, and indeed the German race in general,
were in the habit of eating consecrated cakes at their religious
festivals. Our hot cross-buns at Easter are only the cakes which the
pagan Saxons ate in honour of their goddess Eastre, and from which the
Christian clergy, who were unable to prevent people from eating, sought
to expel the paganism by marking them with the cross. It is curious that
the use of these cakes should have been preserved so long in this
locality, and still more curious are the tales which have arisen to
explain the meaning of the name, which had been long forgotten. Some
pretend that the father of Lambert Simnel, the well-known pretender in
the reign of Henry VII., was a baker, and the first maker of simnels,
and that in consequence of the celebrity he gained by the acts of his
son, the cakes have retained his name. There is another story current in
Shropshire, which is much more picturesque, and which we tell as nearly
as possible in the words in which it was related to us. Long ago there
lived an honest old couple, boasting the names of Simon and Nelly, but
their surnames are not known. It was their custom at Easter to gather
their children about them, and thus meet together once a year under the
old homestead. The fast season of Lent was just ending, but still they
had left some of the unleavened dough which had been from time to time
converted into bread during the forty days. Nelly was a careful woman,
and it grieved her to waste anything, so she suggested that they should
use the remains of the Lenten dough for the basis of a cake to regale
the assembled family. Simon readily agreed to the proposal, and further
reminded his partner that there were still some remains of their
Christmas plum-pudding hoarded up in the cupboard, and that this might
form the interior, and be an agreeable surprise to the young people when
they had made their way through the less tasty crust. So far, all things
went on harmoniously; but when the cake was made, a subject of violent
discord arose, Sim insisting that it should be boiled, while Nell no
less obstinately contended that it should be baked. The dispute ran from
words to blows, for Nell, not choosing to let her province in the
household be thus interfered with, jumped up, and threw the stool she
was sitting on at Sim, who on his part seized a besom, and applied it
with right good will to the head and shoulders of his spouse. She now
seized the broom, and the battle became so warm that it might have had a
very serious result, had not Nell proposed as a compromise that the cake
should be boiled first and afterwards baked. This Sim acceded to, for he
had no wish for further acquaintance with the heavy end of the broom.
Accordingly, the big pot was set on the fire, and the stool broken up
and thrown on to boil it, whilst the besom and broom furnished fuel for
the oven. Some eggs, which had been broken in the scuffle, were used to
coat the outside of the pudding when boiled, which gave it the shining
gloss it possesses as a cake. This new and remarkable production in the
art of confectionery became known by the name of the cake of Simon and
Nelly, but soon only the first half of each name was alone preserved and
joined together, and it has ever since been known as the cake of
Sim-Nel, or Simnel.--_Chambers's Book of Days._
CHAPTER V.
MAY-DAY CEREMONIES AND SUPERSTITIONS.
Rejoice, Oh English hearts, rejoice!
Rejoice, Oh lovers dear;
Rejoice, Oh city, town, and country,
Rejoice, eke every shire.
For now the fragrant flowers
Do spring and sprout in seemly sort;
The little birds do sit and sing,
The lambs do make fine sport.
Up then, I say both young and old,
Both man and maid amaying,
With drums and guns that bounce aloud,
And merry tabor playing.
_Old May-day Song._
The May-day festivities and superstitious ceremonies belong to the same
antique or pagan class as those previously described. The Irish
antiquary, O'Brien, says that the practice of lighting fires in honour
of the god Bel, on May-day, gave the Irish name "Mina-Bealtine" to the
flowery month. Brand says: "In honour of May-day, the Goths and Southern
Swedes had a mock battle between summer and winter, which ceremony is
retained in the Isle of Man, where the Danes and Norwegians had been for
a long time masters." This, evidently, is a remnant of an Aryan myth.
Olaus Magnus says, the "Northern natives have a custom to welcome the
returning splendour of the sun with dancing, and mutually to feast each
other, rejoicing that a better season for feasting and hunting was
approached." Tollet quaintly says: "Better judges may decide that the
institution of this festival originated from the Roman Floralia, or from
the Celtic La Beltine, while I conceive it derived to us from our Gothic
ancestors." The theory of the common Aryan source of these festive rites
reconciles Tollet's conception with the decision of the "better judges,"
for whose opinion he evidently entertains profound respect. The Rev. Mr.
Maurice, in his learned work on "The Antiquities of India," contends
that the May-day festivities were originally inaugurated at the vernal
equinox, and that they pertained to a "phallic festival to celebrate the
generative powers of nature." From this stand-point he argues that they
are the remains of very ancient ceremonies well known to Egypt, India,
and other places. His reasoning on this subject is very learned and
ingenious. He says:--
"When the reader calls to mind what has already been observed, that,
owing to a precession of the equinox, after the rate of seventy-two
years to a degree, a total alteration has taken place through all the
signs of the ecliptic, insomuch that those stars which formerly were in
Aries have now got into Taurus, and those of Taurus into Gemini; and
when he considers also the difference before mentioned, occasioned by
the reform of the calendar, he will not wonder at the disagreement that
exists in respect to the exact period of the year on which the great
festivals were anciently kept, and that on which, in imitation of
primæval customs, they are celebrated by the moderns. Now, the vernal
equinox, after the rate of that precession, certainly could not have
coincided with the first of May less than four thousand years before
Christ, which nearly marks the æra of creation, which, according to the
best and wisest of chronologers, began at the vernal equinox, when all
nature was gay and smiling, and the earth arrayed in its loveliest
verdure, and not, as others have imagined, at the dreary autumnal
equinox, when that nature must necessarily have its beauty declining,
and that earth its verdure decaying. I have little doubt, therefore,
that May-day, or at least the day on which the sun entered Taurus, has
been immemorably kept as a sacred festival from the creation of the
earth and man, and was originally intended as a memorial of that
auspicious period and that momentous event.... On the general devotion
of the ancients to the worship of the _bull_ I have had frequent
occasion to remark, and _more particularly in the Indian history_, by
their devotion to it at that period--
'Aperit cum cornibus annum Taurus.'
'When the bull with his horns openeth the vernal year.' I observed that
all nations seem anciently to have vied with each other in celebrating
that blissful epoch; and that the moment the sun entered the sign
Taurus, were displayed the signals of triumph and the incentives to
passion; that memorials of the universal festivity indulged in at that
season are to be found in the records and customs of people otherwise
the most opposite in manners and most remote in situation. I could not
avoid considering the circumstance as a strong additional proof that
mankind originally descended from one great family, and proceeded to the
several regions in which they finally settled, from one common and
central spot; that the Apis, or sacred bull of Egypt, was only the
symbol of the sun in the vigour of vernal youth; that the bull of Japan,
breaking with his horn the mundane egg, was evidently connected with the
same bovine species of superstition, founded on the mixture of astronomy
and mythology."
According to Mr. Maurice's calculation, the vernal equinox could not
have coincided with the first degree of Aries later, at the latest, than
eighteen hundred years before Christ. The festival of the vernal equinox
would then be celebrated on the first of April. The modern "April fool"
freaks are regarded by many writers as relics of these festivities. In
India this is termed the Huli festival. It has previously been shown
that, in modern Welsh, _heulo_ means to shine as the sun. _Heulog_
likewise means sunny or sunshiny.
The original purport of most of the May-day ceremonials was
unquestionably a demonstration of joy at the return of spring. Rowe,
speaking of the tower of Magdalen College, Oxford, and its famous peal
of ten bells, says, "On May-day the choristers assemble on the top to
usher in the spring." Oxonians of the "olden time," appear to have
welcomed the season not simply by blowing lustily through cows' horns,
but by drinking deeply from cups fashioned therefrom. Herne says this
blowing and drinking was done "upon the jollities of the first of May,
to remind people of the pleasantness of that part of the year, which
ought to create mirth and gaiety."
In the north of England, especially, Bourne informs us, that the more
youthful portion of the villagers, of both sexes, were in the habit, at
midnight, on the eve of May-day, of rendezvousing in some neighbouring
wood, with the view of gathering green branches of trees and wild
flowers, from which they made garlands, etc., and carried them in
procession during the day. Some of these garlands were afterwards
deposited in the neighbouring churches; others decorated the doors and
windows of the villagers' residences. It appears that the gathering of
these woodspoils was accompanied by much clangour of rude music,
including the blowing of cows' horns, previously referred to. Stubbs,
the Puritan, in his "Anatomy of Abuses," published in 1585, rebukes this
custom on account of the immoralities which such midnight forest
gatherings would doubtless give rise to. And yet the practice was very
common, and was countenanced by the highest in rank in the kingdom. King
Henry VIII. and his Queen, Katherine of Arragon, and the courtiers, are
reported to have much enjoyed this species of pastime.
Stubbs thus describes the custom he denounces:--
"Against May, every parish, town, and village assembled themselves
together, both men, women, and children, old and young, even all
indifferently, and either going all together or dividing themselves into
companies, they go, some to the woods and groves, some to the hills and
mountains, some to one place, some to another, where they spend all the
night in pastimes, and in the morning they return, bringing with them
birch boughs and branches of trees, to deck their assembly withal."
Chaucer, in his "Court of Love," makes reference to the May-day
ceremonies of his time, and says that early in the morning "fourth goth
al the Court, both most and lest, to fetche the flouris fresh, and
braunch and blome."
The supposed appropriateness of May-day for love-making is referred to
by Shakspere in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Lysander, in the first act,
wishing to further his suit to Hermia, says:--
If thou lovest me, then,
Steal from thy father's house to-morrow night;
And in the wood, a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
_To do observance of a morn of May_,
There will I stay for thee.
Again, in the fourth act, when Theseus and his hunting party discover
the two pairs of sweethearts asleep in the wood, the Duke, in reply to a
query by Egeus, says:--
No doubt, _they rose up early, to observe
The rite of May_; and, hearing our intent,
Come here in grace of our solemnity.
Herrick, in a quaint lyric on this subject, says:--
There's not a budding boy or girl, this day,
But is got up and gone to bring in May;
A deal of youth ere this is come
Back, with white-thorn laden home.
Milton thus magnificently apostrophises the advent of the "flowery
month":--
Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flow'ry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May! thou dost inspire
Mirth and youth and fond desire;
Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee and wish thee long.
Old Stowe thus quaintly describes the May-day doings in the beginning of
the seventeenth century:--
"On May-day, in the morning, every man, except impediment, would walke
into the sweete meadowes and greene woods, there to rejoyce their
spirites with the beauty and savour of sweete flowers, and with the
harmony of birds praysing God in their kind. I find also that in the
moneth of May the citizens of London, of all estates, lightly in every
parish, or sometimes two or three parishes joyning together, had their
severall Mayings, and did fetch in May-poles, with diverse warlike
shewes, with good archers, morice dauncers, and other devices, for
pastime all day long, and towards the evening they had stage playes and
bonfieers in the streets."
Polwhele, in his "History of Cornwall," describes a spring festival,
said to be of very ancient origin, annually celebrated at Helston on the
8th of May, named the "Furry," or gathering. The day opens with singing
and the beating of drums and kettles. The whole population rush out of
the town into the country, and return garlanded with leaves and flowers,
in which guise they caper about the streets, and enter unmolested each
others' houses to congratulate their neighbours on the return of spring.
The young people of Spotland, in the parish of Rochdale, are yet in the
habit of assembling on the hill sides on the first Sunday in May, and
exchanging congratulations on the return of spring. They drink to each
others' health in liquor supplied by the pure mountain streamlets--no
inapt substitute for the "heavenly soma" of the Vedic hymns. No doubt,
some genuine love-making, as well as much licentiousness, has resulted
from the observance of such ceremonies. It was formerly a custom, for
milkmaids especially, in various parts of the country, to dance around a
"garland" decorated with articles of value, very much after the fashion
of the rush-bearers of Lancashire at the present day. The latter adorn
their rush-cart and its contents with goblets, watches, and other
polished metal articles, lent by friends for the occasion. Brand,
speaking of the milkmaids in the neighbourhood of London, says:--
"They used to dress themselves in holiday guise on this morning, and
come in bands with fiddles, whereto they danced, attended by a
strange-looking pyramidal pile, covered with pewter plates, ribands, and
streamers, either borne by a man upon his head or by two men upon a
hand-barrow; this was called their garland."
Doubtless, the "well-dressing," or the decoration of springs and
fountains with flowers, yet very common in some counties, and especially
in Derbyshire, either owes its origin to the Roman Floralia, or to a
still older custom, the common Aryan root of both. Dr. Stukeley, the
celebrated antiquary, writing in 1724, speaks of a May-pole near Horn
Castle, Lincolnshire, on a spot "where probably stood an Hermes in Roman
times." He adds: "The boys annually keep up the festival of the
_Floralia_ on May-day, making a procession to this hill with May gads
(as they call them) in their hands. This is a white willow wand, the
bark peeled off, ty'd round with cowslips, a thyrsus of the Bacchanals.
At night they have a bonefire, and other merriment, which is really a
sacrifice or religious festival."
The old Puritan writers seem to have entertained a most profound horror
of the ancient May-day festivities. Friar Tuck was pronounced a remnant
of popery; maid Marian was the scarlet lady herself; and the hobby-horse
was consigned to the limbo of defunct pagan superstitions. A May-pole
was an abomination equalled only in atrocity by a "Whitsun-ale" or a
"Morris-dance." Old Stubbs calls the May-pole a "stinking idol," and
says it was brought home with "great _veneration_," hence his
malediction. The attendant ceremony he describes as follows: "They have
twenty or forty yoke of oxen, every ox having a sweet nosegay of flowers
tied to the tips of his horns; and these oxen draw home the May-pole,
covered all over with flowers and herbs, bound round with strings from
the top to the bottom, and sometimes painted with variable colours,
having two or three hundred men, women, and children following it with
great _devotion_." Stubbs evidently knew that the May-pole was of pagan
origin, if he was ignorant of its phallic character.
The court, however, favoured some of these pastimes. King James I.
received a deputation on the subject during his stay at Hoghton Tower;
and at Myerscough, near Preston, in Lancashire, he made a "speeche about
libertie to piping and honest recreation." This was followed by his
famous proclamation, levelled chiefly against the "Puritans and precise
people of Lancashire." This action culminated in the still more
celebrated "Book of Sports." Charles I., in 1633, republished "his
blessed father's declaration," which decreed that "after the end of
Divine service, his good people be not disturbed, letted, or discouraged
from any lawful recreation; such as dancing, either men or women;
archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmless
recreations; nor from having of May Games, Whitsun Ales, and Morris
Dances, and the setting up of May-poles, and other sports therewith
used; so as the same may be had in due and convenient time, without
impediment or neglect of Divine Service. And that women shall have leave
to carry rushes to the church, for the decoration of it according to
their old custom. But withall his Majesty doth hereby account still as
prohibited all unlawful games to be used, on Sundays only, as bear and
bull baitings, interludes, and, at all times, in the meaner sort of
people, as by law prohibited, bowling."
Our ancestors appear to have regarded the playing at bowls as an
especially dignified recreation, and to have guarded by statute the game
from any profanation by the vulgar. Old Strype records that owing to
threatened disturbances in the North of England, a strict search was
made, in every part of the kingdom, on the night of Sunday, the 10th
July, 1569, for vagrants, beggars, gamesters, rogues, or gipsies. It
resulted in the apprehension of thirteen thousand "masterless men." The
chief offence with which they were charged was that they had no visible
mode of living, "except that which was derived from _unlawful_ games,
especially of bowling, and maintenance of archery."
The sight of a May-pole, so offensive to the Puritan of old, excited a
very different train of thought in the imagination of Washington Irving,
on his first visit to this country. He says:--
"I shall never forget the delight I felt on first seeing a May-pole. It
was on the banks of the Dee, close by the picturesque old bridge that
stretches across the river from the quaint little city of Chester. I had
already been carried back into former days by the antiquities of that
venerable place, the examination of which is equal to turning over the
pages of a black letter volume, or gazing on the pictures in Froissart.
The May-pole on the margin of that poetic stream completed the illusion.
My fancy adorned it with wreaths of flowers, and peopled the green bank
with all the dancing revelry of May-day. The mere sight of this May-pole
gave a glow to my feelings, and spread a charm over the country for the
rest of the day; and, as I traversed a part of the fair plain of
Cheshire, and the beautiful borders of Wales, and looked from among
swelling hills down a long green valley, through which 'the Deva wound
its wizard stream,' my imagination turned all into a perfect Arcadia."
The Laureate, in his beautiful poem, "The May Queen," has most happily
pourtrayed the buoyant, joyous heart-feeling of the modern juvenile
representative of the mythical Maid Marian of old. Eliza Cook, in one of
the most successful of her many truly national songs, has hit off the
spirit of the ancient May-day festivities with remarkable truthfulness
and power:--
My brave land! my brave land! oh, may'st thou be my grave-land!
For firm and fond will be the bond that ties my breast to thee.
When Summer's beams are glowing, when Autumn's gusts are blowing,
When Winter's clouds are snowing, thou art still right dear to me.
But yet methinks I love thee best
When bees are nursed on white-thorn breast,
When spring-tide pours in--sweet and blest--
And Mirth and Hope come dancing;
When music from the feathered throng
Breaks forth in merry marriage-song,
And mountain streamlets dash along,
Like molten diamonds glancing!
Oh! pleasant 'tis to scan the page,
Rich with the theme of by-gone age;
When motley fool and learned sage
Brought garlands for the gay pole;
When laugh and shout came ringing out
From courtly knight and peasant lout,
In "Hurrah for merry England, and
The raising of the May-pole;"
When the good old times had carol rhymes,
With morris games and village chimes;
When clown and priest shared cup and feast,
And the greatest jostled with the least,
At the "raising of the May-pole."
The people of Lancashire, until very recently, kept the May-day festival
with considerable _éclat_. Indeed, it is by no means forgotten at the
present day. The main streets of Preston, Manchester, and other towns,
during "the good old coaching time," presented a remarkably gay
appearance, in consequence of the horses being decorated, and some of
them profusely, with ribbons and other festive ornaments.
The decoration of horses with flowers and ribbons, the raising of
May-poles, and the attendant dances and games, are yet far from obsolete
in many parts of England. A few years ago I attended a May-day gathering
at a village in North Cheshire; but the dancers, as well as the May
Queen, were all children, and the spectators chiefly ladies and
gentlemen from Manchester and its neighbourhood. It was a very pretty
sight, and was patronised by the neighbouring "squire" (R. E.
Warburton)[22] and his family, but it lacked the healthy rusticity
which I had anticipated from the hearty enjoyment of lusty farm
labourers and their sweethearts in the old-fashioned May-day dance.
The Rev. Jno. E. Sedgwick, of St. Alban's Church, Cheetwood, Manchester,
has recently revived the May-day games; but, although termed May-day
festivities, the decoration of the May-pole, the crowning of the May
Queen, etc., which I visited, took place, in 1867, in Whit-week, which
is the great Manchester holiday. The children looked pretty with their
pink sashes and wreaths of green leaves, and evidently enjoyed
themselves much. With this exception, however, the affair was in little
distinguishable from ordinary holiday sports, and it certainly lacked
the necessary rusticity to suggest any strong sympathy with the rural
festival of the "olden time."
The practice of gathering hawthorn blossoms, where practicable on the
1st of May, still continues, and in many localities superstition lingers
respecting the supernatural properties of this tree. The hanging up in
the homestead of a white thorn branch procured on May-day was supposed
to act as an antidote to the machinations of witchcraft. Both the white
and black thorn are considered as representatives of the _Mimosa
catechu_, the sacred thorn of India, which, being sprung from lightning,
was supposed to be endowed with supernatural properties. Amongst the
Germans "wishing" or "divining" rods were made from both the black and
the white thorn. Walter Kelly says, "The wood of the thorn (ramnos) was
used by the Greeks for the drilling stick of their pyreia (or
fire-producing chark), and it was held by them to be prophylactic
against magic, as the white thorn was by the Romans, among whom it was
used for marriage torches."
I have referred, in a preceding chapter, to the superstition respecting
the blossoming of the Christmas thorn at midnight, on _Old_ Christmas
eve. The legend has, no doubt, intimate relationship to the presumed
supernatural attributes of the celebrated Glastonbury thorn, and its
progeny. The original plant, according to Collinson's "History of
Somersetshire," was the dry hawthorn staff which St. Joseph of Arimathea
stuck into the ground when weary with journeying.
In one of the Coventry Mysteries, "The Miraculous Espousal of Mary and
Joseph," the blossoming of the rod of the latter is the sign that he is
the destined husband of the former. When the feeble old man unwillingly
appears before the "bishop Issachar," he is surprised to see his staff
break out into flower. Issachar is equally astonished, and exclaims:--
A mercy! mercy! mercy! lord, we crye!
The blyssyd of God we see art thou!
. . . . .
Here may be see a merveyl one,
A ded stok beryth fflours ffre.
Joseph, in hert, with outen mone,
Thou may'st be blyth, with game and gle,
A mayd to wedde, thou must gone,
Be this meracle I do wel se;
Mary is here name.
This superstition bears evident marks of near relationship to some of
both the Greek and the Indoo, as well as other Eastern mythical faiths.
The blossoming staff of Joseph appears to be but a reproduction of the
budding thyrsus of the Bacchanals and of Hermes, which is regarded as a
phallic symbol, typical of the reproductive forces of nature. In the
Teutonic mythology the fylfot, or revivifying hammer of Thor, as
previously shown, likewise reproduces a phallic symbol.
So highly were branches and blossoms from the Glastonbury thorn esteemed
that Bristol merchants exported large quantities. The Puritans, in
Elizabeth's reign, cut down one of its stems, and the other was
demolished during the "Great Rebellion." Collinson says, "It is strange
to see how much this tree was sought after by the credulous; and, though
a common thorn, Queen Anne, King James, and many of the nobility of the
realm, even when the times of monkish superstition had ceased, gave
large sums of money for small cuttings from the original."
Some authorities regard this Christmas flowering thorn as a variety of
the _cratægus monogyna_, or common hawthorn, probably brought by the
early crusaders from Palestine. If this be true, it throws some light on
the origin of the reverence in which it was held by the pilgrims to the
shrine of St. Joseph at Glastonbury.
The sacred character of the white thorn especially, appears to have
become interwoven with a great variety of superstitious belief. A writer
in the _Quarterly Review_ for July, 1863, treating of "Sacred Trees and
Flowers," says, "The white thorn is one of the trees most in favour with
the small people" [the fairies]; "and both in Brittany and in some parts
of Ireland it is held unsafe to gather even a leaf from certain old and
solitary thorns which grow in sheltered hollows of the moorland, and are
the fairies' trysting places. But no '_evil ghost_' dares to approach
the white thorn." The writer attributes this peculiar sanctity of the
white thorn to the belief that the crown placed in derision on the head
of Christ, previous to his crucifixion, was made from branches of this
tree; and, doubtless, at the present day, such may be mainly the case,
although, as the writer himself observes, modern botanical researches
have taught us that the fact "cannot have been so." Kelly says we know
more than even this; "we know that the white thorn was a sacred tree
before Christianity existed, so that we must needs invert the statement
of the writer in the _Quarterly_, and conclude that the ancient sanctity
of the aubépine, or white thorn, was what gave rise to the mediæval
belief." He further contends that the excerpt relied upon by the writer,
from Sir John Mandeville, who flourished in the earlier portion of the
fourteenth century, shows on its face that the old wanderer was "an
unconscious witness to the enduring vitality of the Aryan tradition that
invested the hawthorn with the virtues of a tree sprung from the
lightning."
The passage referred to is curious. Sir John says, "Then was our Lord
ylad into a gardyn ... and there the Jews scorned hym, and maden hym a
croune of the braunches of the albespyne, that is white thorn, that grew
in the same gardyn, and seten yt on hys heved.... And, therefore, hath
the white thorn many virtues. For he that beareth a braunch on hym
thereof, no thondere, no ne manner of tempest may dere [hurt] him; ne in
the hows that yt is ynne may non evil ghost entre."
The knowledge of the traditionary faith in the sanctity of this tree
invests with considerable interest the eagerness of children, resident
in populous towns, to obtain a sprig of hawthorn blossom from any
stranger returning from the country with a few branches of this May
trophy. I have had scores of applications of this class for the small
branches which I have carried in my hand from Old Trafford to
Manchester. But, of course, children exhibit a similarly eagerly desire
to obtain possession of flowers, and especially wild flowers, of every
class. Longfellow has beautifully said:--
In the cottage of the rudest peasant,
In ancestral homes whose crumbling towers,
Speaking of the Past unto the Present,
Tell us of the ancient games of Flowers;
In all places, then, and in all seasons,
Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings,
Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons,
How akin they are to human things;
And with child-like, credulous affection,
We behold their tender buds expand;
Emblems of our own great resurrection,
Emblems of the bright and better land.
Amongst the other virtues ascribed to dew gathered on May-day morning,
its supposed power over the complexion yet finds believers. Old Pepys,
in his most interesting, if sometimes stupid, diary, says:--"My wife
away down with Jane and W. Hewer to Woolwich, in order to a little ayre,
and to lay there to-night, and so to gather May dew to-morrow morning,
which Mrs. Turner hath taught her is the only thing in the world to wash
her face with; and I am contented with it." Kelly says: "The Aryan idea,
that the rain clouds were cows, has been well preserved among the
Northern nations.... It is a very common opinion that rain and dew, the
milk of the heavenly cows, are capable of increasing the milk of the
earthly cows; hence a dewy May morning is welcomed as giving promise of
a good dairy year." Mannhardt speaks of a practice in North Germany of
tying a May bush to the tail of the leading cow on May-day morning, in
order that she may brush up the potent dew, and so increase the contents
of her udder. But the strangest faith in the potency of May-dew is
related by Sir John Mandeville. The quaint old traveller seriously
assures us that in Ethiopia there are male and female diamonds that
enter into matrimonial relationship and have offspring! Nay, he declares
that he himself has "_often tymes assayed it_," and found that the
precious stones do grow year by year, on one condition, namely, that
they be well wetted with May-dew! He says:--
"And ther be sume of the gretnesse of a bene, and sume als grete as an
haselle note. And thei ben square and poynted of here owne kinde, bothe
aboven and benethen, withouten worchinge of mannes hond. And thei growen
to gedre, male and femele. And thei ben norysscht with the dew of
Hevene. And thei engendren comounly, and bryngen forthe smale children,
that multiplyen and growen alle the yeer. I have often tymes assayed,
that gif a man kepe hem with a litylle of the roche, and wete hem with
May dew ofte sithes, thei schulle growe everyche yeer; and the small
wole waxen grete."
Sir Kenelm Digby, two centuries ago, in a letter to the younger
Winthorp, governor of New England, expresses his great faith in the
efficacy of dew in the cure of deliriums, frenzies, and manias; but he
does not intimate any preference for dew gathered on May-day. All dew
does not appear, however, to have possessed these curative qualities.
Some, indeed, was of a malignant or deadly character. Ariel, in "the
Tempest," speaks of "the deep nook" in the harbour
where once,
Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still-vext Bermothes.
Caliban, when venting his rage on Prospero and Miranda, can find no
stronger curse than the following:--
As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd
With raven's feather from unwholesome fen,
Drop on you both!
May not this dew superstition have relationship, in some of its phases,
to the classic myth of Kephalos (the head of the sun), Procris (the
dew), and Eôs (the east or morning)? Mr. Cox says "it sprung from three
simple phrases, one of which said, 'The sun loves the dew;' while the
second said that 'the morning loves the sun;' and the third added that
'the sun killed the dew.'" Hence both the good and evil influences
attendant thereon.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] Mr. Warburton is the author of several capital hunting and other
songs, in the dialect of North Cheshire.
CHAPTER VI.
WITCHCRAFT.
What are these,
So wither'd and so wild in their attire;
That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth,
And yet are on't? Live you? or are you aught
That man may question?
_Shakspere._
The county of Lancaster especially has been famous for its witches--or
infamous, rather, if the reader prefer the latter epithet. Certainly,
the hanging of the poor old women from Pendle side, for their supposed
sorcery, is neither a legislative nor a judicial feat to feel very proud
of, especially in these days of "spirit-rapping mediums" and dark
_séance_ performers, who supply writing done by invisible hands, and
cause heads to be thumped by malignant imps in the shape of discordant
fiddles, trumpets, and tambourines. This modern necromancery, it must
not be forgotten, is performed under aristocratic patronage, and _for a
monetary consideration_ which would have rejoiced greatly the hearts
that beat wildly beneath the weather-worn skins of poor old Dame Demdike
and her compeers. Truly, popular superstition, as well as tradition, is
"tough." Forms, manners, and customs may change externally, but it
requires the lapse of long, long periods of time to totally eradicate
from the imagination of an entire people _all faith_ in any mystery,
however absurd to modern scientific minds, to which their ancestors once
clung with simple earnest truthfulness. The witchcraft of the old
Demdike and Chattox school, in all its essential features, is derived
from the early superstitions of our Eastern Aryan progenitors. Nay, the
mystical character of many of its more vulgar "stage properties," such
as cauldrons, besoms, sieves, hares, cats, &c., was recorded with all
due solemnity in the Rig Vedas of the Southern Aryans, some three
thousand two hundred years ago. Pliny says that, in his day, the
Britons celebrated magic rites with so many similar ceremonies that one
might suppose them to have been instructed therein by the Persians. In
the Britain of our day, after passing through both Keltic, Teutonic,
Greek, and Roman channels, these superstitions yet exist either in the
traditionary lore of the rustic population, or the more elevated art
forms with which poetry, sculpture, and painting have clothed them. The
diamond crystal and the charred willow branch are near relatives of the
carbon family; and it may truly be said that a similar relationship
exists between the weird "folk lore" of the wild moorlands or the lonely
mountain glens and the noble artistic creations of a Shakspere, a Walter
Scott, an Ovid, a Homer, an Apelles, or a Phidias. Truly, "one touch of
Nature makes the whole world kin," and especially if that touch be given
by a finger which has been dipped deeply in the dark pool of mysticism.
Witches appear, on the whole, and in more modern times especially, to
typify evil or malignant influences, and are not unfrequently degraded
forms of the deities of a preceding mythology. Kelly, on the authority
of Schwartz and others, speaks of the "human witches" of Northern
nations as "degenerate and abhorred representatives of the ancient
goddesses and their attendants, who were themselves developments of the
primitive conception of the _cloud-women_; but witches, even in their
degraded state, exhibit a multitude of characteristics by which we can
recognise the originals of whom they are but loathsome caricatures.
Their alleged May-day meetings, for instance, on the Brocken, the
Blocksberg, and at Lucken Hare, in the Eildon Hills, are not, as
commonly supposed, merely reminiscences of certain popular gatherings in
heathen times, but were originally assemblages of goddesses and their
retinues, making their customary progress through the land at the
opening of the spring, and visible to their believing votaries in the
shifting clouds about the summits of the mountains. Even the May-day
night dances of the witches, with the devil for the master of the
ceremonies in the shape of a buck goat, are but coarse representations
of weather tokens of the early spring; they are analogous in all but
their ugliness to the dances of the nymphs, led by the goat-footed Pan
at the same glad season of the year amongst the clouds on the windy
mountain tops of Arcadia." The witch revelling at Alloway Kirk, as
detailed in several Scottish traditions, and rendered immortal by the
genius of Burns, seems to confirm this view.
Amongst the infernal deities of classical mythology were the Fates or
Destinies, named Parcæ. They were, like Shakspere's weird sisters,
three in number, and are said by some to have been the offspring of
Erebus and Nox, and by others of Jupiter and Themis. Their mode of
divination was a spinning process. When determining the future life or
career of a mortal, Clotho held the distaff, while Lachesis did the
spinning and Atropos cut the thread. According to Ovid, these divining
deities were equally successful in their occult labours when without, as
when with, some necessary "staple" on which to exercise their spinning
ingenuity or skill.
Witches were supposed to compass the death of any obnoxious individual
by making an image of the victim in wax. As this slowly melted before a
fire, or under other applied heat, it was believed the original would in
like manner sicken and decay. Images were frequently formed of other
materials, and maltreated in some form or other, to produce similar
results. This superstition yet obtains to a great extent in the East and
elsewhere. Dubois, in his "People of India," speaks of magicians who
make small images in mud or clay, and write the names of the objects of
their animosity on the breasts thereof. These are afterwards pierced
with thorns or otherwise mutilated, "so as to communicate a
corresponding injury to the person represented."
There is considerable affinity, in this phase of the superstition, to
the classic solar myth which records the doom of Meleager. The Mœræ,
the three sisters, or the Fates, informed Althæa, the mother of the
future hero, when in his cradle, that her son would die when a certain
brand they pointed out on the hearth was totally consumed. She instantly
snatched it away, plunged it into water, and hid it in a secret place.
In later years, Meleager slew a brother of Althæa, which so exasperated
the mother that she laid her curse upon her son. She brought out the
brand from its hiding place, and flung it on the fire. As it burnt away,
the strength of the hero decayed, and, with the extinguishing of its
last spark, he expired. Mr. Cox says Meleager's life is that "of the
sun, which is bound up with the torch of day; when the torch burns out
he dies."
The gradual change of the old Aryan superstition into its more modern
form would seem to be indicated by a passage in the writings of
Pomponius Mela, who flourished in the reign of the Emperor Claudius. The
old writer, describing what his translator terms a "Druidical nunnery,"
says it "was situated in an island in the British sea, and contained
nine of these _venerable vestals_, who pretended that they could raise
storms and tempests by their incantations, could cure the most incurable
diseases, could transform themselves into all kinds of animals, and
foresee future events."
Reginald Scot, in his "Discoverie of Witchcraft," published in 1584,
describes the nature of the faith in this superstition as it existed in
his day, and for ridiculing which he was covered with obloquy, and his
book was not only "refuted" by King James I. and a host of others, but
it was ignominiously consigned to the flames by the hands of the common
hangman. This shrewd old writer says:
"No one endued with common sense but will deny that the elements are
obedient to witches and at their commandment, or that they may, at their
pleasure, send rain, hail, tempests, thunder, lightning, when she, being
but an old doting woman, casteth a flint stone over her left shoulder
towards the west, or hurleth a little sea sand up into the element, or
wetteth a broom-sprig in water, and sprinkleth the same in the air; or
diggeth a pit in the earth, and, putting water therein, stirreth it
about with her finger; or boileth hogs' bristles; or layeth sticks
across upon a bank where never was a drop of water; or burieth sage till
it be rotten; all which things are confessed by witches, and affirmed by
writers to be the means that witches used to move extraordinary tempests
and rain."
The elaborate title-page of this curious work, vividly illustrates the
condition of the public mind on this subject in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries:--"Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft; Familiars; and
their power to kill, torment, and consume the bodies of men, women, and
children, or other creatures by disease or otherwise; their flying in
the Air etc.: To be but imaginary Erronious conceptions and novelties;
wherein also the lewde, unchristian practises of Witchmongers, upon
aged, melancholy, ignorant and superstitious people in extorting
confessions by inhumane terrors and Tortures is notably detected. Also
the knavery and confederacy of Conjurors. The impious blasphemy of
Inchanters. The imposture of Soothsayers, and infidelity of Atheists.
The delusion of Pythonists, Figure-casters, Astrologers, and vanity of
Dreamers. The fruitlesse beggerly act of Alchimistry. The horrible act
of Poisoning and all the tricks and conveyances of juggling and
legerdemain are fully deciphered. With many other things opened that
have long lain hidden: though very necessary to be known for the
undeceiving of Judges, Justices, and Juries, and for the preservation of
poor, aged, deformed, ignorant people; frequently taken, arraigned,
condemned and executed for Witches, when according to a right
understanding, and a good conscience, Physic, Food, and necessaries
should be administered to him. Whereunto is added a treatise upon the
nature and substance of Spirits and Divels, &c., all written and
published in Anno 1584. By REGINALD SCOT, Esquire. Printed by R. C. and
are to be sold by Giles Calvert dwelling at the Black Spread-Eagle, at
the West-End of Pauls, 1651."
Wierus, a German physician, indeed, in 1563, published a work, in which
he undertook the refutation of many of the so-called facts and phenomena
which were believed to pertain to witchcraft, but he apparently dared
not to venture a direct denial of the existence of sorcery or demoniacal
possession. He, however, did much, considering the conditions by which
he was surrounded. He thanked God that his labour had not been in vain,
but that it had "in many places caused the cruelty against innocent
blood to slacken." He claimed, and certainly deserved, the civic wreath,
for having saved the lives of so many of his fellow-citizens.
Doubtless, in addition to the genuine superstition, there existed, as at
the present time, a certain amount of imposture in connection therewith,
although, owing to the heavy penalties inflicted by the law, the
credulous element may be supposed to have largely preponderated. It is
somewhat remarkable that the celebrated Pendle witches, Demdike,
Chattox, &c., were pronounced _genuine_ sorcerers, and were hanged
accordingly, at Lancaster, in the year 1612; while the eight from
Samlesbury, near Preston, were acquitted, because they were suspected to
be not the _genuine_ article, but a fraudulent imitation thereof.
So thoroughly saturated was the public mind with a belief in witchcraft,
until a relatively recent period, that hundreds were yearly executed for
this supposed crime. Howell, in his "State Trials," estimates that, in
one hundred and fifty years, thirty thousand persons suffered death as
witches in England alone!
Bishop Jewel, when preaching a sermon before Queen Elizabeth, exhorted
her Majesty to use her authority to check the "tremendous operations of
the devil by exterminating his agents, the witches and wizards, who were
then very numerous."
Reginald Scot gives us a very graphic full-length portrait of the devil
of popular superstition in the sixteenth century. He says, "Our mothers'
mayds terrifie us with the ouglie devil, with hornes on his head, fier
in his mouth, a huge tayle in his breach, eies like basons, fangs like a
boar, claws like a tiger, a skin like a bear, and a voice roaring like a
lion."
A Keltic hairy wood-demon was called _Dus_, hence our modern "the
Deuce." A similar Teutonic monster was named _Scrat_, hence our "Old
Scratch."
In 1633, seventeen Pendle witches were condemned to die; but Charles I.
pardoned them. Strange as it may appear, some of them confessed
themselves guilty. Such is the fascinating influence of superstition,
that imposture itself gradually yields to its power. There is an old
Lancashire saying that if a man will only tell a lie a certain number of
times he will eventually himself regard it as a truth. One of the
seventeen Pendle witches last referred to, Margaret Johnson, in her
confession said, "Good Friday is one constant day for a generall
meetinge of witches, and that on Good Friday last they had a generall
meetinge neere Pendle Water syde." One of the Samlesbury "impostors," a
girl named Grace Sowerbutts, stated that she had been induced to join
the sisterhood, and she gave an account of the means adopted to acquire
the diabolical potency, which, it appears, was not considered
satisfactory by the judges, even of that day. Flying over Ribble with
their "familiars" was one of the ordinary feats of the gang, according
to this youthful witch. Perhaps Grace's face wanted the orthodox number
of wrinkles to gain her credence in an affair of so much mystery and
importance at that period.
A remarkable instance of this species of delusion occurred at Salem, in
New England, in 1682. During the excitement which prevailed in
Massachusetts at this time, about twenty persons were put to death for
witchcraft. One woman confessed that she had ridden from Andover to a
witch meeting on a broomstick. She added that the stick broke, and that
the lameness under which she at the time suffered resulted from the
accident. Her daughter and grand-daughter confirmed her evidence, and
declared they all signed Satan's book together. Others confessed to
equally strange delusions. And yet, it appears the inhabitants of Rhode
Island formed an exception to the rule, for they declared "there were no
witches on earth, nor devils,--except the New England ministers, and
such as they!"
Hallam notices a parallel case of delusion recorded in the "Memoirs of
Du Clercq," which happened at Arras, in 1459. He says:--
"A few obscure persons were accused of '_vauderie_, or witchcraft.'
After their condemnation, which was founded on confessions obtained by
torture, and afterwards retracted, an epidemical contagion of
superstitious dread was diffused all around. Numbers were arrested,
burned alive, by order of a tribunal instituted for the detection of
this offence, or detained in prison; so that no person in Arras thought
himself safe. It was believed that many were accused for the sake of
their possessions, which were confiscated to the use of the church. At
length the Duke of Burgundy interfered, and put a stop to the
persecutions."
That the fraudulent element most probably entered largely into the
motives of witch prosecutions is attested by some instances in
connection with the Lancashire trials. Mr. Crossley, in the
republication of "Potts's Discovery of Witches," by the Chetham Society,
says "the main interest in reviewing this miserable band of victims will
be felt to centre in Alice Nutter. Wealthy, well-conducted,
well-connected, and placed probably on an equality with most of the
neighbouring families, and the magistrates before whom she was
committed, she deserves to be distinguished from the companions with
whom she suffered, and to attract an attention which has never yet been
directed to her. That James Dervice, on whose evidence she was
convicted, was instructed to accuse her by her own nearest relatives,
and that the magistrate, Roger Nowell, entered as a confederate into the
conspiracy against her on account of a long-disputed boundary, are
allegations which tradition has preserved, but the truth or falsehood of
which, at this distance of time, it is scarcely possible satisfactorily
to examine. Her mansion, Rough Lee, is still standing, a very
substantial and rather fine specimen of the houses of the inferior
gentry, _temp._ James I., but now divided into cottages."
It was likewise suspected by the magistrates that a seminary priest,
named Thompson, _alias_ Southworth, had instigated the girl Sowerbutts
to make the charges in the Samlesbury case previously referred to.
Some excuse for the popular frenzy on the subject may be found in the
fact that not only did the king and the highest legal authorities in the
land recognise the crimes of sorcery and witchcraft, but dignitaries of
the church, like Bishop Jewel, in Elizabeth's reign, complained of the
great increase in the number of those offenders. Such men as Sir Thomas
Brown, indeed, went so far as to stigmatise the sceptical on the subject
as guilty of atheism.
Sir Kenelm Digby seems to have doubted. Nevertheless, in his
"Observations on the Religio Medici," after expressing his doubts, he
adds:--"Neither do I deny there are witches; I only reserve my assent
till I meet with stronger motives to carry it." Sir Kenelm, however,
notwithstanding his scepticism about witchcraft, could swallow tolerably
large doses of the marvellous. In a letter to J. Winthorp, jun.,
governor of New England, he says:--
"For all sorts of agues, I have of late tried the following magnetical
experiment with infallible success. Pare the patient's nails when the
fit is coming on, and put the parings into a little bag of fine linen or
sarsanet, and tie that about a live eel's neck in a tub of water. The
eel will die and the patient will recover. And if a dog or hog eat that
eel they will also die."
He adds, "I have known one that cured all deliriums and frenzies
whatsoever, and at once taking, with an elixer made of dew, nothing but
dew purified and nipped up in a glass and digested 15 months till all of
it has become a grey powder, not one drop of humidity remaining. This I
know to be true, and that first it was as black as ink, then green, then
grey, and at 22 months' end it was as white and lustrous as any oriental
pearl. But it cured manias at fifteen months' end."
The sapient James I., of England, before he left his northern kingdom,
was so profoundly agitated on hearing the rumour that one Agnes Sampson
and two hundred other Scotch witches "had sailed in sieves from Leith to
North Berwick church to hold a banquet with the devil," that he ordered
the wretched woman to be put to the torture in his presence, and
appeared to feel pleasure in questioning her during her suffering. It
was afterwards affirmed that Agnes and her two hundred weird sisters
"had baptised and drowned a black cat, thereby raising a dreadful
storm," which had nearly proved fatal to a ship that carried the
superstitious monarch. The poor woman, though she protested her
innocence to the last, perished at the stake, supplicating in vain for
mercy from the king and her Christian fellow-subjects. Strange to say,
the second batch of witches condemned at Lancaster in 1633, but pardoned
by Charles I., were accused of similarly interfering with the weather
during a royal cruise. A letter in the State Paper Office, written May
16, 1634, by Sir William Pelham to Lord Conway, contains the
following:--
"The greatest news from the country is of a huge pack of witches which
are lately discovered in Lancashire, whereof 'tis said 19 are condemned,
and that there are at least 60 already discovered, and yet daily there
are more revealed: there are divers of them of good ability, and they
have done much harm. I hear it is suspected that they had a hand in
raising the great storm, wherein his Majesty [Charles I.] was in so
great danger at sea in Scotland."
The writer of the article "Hertfordshire," in "Knight's Cyclopædia," has
the following singular reference to the belief in witchcraft in that
part of England, about the middle of last century:--
"There has been no public event since (_temp._ Charles I.) of any moment
connected with the county; but a circumstance which occurred in April of
the year 1751, deserves notice as marking the extent of popular
ignorance and barbarity at that period. A publican near Tring being
troubled with fits, conceived that he was bewitched by an old woman
named Osborne. Notice was given by the crier that two witches were to be
tried by ducking; and in consequence a vast mob assembled at the time
appointed. The old woman and her husband, who had been in Tring
workhouse, were removed into the church for safety; but the mob obtained
possession of the old man and the old woman, whom they then dragged two
miles to a muddy stream, ducked them and otherwise so maltreated them
that the woman died on the spot, and the man with difficulty recovered.
Thomas Colley, one of the perpetrators, was executed on the spot; but so
strong was the infatuation of the populace, that it was thought
necessary to have a guard of more than 100 troopers to escort the
cavalcade to the place of execution."
Yes, the ignorance and infatuation had ceased to be "respectable," which
fact, doubtless, has a marvellous influence on our mental and moral
optics, when contemplating many other historical delusions, as well as
those connected with supposed witches and their malevolent doings.
A singular instance of combined delusion and imposture with respect to
witchcraft, is related in Ralph Gardiner's "malicious invective against
the government of Newcastle-on-Tyne," entitled "England's Grievance
Discovered in Relation to the Coal-Trade," and published in 1655. It
appears that about five or six years previously, the magistrates of the
borough had sent two of their sergeants into Scotland, "to agree with a
Scotchman, who pretended knowledge to find out Witches by pricking them
with pins, to come to Newcastle, where he should try such who should be
brought to him, and to have twenty shillings a peece for all he could
condemn as witches, and free passage thither and back again." Many poor
women were subjected to much indignity by this fellow, who caused them
to be stripped partially naked, when he inserted pins into various parts
of their flesh, to find a place from which no blood would issue, as he
pretended. On one occasion, however, he was detected and compelled to
acknowledge that a respectable woman, whom he had grossly treated and
condemned, was "not a child of the Devil," as he had previously
insisted. It appears that this worthy afterwards visited other parts of
Northumberland, "to try women there, where he got some three pound a
peece." The author adds, "it was conceived if he had staid he would have
made most of the women in the North Witches for mony." He gives the
names of fifteen poor wretches who were hanged at Newcastle at this
impostor's instigation, and says, "These poor souls never confessed
anything, but pleaded innocence: And one of them by name Margaret Brown
beseeched God that some remarkable sign might be seen at the time of
their execution, to evidence their innocence, and as soon as ever she
was turned off the ladder, _her blood gushed out upon the people to the
admiration of the beholders_!" The said witchfinder at length met with
the fate he so richly merited. He was, in the words of the indignant
author, "laid hold on in Scotland, cast into prison, indicted,
arraigned, and condemned for such like villainie exercised in Scotland.
And upon the gallows he confessed he had been the death of about two
hundred and twenty women in England and Scotland for the gain of twenty
shillings a peece, and beseeched forgiveness. And was executed."
Singularly enough, our author himself met with a similar untimely fate,
but for a very different crime, as appears from the following MS. note,
in the copy of Gardiner's work before the present writer, purporting to
be extracted from a "MS. Life of Barnes, p. 420":--"Upon some methods
agreed on for reformation of Manners in the Town according to that
clause in the charter which empowers them to make By-laws, there was one
Gardiner writ a malicious Invective against the Government of Newcastle,
but he got his Reward, being afterwards at York hanged for Coyning."
The celebrated "witchfinder," Hopkins, was equally unfortunate with his
Scotch compeer. Some individuals, with more acumen than the
superstitious masses, took it into their heads to experiment upon
Hopkins himself. Accordingly they seized him, tied his thumbs and toes
together, after his own fashion, when operating on others. On placing
him on the water he swam as buoyantly as his victims. "This," says one
writer, "cleared the country of him, and it was a great pity that they
did not think of the experiment sooner." Hopkins's method of discovering
witches is, at least, as old as the days of Pliny the elder.
In the "Covntrey Ivstice," by "Michael Dalton, Lincoln's Inn, Gent,"
published in 1618, are some curious illustrations of the state of the
law with regard to witchcraft, at the period. The author says:--
"Now against these witches the Iustices of peace may not alwaies expect
direct euidence, seeing all their works are the works of darknesse, and
no witnesses present with them to accuse them: And therefore for their
better discouerie, I thought good here to insert certaine obseruations
out of the booke of discouery of the Witches that were arraigned at
Lancaster, _Ann. Dom._ 1612, before Sir _Iames Altham_, and Sir _Edw.
Bromely_ Iudges of Assise there.
"1. They haue ordinarily a familiar, or spirit, which appeareth to them.
"2. Their said familiar hath some bigg or place vpon their body, where
he sucketh them.
"3. They haue often pictures of clay, or waxe (like a man, &c.) found in
their house.
"4. If the dead body bleed, vpon the Witches touching it.
"5. The testimony of the person hurt, vpon his death.
"6. The examination and confession of the children or servants of the
Witch.
"7. Their owne voluntary confession, which exceeds all other euidence."
Bodin, a French writer, in his "Demonomanie des Sorciers," published in
1587, says, "On half-proof or strong presumption, the judge may proceed
to torture." The judge might, moreover, in his opinion, lie with
impunity, and promise a suspected person a pardon on confession, without
the intention of carrying it into effect. But this is not much from a
man, who could cite with approval and even relish, the decision of a
magistrate that a person "who had eaten flesh on a Friday should be
burned alive unless he repented, and if he repented, yet he was hanged
out of compassion." Yet this same Bodin was a Protestant, forsooth!
Walburgar, writing in the following century, is not much less tolerant
of judicial mendacity. He does not, indeed, recommend direct lying, but
equivocation. The judge may inform the suspected that her confession
will induce in him favourable action, that a new house should be built
for her, and that it will tend to the saving of her life. And yet, after
the poor deluded creature has committed herself, he regards it as
perfectly just and honourable that the sapient administrator of the law
should inform her that his action in burning her will be favourable to
the commonwealth, that her new house will be of wood at the stake, and
that the destruction of her body will tend to the salvation of her soul!
In Würtzburg, as recently as 1749, a girl was burnt alive as a legally
condemned practitioner of witchcraft. Witches were burned in Scotland
till 1772, and in France in 1718. The severe acts passed in the reign
of James I., condemnatory of witchcraft, were not repealed till the 9th
George II. (1736).
There appears to have been three kinds of witches--the black, the white,
and the grey. The black had power only for evil, the white for good, and
the grey possessed authority both in matters good and evil. These seem
to have originally been merely personifications of the black, white, and
grey-coloured clouds of the Aryan elemental conflicts. Perhaps Shakspere
formed his principal group of three from the circumstance that the
destiny of his hero was influenced to some extent by one of each class.
Many altars, of the period of the Roman occupation, dedicated to the
_deæ matres_, or mother goddesses, have been found in various parts of
the north of England. It is believed they were introduced by Teutonic
auxiliaries. These deities have undergone much change in their
transference to more modern superstitions; but some of their attributes
may be detected without difficulty. Mr. Thomas Wright, in "Celt, Roman,
and Saxon," says:
"They are sometimes regarded as the three Fates--the _norni_ of the
north, the _wæleyrian_ of the Anglo-Saxons (the weird sisters,
transformed in Shakspere into three witches) disposing of the fates of
individuals, and dealing out life and death. But they are also found
distributing rewards and punishments, giving wealth and property, and
conferring fruitfulness. They are the three fairies who are often
introduced in the fairy legends of a later period, with these same
characteristics."
I have said that many of the "theatrical properties" of mediæval
witchcraft may be traced to an Aryan origin. The chief of these, the
cauldron, is familiar to all from Shakspere's admirable pictures in
Macbeth. I have previously referred to the fact that the phrase "brewing
a storm" is derived from this source. Cauldron stories are common
amongst ancient tribes. Guy of Warwick's "porridge pot" is of this
class. Kelly says, speaking of the "genii of the lightning, the beings
who brewed and lightned in the storm,"--
"If the Bhrigus or their associates were brewers they must needs have
had brewing utensils; at the very least they must have had a brewing
pot; and therefore we are justified in referring back the origin of the
witches' cauldron to the remotest antiquity. Perhaps the oldest example
of such a vessel of which there is any distinct record is the cauldron
which Thor carried off from the giant Hymir, to brew drink for the gods
at Oegir's harvest feast. It was five miles deep, and modern expounders
of the Eddic myths are of opinion that it was the vaulted sky."
It must be borne in mind that the "heavenly liquor," so much vaunted,
was neither more nor less than rain water, "brewed" by the action of the
storm deities and their assistants, whether dignified by the name of
soma, amrita, or nectar.
Robert Hunt, in his "Superstitions of Old Cornwall," describes the
_modus operandi_ of a celebrated witch at Fraddam, when engaged in
brewing a liquor of "wondrous potency," which clearly exhibits the
"elemental strife" that lies at the base of these superstitions. She
"collected with the utmost care all the deadly things she could obtain,
with which to brew her famous drink. In the darkest night, in the midst
of the wildest storms, amidst the flashings of lightnings and the
bellowings of the thunder, the witch was seen riding on her black
ram-cat over the moors and mountains in search of her poisons. At length
all was complete--the horse-drink was boiled, the hell-broth was brewed.
It was in March, about the time of the equinox; the night was dark, and
the King of Storms was abroad."
Olaus Magnus speaks of the storm-raising powers and propensities of the
Scandinavian witches as amongst their most remarkable attributes.
The sieve, amongst all nations of the Aryan stock, and even of some
others, has been regarded as a mythical implement of this class. Witches
used them as boats, notwithstanding their inability to float on water.
The supernatural, of course, easily overcame so trifling a physical
difficulty. The premier weird woman in Shakspere's group, referring to
the scoff she had received from a sailor's wife, says:--
Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master of the Tiger;
But _in a sieve I'll thither sail_,
And, like a rat without a tail,
I'll do, I'll do, I'll do.
It is not improbable that witch-sailing would be originally through the
air rather than on the water. The sieve, amongst the Aryans, was a cloud
emblem; the implement by means of which water was filtered into
rain-drops. The upper regions were more affected by witches than the
oceanic "waste of waters." In the opening scene in Macbeth, the
well-known trio, at the conclusion of their _séance_, "hover through the
fog and filthy air." They appear to have intimate relationship to the
clouds and the weather:--
_1st Witch_--When shall we three meet again,
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
_2nd Witch_--When the hurly-burly's done;
When the battle's lost and won.
Though unable to totally wreck the seaman's bark, the first witch
assures her companions that "it shall be tempest toss'd." When Banquo
asks Macbeth, "Whither are they vanished?" the latter answers:--
Into the air; and what seemed corporal melted
As breath into the wind.
In his letter to his wife, he likewise observes: "They made
themselves--air, into which they vanished." Hecate, in the third act,
after giving instructions to the weird host, says:--
I'm for the air; this night I'll spend
Unto a dismal and a fatal end.
Great business must be wrought ere noon:
Upon the corner of the moon
There hangs a _vapourous drop_ profound
I'll catch, ere it come to the ground;
And that distill'd by magic sleights,
Shall raise such artificial sprights,
As by the strength of their illusion,
Shall draw him on to his confusion.
And previous to departing, Hecate further says:--
Hark, I am called; my little spirit, see,
_Sits in a foggy cloud_, and stays for me.
Hecate, in the classical mythology, is the Pandemonium name for Diana.
This goddess was known by the latter appellation on earth, and by that
of Luna in heaven. Hence the absurdity of converting her into a burly
masculine basso in the so-called "Locke's music," introduced with very
questionable taste into Shakspere's sublime tragedy of Macbeth.
Proserpina, the wife of Pluto, is confounded with Hecate. She was
supposed to preside over sorceries and incantations.
Grimm, although he, in one of his tales, speaks of "angels drawing water
in a perforated vessel," seems not to have clearly interpreted the
mythic import of the sieve. He, however, expressly says that it "appears
to be a sacred archaic implement to which marvellous powers were
attributed." Liebrecht speaks of a tribe of water-spirits, or
cloud-gods, the Draci of Languedoc, with "hands perforated like
colanders." The Grecian Naiads, with their urns, and the various
river-gods, from old Tiber or Ilissus to Father Thames, are but more
artistic modifications of a similar thought.
There is a tradition, in the neighbourhood of Grimsargh, near Preston,
to the effect that during some drought, "in the olden time," a gigantic
dun cow appeared and gave an almost unlimited supply of milk, which
saved the inhabitants from death. An old woman--of the witch fraternity,
I suspect--however, with the view to obtain from the beast more than the
usual number of pails-full, milked the cow with a sieve, riddle, or
colander, which, of course, never became full, as the precious liquid
passed through the orifices into a vessel below. When full, the latter
was replaced by an empty one of a similar character. The tradition adds
that the cow either died of grief, on detecting the imposture, or from
sheer exhaustion, I forget which. A locality is still pointed out, named
"Cow Hill," where gossips aver that, in relatively recent times, the
huge bones of the said cow were disinterred. Over the porch of a house
on the way from Goosnargh to Longridge, I remember, not very long ago,
seeing a large bone, apparently a rib, placed in a conspicuous position.
This was stated to have been a portion of the skeleton so disinterred. I
fancied at the time that, in Polonius's phraseology, the bone in
question was suggestive of something "very like a whale." It is not
improbable, however, that at some early period, the remains of the huge
extinct ox, the _bos primigenius_, or even the _elephas primigenius_ or
fossil mammoth, may have been exhumed in the neighbourhood of Grimsargh.
Many bones and skulls of the former have been dredged from the bed of
the Ribble, and others taken from the fluvial drift excavated in the
valley when preparing for the foundations of the piers of the railway
bridges in the neighbourhood of Preston. Bones of two species of fossil
elephant, two species of rhinoceros, and other extinct pachyderms of
huge dimensions, have recently been found in connection with early flint
implements, indicative of the presence of man, in the fresh water gravel
belonging to what Lyell terms the post-pliocene period of the earth's
history, both in France and in several parts of England. Some such
discovery, grafted upon the ancient Aryan tradition respecting the
heavenly cows, or rain-giving clouds, opportunely rescuing the parched
vegetation from premature decay, might very easily eventuate in such a
tradition as the one current in Grimsargh at the present day.
Some of the deeds of the Saxon giant, the celebrated Guy of Warwick,
appear to enshrine elements of myths of a similar character. In the
"Huddersford Wiccamical Chaplet," we read:--
By gallant Guy of Warwick slain
Was Colbrand, that gigantic Dane.
Nor could this desp'rate champion daunt
A dun cow bigger than elephaunt:
But he, to prove his courage sterling,
His whinyard in her blood embrued.
He cut from her enormous side a sirloin,
And in his porridge-pot her brisket stew'd,
Then butcher'd a wild boar, and eat him barbicu'd.[23]
We have here the cow, or rain cloud, the boar, typical of the lightning,
and the human giant or warrior substitute for Indra or Odin, in the
Aryan and Teutonic mythologies.
The ribs of the gigantic dun cow, said to have been slain by the
redoubtable Guy, are still preserved at Warwick. A similar rib is to be
seen in the church of St. Mary Redcliffe, at Bristol, and another at
Chesterfield. At an inn in Lincolnshire, a huge scapula is exhibited as
a relic of the famous dun cow. The tradition at Bristol asserts that, at
some former period, the said bovine monster supplied the whole of the
city with milk. This coincides with the Grimsargh tradition. One Warwick
legend too asserts that the cow had been driven mad by the overmilking
of a witch. Another says that the cow was slain by Guy during a season
of great scarcity, and that the consumption of its flesh saved the
inhabitants from perishing of famine. The large rib in the Foljambe
Chapel, Warwick, is said to measure seven feet four inches in length,
and from twelve to thirteen inches in circumference. Frank Buckland, in
his "Curiosities of Natural History," says, "the ribs of the dun cow at
Warwick and the gigantic rib at St. Mary Redcliffe Church, Bristol, are
the bones of whales."
Tom Brown ("Amusements for the Meridian of London," 1700) mentions a
remarkable superstitious reverence for the milk of a red cow. Referring
to the Green Walk, St. James's Park, London, he says: "There were a
cluster of senators talking of state affairs, and the price of corn and
cattle, and were disturbed with the noisy Milk folk crying: 'A can of
Milk, ladies; a can of _Red_ Cow's Milk, sirs?' This appears to be a
remnant of the Aryan reverence for the heavenly fire or the lightning,
which they believed to be typified in the _red_ breast of the robin, the
red mutch of the woodpecker, and the red colour of other
'fire-bringers.'"
In the Vedas, the dawn is symbolised by the goddess Ushas, by
philologists regarded as the prototype of the Greek Eôs, and the Latin
Aurora. The ruddy light on the eastern horizon which preceded the
sunrise, was regarded as a herd of red cows attendant upon her. In the
Vedic hymns she is sometimes addressed as a quail. Kelly says, "Vartikâ,
the Sanscrit name of the bird, corresponds etymologically with ortyx,
its Greek name; and in the myths of Greece and Asia Minor the quail is a
symbol of light and heat."
The early Greek mythology has preserved some remains of this bovine
personification of the ruddy dawn clouds. Mr. Gladstone, in "Juventus
Mundi," says, "Although animal worship has played so considerable a part
in the religions of the East, the traces of it in Homer are few, and,
with one exception, they are also faint. That exception is the
extraordinary sanctity attaching, in the Twelfth Odyssey, to the Oxen of
the Sun, which I have treated as belonging to the Phœnician system,
and as foreign to the Olympian religion." Notwithstanding this, the
evidence in favour of the Aryan origin of the myth seems indisputable.
Dr. Benisch, in one of his expositions of "Maimonides and Kimchito" to
members of the Society of Hebrew Literature, on the 30th of March, 1871,
stated that he was engaged in a comparison of the Semitic and Aryan
tongues, with a view to establish many more points of contact than are
usually admitted to exist between these two families of speech.
Red cow's milk is an important element in a recipe for the cure of
consumption in Dr. Sampson Jones's "Medicine Boke," published in the
latter portion of the seventeenth century. _Red_ is especially mentioned
as the colour of the heifer set apart for sacrifice for the purification
of sin in Numbers, chapter 19; and _scarlet_ is specified as the colour
of one of the articles "cast into the midst of the burning of the
heifer." Thousands of persons yet believe that there is more warmth in
_red_ flannel than in either black, white, blue, or yellow.
On some public-house signs it is not uncommon to refer to the liquor
sold within as the "dun cow's milk." On one, between York and Durham, we
read the following:--
Oh, come you from the east,
Oh, come you from the west,
If ye will taste the Dun Cow's milk,
Y'll say it is the best.
The Durham legend of St. Cuthbert's dun cow is well known in the North
of England. The eccentric saint would not permit a cow to approach his
sacred residence at Lindisfarne. He excused himself for this strange
freak by averring that "where there is a cow there must be a woman, and
where there is a woman there must be mischief." Has not the Scotchman's
"mountain dew" some figurative relationship to the Aryan heavenly soma?
A belief in the influence of witches on the milk and butter yielding
habits of cows is yet very widely entertained. In his "Ancient and
Modern Manners of the Irish," Camden says: "If a cow becomes dry a witch
is applied to, who, inspiring her with a fondness for some other calf,
makes her yield her milk." He further observes that they slaughter all
hares found amongst their cattle on May-day, from a belief that they are
witches, who, having designs on their butter, have assumed this form the
better to effect their purpose. Other authorities speak of the general
belief in witches sucking the dugs of cows in the form of hares. A
writer in the _Athenæum_, as recently as 1846, refers to a certain
Scotch witch, who, he says, "has been seen a hundred times milking the
cows in the shape of a hare." A Scotch witch, recently deceased, named
Margery Scott, firmly believed that she had been frequently transmuted
into a hare and hunted by dogs.
Mr. Robert Hunt, in his "Drolls, Superstitions, and Traditions of Old
Cornwall," relates a very amusing story about "the witch of Treva."
Being without food, the husband of the old crone, who doubted her
pretended supernatural power, asked, as a proof to which he would yield,
that she would walk to St. Ives and back, a distance of five miles, and
procure some substantial human victuals. This she undertook to effect in
the space of half-an-hour. The man kept his eye on her for some time,
after she started on her strange errand, "and at the bottom of the hill
he saw his wife quietly place herself on the ground and disappear. In
her place _a fine hare_ ran on at its full speed." He further adds that
the woman returned within the prescribed time, and brought with her
"good flesh and taties, all ready for aiting!" When the said crone was
carried to her grave, she caused much amazement and even terror by her
mad pranks. "When they were about half way between the house and the
church, a hare started from the roadside and leaped over the coffin. The
terrified bearers let the corpse fall to the ground, and ran away.
Another lot of men took up the coffin and proceeded. They had not gone
far when puss was suddenly seen seated on the coffin, and again the
coffin was abandoned." After considerable labour and much tribulation,
we are informed the parson commenced "the ordinary burial service, and
there stood the hare, which, as soon as the clergyman began 'I am the
resurrection and the life,' uttered a diabolical howl, changed into a
black, unshapen creature, and disappeared!"
One of the Saxon forms of the goddess Freyja, according to Mannhardt,
has hares for trainbearers, and another walks at night in the fields of
Aargau, accompanied by a hare of silver-grey colour. The prevalent
superstition that a hare crossing the highway before any person
prognosticated ill-fortune, doubtless, has its origin in the witchcraft
association. Perhaps the story of the hare's nest, to which children are
sent in search of eggs at Easter, in Swabia and Hesse, according to
Meier, is the original of our "_mare's nest_," and has some reference to
the supposed supernatural attributes of the animal. Mannhardt says the
hare is reputed to be a fire and soul bringer; that many kinder-brünnen
(baby fountains) are so named from this circumstance; and that children
are supposed to be procured from the hare's form, as well as from the
parsley bed. We learn from Cæsar that the Ancient Britons held the hare
in reverence, and refused, therefore, to kill it for food.
Sir Jno. Lubbock, Lyell and others are of opinion that to the existence
of this feeling may be attributed the almost total absence of the bones
of the hare amongst the _débris_ of the ancient Swiss lake dwellings,
and the kjökkenmöddings or shell mounds of Denmark. The superstition yet
exists amongst the Laplanders of the present day. According to Burton,
the Somal Arabs reject it as the Hottentot men do, although their women
may partake of it as food, and M. Schlegel informs us that the Chinese
entertain a prejudice against the animal. Owing to a false impression
respecting the hare chewing its cud, the Jews pronounced it to be
unclean, and therefore rejected it as food. Boadicea, Queen of the
Iceni, when she had harangued her soldiers, opened the drapery around
her bosom and let go a hare, which she had concealed. The frightened
animal's antics, according to the then orthodox laws of divination,
indicated a successful issue to the pending expedition. The warrior
queen improved the occasion, led her enthusiastic troops against the
highly disciplined Roman legions, and vanquished them.
Kelly is satisfied of the Aryan origin of the animal's supernatural
reputation. He says,--"The hare is no doubt mythically connected with
the phenomena of the sky, but upon what natural grounds it has been
credited with such meteoric relations is a point not yet determined. I
incline to think it will be found to lie, in part at least, in the
habits which the animal displays about the time of the vernal equinox,
and which have given rise to the popular saying, 'as mad as a March
hare.' And perhaps this very restlessness in rough weather has been the
cause of the animal being regarded as a disguised witch, actively
engaged in 'brewing storms.'"
Cats, as well as hares, have the reputation of being weather wise; hence
their association with witches or "wise women." Hecate was supposed to
frequently assume the feline form. Shakspere's witches evidently held it
in reverence. One says, with great solemnity, on a momentous occasion,
"Thrice the brindled cat hath mew'd." A very strong belief yet obtains,
amongst persons better educated than the Lancashire peasantry, that cats
can see better in the dark than in the light, and that they possess nine
lives, or, in other words, that they require killing nine times, before
they remain permanently defunct. The author of "Choice Notes" says that
sailors have a firm belief that the presence of a dead hare on board
ship is certain to bring about bad weather. They likewise object to
having cats on board, and when one happens to be more frisky than usual,
like a "mad March hare," they have a saying that "the cat has got a gale
of wind in her tail." The same authority says that the throwing of a cat
overboard will infallibly bring on a storm. Mannhardt says, in Germany,
anyone who, during his lifetime, may have made cats his enemies, is
certain to be accompanied to the grave with wind and rain. A writer in
_Notes and Queries_ refers to a Dutch superstition of this class, in
which a rainy wedding day is supposed to result from the bride's
neglecting to feed her cat. Walter Kelly thinks "the question why the
chariot of the goddess Freyja was drawn by cats, and why Holda was
attended by maidens riding on cats, or themselves disguised in feline
form, is easily solved. Like the lynx, and the owl of Pallas Athenê, the
cat owes its celestial honours above all to its eyes, that gleam in the
dark like fire, but the belief in its supernatural powers may very
probably have been corroborated by the common observation that the cat,
like the stormy boar, is a weather wise animal."
This connection of the goddess Freyja (whence our Friday) with the
feline personification of stormy weather, may lay at the root of the
prejudice of sailors against commencing a voyage on that day. That this
superstition has yet strong hold on the nautical imagination, was
recently (1871), attested by the fact that, in consequence of the loss
of the ill-fated turret-ship, "Captain," which had left port on a
Friday, the "Agincourt," in order to satisfy the clamour of the crew,
did not leave Gibraltar on the presumedly fatal day. The departure of
the last-named war-ship on the Saturday, however, did not prevent her
striking on the "Pearl Rock" shortly afterwards. This fact might,
perhaps, stagger Jack's faith for a moment, but superstition is tougher
than actual experience in many of its phases, and Friday will still be a
black letter day in the sailor's calendar.
Hallam, in his "View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages,"
when discussing the probabilities of the guilt or innocence of the
Knights Templars, concerning which there still exists great diversity of
opinion, refers to the evidence adduced by M. von Hammer as the most
difficult of refutation. This authority contends that the adoption of
the infamous practices of the Gnostic superstition, which the Templars
are said to have imported from the East, is proved by certain obscene
sculptures found in secret places in edifices erected by the members of
this order in various parts of Europe. He says these scandalous figures
resemble those in the Gnostic churches. Hallam adds, however, "The
Stadinghi, heretics of the thirteenth century, are charged, in a bull of
Gregory IX., with exactly the same profaneness, even including the
_black cat_ [canis aut gattus niger] as the Templars of the next
century. This is said by Von Hammer to be confirmed by sculptures." May
not these coincidences have arisen from the common Aryan origin of the
pagan superstitions; and, in some instances, at least, in the figurative
meaning of the sculptures referred to? There was a famous "cat stone" in
Leyland old church, which was said to be the "devil in the form of a
cat," who "throttled" an individual that witnessed his removal, by
night, of the stones used by the builders of the church in the day-time.
The morals, as well as the manners, of the thirteenth century were very
different to those of the nineteenth; and yet I could point out, within
Lancashire and Cheshire, at least two instances, where obnoxious
sculpture of this class has been preserved from mediæval times to the
present day.
The notorious besom or broomstick is an instrument in the operations of
witchcraft common to all the Aryan nations. According to the "Asiatic
Register," for 1801, the Eastern, as well as the European witches,
"practice their spells by dancing at midnight, and the principal
instrument they use on such occasions is a broom." It is regarded as "a
type of the winds, and therefore an appropriate utensil in the hands of
the witches, who are wind makers and workers in that element."
Dr. Kuhn says, "In the Mark, an old broom is burned in order to raise a
wind. Sailors, after long toiling against a contrary wind, on meeting
another ship sailing in an opposite direction, will throw an old broom
before the vessel, which, they contend, will reverse the wind, and
consequently cause it to blow in their favour."
Burns, in his "Address to the Deil," makes his witches and warlocks
"skim the muirs and dizzy crags" on "ragweed nags," "wi' wicked speed."
Witches notoriously ride swiftly and easily through the air astride of
a broomstick.[24] Hence this superstition may be said to personify the
light scudding clouds that pass rapidly across the sky, and herald
squally weather. Dr. Kuhn regards the broom as the implement used by the
Aryan demi-deities in sweeping the sky; for that such was a portion of
the duty devolving upon its riders may be inferred from the still
existing Hartz tradition that witches must dance away all the snow upon
the Blocksberg, on the first of May.
The hanging out of a broom when a man's wife is from home, to intimate
to the husband's unmarried friends that the usual matrimonial restraint
is temporarily suspended, and that bachelor fare and bachelor habits
will be the order of the day, for a time, is yet well known in
Lancashire. I am not aware how far it is practised or understood in
other parts of the country, neither have I been able to find a
satisfactory explanation of its origin. As the "Lancashire witches" of
the present day do "work their spells" upon their masculine friends,
though in a more pleasing form and agreeable manner than their haggard
and aged predecessors, it is not improbable that the emblem of power may
have accompanied the transmission of the once dreaded appellation.
Brooms, after being used in the performance of divers mythical
ceremonies, were hung up in houses, and regarded, like pieces of the
rowan or mountain ash-tree, as powerful charms against the entrance of
evil doers. Perhaps the "bachelor husband" of by-gone times removed the
broom to the outside of the house with the view to destroy its power
over the interior, as well as to inform his roystering friends that the
coast was clear, and that there existed no impediment to unlimited
jollification.[25] Dr. Kuhn says in several parts of Westphalia, at
Shrovetide, cows' horns are decorated with white besoms with white
handles. After the house has been swept by them, they are hung, as a
kind of talisman, over or near the door of the cow-house. Have these
white besoms any relationship to those ornamental ones formerly much
hawked in England by German peasant girls, who likewise sung in the
streets the once popular song, "Buy a broom?"
Gaule says there were "eight classes of witches distinguished by their
operations: first, the diviner, gipsy or fortune telling witch; second,
the astrologian, star-gazing, planetary, prognosticating witch; third,
the chanting, canting, or calculating witch, who works by signs or
numbers; fourth, the venefick, or poisonous witch; fifth, the exorcist,
or conjuring witch; sixth, the gastromantick witch; seventh, the
magical, speculative, sciential, or arted witch; eighth, the
necromancer."
Many of the practices of the modern gipsies seem to have much in common
with the older witchcraft. Fortune telling, divination, &c., appear to
be their chief professional avocations at the present time,
notwithstanding the magisterial rigour to which such imposture is
subjected. Much learned discussion has been evoked concerning the origin
of this singular people. They appear to have been first generally
noticed in Europe about the beginning of the fifteenth century. Some are
said, however, to have arrived in Switzerland somewhat earlier. They
were styled gipsies because they were believed to have wandered into
Europe from Egypt. Their language, and their superstitions, however,
show their true origin to have been Indian. Some writers contend that
they left that country at the time of the celebrated Timour's invasion,
early in the fifteenth century, and that their first resting place being
in the country called Zinganen, near the mouth of the Indus, probably
explains why in some countries they are called Zingari. Their next
resting place being Egypt most probably gave rise to their English
appellation. On the whole it seems not improbable that they spring from
the pariahs or lowest caste of Hindoos, now named Suders. The glass
globe or egg-shaped instrument, in which they profess to detect
supernatural revelations, appears to belong either to the sun image or
thunderbolt type of the Aryan mythology. Some of their conjuring,
juggling, and other feats of skill are suggestive of a similar
paternity. But the identity of the languages, in several essentials,
notwithstanding much corruption of the gipsy dialects, in consequence of
their admixture with those of other nations, is perhaps the most
conclusive proof of the Hindoo origin of these Zingari tribes.
The superstitious belief in the supernatural yet exists in Lancashire,
as well as in other counties of England, to a much greater extent than
highly educated people are apt to imagine. Gipsies ply their trade with
profit, and "wise women" and witches are by no means extinct. The county
of Somerset has recently furnished two remarkable illustrations of this.
The following appeared in the public press in June, 1871:--
"LINGERING SUPERSTITION.--At Wincanton, in Somersetshire, the
magistrates have had before them a charge arising out of the belief in
witchcraft which still prevails in that county. Ann Green accused a
labourer named William Higham of assaulting her. It appeared that the
defendant had long laboured under the delusion that he was 'overlooked'
by the complainant, and in order to break the spell he stabbed her
twice. The sleeves of the garments which were worn by the complainant
were produced in court, saturated with blood. The prisoner gravely
informed the Bench that he did it to destroy Mrs. Green's power over
him, but that he had not yet found any relief. The prisoner's mother
said she had not been able to rest for a fortnight past, as he was
constantly saying that Mrs. Green was 'overlooking' him, and that it
would kill him. He was ordered to find sureties or to be imprisoned for
three weeks."
The following "went the round of the papers" in July, 1870:--
"A strange case of superstition has been brought before the magistrates
of Wincanton, in Somerset. A young man named Lamb, fancying that a
certain young woman, Mary Crees, had bewitched him, rushed upon her,
seized her by the throat, and pulling out his penknife, attempted to
wound her. In reply to the Bench he said, 'She overlooks I; that's as
true as the hat's in my hand, and I wanted to draw blood to stop her.'
Two years ago he fell down in a fit on seeing her."
The _Manchester Examiner and Times_, of June 24th, 1871, contained the
following "short leader":--
"The metropolitan police have been engaged in a laudable attempt at
putting down fortune-telling. They made a 'raid' the other evening upon
several professors of the cabalistic art, and in one house found thirty
or forty young women waiting to have their 'fortunes told.' Perhaps the
most important of the gentlemen arrested on the occasion was a Mr.
George Shepherd, who, however, appeared in handbills printed for
extensive circulation under the name of 'Professor Cicero, of Rome,
Palestine, Jerusalem, and the Holy Land.' His rooms were fitted up with
all the symbols of his craft, in every branch of which he professed to
be an adept. The fees varied from sixpence to half-a-crown, according
to the nature of the service rendered, and a list was found in the place
showing the number of visitors--that is, customers--in so many
consecutive weeks. These figures, which have a certain interest as
throwing light upon the prevalence of popular credulity, ran as follow:
662, 250, 502, 380, 512, 513, 430, 89, 466. In Easter-week, including
Good Friday, there were only 217 callers, proving that the attractions
of a holiday outweigh even those of a visit to a modern temple of
divination. But the subject has a serious as well as a romantic side.
The four 'Professors' were all 'found guilty,' and committed to gaol for
three calendar months with hard labour. Probably no effectual stop will
be put to a very silly practice until the dupes are convicted as well as
the prime agents. It is perfectly well known that fortune-telling is
illegal, and a penalty should attach to all who figure in the
transaction, whether as seconds or principals."
The following appeared in a Manchester paper in 1865:--
"SUPERSTITION IN SALFORD.--At the Salford Town Hall, yesterday, John
Rhodes, apparently a respectable man, living at 226, Regent Road, was
charged, under the Vagrancy Act, with telling fortunes. A girl, named
Ellen Cooper, stated that she saw the prisoner at his house, on Tuesday.
After she had told him the date of her nativity, the prisoner cast her
horoscope, and told her what she might expect would be her future
fortune. For this she paid a shilling, which she understood was his
regular charge. During the time the girl was there, several other
females called on a similar errand, but did not stay. From information
given by the girl, Cooper, two detective officers called at the
prisoner's house on Thursday, where they found him with a female
standing beside him, whose future destiny he was busy calculating, aided
by an astrological work and a large slate. On the latter were what was
apparently intended as a representation of the movements of the heavenly
bodies. In the prisoner's house the officers found a large number of
books, including 'An Introduction to Astrology,' by William Lilly;
'Raphael's Prophetic Alphabet'; 'Occult Philosophy,' by Cornelius
Agrippa (in manuscript); a work on horary astrology, &c. Besides these,
six large volumes were seized, which were filled with the names and the
dates of the nativities of his clients, neatly surrounded, in each case,
with hieroglyphics. In addition to these were manuscripts with forms of
invocations to spirits to do the will and bidding of the invoker; also
love spells, and forms for invoking evil destinies. The text of one of
these was as follows:--'I adjure and command you, ye strong, mighty, and
powerful spirits, who are rulers of this day and hour, that ye obey me
in this my cause by placing my husband in his former situation under the
Trent Brewery Company, and I adjure you to banish all his enemies out of
his way and to make them to crouch in humiliation unto him and
acknowledge all the wrongs they have done unto him, and I bind you by
the name of Almighty God, and by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by His
precious blood, and on pain of everlasting damnation, that you labour
for him and complete and accomplish the whole of this my will and
desire, and not depart till the whole of this my will and desire be
fulfilled, and when you have accomplished the whole of these my commands
you shall be released from all these bonds and demands, and this I
guarantee through the blood of the Redeemer and on pain of my future
happiness. Let angels praise the Lord. Amen.' Amongst the papers found
there was sufficient evidence that, amongst the prisoner's many hundreds
of clients, there were those who moved in a sphere of life not peculiar
to the poorer classes. Mr. Roberts defended the prisoner. Mr. Trafford
said the practice was so mischievous that he could not let the prisoner
off without some punishment; he must therefore send him to prison for
seven days."
From the following, which appeared in the _New Zealand Herald_ in 1865,
it appears the belief in witchcraft produces serious results amongst the
Maories:--
"From Kawhia we hear of wars and rumours of wars, instigated probably by
the desire of the semi-friendly natives there to be put on rations and
receive pay. Hone Wetere (John Wesley) late native magistrate there, who
was deposed from his office four years ago for the abduction of a native
woman, the wife of a sawyer named Wright, has been adding to the
interest of native proceedings at the present time by the commission of
a most brutal murder. It seems that this late learned interpreter of the
law had, with a zeal worthy of Matthew Hopkins, condemned an old Maori
woman of 'makutu,' or witchcraft, and punished her by his own hands,
cutting off her head on the spot. This may appear to Auckland
philo-Maories as something startling and, perhaps, out of the way, but
to us here it is no extraordinary event. It is only a few years since
two natives in our district murdered a man and woman for the same
reason, and cooked a copper Maori over their grave. Much about the same
time, at Kawhia, a native and his wife pulled the heart out of their
living child under the impression that the poor infant was bewitched."
M. Paul B. Du Chaillu, in his "Journey to Ashango-land," relates many
striking instances of the popular belief in witchcraft which exists in
Western Equatorial Africa. He says:--
"As usual I heard a harrowing tale of witchcraft in the course of the
day. Few weeks pass away in these unhappy villages without something of
this kind happening. A poor fellow was singing a mournful song, seated
on the ground in the village street; and on enquiring the cause of his
grief I was told that the chief of the village near his having died, and
the magic doctor having declared that five persons had bewitched him,
the mother, sister, and brother of the poor mourner had just been
ruthlessly massacred by the excited people, and his own house and
plantation burnt and laid waste." He describes at length the ceremonies
attending the drinking of the mboundou, or the ordeal by poison, which
he witnessed at Mayolo. If the poison kills the suspected person he is
pronounced guilty; but if, as in three instances he witnessed, the
drinker should, after severe spasms, vomit the deadly potion, he
generally recovers, and is declared innocent of the charge of witchcraft
preferred against him.
From these instances, and others which might be adduced, it is clear
that this superstition is a very ancient and a very universal one, in
some form, and therefore, not necessarily of exclusively Aryan origin;
but that it may result from similar conditions to which humanity is, or
has been, subjected in various parts of the globe. It is not impossible,
however, that the African instances referred to may have some very
remote connection with the Aryan superstitions of a similar character,
for M. Du Chaillu expressly declares his belief that the ancestors of
the present inhabitants of Western Equatorial Africa migrated from the
east. He says:--"The migration of the tribes, as I have already
observed, seems to have followed the same laws as migrations among
ourselves; I did not meet with a single tribe or clan who said they came
from the west; they all pointed to the east as the place they came
from."
Mr. T. T. Wilkinson gives the following very graphic description of a
Burnley witch, but recently deceased:--
"Most nations of all ages have been accustomed to deck the graves of
their dead with appropriate flowers, much as we do at present. The last
words of the dying have, from the earliest times, been considered of
prophetic import; and, according to Theocritus, some one of those
present have endeavoured to receive into his mouth the last breath of a
dying parent or friend, '_as fancying the soul to pass out with it and
enter into their own bodies_.' Few would expect to find this singular
custom still existing in Lancashire, and yet such is the fact.
Witchcraft can boast her votaries in this county even up to the present
date, and she numbers this practice amongst her rites and ceremonies.
Not many years ago, there resided in the neighbourhood of Burnley, a
female whose malevolent practices were supposed to render themselves
manifest by the injuries she inflicted on her neighbours' cattle; and
many a lucky-stone, many a stout horseshoe and rusty sickle, may now be
found behind the doors or hung from the beams of the cow-houses and
stables belonging to the farmers in that locality, which date their
suspension from the time when this good old lady held the country side
in awe. Not one of her neighbours ever dared to offend her openly; and
if she at any time preferred a request it was granted at all hazards,
regardless of inconvenience and expense. If in some thoughtless moment
any one spoke slightingly either of her or her powers, a corresponding
penalty was threatened as soon as it reached her ears, and the loss of
cattle, personal health, or a general 'run of bad luck' soon led the
offending party to think seriously of making peace with his powerful
tormentor. As time wore on she herself sickened and died; but before she
could 'shuffle off this mortal coil,' she must needs _transfer her
familiar spirit_ to some trusty successor. An intimate acquaintance from
a neighbouring township was consequently sent for in all haste, and on
her arrival was immediately closeted with her dying friend. What passed
between them has never fully transpired, but it is confidently affirmed
that at the close of the interview this associate _received the witch's
last breath into her mouth, and with it the familiar spirit_. The
dreaded woman thus ceased to exist, but her powers for good or evil were
transferred to her companion; and on passing along the road from Burnley
to Blackburn we can point out a farm-house at no great distance, with
whose thrifty matron no neighbouring farmer will yet dare to quarrel."
This superstition respecting the reception of the spirit of the dying by
inhaling the last breath, must have existed from a very remote
antiquity. Psychê, the Greek personification of the soul, as a word,
originally, simply meant breath. From the butterfly being the emblem of
Psychê, the word became the name of the beautiful insect likewise. The
Zulus call a man's shadow his soul, which would seem to be analogous to
our churchyard ghost and the _umbra_ of the Romans. The Zulus hold that
a dead body can cast no shadow, because that appurtenance departed from
it at the close of life.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] A pig roasted whole, seasoned with spices, and basted with wine,
was said to be "barbecued." The term is believed to have been imported
from the West Indies.
[24] The Pendle witches, on leaving Malkin tower, mounted their familiar
spirits, in the form of horses, and quickly vanished.
[25] Since the above was written, I have noticed, in Larwood and
Hotten's "History of Signboards," a representation of a public-house
"bush" copied from a MS. of the fourteenth century. The implement, in
this instance, is evidently a common broom or besom. Hence it is not at
all improbable that the Lancashire Benedicts but hang out the earliest
known tavern or inn sign. The authors of the work referred to say: "The
bush certainly must be counted amongst the most ancient and popular of
signs. Traces of its use are not only found amongst Roman and other old
world remains, but during the middle ages we have evidence of its
display." Kelly says "the broom must originally have been supposed, like
the sieve, to be used for some purpose or other in the economy of the
upper regions." Perhaps in the brewing of the "heavenly soma," and hence
its appropriateness as an emblem of "good liquor" of a terrestrial
character.
CHAPTER VII.
FAIRIES AND BOGGARTS.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your _philosophy_!
_Shakspere._
In my youthful imagination, some forty odd years ago, "boggarts,"
ghosts, or spirits of one kind or another, in Lancashire, appeared, to
use Falstaff's phrase, to be "as plentiful as blackberries." "Boggart,"
by some writers is regarded as the Lancashire cognomen for "Puck" or
"Robin Goodfellow." Certainly there are, or were, many boggarts whose
mischievous propensities and rude practical jokings remind us very
forcibly of the eccentric and erratic goblin page to the fairy king, so
admirably delineated by Shakspere in his "Midsummer Night's Dream":--
_Fairy_--Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite,
Called Robin Goodfellow; are you not he
That fright the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometimes make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night wanderers, laughing at their harm;
Those that hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck:
Are not you he?
_Puck_--Thou speakest aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night,
I jest to Oberon and make him smile,
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal;
And sometimes lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab;
And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometimes for three-foot stool mistaketh me.
Ben Jonson makes Robin Goodfellow say--
"Sometimes I meet them like a man,
Sometimes an ox, sometimes a hound,
And to a horse I turn me can,
To trip and trot about them round.
But if to ride,
My back they stride,
More swift than wind away I go:
O'er edge and lands,
Through pools and ponds,
I whirry laughing, Ho! ho! ho!"
There is some diversity and variety of colouring in the various fairy
types presented in different localities, but they have sufficient in
common to justify perfect faith in their near relationship, whether they
are styled Peris, as in Persia, Pixies, as in Devonshire, Ginns, as in
Arabia, Gnomes or Elves, amongst the Teutons, or "the Leprachaun" or
"Good people," of the sister Island. The finest modern artistic
realisation of the fairy kingdom is unquestionably to be found in
Shakspere's "Midsummer Night's Dream." How strangely, yet how
beautifully and consistently, has he there woven together his ethereal
conceptions with the grosser, as well as with the more elevated aspect
of our common humanity! How exquisite is the poetry in which the visions
of his imaginations are embodied! The fairy-King Oberon thus describes
his queen, Titania's, bower:--
I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,
Where oxslips and the nodding violet grows;
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine;
There sleeps Titania, some time of the night,
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight,
And there the snake throws her enamelled skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.
And again at the close of the play, Puck says--
Now it is the time of night,
That the graves all gaping wide,
Every one lets forth his sprite
In the church-way paths to glide:
And we fairies that do run
By the triple Hecat's team,
From the presence of the sun,
Following darkness like a dream,
Now are frolic.
Witches, fairies, ghosts, and boggarts seem to have become intimately
amalgamated in the _repertoire_ of modern superstition. Doubtless many
of them have a common origin, and are but separate developments,
mythical or artistic, of the universal tendency of primitive peoples to
personify, or render more tangible to the ruder sense, their conceptions
of those forces of nature, the laws governing which are, to them, hidden
in the delusive gloom of ignorance. "Feeorin" is a general term for all
things of this character that create fear in the otherwise intrepid
heart of a "Lancashire lad." Mr. Edwin Waugh, whose songs in the dialect
are not more remarkable for their quaint humour and homely pathos than
for their idiomatic truthfulness, aptly illustrates the mingling of the
various supernatural terrors to which I have referred, in his admirable
ballad, "What ails thee, my son Robin." The mother, alarmed at the lad's
melancholy mood, says, inquiringly:--
Neaw, arto fairy-stricken;
Or arto gradely ill?
Or hasto bin wi' th' witches
I'th cloof, at deep o'th neet?
Robin replies--
'Tisn't lung o'th feeorin'
That han to do wi' th' dule;
There's nought at thus could daunt mo,
I'th cloof, by neet nor day;
It's yon blue een o' Mary's:
They taen my life away.
Queen Mab appears to have been equally as mischievous an elf as Puck.
Shakspere says,--
This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the _elf-locks_ in foul sluttish hairs,
Which, once entangled, much misfortune bodes.
Mab, however, like Puck, seems to have had a large element of humour in
her composition, which is delineated with marvellous grace and
brilliancy in the celebrated speech of Mercutio, in "Romeo and Juliet."
Boggarts, in some cases, appear to have been anything but unwelcome
guests. King James I., in his "Dæmonologie," describes the spirit called
a "brownie" as something that "appeared like a rough man, and haunted
divers houses without doing any evile, but doing, as it were, necessarie
turnes up and downe the house; yet some were so blinded as to beleeve
that their house was all the sonsier, as they called it, that such
spirits resorted there."
Mr. T. T. Wilkinson relates some good stories of Lancashire goblins, who
are believed to have determined the sites of Rochdale, Burnley,
Samlesbury, and some other churches, by removing the stones and
scaffolding of the builders in the night time. There is likewise a
legend of this class in connection with the church at Winwich, near
Warrington, and another at Whaley-bridge, in Derbyshire. Indeed, these
goblin church builders are very common throughout the land. In some
cases the sprite assumes the form of the arch-fiend himself. Referring
to the famous boggart of Syke Lumb farm, near Blackburn, Mr. Wilkinson
says:--
"When in a good humour, this noted goblin will milk the cows, pull the
hay, fodder the cattle, harness the horses, load the carts, and stack
the crops. When irritated by the utterance of some unguarded expression
or marked disrespect, either from the farmer or his servants, the cream
mugs are then smashed to atoms; no butter can be obtained by churning;
the horses and other cattle are turned loose, or driven into the woods;
two cows will sometimes be found fastened in the same stall; no hay can
be pulled from the mow; and all the while the wicked imp sits grinning
with delight upon one of the cross beams in the barn. At other times the
horses are unable to draw the empty carts across the farm yard; if
loaded they are upset; whilst the cattle tremble with fear, without any
visible cause. Nor do the inmates of the house experience any better or
gentler usage. During the night the clothes are said to be violently
torn from off the beds of the offending parties, whilst, by invisible
hands, they themselves are dragged down the stone stairs by the legs,
one step at a time, after a more uncomfortable manner than we need
describe."
Mr. Wilkinson relates an anecdote of a near relation of his own, who,
although, "not more imbued with superstition than the majority," firmly
believed that he had once seen "a real dwarf or fairy, without the use
of any incantation. He had been amusing himself one summer evening on
the top of Mellor Moor, near Blackburn, close to the remains of the
Roman encampment, when his attention was arrested by the appearance of a
dwarf-like man, attired in full hunting costume, with top boots and
spurs, a green jacket, red hairy cap, and a thick hunting whip in his
hand. He ran briskly along the moor for a considerable distance, when,
leaping over a low stone wall, he darted down a steep declivity, and was
soon lost to sight."
One of the best descriptions of a Lancashire boggart or bargaist[26]
that I have met with, was written by the late Crofton Croker, and
published in Roby's "Traditions of Lancashire." I may just remark, _en
passant_, that the word "traditions," as applied to nearly the whole of
these stories, is a sad misnomer. The tales might, perhaps with
propriety, be termed _nouvelletes_, or little novels; but when put forth
as "traditions," in the true acceptation of the term, they are worse
than useless, for they are calculated equally to mislead both the
antiquary and the collector of "folk lore." Croker makes the scene of
his story what was once a retired and densely wooded dell, or deep
valley, in the township of Blackley, near Manchester, called to this
day, "Boggart Ho' Clough." This boggart sadly pestered a worthy farmer,
named George Cheetham, by "scaring his maids, worrying his men, and
frightening the poor children out of their senses, so that, at last, not
even a mouse durst shew himself indoors at the farm, as he valued his
whiskers, after the clock had struck twelve." This same boggart,
however, had some jolly genial qualities. His voice, when he joined the
household laughter, on merry tales being told and practical jokes
indulged in, around the hearth at Christmastide, is described as "small
and shrill," and as easily "heard above the rest, _like a baby's penny
trumpet_." He began to regard himself at last as a "privileged inmate"
and conducted himself in the most extraordinary manner, snatching the
children's bread and butter out of their hands, and interfering with
their porridge, milk, and other food. His "invisible hand" knocked the
furniture about in the most approved modern style of goblin or spiritual
manifestation. Yet, this mischievous propensity did not prevent him from
occasionally performing some kindly acts, such as churning the cream and
scouring the pans and kettles! Truly, he was a "tricksty sprite." Croker
refers to one circumstance which he regards as "remarkable," and which
will remind modern readers very distinctly of a "spiritual" exhibition
which recently attracted much public attention. He says--"the stairs
ascended from the kitchen; a partition of boards covered the ends of the
steps, and formed a _closet_ beneath the staircase. From one of the
boards of this partition a large round knot was accidently displaced,
and one day the youngest of the children, while playing with the
shoe-horn, stuck it into this knot-hole. Whether or not the aperture had
been formed by the boggart as a peep-hole to watch the motions of the
family, I cannot pretend to say. Some thought it was, for it was called
the boggart's peep-hole; but others said that they had remembered it
before the shrill laugh of the boggart was heard in the house. However
this may have been, it is certain that the horn was ejected with
surprising precision at the head of whoever put it there; and either in
mirth or in anger the horn was darted forth with great velocity, and
struck the poor child over the ear." To say the least of it, it is
rather remarkable that the mere substitution of the words _structure_ or
_cabinet_ for _closet_, and _trumpet_ for _horn_, to say nothing of the
peculiar quality of the boggart's voice, should make the whole so
eloquently suggestive of the doings of a certain "Mr. Ferguson" and his
friends the Davenport Brothers, and other "spiritual manifestations"
recently so much in vogue. All this supernatural mountebanking was, it
appears, taken in good part by Mr. Cheetham's family, and when the
children or neighbours wished for a little excitement they easily found
it in "laking," that is, playing, with this eccentric and pugnacious
disembodied spirit.[27]
But Mr. Boggart eventually returned to his old avocations, and midnight
noises again disturbed the repose of the inmates of the haunted house.
Pewter pots and earthen dishes were dashed to the floor, and yet, in the
morning they were found perfectly uninjured, and in their usual places.
To such a pitch at last did matters reach, that George Cheetham and his
family were observed one day by neighbour John Marshall sullenly
following a cart that contained their household goods and chattels. What
transpired is best told in Mr. Croker's own words:--
"'Well, Georgy, and soa you're leaving th'owd house at last,' said
Marshall.
"'Heigh, Johnny, my lad, I'm in a manner forced to it, thou sees,'
replied the other, 'for that wearyfu' boggart torments us soa, we can
neither rest neet nor day for't. It seems loike to have a malice agains
t' young uns, an' it ommost kills my poor dame at thoughts on't, and
soa, thou sees, we're forced to flit like.'
"He had got thus far in his complaint when, behold, a shrill voice, from
a deep upright _churn_, the topmost utensil on the cart, called out,
'Ay, ay, neighbour, we're flitting, you see.'
"'Od rot thee,' exclaimed George, 'If I'd known thou'd been flitting
too, I wadn't ha' stirred a peg. Nay, nay, it's no use, Mally,' he
continued, turning to his wife, 'we may as weel turn back again to
th'owd house, as be tormented in another not so convenient.'"
In Florence of Worcester's Chronicle, under the date, 1138, a singular
story is related, which explains "how the devil, in the shape of a black
dwarf, was made a monk." From some of the details, it appears to embody,
in no slight degree, the popular superstition regarding the mischievous
Puck. On three distinct occasions the cellars of a monastery at Prum, in
the arch-diocese of Treves, had been invaded, bungs wantonly withdrawn
from casks, and good wine spilled on the floor. The abbot, in despair,
at length ordered the bungholes to be "anointed round with chrism." On
the following morning "a wonderfully dwarfish black boy" was found
"clinging by the hands to one of the bungs." He was released, dressed in
a monk's habit, and made to associate with the other boys. He, however,
never uttered a word, either in public or private, or tasted food of any
kind. A neighbouring abbot pronounced him to be a devil lurking in human
form; and, the chronicle informs us, "while they were in the act of
stripping off his monastic dress, he vanished from their hands like
smoke."
This sort of superstition was devotedly respected by even such men as
Martin Luther. He tells us of a demon who officiated as _famulus_ in a
monastery. He was a good hand at an earthly bargain too, and insisted on
having full measure for his money, when employed to fetch beer for the
monks.
I remember in my youth hearing a story of a headless boggart that
haunted Preston streets and neighbouring lanes. Its presence was often
accompanied by the rattling of chains. I forget now what was its special
mission. It frequently changed its form, however, but whether it
appeared as a woman or a black dog, it was always headless. The story
went that this boggart or ghost was at length "laid" by some magical or
religious ceremony in Walton Church yard. I have often thought that the
story told by Weaver, a Preston antiquary, in his "Funerall Monuments,"
printed in 1631, and which I have transcribed at page 149 of the
"History of Preston and its Environs," may have had some remote
connection with this tradition. He relates how Michael Kelly, the
celebrated Dr. Dee's companion, together with one Paul Wareing,
"invocated some of the infernal regiment, to know certain passages in
the life, as also what might bee knowne by the devils foresight, of the
manner and the time of the death of a noble young gentleman then in his
wardship." He further relates how, on the following evening they dug up
in Law (Walton) Church yard, the corpse of a man recently buried, when,
"by their incantations, they made him (or rather some evil spirit
through his organs) to speake, who delivered strange predictions
concerning the said gentleman." From the whole of this narration, it is
evident that Weaver honestly believed some special sorcery or
_diablerie_ had been perpetrated in the localities referred to.
This belief that the devil made use of other organs than his own, in
giving expression to his thoughts or opinions was shared in by the
learned. Melanchthon tells us of an Italian girl who was "possessed"
with a devil, and who, although she knew no Latin, quoted Virgil
fluently (at least Satan did through her organ of speech), when
questioned by a Bolognese professor. This anecdote is rather
unpleasantly suggestive of certain recent clairvoyant exhibitions.
Amongst other youthful terrors to which I remember being subjected, one
had reference to a mythic monster styled "raw head and bloody bones."
This boggart appeared to partake of the cannibal nature of some of the
giants and ogres in our nursery tales, one of which, on the approach of
the redoubtable "Jack, the Giant-killer," called out to his wife, "I
smell fresh meat!" or according to the popular rhyme--
Fee, fo, fam, I smell the blood of an Englishman!
Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to salt and bread!
The said "raw head and bloody bones," I was seriously informed,
preferred to breakfast on the bodies of naughty children, nicely
roasted! I can likewise remember well being told that boggarts
especially loved to haunt and otherwise annoy those who refused to
_believe_ in their existence. After experience, I need scarcely say, has
demonstrated the contrary to be much nearer the truth.
Mr. Edwin Waugh, in his "Grave of Grislehurst Boggart," gives a vivid
picture of this species of superstition as it still exists in
Lancashire. The story is admirably told in a conversation between the
author, an old weaver and his dame, and is replete with characteristic
traits. It seems this boggart, although it was supposed to be "laid" in
the most orthodox manner, still troubled the neighbourhood. The old dame
declares--"It's a good while sin it were laid; an' there were a cock
buried wi' it, we a stoop (a stake) driven through it. It 're nooan
settled with a little, aw'll uphowd yo."
"'And do you really think,' said the author, 'that this place has been
haunted by a boggart?'
"'Has bin--be far!' replied the dame. 'It is neaw! Yodd'n soon find it
eawt, too, iv yo live't oppo th' spot. It's very mich iv it wouldn't may
yor yure fair ston of an end, othur with one marlock or another.
There's noan so mony folk oppo this country side at likes to go deawn
yon lone at after delit (daylight), aw con tell yo.'
"'But it's laid and buried,' replied the author, 'it surely doesn't
trouble you much now.'
"'Oh, well,' said the old woman, 'iv it doesn't, it doesn't; so there
needs no moor. Aw know some folk winnut believe sich things; there is
some at'll believe naught at o' iv it isn't fair druven into um, wilto,
shalto; but this is a different case, mind yo. Eh, never name it; thoose
at has it to dhyel wi knows what it is; but thoose at knows naught
abeawt sich like--whau, it's like summat an' nawt talkin' to 'um abeawt
it; so we'n e'en lap it up where it is.'"
This boggart, from its doings, appears to have been an exact counterpart
of George Cheetham's plague. On Mr. Waugh inquiring if the weaver never
thought of digging into the grave in order to satisfy his curiosity on
the matter, the old lady broke in with--"Naw; he'll delve noan theer,
nut iv aw know it.... Nor no mon elze dar lay a finger oppo that
greawnd. Joseph Fenton's a meeterly bowd chap, an' he's ruvven
everything up abeawt this country side, welly, but he dar not touch
Gerzlehus' Boggart for his skin! An' I howd his wit good, too, mind yo!"
The Grislehurst dame seems to have placed some emphasis on the fact,
when their ghost or boggart was "laid," that "there was a cock buried
wi' it." This ceremony resulted, doubtless, from a lingering remnant of
the ancient and almost universal superstition that the soul departeth
from the body in the form of a bird. This Dr. Kuhn regards as intimately
connected with the Aryan belief respecting birds being soul-bringers. I
am not aware, however, whether the barn-door fowl is included amongst
the numerous lightning birds, which Kelly describes as having "nestled
in the fire-bearing tree," of which the clouds formed the foliage, and
the sun, moon, and stars the fruit.
In Willsford's "Nature's Secrets" (1658), is, however, the following
passage, which shows the connection of the common fowl with stormy
weather:--
"The vigilant cock, the bird of Mars, the good housewife's clock and the
Switzer's alarum, if he crows in the day-time very much, or at
sun-setting, or when he is at roost at unusual hours, as at nine or ten,
expect some change of weather, and that suddenly, and that from fair to
foul, or the contrary; but when the hen crows, good men _expect a storm
within doors and without_. If the hen or chickens in the morning come
late from their roosts (as if they were constrained by hunger), it
presages much rainy weather."
The Romans used fowls in divination. Mohammed, too, is said to have
included amongst his domestic pets a white cock, which he regarded as
his friend, and considered that it protected him from the machinations
of witchcraft, of genii and devils, and of the evil eye.
Mr. T. T. Wilkinson relates a curious anecdote, which he had, a few
years ago, from a respectable gentleman, in the neighbourhood of
Burnley, about "killing a witch." His informant was one of the farmers
engaged in the mystical ceremony, the object of which was the
destruction of a wizard who had wrought sad havoc amongst his
neighbours' cattle. He says:--"They met at the house of one of their
number, whose cattle were then supposed to be under the influence of the
wizard; and, having procured a live cock chicken, they stuck him full of
pins and burnt him alive, whilst repeating some magical incantation....
The wind suddenly rose to a tempest, and threatened the destruction of
the house. Dreadful moanings, as of some one in intense agony, were
heard from without, whilst a sense of horror seized upon all within. At
the moment when the storm was at the wildest, the wizard knocked at the
door, and, in piteous tones, desired admittance. They had previously
been warned, by the 'wise man' they had consulted, that such would be
the case, and had been charged not to yield to their feelings of
humanity by allowing him to enter." The violent death of the cock, it
appears, was necessary _to raise the storm_. The sequel of the story
informs us that exposure to its violence killed the presumed wizard in
the course of a week.
There is a superstition in Cornwall that the crowing of a cock at
midnight indicates that the angel of death is passing over the house.
Mr. Hunt relates the following anecdote, from which it appears that
chanticleer is largely credited in that district with supernatural
attributes:--
"A farmer in Towednack having been robbed of some property of no great
value, was resolved, nevertheless, to employ a test which he had heard
the 'old people' resorted to for the purpose of catching a thief. He
invited all his neighbours into his cottage, and when they were
assembled, he placed a cock under the 'brandice' (an iron vessel
formerly much employed by the peasantry in baking, when this process was
carried out on the hearth, the fuel being furze and ferns). Every one
was directed to touch the brandice with his, or her third finger, and
say, 'In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, speak.' Every one
did as they were directed, and no sound came from beneath the brandice.
The last person was a woman, who occasionally laboured for the farmer
in his fields. She hung back, hoping to pass unobserved amidst the
crowd. But her very anxiety made her a suspected person. She was forced
forward, and most unwillingly she touched the brandice, when, before she
could utter the words prescribed, the cock crew. The woman fell faint on
the floor, and, when she recovered, she confessed herself to be the
thief, restored the stolen property, and became, it is said, 'a changed
character from that day.'"
Shakspere appears to have been fully aware of the prevalence of a
superstition which attributed to ghosts and wandering spirits a
wholesome dread of the sonorous tones of chanticleer's early morning
song. In the first scene in Hamlet, on the departure of the ghost,
Bernardo says:--
It was about to speak when the cock crew.
Horatio answers:--
And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard
The cock that is the trumpet of the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat,
Awake the god of day; and, at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine: and of the truth herein
This present object made probation.
To which Marcellus adds:--
It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes,
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad.
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.
And again, Puck, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, referring to the morning
star or early dawn, which awakeneth chanticleer, says:--
My fairy lord, this must be done with haste;
For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,
And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger;
At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all,
That in cross-ways and floods have burial,
Already to their wormy beds are gone;
For fear lest day should look their shames upon,
They wilfully themselves exile from light,
And must for aye consort with black-browed night.
Not so, however, with the fairies, for Oberon rejoins:--
But we are spirits of another sort:
I with the morning's love have oft made sport;
And, like a forester, the groves may tread,
Even till the eastern gate, all fiery red,
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,
Turns into yellow gold his salt-green streams.
The cock was one of the attendants or emblems of Æsculapius or
Asclêpius, the god of medicine of the Greek mythology, and this fowl was
commonly sacrificed to him. In addition to his knowledge in the art of
healing disease, he possessed the power of raising the dead to life. He
was believed to be the son of Apollo. According to Plato, the last words
of Socrates were, "Criton, we owe a cock to Asclêpius." This bird, as
well as the serpent, was one of his sacred emblems.
The Roman god Janus is regarded by many to be in some respects a Latin
form of the Greek Asclêpius. He opens the year and the daily morning,
and is the porter of heaven. One of his peculiar emblems was a cock, by
the means of whose matutinal song he was supposed to announce the
approach of the dawn.
The crowing of a cock of the colour of gold is to be the signal of the
dawn of _Ragnarock_, "the great day of arousing," according to
Scandinavian mythology. A black cock is likewise said to crow in the
_Niflheim_, or "land of gloom."
J. Bossewell, in "Workes of Armourie" (1597), says:--"The lyon dreadeth
the white cocke, because he breedeth a precious stone called
allectricium, like to the stone that bright Calcedonius, and for that
the cocke beareth such a stone, the lyon specially abhorreth him." The
stone referred to was said to be similar to a dark crystal, and about
the size of a bean.
A most astounding story affirming the supernatural attributes of
chanticleer is related in Pinkerton's "General Collection of Voyages and
Travels." In the "Voyage to Congo," a Capuchin "missioner," named Father
Morolla, relates the following remarkable incident with the utmost
gravity and evidently with perfect faith in the veracity of the
story:--On the capture of a certain town by the army of Sogno, a large
cock was found with an iron ring attached to one of its legs. The
unfortunate rooster was speedily placed in the pot and boiled in the
most orthodox fashion. When, however, his captors were about to commence
their improvised feast, to their astonishment the cooked "pieces of the
cock, though sodden and near dissolved, began to move about, and unite
into the form they were in before, and being so united, the restored
cock immediately raised himself up, and jumped out of the platter upon
the ground, where he walked about as well as when he was first taken.
Afterwards he leaped upon an adjoining wall, where he became
new-feathered all of a sudden, and then took his flight to a tree hard
by, where, fixing himself, he, after three claps of his wings, made a
most hideous noise, and then disappeared. Every one may imagine what a
terrible fright the spectators were in at this sight, who, leaping with
a thousand Ave-Marias in their mouths from the place where this had
happened, were contented to observe most of the particulars at a
distance."
The fabulous animal, the cockatrice, was believed to result from a
"venomous egg" laid by an aged cock, and hatched by a toad. The monster
had the head and breast of the dunghill champion, and "thence downwards
the body of a serpent." Toads are frequently referred to by old writers
in connection with witches and witchcraft.
In a MS. "Medycine Boke," belonging to Dr. Sampson Jones, of Bettws,
Monmouthshire (1650-90), is the following strange recipe, entitled,
"Cock water for a consumption and cough of the lungs":--"Take a running
cock and pull (pluck) him alive, then kill him and cutt him in pieces
and take out his intrals and wipe him cleane, breake the bones, then put
him into an ordinary still with a pottle of sack and a pottle of red
cow's milk," etc., etc.
The mythical character and medical qualities of red cow's milk have been
referred to in the previous chapter.
Lightning birds were supposed to come "down to earth either as
incorporations of the lightning, or bringing with them a branch charged
with latent or invisible fire." The eagle or the falcon was the form
which Agni, the fire-god, assumed on such occasions. The fire-birds were
very numerous, and included the woodpecker, the robin, the wren, the
owl, the cuckoo, the stork, the swallow, and the hoopoe. Kelly quotes
the Herefordshire rhyme as evidence that the ancient superstition
respecting the wren is still alive in England, as well as in France,
Scotland, Wales, and the Isle of Man. The peasants there say:--
Robin Redbreast and Jenny Wren
Are God Almighty's cock and hen.
In Lancashire, however, the rhyme is:--
A robin and a wren
Are God's cock and hen.
And it is generally followed by the intimation that
A spink and a sparrow
Are the devil's bow and arrow.
To kill or rob the nests of these sacred birds was supposed to hazard
the destruction of the culprit's residence by lightning. A Cornish rhyme
says:--
Those who kill a robin or a wran
Will never prosper, boy or man.
In the "laying" of the redoubted Grislehurst boggart, it is not
improbable, as ghosts are not easily coffined in a corporeal sense, that
some superannuated old rooster, who had disturbed the bodily rest, and
scared the wits of the neighbouring rustics by some untoward
cock-a-doodle-doing, furnished all that was really "laid" in the
mysterious grave referred to. An impression may have been entertained
that the troublesome elf who had turned the household topsy-turvy had
made the said rooster's corpus his temporary earthly tabernacle. Perhaps
the "wise men" of the hamlet vainly imagined that nought was required
but the driving of a "stoop" through the feathered repository to utterly
"squelch" its ghostly occupant.
Since the above was written, a paragraph from the _Carnatic Telegraph_
has "gone the round of the press," relating to the "casting out of
devils," as at present practised in India. From this, it appears that
the cock is, with the Hindoos as with the Lancashire peasant, a most
potent instrument in the subjugation of troublesome spirits. The Hindoo
exorcist tied his patient's hair in a knot, and then with a nail
attached it to a tree. Muttering some "incantatory" stanzas, he seized a
live cock, and, holding it over the poor girl's head with one hand, he,
with the other, cut its throat. The blood-stained knot of hair was left
attached to the tree, which was supposed to detain the demon. It is
firmly believed that one "or a legion thus exorcised will haunt that
tree till he or they shall choose to take possession of some other
unfortunate."
In a work published in 1869, entitled "Count Teleki; a Story of Modern
Jewish Life and Customs, by Eca," the author describes a ceremony called
the "Keparoth or atoning sacrifice," in which the common barn-door fowl
plays an important part. The penitent "whirled a cock around his head,
saying, 'This is my atonement, this is my ransom. This cock goeth to
death, but may I be gathered and enter into a long and happy life and
into peace.' This he repeated three times.... The sacrifice consists of
a cock for the male, and a hen for a female. A white fowl is preferred
to any other, in allusion to the words of the prophet, 'Though your sins
be as scarlet they shall become white as snow.' A pregnant woman takes
three, two hens and one cock, one hen for herself and the other two for
the unborn infant--the hen lest it should be a girl, and the cock lest
it should be a boy." The fowls are immediately afterwards handed over to
the Jewish butcher to be killed.
A yet very prevalent superstition asserts that a person at the point of
death finds serious difficulty in "shuffling off this mortal coil"
should there happen to be any game cock feathers in the bed on which he
lies. Pigeons' feathers are likewise said to prolong the agonies of
death.
In France, a black cock is the chief instrument employed to raise the
devil, and extract from the fiend sums of money. The incantation must be
performed at a locality where four roads meet or two cross each other.
Mr. Wilkinson, referring to the Hothersall Hall boggart, says it "is
understood to have been '_laid_' under the roots of a large laurel tree,
at the end of the house, and will not be able to molest the family so
long as that tree exists. It is a common opinion in that part of the
country that the roots have to be moistened with milk on certain
occasions, in order to prolong its existence, and also to preserve the
power of the spell under which the goblin is laid."
The laurel here appears to be invested with the mythical properties of
the ash and the rowan trees, which were supposed to possess irresistible
power over "witches, fairies, and other imps of darkness." The author of
"Choice Notes" quotes an Aberdeenshire couplet, which asserts that
Rowan, ash, and red thread
Keep the devils frae their speed.
and further adds:--"It is a common practice with the housewives in the
same district to tie a piece of red worsted thread round their cows'
tails previous to turning them out to grass for the first time in the
spring. It secures their cattle, they say, from an evil eye, from being
elfshot by fairies, etc." The red thread is here, like the berries of
the rowan, the mutch of the woodpecker, the red breast of the robin,
etc., in the Aryan myths, typical of the lightning.
In many nooks and corners of Lancashire, and some other parts of
England, other stories may be found, many of which point to the Puck or
Robin Goodfellow of the fairy mythology as their most probable
prototype.
Roby says:--"The English Puck (the Lancashire Boggart), the Scotch
Bogie, the French Goblin, the Gobelinus of the Middle Ages, and the
German Kobold, are probably only varied names for the Grecian
Khobalus,--whose sole delight consists in perplexing the human race, and
evoking those harmless terrors that constantly hover round the minds of
the timid. So, also, the German Spuck, and the Danish Spogel, correspond
to the northern Spog; whilst the German Hudkin, and the Icelandic Puki,
exactly answer to the character of the English Robin Goodfellow."
These English domestic sprites or elves that seem to claim a species of
kinship to those they alternately torment and render substantial aid,
clearly find their counterparts in the ghost and fairy lore of other
nations. Kelly says, "Many similar tales are told of the German Zwergs,
or dwarfs, who are the same race of little people as the elves and
fairies that live in the hearts of green hills and mounds in Great
Britain and Ireland. Often does it happen that a whole colony of these
Zwergs effects an exodus from a German district, because the people have
given them some offence, or 'have become too knowing for them;' and on
these occasions there is always a river to be crossed." This was ever a
difficulty, but not an unconquerable one, with the German elves. In
England and Scotland a certain class of goblin or ghost found a running
stream an impassable barrier. Poor Tam O'Shanter's mare Meg demonstrated
the truth of this by the sacrifice of her caudal appendage. Grimm says
that many facts tend to show a near relationship between elves of this
class and the souls of men. The ordinary ghosts of the present day,
whether voluntary visitors or obedient servants of "spirit mediums," are
supposed to be the souls of the departed. Kelly says, on the authority
of Kuhn and Schwartz, "Some of the many names by which the Zwergs are
known in North Germany mean the 'ancients' or the 'ancestors,' and mark
the analogy between the beings so designated and the Hindoo Pitris or
Fathers; whilst other names--Holden (_i.e._, good, kind) in Germany;
good people, good neighbours, in Ireland and Scotland--connect the same
elves with the Manes of the Romans." The Pitris of the Hindoos seem to
furnish the germ of "good fairies," the fairy godmother, the Persian
Peris, the Arabic Ginns, the chief of the followers of Oberon and
Titania, and of the kindlier phase in the character of Puck, Robin
Goodfellow, or the Lancashire bogie, or domestic boggart, but the
larking propensity of this sprite may possibly have resulted from a more
modern addition to the spirit lore of the Northern Aryan people.
Mr. Jno. Aubrey, Fellow of the Royal Society, in his "Miscellanies,"
published in 1696, gives what he styles "a Collection of Hermetic
Philosophy," which exhibits an astonishing amount of superstition, even
amongst the presumedly learned men of the age. Amongst other things he
informs his readers, on the authority of a letter from a "learned
friend," in Scotland, that a certain Lord Duffin was suddenly
transported, by fairies, from his residence in Morayshire, and that he
was "found the next day in Paris, in the French king's cellar, with a
silver cup in his hand!" Such a feat was worthy of the sprite who could
put a "girdle round the earth in forty minutes." Truly, as Ben Johnson's
Puck says, he could "travel swifter than the wind with a load of
humanity on his back."
Our ordinary stories of churchyard ghosts, and other apparitions and
"spiritual manifestations," have much more in common with the
"folk-lore" of classical antiquity than is generally known. There is a
story told by Pliny the younger, which so much resembles many that we
have heard in youth, that nothing is required but a change of name,
place, and date, to thoroughly domesticate it amongst us. It is related
as follows, in Melmoth's translation of Pliny's letters:
"There was at Athens a large and spacious house which lay under the
disrepute of being haunted. In the dead of the night a noise resembling
the clashing of iron was frequently heard, which, if you listened more
attentively, sounded like the rattling of chains; at first it seemed at
a distance, but approached nearer by degrees; immediately afterwards a
spectre appeared in the form of an old man, extremely meagre and
ghastly, with a long beard and dishevelled hair, rattling the chains on
his feet and hands.... By this means the house was at last deserted,
being judged by everybody to be absolutely uninhabitable; so that it was
now entirely abandoned to the ghost. However, in hopes that some tenant
might be found who was ignorant of this great calamity which attended
it, a bill was put up giving notice that it was either to be let or
sold. It happened that the philosopher Athenodorus came to Athens at
this time, and, reading the bill, inquired the price. The extraordinary
cheapness raised his suspicion; nevertheless, when he heard the whole
story, he was so far from being discouraged that he was more strongly
inclined to hire it, and, in short, actually did so. When it drew
towards evening, he ordered a couch to be prepared for him in the fore
part of the house, and, after calling for a light, together with his pen
and tablets, he directed all his people to retire. But that his mind
might not, for want of employment, be open to the vain terrors of
imaginary noises and spirits, he applied himself to writing with the
utmost attention. The first part of the night passed with usual silence,
when at length the chains began to rattle; however he neither lifted up
his eyes nor laid down his pen, but diverted his observation by pursuing
his studies with greater earnestness. The noise increased, and advanced
nearer, till it seemed at the door, and at last in the chamber. He
looked up, and saw the ghost exactly in the manner it had been described
to him; it stood before him, beckoning with his finger. Athenodorus made
a sign with his hand that it should wait a little, and then threw his
eyes again upon his papers; but, the ghost still rattling his chains in
his ears, he looked up, and saw him beckoning as before. Upon this he
immediately arose, and, with the light in his hand, followed it. The
ghost slowly stalked along, as if encumbered with his chains, and
turning into the area of the house, suddenly vanished. Athenodorus,
being thus deserted, made a mark, with some grass and leaves, where the
spirit left him. The next day he gave information to the magistrates,
and advised them to order that spot to be dug up. This was accordingly
done, and the skeleton of a man in chains was there found; for the body
having lain for a considerable time in the ground, was putrefied and
mouldered away from the fetters. The bones, being collected together,
were publicly buried, and thus, after the ghost was appeased by the
proper ceremonies, the house was haunted no more."
I was forcibly struck with the peculiarly Eastern character of a
traditionary observance related to me during my investigation of the
remains found in the ancient British tumulus at Over Darwen, in
Lancashire, in November, 1864. I was informed that the country people
spoke of the mound as a locality haunted by "boggarts," and that
children were in the habit of taking off their clogs or shoes, under the
influence of some such superstitious feeling, when walking past it in
the night time.
Keppel, in his "Visit to the Indian Archipelago," refers to a somewhat
similar superstition in Northern Australia. The natives will not
willingly approach graves at night alone; "but when they are obliged to
pass them, they carry a fire stick to keep off the spirit of darkness."
It is perhaps scarcely necessary that I should refer to the fact that
recent naturalists have satisfactorily demonstrated that the green
circles termed "fairy rings," have nothing "supernatural" in their
character, being simply a result of the growth of a species of fungus.
Not long ago, "the learned" contended that they resulted from some
obscure kind of electric action. Sir Walter Scott, who held this
opinion, sneeringly refers to them as "electrical rings, which vulgar
credulity supposes to be traces of fairy revels." Thousands of English
peasants, yes, and many presumedly much wiser people, nevertheless, yet
firmly adhere to the ancient faith. Singularly enough, Shakspere seems
almost to have intuitively guessed at their true origin. When Prospero,
for the last time invokes the aid of the supernatural, he exclaims:--
Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves;
And ye that on the sands with printless feet
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets, that
By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime
Is to make _midnight mushrooms_.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] Sir Walter Scott thought _bargaist_ to be the German _bahrgeist_,
the spirit of the bier, alluding to its presence foretelling death. The
word is variously written, _barguest_ and _boguest_ being amongst its
forms. A very slight provincial change would make the latter _boguerst_,
from whence, probably, the Lancashire boggart. The Cymric word bwg,
which represents, according to Mr. Garnett, the modern bug, bugbear, and
hobgoblin, has evidently intimate relation to the root of the word. This
sprite is often confounded with others, and is subjected to much local
variation.
[27] QUERY.--Has the Lancashire and Yorkshire word "lake," meaning "to
play," anything in common with the modern word "larking," now so much in
vogue?
CHAPTER VIII.
FERN-SEED AND ST. JOHN'S-WORT SUPERSTITIONS.
I had
No medicine, sir, to go invisible,
No fern-seed in my pocket.
_Ben Jonson._
Most peoples have, in some form or other, preserved the traditionary
superstition that fern-seed was miraculously endowed with the power of
rendering its possessor invisible. The great hero of our boyish days,
the redoubtable "Jack, the Giant-killer," had his "coat of darkness,"
which conferred upon its proprietor this marvellous peculiarity. In the
classical mythology, the helmet given to Hades or Pluto likewise
possessed the power of rendering the wearer invisible. In the Teutonic,
the "invisible cap" of the Nibelungenlied possessed a similar property.
Shakspere makes Gadshill allude to it in a metaphorical sense. He is
anxious to impress upon the mind of the chamberlain of the hostelry,
near the scene of Falstaff's famous robbing exploit, that although he
was engaged in an illegal enterprise, he was in league with companions
of such high social status that the officers of the law would be unable
to perceive their criminality if detected. He says:--"We steal as in a
castle, cock-sure; we have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible."
Beaumont and Fletcher, in the "Fair Maid of the Inn," have the following
reference to this superstition:--
Had you not Gyges' ring?
Or the herb that gives invisibility?
In a curious tract, published in the reign of Elizabeth, entitled
"Plaine Percevall, the Peacemaker," the following passage occurs:--"I
thinke the mad slave hath tasted on a fernstalke, that he walkes so
invisible."
Fairies, of course, possessed the power of rendering themselves
visible, or otherwise, at pleasure. Oberon, in A Midsummer Night's
Dream, says:--
But who comes here?
I am invisible, and I will
Overhear their conference.
Spirits of any class, of course, possessed this power, and its
complement, that of being visible, at pleasure. Prospero, in the
Tempest, says to Ariel:--
Go make thyself like to a nymph o' the sea;
Be subject to no sight but mine; invisible
To every eyeball else.
All ferns, according to German authorities, and especially the "seed"
thereof, possessed the quality usually described as "luck bringing."
According to Panzer, the devil was compelled to fulfil the wish of any
person in possession of the seed of this plant; and Meier tells us that
in Swabia the peasants believe that the possession of this seed,
obtained from his Satanic majesty between the hours of eleven and twelve
o'clock on Christmas night, will enable one man to do the work of twenty
or thirty others not so favoured. Browne, in his "Britannia's
Pastorals," speaks of "the wonderous one night seeding ferne;" and
Richard Bivot, in his "Pandæmonium," published in 1648, quaintly informs
us that "much discourse hath been about gathering of fern seed (which is
looked upon as a magical herb) on the night of Midsummer-eve; and I
remember I was told of one who went to gather it, and the spirits
whisk't by his ears like bullets, and sometimes struck his hat and other
parts of his body; in fine, although he apprehended he had gotten a
quantity of it, and secured it in papers, and a box besides, when he
came home he found all empty."
Kelly says,--"The summer solstice is a favourite season for gathering
plants of the lightning tribe, and particularly the springwort and fern.
It is believed in the Oberpfalz that the springwort, or St. John's-wort
(johanniswurzel) as some call it, can only be found among the fern on
St. John's night. It is said to be of a yellow colour, and to shine in
the night like a candle; which is just what is said of the mandrake in
an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the tenth or eleventh century. Moreover, it
never stands still, but hops about continually, to avoid the grasp of
men. Here, then, in the luminosity and power of nimble movement
attributed to the springwort, we have another remarkable tradition
signifying the transformation of the lightning into the plant."
The following translation from a German poem, beautifully illustrates
the Teutonic form of this superstition:--
The young maid stole through the cottage door,
And blushed as she sought the plant of power.
"Thou silver glow-worm, O lend me thy light,
I must gather the mystic St. John's-wort to-night;
The wonderful herb whose leaf will decide
If the coming year shall make me a bride!"
And the glow-worm came
With his silvery flame,
And sparkled and shone
Through the night of St. John.
And soon as the young maid her love-knot tied
With noiseless tread
To her chamber she sped,
Where the spectral moon her white beams shed,
"Bloom here, bloom here, thou plant of power,
To deck the young bride in her bridal hour!"
But it drooped its head, that plant of power,
And died the mute death of a voiceless flower;
And a withered leaf on the ground it lay,
More meet for a burial than a bridal day.
And when a year was passed away,
All pale on her bier the young maid lay!
And the glow-worm came
With its silvery flame,
And sparkled and shone
Through the night of St. John;
And they closed the cold grave o'er the maid's cold clay.
Vernaleken says the Slavocks believe that any person approaching too
near to the fern, at the time of its "efflorescence," will be overcome
by drowsiness, and that beings of a supernatural character will
successfully resist any attempt to lay hands on the plant. Bivot has a
statement to a somewhat similar effect.
A remarkable story respecting the magical quality of fern seed is
related by Jacob Grimm, in his "Deutsche Mythologie." It is said to be a
popular one with the people of Westphalia. A man, in search of a foal,
passed through a meadow on Midsummer's Eve, when some ripening fern seed
fell into his shoes. He did not return home until the following morning,
when he was astonished to find that his wife and children appeared
utterly unconscious of his presence. When he called out to them, "I have
not found the foal," the greatest alarm and confusion followed, for the
members of his household could hear his voice but failed to detect his
person. Fancying he was hiding in jest, his wife called out his name. He
answered, "Here I am right before you. Why do you call me?" This but
increased their terror. The man perceiving that he was, to them
invisible, thought it not improbable that something in his shoes, which
felt like sand, might really prove to be fern seed. He accordingly
pulled them off, and as he scattered the grains on the floor resumed his
visibility to the eyes of his astounded family.
In an ancient "Calendar of the Romish Church," the 23rd June, the vigil
of the nativity of John the Baptist, is stated to be prolific in
supernatural phenomena. Amongst others we are informed that "waters are
swum in during the night, and are brought in vessels that hang for the
purposes of divination;" that "fern is in great estimation with the
vulgar, on account of its seed." We are further informed that "herbs of
different kinds are sought with many ceremonies." Monsieur Bergerac, in
his "Satyrical Characters," translated "out of the French, by a Person
of Honour," in 1658, makes a magician of the period enumerate amongst
his many powers and duties the "wakening of the country fellow on St.
John's eve to gather his hearb, fasting and in silence." Brand says that
"a respectable countryman, at Heston, in Middlesex," had stated to him
that he had often been "present at the ceremony of catching the fern
seed at midnight on the eve of St. John the Baptist. The attempt, he
said, was often unsuccessful, for the seed was to fall into the plate of
its own accord, and that, too, without shaking the plant."
Referring to our Lancashire superstitions Mr. T. T. Wilkinson
says:--"Fern seed is still said to be gathered on the Holy Bible, and is
believed to be able to render those invisible who will dare to take it;
and herbs for the use of man and beasts are still collected when their
proper planets are ruling in the heavens."
Ceremonies on St. John's Eve are likewise regarded as very potent in
matters matrimonial. Bivot describes a party of fair ladies who
say,--"We have been told divers times that if we fasted on Midsummer
Eve, and then at twelve o'clock at night laid a cloth on the table, with
bread and cheese, and a cup of the best beer, setting ourselves down as
if we were going to eat, and leaving the door of the room open, we
should see the persons whom we should afterwards marry, come into the
room and drink to us."
The belief in the power of fern seed in the domain over which Cupid is
said to preside, still lingers in various parts of Lancashire. The best
story of this class that I have met with, is related by Samuel Bamford,
in his "Passages in the Life of a Radical." One Bangle, a Lancashire
youth, "of ardent temperament but bashful withal," had become enamoured
of the daughter of a neighbouring farmer.
"His modest approaches had not been noticed by the adored one; and, as
she had danced with another youth at Bury fair, he imagined she was
irrecoverably lost to him, and the persuasion had driven him melancholy.
Doctors had been applied to, but he was no better; philters and charms
had been tried to bring down the cold-hearted maid, but all in vain....
At length sorcerers and fortune-tellers were thought of, and 'Limping
Billy,' a noted seer, residing at Radcliffe Bridge, having been
consulted, said the lad had no chance of gaining power over the damsel,
unless he could take St. John's fern seed; and if he could but secure
three grains of that, he might bring to him whatever he wished, that
walked, flew, or swam."
Two friends, Plant, a country botanist, and Chirrup, a bird catcher,
agreed to accompany Bangle in his expedition in search of the potent
fern seed. Plant said he knew where the finest specimens of the herb
grew, and led the way to the "Boggart Ho' Clough," referred to in the
preceding chapter. The three worthies assembled on the Eve of St. John,
at midnight, in this then thickly wooded glen. As a part of the
necessary cabalistic implements, Plant brought an earthen dish, "brown
and roof" [rough], Chirrup a pewter platter, which he regarded as "breet
enough" for their purpose; Bangle's contribution, which he described as
"teed wi' web an' woof," and "deep enough," was "a musty dun skull, with
the cap sawn off above the eyes, and left flapping like a lid by a piece
of tanned scalp, which still adhered. The interior cavities had also
been stuffed with moss and lined with clay, kneaded with blood from
human veins, and the youth had secured the skull to his shoulders by a
twine of three strands made of unbleached flax, of undyed wool, and of
woman's hair, from which also depended a raven black tress, which a wily
crone had procured from the maid he sought to obtain.... A silence, like
that of death, was around them, as they entered the open platting.
Nothing moved either in tree or brake. Through a space in the foliage
the stars were seen pale in heaven, and a crooked moon hung in a bit of
blue, amid motionless clouds. All was still and breathless as if earth,
heaven, and the elements were aghast.... Gasping, and with cold sweat
oozing on his brow, Plant recollected that they were to shake the fern
with a forked rod of witch hazel, and by no means must touch it with
their hands.... Plant drew his knife, and stepping into a moonlighted
bush, soon returned with what was wanted, and then went forward. The
green knowe [knoll], the old oaks, the encircled space, and the fern
were now approached; the latter stiff and erect in a gleamy light....
Plant knelt on one knee, and held his dish under the fern. Chirrup held
his broad plate next below, and Bangle knelt and rested the skull
directly under both on the green sod, the lid being up. Plant said:--
Good St. John, this seed we crave,
We have dared; shall we have?
"A voice responded--
Now the moon is downward starting,
Moon and stars are now departing;
Quick, quick; shake, shake;
He whose heart shall soonest break,
Let him take.
"They looked, and perceived by a glame that a venerable form, in a loose
robe, was near them.
"Darkness came down like a swoop. The fern was shaken; the upper dish
flew into pieces; the pewter one melted; the skull emitted a cry, and
eyes glared in its sockets; lights broke; beautiful children were seen
walking in their holiday clothes, and graceful female forms sung
mournful and enchanting airs. The men stood terrified and fascinated;
and Bangle, gazing, bade 'God bless 'em.' A crash followed as if all the
timber in the kloof was being splintered and torn up; strange and horrid
forms appeared from the thickets; the men ran as if sped on the wind.
They separated and lost each other."
Plant lay unconscious at home for three days, and "Chirrup was found on
the White Moss, raving mad and chasing the wild birds; as for poor
Bangle, he found his way home over hedge and ditch, running with
supernatural and fearful speed--the skull's eyes glaring at his back,
and the nether jaw grinning and jabbering frightful and unintelligible
sounds. He had preserved the seed, however, and, having taken it from
the skull, he buried the latter at the cross road from whence he had
taken it. He then carried the spell out, and his proud love stood one
night by his bedside in tears. But he had done too much for human
nature--in three months after she followed his corpse, a real mourner,
to the grave."
Kelly gives several illustrations of the varied forms in which the
superstitions respecting this "lightning plant" are presented in other
countries, which throw additional light upon some of the incidents in
Bamford's story. He says:--"Besides the powers already mentioned, fern
has others which distinctly mark its affinity with thunder and
lightning. 'In places where it grows the devil rarely practises his
glamour. He shuns and abhors the house and the place where it is, and
thunder, lightning and hail rarely fall there.'[28] This is in apparent
contradiction with the Polish superstition, according to which the
plucking of fern produces a violent thunderstorm; but it is a natural
superstition, that the hitherto rooted and transformed thunderbolt
resumes its pristine nature, when the plant that contained it is taken
from the ground. In the Thuringian forest fern is called _irrkracet_, or
bewildering weed (from _irren_, to err, go astray), because whoever
treads on it unawares loses his wits, and knows not where he is. In
fact, he is in that condition of mind which we English call
'thunderstruck,' and which Germans, Romans, and Greeks have agreed in
denoting by exactly corresponding terms. He has been crazed by a shock
from the lightning with which the fern is charged like a Leyden jar.
Instances of a similar phenomenon occur in the legends of India and
Greece."
The forms of beauty, referred to by Bamford as appearing amongst the
uncouth and "jabbering" sprites on this momentous occasion, are
suggestive of the legend of the "bright-day god" Baldr. Longfellow
says,--"Now the glad, leafy Midsummer, full of blossoms and songs of
nightingales is come! Saint John has taken the flowers and festival of
heathen Balder." It appears that Freyja, in exacting an oath from all
created things never to harm this "whitest and most beloved of the
gods," inadvertently overlooked one of the lightning plants. It was an
arrow formed from the branch of the mistletoe, flung by the hand of the
blind Hodr or Helder, with which Baldr was struck dead. Baldr, says the
legend, was buried in the true Scandinavian fashion. His body was placed
by the Æsir on a funeral pyre, raised on the deck of a ship, and whilst
the former was in flames the latter was floated seaward. The "St.
John's-wort" seems to have superseded the mistletoe in the modern
tradition. As both were "lightning plants," this however is not
specially remarkable.
Ferns belong to the class _Cryptogamia_, or non-flowering plants. They
produce no seed, in a true sense, but fructify by means of the sporules,
or spores, deposited in _thecæ_, on the under side of the fronds. It was
formerly believed that they did produce seed, and old botanists describe
it as "too minute and obscure" to be readily detected. Singularly
enough, the St. John's-wort (Hypericum), of which there are several
species found in Lancashire, is generally confounded in these traditions
with the _Osmunda Regalis_, or royal fern, or, as it is sometimes
improperly styled, the "_flowering_ fern," which, of course, is an
absurdity, as expressing neither more nor less than the flowering
non-flowering plant! The name is said to be of Saxon origin, Osmunda
being one of the appellations of Thor, who, as we have previously seen,
was the "consecrator of marriage." The sporules are very numerous and
minute. The common St. John's-wort (_Hypericum Vulgare._ Lin.) bears a
yellow flower, and produces, of course, regular seeds. Hill, in his
"British Herbal," published in 1756, says, "A tincture of the flower
made strong in white wine is recommended greatly by some against
melancholy; but of these qualities we speak with less certainty, though
they deserve a fair trial."
Mr. John Ingram, in his "Flora Symbolica," says,--"Vervain, or wild
verbena, has been the floral symbol of enchantment from time
immemorial."
Ben Jonson says:--
Bring your garlands, and with reverence place
The vervain on the altar.
Mr. Ingram adds,--"In some country districts this small insignificant
flower still retains a portion of its old renown, and old folks tie it
round the neck to charm away the ague; with many it still has the
reputation of securing affection from those who take it to those who
administer it; and still in some parts of France do the peasantry
continue to gather the vervain, with ceremonies and words known only to
themselves; and to express its juices under certain phases of the moon.
At once the doctors and conjurors of their village, they alternately
cure the complaints of their masters or fill them with dread; for the
same means which relieve their ailments enable them to cast a spell on
their cattle and on the hearts of their daughters. They insist that this
power is given to them by vervain, especially when the damsels are young
and handsome. The vervain is still the plant of spells and enchantments,
as it was amongst the ancients."
A superstitious feeling yet prevails that the burning of fern attracts
rain. A copy of a royal proclamation is preserved in the British Museum,
enjoining the country people not to burn the fern on the waysides during
a "royal progress" of the merry monarch, Charles II.
The confusion which exists in the minds of the vulgar respecting two
very distinct classes of these plants, all, however, of lightning origin
in the Aryan mythology, is thus commented upon by Kelly:--"It is also a
highly significant fact that the marvellous root (St. John's-wort) is
said to be connected with fern; for the johnsroot or john's hand is the
root of a species of fern (_Polypodium Filix mas._ Lin.), which is
applied to many superstitious uses. The fern has large pinnate fronds,
and is thus related to the mountain ash and the mimosæ. In fact, says
Kuhn, it were hardly possible to find in our climate a plant which more
accurately corresponds in its whole appearance to the original
signification of the Sanscrit name parna as leaf and feather. Nor does
the relationship between them end here, for fern, Anglo-Saxon _fearn_,
Old German _faram_, _farn_, and Sanscrit _parna_, are one and the same
word. It is also worthy of note that whereas one of the German names of
the rowan means boarash (eberesche), so also there is a fern
(_Polypodium Filix arboratica_) which is called in Anglo-Saxon
_eoferfarn_, _eferfarn_, that is boar-fern. In all the Indo-European
mythologies the boar is an animal connected with storm and lightning."
Mr. Edwin Waugh, in his "Sketches of Lancashire Life and Localities,"
mentions a curious fact relative to this famous "Boggart Ho' Clough,"
which is not without its significance. He says he was informed that a
lawyer, anxious to describe the locality in a legal document, had found,
on referring to some old title deeds, that a "family of the name of
'Bowker' had formerly occupied a residence situate in or near the
clough; and that their dwelling was designated 'Bowker's Hall.'" The
lawyer very naturally adopted this as the true origin of the name. Yet
Mr. Waugh informs us that the "testimony of every writer who notices the
spot, especially those best acquainted with it, inclines to the other
derivation."
Feeling some curiosity as to the true origin of this bit of local
nomenclature, I some time ago visited the place, in company with Mr.
Waugh. While we were resting at the farm-house at the head of the
clough, I asked a buxom maid if she had ever seen a boggart in the
neighbourhood. She candidly confessed that she had not. On my pressing
her hard as to whether she knew any one who had been more fortunate, or
unfortunate, as the case might be, she said firmly, after a slight
scrutiny of my countenance and figure--"Yes; Sam Bamford has!" I put
similar questions about an hour afterwards to the maid at the "Bell"
public-house, in Moston Lane, which, to my surprise, elicited exactly
similar responses. I pressed this girl still further on the subject; and
at length she frankly said,--"I don't think any body, as I know, has sin
a boggart i'th clough except Bamford, 'bout it be Edwin Waugh. Ye've
heard of him, no doubt!" The girl was astounded on my informing her that
Mr. Waugh was present; and still more so when she witnessed the
amusement which his supposed interview with the redoubtable boggart
created amongst the party.
That there have existed traditions of boggarts, ghosts, &c., in the
neighbourhood, as in other places, from time immemorial, cannot admit of
a doubt; but I nevertheless suspect that the corruption referred to by
Mr. Waugh has fixed the precise locality of, at least, one of the
stories to which I have referred. Once call a place "Boggart Ho'
Clough," and especially such a place, and I can easily imagine, in a
very short time, that many of the floating traditions of the
neighbourhood would fasten themselves upon it. This being afterwards
rendered more definite by the action of literary exponents of
traditionary lore, is quite sufficient to explain the whole of the
phenomena pertaining to the question in dispute. It must not be
forgotten, either, that by the vernacular appellation the clough is not
necessarily supposed to be haunted, but the "_hall_" merely, which stood
in it, or somewhere in its neighbourhood.
On the line of the Roman Wall, to the north of Haltwhistle, Dr.
Collingwood Bruce speaks of "a gap of bold proportions having the
ominous name of Boglehole." Doubtless many other localities could be
pointed out where a nomenclature of a similar kind obtains, and is still
believed in by many not necessarily otherwise uneducated people.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] Jacob Grimm.
CHAPTER IX.
THE SPECTRE HUNTSMAN AND THE FURIOUS HOST.
He the seven birds hath seen that never part,
Seen the seven whistlers on their mighty rounds,
And counted them! And oftentimes will start,
_For overhead are sweeping Gabriel's hounds_,
Doomed with their _impious lord_ the flying hart,
To chase for ever on äerial grounds.
_Wordsworth._
"Amongst the most prominent of the demon superstitions prevalent in
Lancashire," says Mr. T. T. Wilkinson, "we may first instance that of
the Spectre Huntsman, which occupies so conspicuous a place in the
folk-lore of Germany and the north. This superstition is still extant in
the gorge of Cliviger, where he is believed to hunt a milk white doe
round the Eagle's Crag, in the vale of Todmorden, on All Hallows Eve.
His _hounds_ are said to fly yelping through the air on many other
occasions, and, under the local name of '_Gabriel Ratchets_,' are
supposed to predict death or misfortune to all who hear the sounds."
This superstition is known about Leeds, and other places in Yorkshire,
as "_Gabble Retchet_," and refers more especially to the belief that the
souls of unbaptised children are doomed to wander in this stormy fashion
about the homes of their parents.
These peculiar superstitions appear to have nearly died out, or to have
become merged into some other legends based on the action of the Aryan
storm-gods, Indra, Rudra, and their attendant Maruts or Winds, both in
Great Britain and Ireland. According to a writer in the _Quarterly
Review_, of July, 1836, the wild huntsman still lingers in Devonshire.
He says, "the spectre pack which hunts over Dartmoor is called the 'wish
hounds,' and the black 'master' who follows the chase is no doubt the
same who has left his mark on Wistman's Wood," a neighbouring forest of
dwarf oaks.
The late Mr. Holland, of Sheffield, referring to this superstition, in
1861, says, "I can never forget the impression made upon my own mind
when once arrested by the cry of these Gabriel hounds as I passed the
parish church of Sheffield, one densely dark and very still night. The
sound was exactly like the greeting of a dozen beagles on the foot of a
race, but not so loud, and highly suggestive of ideas of the
supernatural." Mr. Holland has embodied the local feeling on this
subject in the following sonnet:--
Oft have I heard my honoured mother say,
How she has listened to the Gabriel hounds--
Those strange unearthly and mysterious sounds,
Which on the ear through murkiest darkness fell;
And how, entranced by superstitions spell,
The trembling villager not seldom heard,
In the quaint noise of the nocturnal bird
Of death premonished, some sick neighbour's knell.
I, too, remember once at midnight dark,
How these sky-yelpers startled me and stirred
My fancy so, I could have then averred
A mimic pack of beagles low did bark.
Nor wondered I that rustic fear should trace
A spectral huntsman doomed to that long moonless chase.
In classic mythology this wild hunt myth is parallelled by the career of
Orion, the "mighty hunter, the cloud raging in wild freedom over hills
and dales." Seeking to make the beautiful Aerô his bride, he is blinded
by her father, who caught him asleep. After recovering his sight by a
journey towards the rising sun, he vainly endeavours to seize upon and
punish his enemy. In his wanderings he meets with and is beloved by
Artemis (Diana), one of the dawn-goddesses. The Rev. G. W. Cox says, "It
is but the story of the beautiful cloud left in darkness when the sun
goes down, but recovering its brilliance when he rises again in the
east." After his death, being so nearly akin to the powers of light,
Asklêpios "seeks to raise him from the dead, and thus brings on his own
doom from the thunderbolts of Zeus--a myth which points to the blotting
out of the sun from the sky by the thundercloud, just as he was
rekindling the faded vapours which lie motionless on the horizon."
Orion's hound afterwards became the dog-star, Sirius. Hence our name dog
days for parching weather.
This chasing of the white doe or the white hart by the spectre huntsman
has assumed various forms. According to Aristotle a white hart was
killed by Agathocles, king of Sicily, which a thousand years beforehand
had been consecrated to Diana by Diomedes. Alexander the Great is said
by Pliny to have caught a white stag, placed a collar of gold about its
neck, and afterwards set it free. Succeeding heroes have, in after
days, been announced as the capturers of this famous white hart. Julius
Cæsar took the place of Alexander, and Charlemagne caught a white hart
at both Magdebourg, and in the Holstein woods. In 1172, William the Lion
is reported to have accomplished a similar feat, according to a Latin
inscription on the walls of Lubeck Cathedral. Tradition says the white
hart has been caught on Rothwell Hay Common, in Yorkshire, and in
Windsor Forest.
Dean Stanley, in his "Historic Memorials of Westminster Abbey," informs
us that the great northern entrance of that truly historic pile was
erected in the reign of Richard II., and that once "it contained his
well-known badge of the White Hart, which still remains, in colossal
proportions, on the fragile partition which shuts off the Muniment Room
from the southern triforium of the Nave." It appears that the badge was
first adopted in honour of his mother, Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, at a
tournament in 1396. It had, however, direct reference to the tradition
which asserted that the famous white hart of Cæsar had been caught at
Besastine, near Bagshot, in Windsor Forest. Its identity was said to
have been proved by a collar of gold about its neck, which bore the
following inscription:--"_Nemo me tangat: Cæsaris sum._" The badge was
so popular amongst the friends of Richard, that Bolingbroke, when Henry
IV., had much difficulty in suppressing it. Its frequent adoption as an
inn sign is likewise attributed to this circumstance.
In early Greek art, the deities of the morning, Athena, Apollo and
Artemis, are commonly, if not invariably, associated with a fawn with a
gleam of light on its breast. The hart in these legends appears to
typify the dawn, and, in conjunction with some other elements of the
myth, implies the daily sequence of light and darkness.
The spectre huntsman, so very popular in Scandinavian and German
tradition, is the Teutonic deity Odin or Woden, from whence our
Wednesday. Woden is claimed by the early Angle and Saxon kings of the
heptarchy as their common ancestor. This god had many names, each
descriptive of some special quality or attribute. Amongst others he was
styled Wunsch, from which we have the Anglo-Saxon wisk, and the modern
English wish, in the sense in which it is used in the divining or
wish-rod (German wünschelruthe). In Devonshire the term "wishtness" is
still retained, and is employed to designate "all unearthly creatures
and their doings." Indra and Rudra are regarded as the Aryan prototypes
of Odin. Some of their chief characteristics are retained in the doings
of the "wild huntsman" and his followers that form the _dramatis
personæ_ of the "furious host." Kelly describes the first phase of this
legend as follows:
"Mounted on his white or dappled grey steed, the wild huntsman may
always be recognised by his broad-brimmed hat, and his wide mantle, from
which he is surnamed Hakelbärend or Hakelberg, an old word signifying
mantle-wearer. The hooting owl, Tutursel, flies before him, and ravens,
birds peculiarly sacred to Woden, accompany the chase. Whoever sees it
approach must fall flat on the ground, or shelter himself under any odd
number of boards, nine or eleven, otherwise he will be borne away
through the air and set down hundreds of miles away from home, among
people who speak a strange tongue. It is still more dangerous to look
out of the window when Odin is sweeping by. The rash man is struck dead,
or at least gets a box on the ear that makes his head swell as big as a
bucket, and leaves a fiery mark on his cheek. In some instances the
offender has been struck blind or mad. There are certain places where
Woden is accustomed to feed his horse or let it graze, and in those
places the wind is always blowing. He has also a preference for certain
tracks, over which he hunts again and again at fixed seasons, from which
circumstance districts and villages in the old Saxon land received the
name of Woden's way. Houses and barns in which there are two or three
doors opposite each other are very liable to be made thoroughfares by
the wild hunt."
Mr. Baring-Gould, in his "Iceland, its Scenes and Sagas," describes this
superstition, as he heard it from his guide Jón, who related it to him
under the title of the "yule host." He says,--"Odin, or Wodin, is the
wild huntsman who nightly tears on his white horse over the German and
Norwegian forests and moor-sweeps, with his legion of hell-hounds. Some
luckless woodcutter, on a still night, is returning through the pine
woods; the air is sweet-scented with matchless pine fragrance. Overhead
the sky is covered with grey vapour, but a mist is on all the land; not
a sound among the fir tops; and the man starts at the click of a falling
cone. Suddenly his ear catches a distant wail; a moan rolls through the
interlacing branches; nearer and nearer comes the sound. There is the
winding of a long horn waxing louder and louder, the baying of hounds,
the rattle of hoofs and paws on the pine tree tops. A blast of wind
rolls along, the firs bend as withes, and the woodcutter sees the wild
huntsman and his rout reeling by in frantic haste.... The wild huntsman
chases the wood spirits, and he is to be seen at cock-crow returning
with the little Dryads hanging to his saddle-bow by their yellow
locks."
The personification of the strife of the elements in stormy weather is
here very apparent. As the name of Odin or other of his special
appellations became lost or corrupted, mysterious personages, or heroes
of another and more mortal stamp, became confounded with the spectre
huntsman. Herod, the murderer of the Jewish children, is evidently
referred to by the French peasants of Perigord, when they speak of "La
chasse Herode." This seems to have resulted from the corruption of
Hrôdso (the renowned), one of the titles applied to Odin.
At Blois, the wild hunt is called the "chasse Maccabei," from the
following supposed reference to it in the Bible:--"Then it happened that
through all the city, for the space almost of forty days, there were
seen horsemen running in the air, in cloth of gold, and armed with
lances like a band of soldiers. And troops of horsemen in array,
encountering and running one against another, with shaking of shields
and multitudes of pikes, and drawing of swords, and casting of darts,
and glittering of golden ornaments and harness of all sorts. Wherefore
every man prayed that that apparition might turn to good." (II.
Maccabeus, v. 2 to 4.)
In Brittany and Picardy the peasants, in the midst of sudden storms or
whirlwinds, which throw down trees and steeples, are still in the habit
of crossing themselves, and exclaiming "_C'est le juif errant qui
passe_." This evidently demonstrates that the legendary story of the
Wandering Jew, the spectre hunt of Odin, and the superstitions
associated with the seven whistlers, have been confounded or
"dovetailed," as it were, one into the other. Indeed, in its combined
form, remnants may yet be found in Lancashire. Mr. James Pearson, in a
contribution to "Notes and Queries," of September 30th, 1871, testifies
to this in the following terms:--
"THE SEVEN WHISTLERS.--One evening a few years ago, when crossing one of
our Lancashire moors, in company with an intelligent old man, we were
suddenly startled by the whistling overhead of a covey of plovers. My
companion remarked that when a boy the old people considered such a
circumstance a bad omen, 'as the person who heard _the Wandering Jews_,'
as he called the plovers, 'was sure to be overtaken with some ill luck.'
On questioning my friend on the name given to the birds, he said, 'There
is a tradition that they contain the souls of those Jews who assisted at
the crucifixion, and in consequence were doomed to float in the air for
ever.' When we arrived at the foot of the moor, a coach, by which I had
hoped to complete my journey, had already left its station, thereby
causing me to finish the distance on foot. The old man reminded me of
the omen."
Another writer, "A. S.," in "Notes and Queries," October 21, 1871,
says:--"During a thunderstorm which passed over this district"
(Kettering, in Yorkshire), "on the evening of September 6, on which
occasion the lightning was very vivid, an unusual spectacle was
witnessed; immense flocks of birds were flying about, uttering doleful
affrighted cries, as they passed over the locality, and for hours they
kept up a continual whistling like that made by sea birds. There must
have been great numbers of them, as they were also observed at the same
time, as we learn by the public prints, in the counties of Northampton,
Leicester, and Lincoln. The nest day, as my servant was driving me to a
neighbouring village, this phenomenon of the flight of birds became the
subject of conversation, and on asking him what birds he thought they
were he told me they were what were called _The Seven Whistlers_, and
that whenever they were heard it was considered a sign of some great
calamity, and that the last time he heard them was the night before the
great Hartley colliery explosion; he had also been told by soldiers that
if they heard them they always expected a great slaughter would take
place soon. Curiously enough, on taking up the newspaper the following
morning, I saw headed in large letters--'Terrible Colliery Explosion at
Wigan,' etc., etc. This I thought would confirm my man's belief in 'the
Seven Whistlers.'"
I have heard it seriously asserted in discussion by geologists and
mining engineers, that a low state of the barometer generally, if not
invariably, accompanies a certain class of accidents in coal pits.
Perhaps this peculiar atmospheric condition may explain the coincidences
referred to.
Another contributor of the same date, "Viator," gives the following
Eastern illustration of this superstition,--"It strikes me as curious
that Mr. Pearson should hear on a Lancashire moor a tradition or
superstition so similar to that which I have heard on the Bosphorus with
reference to certain flocks of birds, about the size of a thrush, which
fly up and down the channel, and are never seen to rest on the land or
water. I was informed by the man who rowed the _caique_ that they were
the souls of the damned, and condemned to perpetual motion."
There is a legend of Odin wandering over the earth, accompanied by his
two ravens, one of which represented Thought and the other Memory. Mr.
Princeps had a picture in the Royal Academy Exhibition in 1871,
illustrating this tradition.
The last time the Wandering Jew is said to have appeared _in propriâ
personâ_ was in the year 1604, when he was believed to have been seen
three times in France. As his appearance was invariably accompanied with
violent and destructive tempests, the peasantry concluded that his mode
of locomotion was of a supernatural character, and that the fierce
blasts of the storm-god (or fiend) hurled him from place to place. Since
the French visits referred to, it seems that the Wandering Jew's advent
has not been able to gain much credence. Several times, however,
attempts in this direction have been made. Referring to the subject,
Brand says:--"I remember to have seen one of these imposters some years
ago in the north of England, who made a very hermit-like appearance, and
went up and down the streets of Newcastle with a long train of boys at
his heels, muttering, 'Poor John alone, alone!' I thought he pronounced
his name in a manner singularly plaintive." In a note Brand adds that
"Poor John alone" is "otherwise 'Poor Jew alone.'" He mentions a
portrait of this man, painted for Sir William Musgrave, Bart., which was
inscribed "Poor Joe alone!" which corresponds with the name of a then
recent pretender of this class, as recorded by Matthew Paris, on the
authority of an Armenian archbishop, who, in 1228, visited the monastery
at St. Albans.
The earlier gods of the heathens were supposed, notwithstanding their
immortality, to be occasionally subjected to a kind of temporary death.
Baldr, the bright day-god, was slain by a stroke of a mistletoe branch,
wielded by the hand of the blind Hodr; the Python overcame Apollo; and
such is sometimes the strange inconsistency of early traditions and
their after development, that the grave of Zeus was a sacred spot to the
Ancient Greeks. The spectre huntsman appears to have been subjected to
some such death, or protracted trance, periodically.
Odin rode on his dappled grey steed only in rough weather. His mortal
enemy seems to have been the wild boar. This animal is also a favourite
mythic form of expression in Merlin's famous prophesy. The Germans have
a legend that in the form of Hackelberg, or the mantle-wearer, on one
occasion he was heard to inquire for the "stumpy tail" that he knew from
a vision was destined to overcome him. At a great hunt he killed the
animal, and fancied that he had practically given the lie to his dream
of the previous night. In his triumph he kicked the slain brute
contemptuously; but the tusk of the dead animal (an Aryan
personification of the lightning) piercing his leg, inflicted a wound,
from the effects of which he died, or, in other words, fell into a deep
trance. This evidently represents the season of calm weather, during
which the spectre huntsman and his howling pack rest from their
labours.
This wild boar legend has near mythological affinity to the Greek one,
respecting Adonis, who, whilst hunting, was mortally wounded in the
thigh by a wild boar. The waters of the river Adonis assume, at a
certain season of the year, a deep red hue, which was said to be caused
by the blood of Adonis. Modern investigation has attributed this
phenomenon to periodical heavy rains, which bring large quantities of
red earth into the river. In Syria, Thammuz, an older prototype or
counterpart of Adonis, was worshipped, which worship was denounced by
Ezekiel, six centuries before Christ, as amongst the abominations of
Judah. Milton, in "Paradise Lost," says:--
Thammuz came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allur'd
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
In amorous ditties all a summer's day,
While smooth Adonis from his native rock
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood
Of Thammuz yearly wounded.
Adonis alternately abode with Aphroditê in heaven and Persephonê in
hell. This has been held to be "typical of the burial of seed, which, in
due season, rises above the ground for the propagation of its species,"
or of the "annual passage of the sun from the northern to the southern
hemisphere."
Odin was surnamed the lord of the gallows, or the god of the hanged,
because human sacrifices were offered to him in this fashion, and
because he had hanged himself for nine days on the mighty tree
Yggdrasil. Hence the superstition in Germany, and not unknown in
England, that the act of committing suicide by hanging creates a storm.
The temporary death, or state of coma, of these weather-gods is very
significant. When Indra or Odin hurled his spear, the weapon, with most
commendable loyalty, as a rule, returned to the hand of its proprietor.
Thor's hammer or lightning club, was, generally, equally accommodating.
But at the conclusion of the autumnal storms, the implement remained
buried in the earth, where, like some animals, it may be said to have
hybernated. It was not until the return of spring that the potent weapon
was restored to the grasp of the thundering deity.
The analogy of the weapons of these gods to the lightning is forcibly
illustrated by the Scandinavian legend, which asserts that Odin lent his
spear in the form of a reed to King Erich in order to ensure him the
victory in a battle against Styrbjörn. The reed, in its flight, assumed
the form of a spear, and _struck with blindness_ the whole of the
opposing army.
The peculiar form of this weapon of the gods has undergone many changes
in mythical lore. It is the sword of Roland, "Durandal," which Mr. Cox
says "is manifestly the sword of Chrysâôr." It is that of Theseus and
that of Sigurd. It is Arthur's famous sword "Excalibur," as well as the
one which no one could draw from the iron anvil sheath, embedded in
stone, but himself. It is Odin's sword, "Gram," stuck in the roof tree
of Volsung's hall. Mr. Cox says:--"Like all other sons of Helios, Arthur
has his enemies, and King Rience demands as a sign of homage the beard
of Arthur, which gleams with the splendour of the golden locks or rays
of Phoibos Akersekomes. The demand is refused, but in the mediæval
romance there is room for others who reflect the glory of Arthur, while
his own splendour is for a time obscured. At Camelot they see a maiden
with a sword attached to her body, which Arthur himself cannot draw. In
the Knight Balin, who draws it, and who 'because he was poorly arrayed
put him not far in the press,' we see not merely the humble Arthur, who
gives his sword to Sir Kay, but Odysseus, who in his beggar's dress
shrinks from the brilliant throng that crowds his ancestral hall."
Campbell, in his "Tales of the West Highlands," says:--"The Manx hero,
Olave, of Norway, had a sword with a Celtic name, Macabuin." It
reappears in many of the fairy tales. In some popular stories it becomes
an ordinary cudgel, with magical properties, leaps of its own accord out
of the lad's bag who owned it, and severely punishes the rascally
innkeeper who stole the buck-goat that spat gold, the hen that laid the
golden eggs, and a table that covered itself with a sumptuous repast,
without human aid. The stick, like Indra's spear, returned to its
owner's hand on the completion of the innkeeper's castigation. Different
versions of the legend are found in Yorkshire, Germany, and various
other parts of Europe. Kelly says:--"The table, in this story, is the
all-nourishing cloud. The buck-goat is another emblem of the clouds, and
the gold it spits is the golden light of the sun that streams through
the fleecy covering of the sky. The hen's golden egg is the sun itself.
The demon of darkness has stolen these things; the cloud gives no rain,
but hangs dusky in the sky, veiling the light of the sun. Then the
lightning spear of the ancient storm-god, Odin, leaps out from the bag
that concealed it (the cloud again), the robber falls, the rain patters
down, the sun shines once more." In other words we have the Sanscrit
Vritra, the dragon, or "dark thief," stealing the herds of Indra, and
hiding them in the cave of the Panis (the dark cloud), and the weapon of
the lightning-god effecting their liberation.
It is said that, in the "elevated and inland region of Arya, the winter
was a rigorous season of seven months' duration, and it has been
suggested that the dormant condition of the lightning, or the sun-god's
weapon, is symbolical of the fact." Lyell and others contend that
geological evidence indicates that the winters were long and severe
during the period when the makers of the "palæoliths," or rude flint
implements, which have recently attracted so much attention, lived on
the banks of the Somme, near Amiens and Abbeville, and in other
localities in England and Northern Europe. These implements are believed
to furnish the most reliable evidence of the earliest existence of man
yet discovered. If such was the condition of the country on the arrival
of the Aryan emigrants, four different classes of facts--mythological,
philological, geological, and archæological--seem to be in perfect
harmony with each other.
Kelly says, "in some places local tradition makes Hackelberg a mere man;
in others an enormous giant. At Rocklum, near Wolfenbuttel, the
existence of a group of hills is accounted for by saying that they are
composed of the gravel which Hackelberg once threw out of his shoe as he
passed that way with the wild hunt." Similar traditions are not unknown
in Lancashire and other parts of Britain. It is stated in Knight's "Old
England" that "there were formerly three huge upright stones near
Kennet, not far from Abury, the country people called them from time
immemorial, 'The Devil's Coits.' They could be playthings, it might
readily be imagined, for no other busy idler. But the good folks of
Somersetshire, by a sort of refinement of such hacknied traditions, hold
that a great stone, near Stanton Drew, now called '_Hackell's Coit_,'
and which formerly weighed thirty tons, was thrown from a hill about a
mile off, by a mortal champion, Sir Jno. Hautville."
Dr. J. Collingwood Bruce, in his "Wallet-Book of the Roman Wall,"
relates the following Northumberland tradition:--"To the north of
Sewingshields, two strata of sandstone crop out to the day; the highest
points of each ledge are called the King and Queen's-crag, from the
following legend. King Arthur, seated on the furthest rock, was talking
with his queen, who, meanwhile, was engaged in arranging her
'back-hair.' Some expression of the queen's having offended his majesty,
he seized a rock which lay near him, and, with an exertion of strength
for which the Picts were proverbial, he threw it at her, a distance of
about a quarter of a mile! The queen, with great dexterity, caught it
upon her comb, and thus warded off the blow; the stone fell between
them, where it lies to this very day, with the marks of the comb upon
it, to attest the truth of the story. It probably weighs about twenty
tons."[29]
This method of accounting for the deposition of the large boulders and
other erratic rocks of the glacial drift period of modern geology is
common in Lancashire and the North of England. Odin, or Hackelberg, is,
of course, in these legends, converted into the devil, as in Kennet. He
is supposed to have built a bridge over the Kent, a little above Kendal,
and another over the Lune, at Kirkby Lonsdale; and it is said that in
leaping from the hills on the Yorkshire side of the valley into
Lancashire, his apron string broke, and a large mass of scattered rocks
which lie in the valley fell to the earth in consequence. The present
writer was once shown, near Hutton Roof, a hollow in the mountain
limestone of which the hill is formed, which he was seriously told had
been named, from time immemorial, the "Devil's Footprint," and was still
held to be irrefragable evidence of the truth of the legend referred to.
The hole in the rock did certainly bear some slight resemblance to the
impression of a cow's hoof on some plastic substance; but it in reality
is an ordinary limestone cavity, of a somewhat unusual form.
The removing of stones in the night by the devil on the occasion of the
building of churches appears to have some remote connection with the
ancient superstition now under consideration. Lancashire has many such
stories. The wild boar, or demon pig, played some such pranks at
Winwick. A rude sculpture, "resembling a hog fastened to a block by the
collar," has been found amongst the carved stones which decorated the
ancient church. In this, Mr. E. Baines says, "superstition sees the
resemblance of a monster in former ages, which prowled over the
neighbourhood, inflicting injury on man and beast, and which could only
be restrained by the subduing power of the sacred edifice." Mr. T. T.
Wilkinson says "The Goblin Builders" are "said to have removed the
foundations of Rochdale Church from the banks of the river Roach up to
their present elevated position. Samlesbury Church near Preston,
possesses a similar tradition. The demon pig not only determined the
site of St. Oswald's Church at Winwick, but gave a name to the
parish.[30] The parochial church at Burnley, it is said, was originally
intended to be built on the site of the old Saxon cross, in Godly-lane;
but, however much the masons might have built during the day, both the
stones and the scaffolding were invariably found where the church now
stands, on their coming to work next morning. The local legend states
that on this occasion also, the goblin took the form of a _pig_, and a
rude sculpture of such an animal, on the south side of the steeple,
lends its aid to perpetuate and confirm the story."
Miss Farington, in her paper on Leyland Church, read before the
Lancashire and Cheshire Historic Society, refers to several carved
stones which decorated the ancient structure, and amongst others to what
was termed the "cat stone." She says--"To this relic appends the usual
story of the stones being removed by night (in this case from Whittle to
Leyland), and the devil, in the form of a _cat_, throttling a person who
was bold enough to watch." This tradition I have often heard spoken of
myself by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood.
The cat, as I have shown in a previous chapter, like the boar, was an
Aryan personification of storm and tempest.
When the Hackelberg-Odin was killed by the boar's tusk, in accordance
with his last request, he was interred at the spot to which his
favourite steed unguided bore him. He is believed to have been buried in
the "enchanted or cloud mountain," which the superstitious, however,
still insist upon finding on the earth. He is supposed to lie in a
secluded spot on some lone moorland side, the way to which no curious
enquirer ever trod a second time. Hence the many traditions of heroes
slumbering in caves, awaiting the signal for future battle, and their
triumph over the enchantment that has held them for ages spell-bound.
Frederic Barbarossa--he of the red beard like Odin--is yet believed by
the German peasantry to rest in a cavern, surrounded by his knights, in
the Kyffhäuser mountain, "leaning his head upon his arm, at a table
through which his beard has grown, or around which, according to other
accounts, it has grown twice. When it has thrice encircled the table he
will awake up to battle. The cavern glitters with gold and jewels, and
is as bright as the sunniest day. Thousands of horses stand at mangers
filled with thorn bushes instead of hay, and make a prodigious noise as
they stamp on the ground and rattle their chains. The old Kaiser
sometimes wakes up for a moment and speaks to his visitors. He once
asked a herdsman who had found his way into the Kyffhäuser, 'Are the
ravens [Odin's birds] still flying about the mountain?' The man replied
that they were. 'Then,' said Barbarossa, 'I must sleep a hundred years
longer.'" From many details in this superstition, Mannhardt clearly
identifies Frederic and his companions with Odin and his wild host.
Similar stories are told of the Emperor Henry the Fowler, who is said to
be entranced in the Sudemerberg, near Goslar. Charlemagne and his
enchanted army are believed to slumber in several different localities.
In Britain, Armorica, Normandy, and other places, the caverned hero, who
has superseded Odin, is the renowned Arthur, who is expected yet to
reappear, and restore the glory of the ancient British race. Grimm shows
that the mediæval Germans believed that "Arthur, too, the vanished King,
whose return is expected by the Britons, and who rides at the head of
the nightly host, is said to dwell with his men at arms in a mountain;
Felicia, Sybilla's daughter, and the goddess Juno, live with him, and
the whole army are well provided with food, drink, horses, and clothes."
It appears that the earliest poetical writer in the English vernacular,
at the commencement of the thirteenth century, Layamon, in his "Brut or
Chronicle of Britain, a Poetical Semi-Saxon Paraphrase of the Brut of
Wace," first engrafted this legend on the Arthurian romances. According
to him, Arthur, when dying, addressed Constantine, his successor, as
follows:--"I will fare to Avalun to the fairest of all maidens, to
Argante, the Queen, an elf most fair, and she shall make my wounds all
sound; make me all whole with healing draughts. And afterwards I will
come again to my kingdom and dwell with the Britons with mickle joy."
Layamon further adds:--"Even with the words there approached from the
sea a little short boat floating with the waves, and two women therein
wondrously formed; and they took Arthur anon, and bare him quickly, and
laid him softly down, and forth they gan depart. Then was it
accomplished that Merlin whilom said, that mickle care should come of
Arthur's departure. The Britons believe yet that he is alive and
dwelleth in Avalun with the fairest of all elves, and the Britons even
yet expect when Arthur shall return." Amongst the Welsh bards, after the
appearance of Geoffrey's History, fairy land was designated "Ynys yr
Avallon," or the "Island of the Apple Trees."
Sir Walter Scott, in his "Demonology and Witchcraft," relates a
tradition, in which he makes Thomas the Rhymer the hero, but this Kelly
contends is a blunder, and cites the following passage, quoted by Sir
Walter himself, from Leyden's "Scenes of Infancy," in proof of his view
that the caverned warriors referred to were King Arthur's Knights:--
Say who is he with summons loud and long
Shall bid the charmed sleep of ages fly,
Roll the long sound through Eildon's caverns vast,
While each dark warrior kindles at the blast;
The horn, the falchion grasp with mighty hand,
And peal proud Arthur's march from Fairy land?
Sir Walter Scott's version of the legend is as follows:--"A daring
horse-jockey sold a black horse to a man of venerable and antique
appearance, who appointed the remarkable hillock upon Eildon Hills,
called the Lucken Hare, as the place where, at twelve o'clock at night
he should receive the price. He came, his money was paid in ancient
coin, and he was invited by his customer to view his residence. The
trader in horses followed his guide in the deepest astonishment through
several long ranges of stalls, in each of which a horse stood
motionless, while an armed warrior lay equally still at the charger's
feet. 'All these men,' said the wizard in a whisper, 'will awaken at the
battle of Sheriffmoor.' At the extremity of this extraordinary depôt
hung a sword and a horn, which the prophet pointed out to the horse
dealer as containing the means of dissolving the spell. The man, in
confusion, took the horn and attempted to wind it. The horses instantly
started in their stalls, stamped, and shook their bridles, the men arose
and clashed their armour, and the mortal, terrified at the tumult he had
excited, dropped the horn from his hand. A voice like that of a giant,
louder even than the tumult around, pronounced these words:--
Woe to the coward that ever he was born,
That did not draw the sword before he blew the horn!
_A whirlwind_ expelled the horse dealer from the cavern, the entrance to
which he could never find again."
In the neighbourhood of Kirkoswald, on the Eden, in Cumberland, a
district prolific in Arthurian legends, it is said that "a peculiar wind
called the _Helmwind_, sometimes blows with great fury in this part of
the country. It is believed by some persons to be an electrical
phenomenon." Perhaps this fact may have some remote connection with the
superstition under consideration.
Sir Walter remarks that although his legend refers to Sheriffmoor, and
1715, a similar story is related in the reign of Elizabeth by Reginald
Scot. Indeed, it is told with some variations in several localities,
both in the Highlands and in the northern counties of England. In
Hodgson's "Northumberland" it is described in the following terms:--
"Immemorial tradition has asserted that King Arthur, his queen,
Guenever, his court of lords and ladies, and his hounds, were enchanted
in some cave of the crags, or in a hall below the castle of
Sewingshields, and would continue entranced there till some one should
first blow a bugle-horn, that lay on a table near the entrance of the
hall, and then, with 'the sword of the stone,' cut a garter, also placed
there beside it. But none had ever heard where the entrance to this
enchanted hall was, till the farmer at Sewingshields, about fifty years
since, was sitting knitting on the ruins of the castle, and his clew
fell, and ran downwards through a rush of briers and nettles, as he
supposed, into a deep subterranean passage. Full in the faith that the
entrance into King Arthur's hall was now discovered, he cleared the
briery portal of its weeds and rubbish, and, entering a vaulted passage,
followed, in his darkling way, the thread of his clew. The floor was
infested with toads and lizards; and the dark wings of bats, disturbed
by his unhallowed intrusion, flitted fearfully around him. At length his
sinking courage was strengthened by a dim, distant light, which, as he
advanced, grew gradually brighter, till, all at once, he entered a vast
and vaulted hall, in the centre of which, a fire without fuel, from a
broad crevice in the floor, blazed with a high and lambent flame, that
showed all the carved walls and fretted roof, and the monarch and his
queen and court reposing around, in a theatre of thrones and costly
couches. On the floor, beyond the fire, lay the faithful and _deep-toned
pack of thirty couple of hounds_; and, on a table before it, the
spell-dissolving horn, sword, and garter. The shepherd reverently, but
firmly, grasped the sword, and as he drew it leisurely from its rusty
scabbard, the eyes of the monarch and his courtiers began to open, and
they rose till they sat upright. He cut the garter; and, as the sword
was being slowly sheathed, the spell assumed its ancient power, and they
all sank gradually to rest; but not before the monarch had lifted up his
eyes and hands, and exclaimed:--
O woe betide that evil day
On which this witless wight was born,
Who drew the sword--the garter cut,
But never blew the bugle-horn.
Terror brought on loss of memory, and the shepherd was unable to give
any correct account of his adventure, or to find again the entrance to
the enchanted hall."
The Arthur legend is repeated, with some slight variations, by the
country people about Alderley Edge, Cheshire. The sleeping warriors are
said to repose in the recesses of a place called the "Wizard's Cave."
An old Cornish legend avers that King Arthur is still alive in the form
of a raven; and certain superstitious people refuse to shoot these
birds, from a fear that they might inadvertently destroy the mythic
warrior.
King Arthur and his knights have been so popular in Lancashire, that the
Rev. John Whitaker, the historian of Manchester, seriously relates the
story of Sir Tarquin and Lancelot of the Lake as an historical event
pertaining to this county. According to him, Tarquin's castle was at
Manchester, and the lake from which Sir Lancelot derived his surname the
now almost thoroughly drained Martin Mere. He contends that discovered
remains demonstrate that three of the battles won by Arthur, and
ascribed by tradition to the neighbourhood of the Douglas, were fought
near Wigan and Blackrod. Geoffrey of Monmouth, however, only mentions
one battle as being fought on the banks of the Douglas. He says:--
"The Saxons, under the command of Colgrin, were attempting to
exterminate the whole of the British race. They had also entirely
subdued all that part of the island which extends from the Humber to the
sea of Caithness.... Hereupon he (Arthur) marched to (towards) York, of
which, when Colgrin had intelligence, he met him with a very great army,
composed of Saxons, Scots, and Picts, _by the river Duglas_, where a
battle happened with the loss of the greater part of both armies.
Notwithstanding, the victory fell to Arthur, who pursued Colgrin to
York, and there besieged him."
The "historical" Arthur, however, has long been looked upon by the best
historians as a mythical or fictitious personage, the representative, or
impersonation as it were, of the national valour and superstition.[31]
Dr. Kuhn and others regard all the stories of these caverned heroes as
merely relatively modernised forms of Odin and his terrible host. They
refer the weapon suspended in the cave to "that of Heimdallr, the
Sverdâs or sword-god, and warder of Bifrost Bridge," to whom belongs the
"Gjallar horn with which he will warn the gods that the frost giants
are advancing to storm Valhalla." The mighty conflict in which they
expect to be engaged "will be fought before the end of the world, when
heaven and earth shall be destroyed, and the Æsir gods themselves shall
perish, and their places shall be filled by a new creation and new and
brighter gods." This dark myth is by some writers regarded as a
foreshadowing of the downfall of paganism and the advent of a higher
civilisation and purer religion under the Christian dispensation.
Tempests and the howling of the wind appear to have been regarded with
superstitious reverence from the earliest times in the British islands.
Plutarch speaks of the return to Delphos from Britain of a certain
grammarian, named Demetrius, who related some curious stories with
respect to the then but little known country. Amongst other things the
travelled sage narrated to Plutarch and his friends the following
story:--"There are many desert islands scattered about Britain, some of
which have the name of being the islands of genii and heroes; that he
had been sent by the emperor, for the sake of describing and viewing
them, to that which lay nearest to the desert isles, and which had but
few inhabitants; all of whom were esteemed by the Britons sacred and
inviolable. Very soon after his arrival there was great turbulence in
the air, and many portentous storms; the winds became tempestuous, and
fiery whirlwinds rushed forth. When these ceased, the islanders said
that the departure of some one of the superior genii had taken place.
For, as a light when burning, say they, has nothing disagreeable, but
when extinguished, is offensive to many; so likewise lofty spirits
afford an illumination benignant and mild, but their extinction and
destruction frequently, as at the present moment, excite winds and
storms, and often infect the atmosphere with pestilential evils.
Moreover, that there was one island there, where Saturn was confined by
Briareus in sleep: for that sleep had been devised for his bonds; and
that around him were many genii as his companions and attendants."
Singularly enough, M. Du Chaillu, in his "Journey to Ashango-land,"
found a similar superstition to obtain amongst the West Coast Equatorial
Africans. They believe that the Oguisi or "spirit" brings the plague
amongst them in the form of a whirlwind. An impression got abroad that
the white man who was advancing into their territories was the veritable
Oguisi, and consequently, owing to their fetich superstition, they
expected disaster therefrom. He says:--"The King of the Niembouai, like
most of the other monarchs of these regions, did not show himself on my
arrival--he was absent until about noon to-day. I have been told that
the reason why the chiefs keep away from the villages until I have been
in them some time is, that they have a notion that I bring with me a
whirlwind which may do them some great harm; so they wait until it has
had time to blow away from the village before they make their
appearance."
It is somewhat remarkable that the tradition of the "wild hunt," or the
"furious host," has become obsolete, or nearly so, in Ireland, inasmuch
as that country has preserved, with much minuteness, many other Aryan
myths. What does remain in Ireland, however, is singularly in accordance
with the properties assigned to the elder storm-gods, Indra and Rudra,
and their followers, the Ribhus and the Maruts, in the Rig Veda.
A writer in the _Athenæum_, in 1847, makes the following
observations:--"The ideas of the Irish peasantry respecting the state of
departed souls are very singular. According to the tenets of the church
to which the majority of them belong, the souls of the departed are
either in paradise, hell, or purgatory. But popular belief assigns the
air as a fourth place of suffering, where unquiet souls wander about
until their period of penance is past. On a cold, or wet, or stormy
night, the peasant will exclaim with real sympathy 'Musha! God help the
poor souls that are in the shelter of the ditches, or under the eaves
this way!' And the good 'chanathee' or mother of a family will sweep the
hearth, that the poor souls may warm themselves when the family retires.
The conviction that the spirits of the departed sweep along with the
storm or shiver in the driving rain, is singularly wild and near akin to
the Scandinavian myth." The identity of this superstition with some of
the Aryan myths, is very easily perceived. Kelly says:--"Indra has for
friends and followers the Maruts, or spirits of the winds, whose host
consists, at least in part, of the souls of the pious dead; and the
Ribhus, who are of similar origin, but whose element is rather that of
the sunbeams or the lightning, though they too rule the winds, and sing
like the Maruts the loud song of the storm."
The same writer gives the following graphic description of the popular
feeling and action on the approach of this mythic cavalcade:--"The first
token which the furious host gives of its approach is a low song that
makes the hearer's flesh creep. The grass and the leaves of the forest
wave and bow in the moonshine as often as the strain begins anew.
Presently the sounds come nearer and nearer, and swell into the music of
a thousand instruments. Then bursts the hurricane, and the oaks of the
forest come crashing down. The spectral appearance often presents
itself in the shape of a great black coach, on which sit hundreds of
spirits singing a wonderfully sweet song. Before it goes a man, who
loudly warns everybody to get out of the way. All who hear him must
instantly drop down with their faces to the ground, as at the coming of
the wild hunt, and hold fast by something, were it only a blade of
grass; for the furious host has been known to force many a man into its
coach and carry him hundreds of miles away through the air."
The black coach version of the legend of the furious host yet survives
in the North of England. Mr. Henderson says:--"Night after night, too,
when it is sufficiently dark, the headless coach whirls along the rough
approach to Langley Hall, near Durham, drawn by black and fiery steeds."
In a work entitled "Rambles in Northumberland," it is referred to in the
following terms:--"When the death-hearse, drawn by headless horses, and
driven by a headless driver, is seen about midnight, proceeding rapidly,
but without noise, towards the churchyard, the death of some
considerable person in the parish is sure to happen at no distant
period." It is likewise referred to in Rees's Diary as a "vision of a
coach drawn by six black swine, and driven by a black driver."
Grose says:--"We sometimes read of ghosts striking violent blows; and
that, if not made way for, they overturn all impediment, _like a furious
whirlwind_." Yet singularly enough in the same paragraph, speaking on
the authority of Glanvil of the apparition of an old woman, he informs
us that "if a tree stood in her walk," the spectator "observed her
always to go through it." Notwithstanding this feat, the old lady must
have had some materiality about her, for on being lifted from the ground
by human hands at her request, her ghostship "felt just like a bag of
feathers."
"The furious host" seems to have differed in some legends from the "wild
hunt" of Odin and his followers, and yet in others they appear as it
were in combination. Indeed, the name Woden, itself, signifies the
"Furious One;" and hence, doubtless, we have the link which legitimately
connects them together. "_Wud_" still signifies "mad" in some existing
Scottish dialects. The hounds of the "spectre huntsman" are believed to
be human souls transformed into air; which in their wild career strip
the hedges of the linen placed there to dry; they eat up or scatter
abroad meal and the ashes that lay on the peasant's hearth. The hound
sometimes left behind in the household, through which the wild hunt has
passed, is supposed to repose on the hearth for a whole year, during
which time it lives upon ashes, and howls and whines, until the spectre
horseman returns, when it jumps on its feet, wags its tail with joy, and
rejoins its ancient comrades. Kelly says:--"There is only one way
amongst the Germans of ridding the house sooner of the unwelcome guest,
and that is to brew beer in eggshells. The hound watches the operation
and exclaims
Though I am now as old as the old Bohemian wold,
Yet the like of this I ween, in my life I ne'er have seen.
And it goes, and is seen no more. On Christmas evenings especially, that
is to say, at the season of the winter solstice, it is very unsafe to
leave linen hanging out of doors, for the wild huntsman's hounds will
tear it to pieces." The soughing of the wind through crevices, windows,
or doorways in buildings, or narrow passages in the hills, like that at
Cliviger, was believed to be the howling of Odin's hounds, and to
indicate the passage of "the furious host."
This spectre hound or dog is a very common sprite in Lancashire. I
remember well being terrified in my youth in Preston, by Christmas
recitals of strange stories of its appearance, and the misfortune which
its howling was said to forebode. The Preston black dog was without a
head, which rendered the said howling still more mysterious to my
youthful imagination. A gentleman recently related to me a story
respecting this "dog-fiend," which he had direct from a Manchester
tradesman's own lips, who thoroughly believed in the supernatural
character of his nocturnal assailant. This tradesman, a Mr. Drabble,
assured my friend that the celebrated black headless dog-fiend, on one
occasion, about the year 1825, suddenly appeared before, or rather
behind, him, not far from the then Collegiate Church; and, placing its
fore paws upon his shoulders, actually ran him home at a rapid rate, in
spite of his strenuous resistance. He was so terrified at the incident
that he rushed into bed in his dirty clothes, much to the surprise and
dismay of his family. This particular dog-boggart is believed yet by
many to have been "laid" and buried under the dry arch of the old bridge
across the Irwell, on the Salford side of the river; and that the spell
to which it has been subjected will endure for 999 years, which, I
suppose, in vulgar as well as legal parlance, is supposed to be nearly
equivalent to the more comprehensive term--"for ever."
In Larwood and Hotten's "History of Signboards," I find the
following:--"This Black Dog may have derived its name from the canine
spectre that still frightens the ignorant and fearful in the rural
districts, just as the terrible Dun Cow and the Lambton Worm were the
terror of the people in olden times. Near Lyme Regis, Dorset, there is
an alehouse which has this black fiend in all his ancient ugliness
painted over the door. Its adoption there arose from a legend that the
spectral black dog used to haunt at nights the kitchen fire of a
neighbouring farm-house, formerly a Royalist mansion, destroyed by
Cromwell's troops. The dog would sit opposite the farmer; but one night
a little extra liquor gave the man additional courage, and he struck at
the dog, intending to rid himself of the horrid thing. Away, however,
flew the dog, and the farmer after him, from one room to another, until
it sprang through the roof, and was seen no more that night. In mending
the hole, a lot of money fell down, which, of course, was connected in
some way or other with the dog's strange visit. Near the house is a lane
still called Dog Lane, which is now the favourite walk of the black dog,
and to this _genius loci_ the sign is dedicated."
I am inclined to think that the "Trash" or "Skriker" described by Mr.
Wilkinson, of Burnley, has some relationship to the strayed hound of
Odin, and more especially so, as the spectre huntsman is well known in
the neighbourhood of the Cliviger gorge. He says:--
"The appearance of this sprite is considered a certain death-sign, and
has obtained the local names of 'Trash' or 'Skriker.' He generally
appears to one of the family from which death is about to select his
victim, and is more or less visible according to the distance of the
event. I have met with persons to whom the barghaist has assumed the
form of a white cow or a horse; but on most occasions 'Trash' is
described as having the appearance of a large dog, with very broad feet,
shaggy hair, drooping ears, and 'eyes as large as saucers.' When
walking, his feet make a loud splashing noise, like old shoes in a miry
road, and hence the name of 'Trash.' The appellation, 'Skriker,' has
reference to the screams uttered by the sprite, which are frequently
heard when the animal is invisible. When followed by any individual, he
begins to walk backwards, with his eyes fixed full on his pursuer, and
vanishes on the slightest momentary inattention. Occasionally he plunges
into a pool of water, and at other times he sinks at the feet of the
person to whom he appears with a loud splashing noise, as if a heavy
stone was thrown into the miry road. Some are reported to have attempted
to strike him with any weapon they had at hand, but there was no
substance present to receive the blows, although the Skriker kept his
ground. He is said to frequent the neighbourhood of Burnley at present,
and is mostly seen in Godly Lane and about the Parochial Church; but he
by no means confines his visits to the churchyard, as similar sprites
are said to do in other parts of England and Wales."
Grose tells us that dogs have "the faculty of seeing spirits," and he
instances the case of one David Hunter, a neatherd to the Bishop of Down
and Connor, whose dog accompanied him _quietly_, when, from an impulse
he was unable to restrain, he wandered after the apparition of an old
woman by which he was haunted. "But," Grose adds, "they usually show
signs of terror, by whining and creeping to their master for protection;
and it is generally supposed that they often see things of this nature
when their owner cannot; there being some persons, particularly those
born on a Christmas-eve, who cannot see spirits."
Max Müller etymologically identifies the classic Cerberus or Kerberos
with the Vedic Sarvari, "the dog of night, watching the path to the
lower world." Grimm says that the dog is an embodiment of the wind and
an attendant of the dead both in the mythology of the Germans and the
Aryans, and that both these attributes are conspicuous in the wild hunt
superstitions. Dogs, he adds, see ghosts, as well as the goddess of
death, Hel, although she is invisible to human eyes. Kuhn contends that
the name of Yama's canine messengers, Sârameyas, was borne in Greek
form, by the messenger of the Greek gods, Hermeias or Hermes, the
conductor of the shades of the departed to the realm of Hades. With the
aid of Athenê, Hermes conducted Heracles in safety, with the dog
Kerberos, out of Hades.
In the "Merry Devil of Edmonton" (1631) is the following reference to
this superstition:--
I know thee well; I heare the watchfull dogs,
With hollow howling, tell of thy approach;
The lights burne dim, affrighted with thy presence;
And this distempered and tempestuous night
Tells me the ayre is troubled with some devill.
The superstition that the howling of a dog, especially in the night
time, portends the death of some person in the immediate neighbourhood,
is yet, at the present day, firmly believed in, even by the middle, and
by no means uneducated, classes in Lancashire. I listened, not very long
ago, to the serious recital of a story by one who heard the howling and
knew well the party whose death immediately followed. He himself, being
sick at the time, deemed his own end approaching, but was relieved of
his terror on being informed that a well-known neighbour had just
expired.
It is by no means improbable that the extremely delicate sense of smell
possessed by some of the canine species or varieties, as especially
exhibited in the scenting of game and carrion or putrid flesh, may have
influenced the original personification of the dog as an attendant on
the dead.
Charles Dickens, in a recent Christmas story, describes, with his usual
felicity, a rather singular phase of this "howling hound" superstition.
It appears that Dr. Marigold's dog, true to the instincts of his
blustering race, could snuff an approaching storm of a "domestic"
character with the most unerring precision. Certainly there are
localities in which the blasts of old Boreas, and the storm songs of the
Maruts, are infinitely more disagreeable than they are in certain
others. To encounter them alone on the bleak mountain top, or in a wild
gorge, like that of Cliviger, on an "old-fashioned Christmas" or New
Year's-eve, is not productive of exactly the same kind of satisfaction
as results from attentively listening to their wild harmonies when
seated in a warm corner of one's own "snuggery," with plenty of good
cheer, and a select few of tried old friends partaking of the
hospitality characteristic of the season. Dr. Marigold, who is neither
more nor less than the witty and loquacious "Cheap John," of
mock-auction renown, thinks, very properly, that his peripatetic place
of business was a very unsuitable locality for domestic hurricanes. He
says:--"We might have had such a pleasant life. A roomy cart, with the
large goods hung outside, and the bed slung underneath it when on the
road, an iron pot and kettle, a fire-place for the cold weather, a
chimney for the smoke, a hanging-shelf and a cupboard, a dog, and a
horse. What more do you want? You draw off on a bit of turf in a green
lane or by the roadside, you hobble your old horse and turn him grazing,
you light your fire upon the ashes of the last visitors', you cook your
stew, and you would not call the Emperor of France your father. But have
a _temper_ in the cart, flinging language and the hardest goods in stock
at you, and where are you then? Put a name to your feelings! My dog knew
as well when she was on the turn as I did. Before she broke out, he
would give a howl, and bolt. How he knew it was a mystery to me, but the
sure and certain knowledge of it would wake him up out of his soundest
sleep, and he would give a howl and bolt. At such times I wished I was
him."
The large "saucer eyes" of Skriker, and his "_vanishing_ on the
slightest momentary inattention," are suggestive of some connection with
lightning or the ignis fatuus, or wild fire; and, singularly enough, I
find Will-o'-whisp traditions bear considerable resemblance to those
which appertain to the furious host. Mr. Thoms, in his "Shakspere
Notelets," has some curious information on this subject. He says:--
"According to some these phantoms are believed to be the souls of
children who have died unbaptised; while others again believe them to be
the restless spirits of wicked and covetous men, who have not scrupled,
for the sake of their own aggrandisement, to remove their neighbours'
landmarks. In Brittany, we learn from Villemarqué, the _Porte-brandon_
appears in the form of a child bearing a torch, which he turns like a
burning wheel; and with this it is said he sets fire to the villages,
which are sometimes suddenly in the middle of the night wrapped in
flames. In Lusatia, where these wandering children are also supposed to
be the souls of unbaptised children, they are believed to be perfectly
harmless, and to be relieved from their destined wanderings as soon as
any pious hand throws a handful of consecrated ground after them."
This form of superstition prevails yet to a considerable extent in the
north of England and Scotland.
The Maruts or storm-winds of the Sanscrit myths, who rode on
tawny-coloured horses, roared like lions, shook the mountains, and tore
up trees, when their wild work was done, Max Müller informs us, assumed
again, "according to their wont, the form of new-born babes," a phrase
which, as Mr. Cox justly observes, "exhibits the germ, and more than the
germ, of the myth of Hermes returning like a child to his cradle after
tearing up the forests." Hermes, as a personification of both the gentle
breeze and the stormy wind, gives forth soothing as well as martial
music, and his plaintive breath was supposed "to waft the spirits of the
dead to their unseen home." Crantz says the Greenland Esquimaux "lay a
dog's head by the grave of a child, for the soul of a dog can find its
way everywhere, and will show the ignorant babe the way to the land of
souls." The Parsees place a dog before the dying, from a similar
superstitious belief.
There is much probability in the suggestion that Shakspere had some of
these superstitions in view when he placed in the mouth of Macbeth,
while contemplating the murder, and its consequences, of the "gracious
Duncan," the following magnificent metaphors:--
And Pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or Heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind!
The furious host, in the German versions, is sometimes "a cavalcade of
the dead," and not exactly a wild hunt, in the ordinary acceptation of
the term. Kelly says:--"Sometimes it gallops through the stormy air as a
herd of wild boars; but the spirits of which it consists generally
appear in human form. They are of both sexes and of all ages, souls of
unchristened babes being included among them; for Holda or Bertha often
joins the hunt." When Odin rides at the head of a full field, he is
believed to chase a horse or a wild boar; but when he alone appears at
the heels of his yelping pack, it "is in pursuit of a woman with long
snow-white breasts. Seven years he follows her; at last he runs her
down, throws her across his horse, and carries her home." These seven
years are regarded by commentators as having reference to the seven
winter months of the year, during which "the spell bound" lightning and
storm-god was unable, owing to the prevailing cold weather, to continue
in active chase of his flying bride. This latter myth concerning the
chased maiden seems to be the counterpart or prototype of the spectre
huntsman, who "is believed to pursue a milk-white doe round the Eagle's
Crag, in the Vale of Todmorden, on All-Hallow Eve," as related by Mr.
Wilkinson. In Germany the wild hunt chases a whole flock of elfish
beings, the moss-wifekins and wood-maidens, whose lives are bound up
with those of the forest trees. Holda and Bertha are but local or
characteristic appellations for the goddess Freyja (whence our Friday),
the wife of Odin. In some parts of Germany the wild hunt is called the
dead hunt (Heljagd), and, in others, the English hunt (_die Engelske
jagd_), which are synonymous, England being but, at one period, "another
name for the nether world." Hel or Hela, was the name of both the
Scandinavian and German goddess of death. Kuhn, referring to the dispute
whether the ancient locality of departed souls was Great Britain or
Brittany, decides in favour of the former, and informs us that the
German peasants to this day use such expressions as the following: "How
the bells are ringing in England!" "How my children are crying in
England!" when referring to the nether or lower regions.
The dismal realm of Hela, which was a journey of nine days' dreary
descent from Heaven, was termed Niflheimr, the world of mists. It was
said to be situated under one of the roots of the great world-tree,
Yggdrasil, but it appears not to have been regarded, like the modern
Hell, as a place of torment or punishment for sins committed on earth.
It seems to have had more relationship to the Greek Hades. All departed
souls, good and evil, dwelt in Hela's realm, with the exception of those
of heroes slain in battle, which were conveyed at once to Valhalla, by
Odin himself. Kelly says:--
"But the idea of retribution after death for crimes done in the body was
not unknown to German paganism. It was part of the Aryan creed, and the
Vedas speak of the goddess Nirriti, and her dreadful world Naraka, the
destined abode of all guilty souls. It is not conceivable that such a
tradition could have died out, even for a time, amongst any of the pagan
Indo-Europeans."
In support of his position, Kelly cites the following passage from
Kemble's "Saxons in England":--
"For the perjurer and the secret murderer Nastrond existed, a place of
torment and punishment--the strand of the dead--filled with foulness,
peopled with poisonous serpents, dark, cold, and gloomy; the kingdom of
Hel was _Hades_, the invisible, the world of shadows; Nastrond was what
we call Hell."
Kelly further contends that as "the heaven of the (Aryan) Pitris is
often called 'the world of good deed, the world of the righteous,' and
as they themselves were spirits of light and ministers of all good men,
there is strong reason for inferring, although the fact is nowhere
expressly stated, that the inhabitants of the opposite world became
spirits of darkness, and confederates of all the evil powers." He
adds,--"If this conjecture prove to be well founded, it will have
brought to light another remarkable instance of the continuity of Aryan
tradition."
The Rev. G. W. Cox, however, scarcely indorses this view of the Gothic
Hell and Devil. He says,--"Hel had been like Persephonê, the queen of
the unseen land,--in the ideas of the northern tribes, a land of bitter
cold and icy walls. She now became not the queen of Niflheim, but
Niflheim itself, while her abode, though gloomy enough, was not wholly
destitute of material comforts. It became the Hell where the old man
hews wood for the Christmas fire, and where the Devil in his eagerness
to buy the flitch of bacon yields up the marvellous quern which is 'good
to grind almost anything.' It was not so pleasant, indeed, as Heaven, or
the old Valhalla, but it was better to be there than shut out in the
outer cold beyond its padlocked gates. But more particularly the Devil
was a being who under pressure of hunger might be drawn into acting
against his own interest, in other words he might be outwitted, and this
character of a poor or stupid devil is almost the only one exhibited in
Teutonic legends. In fact, as Professor Max Müller remarks, the Germans,
when they had been 'indoctrinated with the idea of a real devil, the
Semitic Satan or Diabolus, treated him in the most good-humoured
manner;' nor is it easy to resist Dr. Dasent's conclusion that 'no
greater proof can be given of the small hold which the Christian Devil
has taken of the Norse mind than the heathen aspect under which he
constantly appears, and the ludicrous way in which he is always
outwitted.'" Mr. Cox adds, in a note, that it has "been said of Southey
that he could never think of the devil without laughing. This is but
saying that he had the genuine humour of our Teutonic ancestors."
Dasent, in his "Popular Tales from the Norse," says,--"The Christian
notion of Hell is that of a place of heat, for in the East, whence
Christianity came, heat is often an intolerable torment, and cold, on
the other hand, everything that is pleasant and delightful. But to the
dwellers in the North heat brings with it sensations of joy and comfort,
and life without fire has a dreary outlook; so their Hel ruled in a cold
region over those who were cowards by implication, while the mead-cup
went round and huge logs blazed and crackled in Valhalla for the brave
and beautiful who had dared to die on the field of battle. But under
Christianity the extremes of heat and cold have met, and Hel, the cold,
uncomfortable goddess, is now our Hell, where flames and fires abound,
and where the devils abide in everlasting flame."
How grandly has Shakspere expressed the various traditionary forms
respecting the lost soul's lodgment or condition after death, in
"Measure for Measure." In act 3, scene 1, Claudio exclaims:--
Ay, but to die and go we know not where,
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling! 'tis too horrible!
The wearied and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
It is a common superstition yet that the ghosts of persons, murdered or
otherwise, not buried in consecrated ground, cannot rest, but must
wander about in search of the means of Christian sepulture. This
superstition obtained amongst the Greeks and Latins. The ghosts of
unburied bodies, not possessing the _obolus_ or fee due to Charon, the
ferryman of the _Styx_ or _Acheron_, were unable to obtain a lodging or
place of rest. They were, therefore, compelled to wander about the
banks of the river for a hundred years, when the _Portitor_ or "ferryman
of hell" passed them over, _in forma pauperis_. Hence the sacred nature
of the duty of surviving relatives and friends under the most trying
circumstances. The celebrated tragedy of Antigone, by Sophocles, owes
its chief interest and pathos to the popular faith on this subject.
Brand on the authority of Aubrey, states that, amongst the vulgar in
Yorkshire, it was believed, "and, perhaps, is in part still," that,
after a person's death, the soul went over Whinney Moor; and till about
1624, at the funeral, a woman came (like a Præfica) and sung the
following song:--
This ean night, this ean night,
Every night and awle,
Fire and fleet (_water_) and candle-light,
And Christ receive thy sawle.
When thou from hence doest pass away,
Every night and awle,
To Whinny-Moor [silly poor] thou comest at last,
And Christ receive thy sawle.
If ever thou gave hosen or shoon [shoes],
Every night and awle,
Sit thee down and put them on,
And Christ receive thy sawle.
But if hosen and shoon thou never gave naen,
Every night and awle,
The whinnes shall prick thee to the bare beane,
And Christ receive thy sawle.
From Whinny-Moor that thou mayst pass,
Every night and awle,
To Brig of Dread thou comest at last,
Christ receive thy sawle.
From Brig of Dread, na brader than a thread,
Every night and awle,
To purgatory fire thou com'st at last,
And Christ receive thy sawle.
If ever thou give either milke or drink,
Every night and awle,
The fire shall never make thee shrink,
And Christ receive thy sawle.
But if milk nor drink thou never gave naen,
Every night and awle,
The fire shall burn thee to the bare beane,
And Christ receive thy sawle.
In the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," this song is printed with
one or two slight variations, with the title of a "Lyke-Wake Dirge."
Sir Walter Scott likewise quotes a passage from a MS. in the Cotton
Library, descriptive of Cleveland in the northern part of Yorkshire, in
Elizabeth's reign, which aptly illustrates this custom. It is as
follows:--
"When any dieth certaine women sing a song to the dead bodie, reciting
the journey that the partye deceased must goe, and they are of beliefe
(such is their fondnesse) that once in their lives it is good to give a
pair of new shoes to a poor man, for as much as after this life they are
to pass barefoote through a great launde, full of thorns and furzen,
except by the meryte of the almes aforesaid they have redemed the
forfeyte; for at the edge of the launde an olde man shall meet them with
the same shoes that were given by the partie when he was lyving, and
after he had shodde them, dismisseth them to go through thick and thin
without scratch or scalle."
According to Mannhardt and Grimm a pair of shoes was deposited in the
grave, in Scandinavia and Germany, for this very purpose. In the
Henneberg district, on this account, the name _todtenschuh_, or "dead
shoe" is applied to a funeral. In Scandinavia the shoe is named _helskö_
or "hel-shoe."
It is customary yet in some parts of the North of England to place a
plate filled with salt on the stomach of a corpse soon after death.
Lighted candles too, are sometimes placed on or about the body. Reginald
Scot says, in his "Discourse concerning Devils and Spirits," on the
authority of Bodin, that "the devil loveth no salt in his meat, for that
is a sign of eternity, and used by God's commandment in all sacrifices."
Douce, speaking of this practice, particularly in Leicestershire, says
it is done with the view of preventing air from getting into the bowels
and swelling the body. Herrick, in his "Hesperides," says:--
The Soul is the Salt.
The body's salt the soul is, which, when gone,
The flesh soon sucks in putrifaction.
According to the learned Moresin the devil abhorreth salt, it being the
emblem of eternity and immortality. It is not liable to corruption
itself, and it preserves other substances from decay. Hence its
superstitious or emblematical import.
The screaming of certain birds, as we have already seen, foreboded
disaster. In some districts the midnight flight of flocks of migratory
seafowl are believed to be the cause of the noises in the atmosphere,
which the peasant's imagination translates into the rush of the furious
host. Mr. Yarrell, in "Notes and Queries," says that flocks of
bean-geese, from Scandinavia and Scotland, when flying over various
parts of England, select very dark nights for their migrations, and that
their flight is accompanied by a very loud and very peculiar cry. The
"seven whistlers," referred to by Wordsworth, and others already quoted,
in some instances appear to be curlews, whose screams are believed by
fishermen to announce the approach of a tempest.
The bellowing of cows at unseasonable hours was likewise regarded as an
announcement of death, as well as the howling of the dog. Cows in the
Aryan mythology represented the rain clouds. Odin and his host,
nevertheless, seem to have fancied the earthly article. They were said
to carry cows away, milk them dry, and, in about three days, generally
return them, but not always. It was idle for the farmer to refuse
complying, as when the furious host appeared, the fattest animals in the
stalls became restive, and on being let loose suddenly disappeared.
The Lancashire peasant, in some districts, still believes the "Milky
Way" to be the path by which departed souls enter Heaven. Mr. Benjamin
Brierley, in one of his Lancashire stories, places in the mouth of one
of his strongly marked provincial characters, the following
expression,--"When tha goes up th' cow lone (lane) to th' better place,"
and he assures me that he has often heard the expression from the lips
of the peasantry. The Germans entertain a similar belief in the "Milky
Way" being the spirit path to heaven. In Friesland its name is _kaupat_,
or cowpath. The giving of a cow to the poor, while on earth, was
considered to confer upon the donor the power to pass with certainty the
fearful Gjallar bridge; for, as in the Vedic superstition, a cow, (or
cloud,) would be present to aid his soul to make the passage in safety.
Mannhardt informs us that "hence it was of yore a funeral custom in
Sweden, Denmark, England, Upper and Lower Germany, that a cow should
follow the coffin to the churchyard. This custom was partially continued
until recent times, being accounted for on the ground that the cow was a
gift to the clergy for saying masses for the dead man's soul or
preaching his funeral sermon."
It is not improbable that the "mortuary" or "heriot" of the olden time,
which rendered the gift of a cow to the church, on the death of a
parishioner, as a condonement of possibly unpaid dues, a necessary
condition of clerical favour, was based on some such superstition. It
was customary, in some places, to drive the cow in the procession of the
funeral _cortége_ to the place of sepulture. Mr. E. Baines, speaking of
the manor of Ashton-under-Lyne, says:--"The obnoxious feudal _heriot_,
consisting of the best beast on the farm, required to be given to the
lord, on the death of the farmer, was a cruel and unmanly exaction, in
illustration of which there are many traditionary stories in the manor
of Ashton, and no doubt in other manors. The priest, as well as the lord
of the manor, claimed his heriot, called a mortuary in these early
times, on the death of his parishioners, as a kind of expiation for the
personal tithes, which the deceased in his lifetime had neglected to
pay." He adds that the custom was in Ashton for "_holy kirk_" to take
the _best_ beast, and the lord of the manor the _second_ best.
To those who treated Odin with proper respect when he and his hunters
passed by, he is said to have dropped a horse's leg or haunch, which
turned to gold. Those who mocked him received a similar present, or
"moss-wifekin's foot, with the green shoe upon it." But the limb in the
latter case became fœtid, and the horrible stench resulting therefrom
defied all attempts to remove it.
All of these legends have been resolved into figurative and sometimes
highly poetic descriptions of natural phenomena, and especially what is
termed the "elemental strife." The horse's leg thrown down by Odin
represents the crooked lightning's flash; the gold its brightness, and
the stench its sulphurous odour. The wild boars which he hunts are
stormy wind-clouds; the fair ladies the light white scudding vapours
that seem to coquette with the squally wind. Odin's broad-brimmed hat is
the dark cloud, and his mantle the starry heavens. Kelly says--"The
moss-wifekins and wood-maidens are female elementary spirits brought
down to the earth from the clouds to become genii of the forest, and
when they are chased _in whole flocks_--or, in other words, when the
leaves are blown off the trees--this is but a modification of the older
conception of flying clouds.... The wild huntsman loves to ride through
houses that have two outer doors directly opposite to each other; that
is to say, in plain prose, a thorough draft, more or less strong, from
one door to the other."
Mr. Ruskin, in his recent lectures at Oxford, as "Slade Professor of
Fine Art," gives an admirable example from paintings on an ancient vase,
of the manner in which Greek artistic genius gradually evolved from out
of natural phenomena, their mythological personifications. He says,--
"First you have Apollo ascending from the sea; thought of as the
_physical sunrise_: only a circle of light for his head; his chariot
horses seen foreshortened, black against the day-break, their feet not
yet risen above the horizon. Underneath is the painting from the
opposite side of the same vase: Athena as the morning breeze, and Hermes
as the morning cloud, flying across the waves before sunrise. At the
distance I now hold them from you, it is scarcely possible for you to
see that they are figures at all, so like are they to broken fragments
of flying mist; and when you look close you will see that as Apollo's
face is invisible in the circle of light, Mercury's is invisible in the
broken form of cloud; but I can tell you that it is conceived as
reverted, looking back to Athena; the grotesque appearance of feature in
the front is the outline of his hair. These two paintings are
exceedingly rude, and of the archæic period; the deities being yet
thought of chiefly as physical powers in violent agency."
Max Müller contends that the earlier Aryan name for the Ribhus, namely
Arbhus, is identical with the Greek Orpheus. Philologists, by the aid of
the earlier Sanscrit writings, have been enabled to get at the roots of
many Greek names, which formerly defied investigation. We see in the
musical influence of Orpheus over trees, rocks, and mountain torrents,
but a highly artistic development of the original Aryan storm-wind myth.
By certain well understood philological steps, the term Arbhus has
passed, in its Teutonic descent, into Albs, Alb, or Alp, which in the
plural yields Elbe and Elfen, the equivalents of our English Elf and
Elves.
Another remnant of the Aryan nomenclature of the train of Odin, the wild
huntsman, may be found in the word mârt or maur, as presented in the
English word nightmare, and the French couchemar, which are evidently
descended from the Maruts or wind-gods of the Vedas. The nightmare is
known to result chiefly from that form of dyspepsia termed flatulent.
The corruption of the word in English to mare has given rise to some
singular blunders, and none greater or more absurd than that perpetrated
by Fuseli, the Royal Academician, in his celebrated picture of "The
Nightmare," in which he represents the fiend in equine form bestraddling
his unhappy victim. Kelly says he can find accounts of the nightmare
assuming the forms of a mouse, a weasel, a toad, and even a cat, but
never that of a horse or a mare, except in the picture referred to. The
fact is, the genuine nightmare is the rider who plies his spurs and
grips the reins, and not a mare that has usurped the function of a
jockey. Aubrey, in his "Miscellanies," describes one phase of the
superstition as a remnant of witchcraft. "To hinder the nightmare, they
hang in a string a flint with a hole in it. It is to prevent the
nightmare, viz., the hag, from riding their horses, who will sometimes
sweat at night. The flint thus hung does hinder it." Brand observes
that "ephialtes, or nightmare, is called by common people
_witch-riding_." He traces the superstition to the Gothic or
Scandinavian Mara, "a spectre of the night."
In classical mythology Pan was regarded as the author of sudden frights
or groundless alarms. Dr. Adam, in his "Roman Antiquities," says that
Faunus and Sylvanus were "supposed to be the same with Pan." He further
adds,--"There were several rural deities called Fauni, who were believed
to occasion the nightmare."
It is not improbable that the modern equine form of the hag may have
resulted from ordinary punning. Lluellin (1679) has the following
stanza, which refers to the power of coral over the nightmare. Hence the
prejudice in favour of coral beads for children which obtains to this
day:--
Some the night-mare hath prest
With that weight on their breast,
No returnes of their breath can passe.
But to us the tale is addle,
We can take off her saddle,
And turn out the night-mare to grasse.
Another old writer, Holiday, in his "Marriage of the Arts," deprecates
the practice of relying on charms, "that your stables may bee alwies
free from the queene of the goblins." He, however, makes the night-hag
equestrian or jockey, and not equine. Herrick, too, in his "Hesperides,"
is both correct and explicit on the subject. He says:--
Hang up hooks and shears to scare
Hence the hag that rides the mare
Till they be all over wet
With the mire and the sweat;
This observed, the manes shall be
Of your horses all knot free.
The term "nightmare," in some instances, may have been applied to a
witch transformed into a mare by means of a magic bridle, and ridden
with great violence by the very party at whose bedside she had
previously metamorphosed into a steed, on the back of which she had
galloped to the witches' revel. If the man-horse contrived to slip off
the bridle, and throw it over the witch's head, she immediately became
transformed into a mare, and was frequently, according to popular
belief, subjected to much harsh usage. There appears, however, to be
little doubt that the night-mares are legitimately descended from the
Aryan Maruts, the "couriers of the air," who rode the winds in the "wild
hunt," or "furious host," headed by Odin, or the renowned spectre
horseman of mediæval legends. Kelly says, "these riders, in all other
respects identical with the Maruts, are in some parts of Germany called
Wabriderske, _i.e._, Valkyrs. In some of the tales that are told of them
they still retain their old divine nature; in others they are brought
down to the level of mere earthly witches. If they ride now in stables,
without locomotion, it is because they swept of old through the air on
their divine coursers. Now they steal by night to the beds of hinds and
churls; but there was a time when they descended from Valhalla to
conceive, in the embrace of a mortal, the demi-god whom they afterwards
accompanied to the battle-field, to bear him thence to the hall of
Odin."
I entertain a strong impression that the singular ceremony practised at
Ashton-under-Lyne, at Easter, styled "_Riding the Black Lad_," contains
some remnant of the tradition of the spectre huntsman. Its origin is
confessed on all hands to be extremely doubtful. The severities of a Sir
Ralph Assheton, in the reign of Henry VI., may have had something to do
with it, but they alone could scarcely have perpetuated the legend and
its accessories. The custom of perambulating the parish boundaries,
still in use in many parts of England, and which, in my own youth, was
performed with much solemnity by the Corporation of Preston, may
likewise have had some influence upon the practice. At the close of the
Preston perambulation, it was customary for the younger spirits "to leap
the colt-hole," as it was termed, the said "colt-hole" being a ditch or
fosse on Preston Marsh. Some unlucky wights occasionally fell into the
said ditch, to the infinite amusement of the graver dignitaries, as well
as to the merriment of the holiday schoolboys attendant. Dr. Hibbert
Ware, referring to the Ashton custom, says:--"An effigy is made of a man
in armour, and the image is deridingly emblazoned with some emblems of
the occupation of the first couple that are linked together in the
course of the year." The story of the enforcing of the weeding of "Carr
gulds" (an obnoxious plant) from the land by Sir Ralph's rough riding,
may have had some foundation in fact; but it is rather strange a
successor should have "abolished the usage for ever, and reserved from
the estate a small sum of money, for the purpose of perpetuating, in an
annual ceremony, the memory of the dreaded visits of the Black Knight."
Spelman, in his "Icenia," referring to the Tilney legend concerning Tom
Hickathrift and his giant-slaying, clearly shows that the "monstrous
giant," slain by Tom, armed with his axle and wheel, like the Cornish
Tom the Tinkheard, and his followers, was none other than the tyrant
lord of the manor who sought by violence to rob his copy-hold tenants
out of their right of pasture in the common field.
Samuel Bamford, in his poem of the "Wild Rider," relates a legend not
uncommon in various parts of the country, about a Sir Ashton Lever, a
lover of a descendant of the Black Knight, who seems to have rivalled
him in horsemanship. Bamford, in a note, says:--"He was an excellent
bowman and a fearless rider, and tradition has handed down stories of
feats of horsemanship analogous to those recited in the ballad,
accompanied with sage intimations that _no horse could have carried him
save one of more than earthly breed or human training_." The narrow
valley of the Tame, in the neighbourhood of Ashton, is as likely as the
gorge at Cliviger to be haunted by the storm-rider or the wild hunt.
Singularly enough, Mr. Baines, in his History of Lancashire, relates
minutely the particulars of two tremendous storms which devastated the
locality, one in 1817, and the other 26 years previously. They both
created much dismay, and the latter, he says, caused "an involuntary
expression of horror throughout the whole place." A neighbouring exposed
hill is named the "Wild Bank." Around it storms often rage with great
fury. In one of the Welsh triads, we find that the "three embellishing
names of the wind" are "Hero of the World, Architect of Bad Weather, and
Assaulter of the Hills." It has been previously shown the spectre
huntsman of Dartmoor is styled the "_Black_ Master," which lends further
probability to the hypothesis advanced.
Since the bulk of the preceding pages in this chapter were written, I
obtained a copy of Mr. R. Hunt's recently published work, entitled
"Popular Romances of the West of England; or the Drolls, Traditions, and
Superstitions of Old Cornwall." In it I find several curious and highly
interesting variations of the legend or myth of the spectre huntsman, or
the furious host, which exhibit not only the connection of the Wandering
Jew tradition with that of the hunt of Odin and his followers, but which
I conceive throw much light upon, and, to a large extent, countenance
the hypothesis I have submitted, that the legend of the celebrated black
knight, or "black lad," of Ashton-under-Lyne, retains, along with more
modern additions, something of the original Aryan personification of the
"elemental strife" previously described. Speaking of the "demon
Tregeagle," a well-known legendary hero of "Old Cornwall," he says:--
"Who has not heard of the wild spirit of Tregeagle? He haunts equally
the moor, the rocky coasts, and the blown sandhills of Cornwall. From
north to south, from east to west, this doomed spirit is heard of, _and
to the day of judgment he is doomed to wander_, pursued by avenging
fiends. For ever endeavouring to perform some task by which he hopes to
secure repose, and being for ever defeated. Who has not heard of the
_howling_ of Tregeagle? When the storms come with all their strength
from the Atlantic, and urge themselves upon the rocks around Land's End,
_the howls of the spirit are louder than the roaring of the winds_. When
calms rest upon the ocean, and the waves can scarcely form upon the
resting waters, _low wailings creep along the coast. These are the
wailings of this wandering soul._ When midnight is on the Moor or on the
mountains, and the night winds whistle amidst the rugged cairns, _the
shrieks of_ Tregeagle are distinctly heard. We know that he is _pursued
by the demon dogs_, and that till day-break he must fly with all speed
before them. The voice of Tregeagle is everywhere, and yet he is unseen
by human eye. Every reader will at once perceive that Tregeagle _belongs
to the mythologies of the oldest nations_, and that _the traditions of
this wandering spirit_ in Cornwall, _which centre upon_ ONE TYRANNICAL
MAGISTRATE, _are but the appropriation of stories which belong to every
age and country_."
Here we have clearly a combination of the doings of the Teutonic spectre
huntsman, Odin, and of his prototypes the Aryan storm-gods, Indra and
Rudra, and their attendant Maruts and the Ribhus; the wailings of the
homeless souls of the Irish and other legends; the interminable toil of
the Wandering Jew; and the more modern tradition of the hard-hearted
lord of the soil, whose deeds have rendered his name odious to the
commonalty. The latter worthy modern tradition asserts, as in the case
of the Ashton "Black Knight," to have been a relatively recent _bonâ
fide_ "tyrannical magistrate," and a "rapacious and unscrupulous
landlord," and "one of the Tregeagles who once owned Trevorder near
Bodmin." At his death the fiends were anxious to get immediate
possession of the soul of this "gigantic sinner;" but the hardened
murderer, terrified at his fate, "gave to the priesthood wealth, that
they might fight with them, and save his soul from eternal fire." On one
occasion it is said that his wandering spirit actually gave evidence in
a court of justice, when the fiends in vain endeavoured to carry him
off. The power of the priesthood prevailed, but only with the condition
attached that the wretched sinner should undertake "some task difficult
beyond the power of human nature, which might be extended far into
eternity," with the view that the power of repentance might gradually
exert its ameliorating influence. His only hope for ultimate salvation
was perpetual toil. The demons could not molest him so long as he
continued his labour.
The first labour to which he was subjected was the emptying of Dosmery
Pool, a mountain lake, some miles in circumference. This, in itself no
slight task, was believed to be rendered more difficult from the
supposed fact that the said pool was bottomless, inasmuch as tradition
asserted that "once on a time" a thorn bush which had been sunk near its
centre had reappeared in Falmouth harbour. One churchman, it is said,
nevertheless thought the plan not sufficiently hopeless. He therefore
suggested that the only lading or baling utensil employed by the
miserable sinner should be a limpet shell with a sufficiently large hole
in it to seriously augment the necessary labour. The demon kept his eye
on Tregeagle, and endeavoured to divert his attention from his toil, in
order that he might lay hold of him. But although he _raised many
tempests_, still the doomed one continued to labour. On one occasion,
however, the fiends were nearly "too many" for the eternal toiler. Mr.
Hunt's description of this terrible struggle is so strikingly suggestive
of one of the myths to which I have referred its origin, that I give it
entire. He says:--
"Nature was at war with herself, the elements had lost their balance,
and there was a terrific struggle to recover it. Lightnings flashed and
coiled like fiery snakes around the rocks of Roughtor. Fire-balls fell
on the desert moors and hissed in the accursed lake. Thunders pealed
through the heavens, and echoed from hill to hill; an earthquake shook
the solid earth, and terror was on all living. The winds rose and raged
with a fury which was irresistible, and hail beat so mercilessly on all
things that it spread death around. Long did Tregeagle stand the
'pelting of the pitiless storm,' but at length he yielded to its force
and fled. The demons in crowds were at his heels. He doubled, however,
on his pursuers and returned to the lake; but so rapid were they that he
could not rest the required moment to dip his shell in the now seething
waters. Three times he fled round the lake, and the evil ones pursued
him. Then feeling that there was no safety for him near Dosmery Pool, he
sprang swifter than the wind across it, shrieking with agony, and
thus--since the devils cannot cross water, and were obliged to go round
the lake--he gained on them and fled over the moor. Away, away went
Tregeagle, faster and faster, the dark spirits pursuing, and they had
nearly overtaken him, when he saw Roach Rock and its chapel before him.
He rushed up the rocks, with giant power clambered to the eastern
window, and dashed his head through it, thus securing the shelter of its
sanctity. The defeated demons retired, and long and loud were their wild
wailings in the air. The inhabitants of the moors and of the
neighbouring towns slept not a wink that night."
This "wild hunt" is, in some respects, suggestive of Tam O'Shanter's
narrow escape from the devil and the witches at Alloway Kirk.
In his "Address to the Deil," Burns associates both the devil and
witches with stormy weather. He says, of the former:--
Whyles raging like a roaring lion,
For prey a' holes an' corners tryin;
Whyles on the strong-wing'd tempest flyin';
Tirlin the kirks.
And again:--
Let warlocks grim, and wither'd hags,
Tell how wi' you, on ragweed nags,
They skim the moors an' dizzy crags,
Wi' wicked speed.
But this is rather corroborative than otherwise of the hypothesis of
their common origin. I have previously shown that witches were descended
from the Aryan storm-gods or their attendants. Shakspere appears to have
been fully cognisant of their elemental origin, or, in other words, of
their supposed power over "the elements," for he makes Macbeth, in his
extremity, exclaim:--
I conjure you, by that which you profess
(Howe'er you came to know it), answer me:
Though you untie the winds, and let them fight
Against the churches: though the yesty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up;
Though bladed corn be lodg'd, and trees torn down;
Though castles topple on their warders' heads;
Though palaces and pyramids do slope
Their heads to their foundations; tho' the treasure
Of nature's germins tumble altogether,
Even till destruction sicken, answer me
To what I ask you.
The tradition that Dosmery Pool was bottomless, reminds me of a similar
presumed phenomenon in the neighbourhood of Preston, which I have often
heard referred to in my youth with implicit faith. It was confidently
asserted that a large pit near the footpath leading from Moor Park to
Cadley Mill was of the bottomless class. Doubtless it was, at that time,
a very deep pit, though I believe now it is nearly if not entirely dry
in the summer season. There was likewise a pit on Preston Moor which
was supposed to be bottomless. A similar belief once obtained respecting
the "Stone Delph," from which the material was quarried for the tower of
the Parish Church, Preston, taken down in 1814. I can yet well remember
being convinced of the absurdity of this legend by an older companion, a
good swimmer and diver, bringing up some mud and a stone from the
bottom. The stone delph referred to is situated in the present bed of
the Ribble, at the foot of the steep brow in Avenham Park. The sinking
of water into the caverns of limestone rocks, as in Derbyshire, and at
Malham Cove, in Yorkshire, and other places, may have originated the
notion of "bottomless pits;" but I am inclined to think that demonology
has, likewise, had something to do with these legends.
The mother of the mythic monster Grendel, in the ancient Anglo-Saxon
poem, Beowulf, lived in a pool or mere on which fire floated at night,
and the depth of which was so great that the wisest living person knew
not its bottom. This mere is supposed to be the sheet of water from
which Hart-le-pool, in the county of Durham, takes its name.
Tregeagle was next employed on the shore near Padstow, to make "trusses
of sand and ropes of sand with which to bind them." Of course, each
recurring tide swept away the result of his toil, and, according to the
tradition, "the ravings of the baffled soul were louder than the
roarings of the winter tempest." He was afterwards removed, by the power
of the priesthood, to the estuary of the Loo, and ordered to carry sand
across to Porthleven. A fiend maliciously tripped him up, and the
contents of his huge sack, it is said, furnished the material of the
sandbank which forms the bar that destroyed the harbour of Ella's Town.
Yet we learn that "the sea was raging with the irritation of a passing
storm" at the time of the mishap, which clearly indicates the origin of
the legend. Tregeagle's last location was at the Land's End, where Mr.
Hunt says "he would find no harbour to destroy and few people to
terrify. His task was to sweep the sands from Porthcurnow Cove round the
headland called Tol-Peden-Penwith, into Nanjisal Cove. Those who know
that rugged headland, with its cubical masses of granite, piled in
Titanic grandeur one upon another, will appreciate the task; and when to
all the difficulties are added the strong sweep of the Atlantic
current,--that portion of the Gulf Stream which washes our southern
shores,--it will be evident that the melancholy spirit has, indeed, a
task which must endure to the world's end. Even until to-day is
Tregeagle labouring at his task. In calms his wailing is heard; and
those sounds which some call the 'soughing of the wind,' are known to be
the moanings of Tregeagle; while the coming storms are predicted by the
fearful roarings of this condemned mortal."
It is very certain that we have here a singularly curious variation of
the popular legend of the "Wandering Jew," and the myth of the "spectre
huntsman," or the "furious host." The yelping hounds of the latter are
not wanting to complete the picture, for Mr. Hunt tells us that "the
tradition of the Midnight Hunter and his headless hounds, _always, in
Cornwall, associated with Tregeagle_, prevails everywhere. The Abbot's
Way, on Dartmoor, an ancient road which extends into Cornwall, is said
to be the favourite coursing ground of the 'wish or whisked hounds of
Dartmoor,' called also the 'yell hounds.' The valley of the Dewerstone
is also the place of their midnight meetings. Once I was told at Jump,
that Sir Francis Drake drove a hearse into Plymouth at night with
headless horses, and that he was followed by a pack of 'yelling hounds'
without heads. If dogs hear the cry of the wish hounds they all die."
The performance attributed to Sir Francis Drake is unquestionably a
relatively modernised version of the mythical black coach story
previously referred to as one form of the furious host legend. The
effect of the cry of the wish hounds on the canine race in Cornwall is
similar to that attributed to their compeers in Lancashire, only the
death resultant is always that of a human being in the northern
locality.
Mr. Hunt seems to doubt Mr. Kemble's etymology of the term "wish," when
he says:--"In Devonshire, to this day, all magical or supernatural
dealings go under the common name of wishtness. Can this have any
reference to Woden's name 'Wyse?'" Mr. Hunt, however, acknowledges that
"Mr. Kemble's idea is supported by the fact that 'there are _Wishanger_
(Wisehanger, or Woden's Meadow,) one about four miles south-west of
Wanborough, in Surrey, and another near Gloucester.'" He acknowledges,
likewise, on the authority of Jabez Allies, that there is a _Wishmoor_,
which may have such an origin, in Ledstone, Delamere, Worcestershire.
Mr. Hunt thinks that the word "wish" is intimately "connected with the
west country word 'whist,' meaning more than ordinary melancholy, a
sorrow which has something weird about it." Polwhele, in his "Wishful
Swain of Devon," says it is "an expression used by the vulgar to express
local melancholy;" and he adds,--"There is something sublime in this
impersonation of _wishness_." It is not at all improbable that both
these etymologies point to a common origin. The deeds of the spectre
huntsman and the furious host, a "cavalcade of the dead," are not
calculated to impress on the human imagination anything repugnant to the
"melancholy sorrow with something weird surrounding it," to which Mr.
Hunt refers.
This supposed sympathy of "the elements" with human joy, or sorrow, or
suffering, is evidently a very ancient superstition. In Lancashire we
have yet the saying--
Happy is the bride that the sun shines on;
Happy is the corpse that the rain rains on.
Shakspere has beautifully illustrated this presumed sensitiveness, not
only of "the elements," but of animated nature, to the perpetration of
deeds of darkness and blood by perverted humanity, in the following
lines, which he places in the mouth of Lennox, on the morning after the
murder of Duncan, by his host, Macbeth:--
The night has been unruly; where we lay,
Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i'the air; strange screams of death;
And prophesying, with accents terrible,
Of dire combustion and confused events,
New hatched to the woeful time. The obscure bird
Clamoured the live-long night; some say the earth
Was feverous, and did shake.
The sentiment is still further illustrated, with singular felicity, in
the dialogue which follows, between Rosse and an old man:--
_Old Man._ Three score and ten I can remember well;
Within the volume of which time I have seen
Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night
Hath trifled former knowings.
_Rosse._ Ah! good father,
Thou see'st the heavens, as troubled with man's act,
Threaten his bloody stage. By the clock 'tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.
Is it night's predominance, or the day's shame,
That darkness does the face of earth entomb,
When living light should kiss it?
_Old Man._ 'Tis unnatural,
Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last,
A falcon, towering in her pride of place,
Was, by a mousing owl, hawked at and killed.
_Rosse._ And Duncan's horses, (a thing most strange and certain),
Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,
Turned wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,
Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make
War with mankind.
_Old Man._ 'Tis said, they eat each other!
_Rosse._ They did so; to the amazement of mine eyes,
That looked upon't.
The Ashton "Black Knight" traditions, doubtless, to some extent,
influenced the colouring of Bamford's poem, "The Wild Rider." Mr. Hunt
quotes from a somewhat similar modern ballad, entitled "_Tregeagle or
Dozmare Poole; an Anciente Cornish Legend_," by John Penwarne, in which,
however, he states the author has taken considerable liberties with the
tradition. Tregeagle is transformed into a kind of Faust, and the black
hunter, whose "dread voyce they hearde in wynde," is no other than the
arch-fiend himself.
They heard hys curste hell houndes runn yelping behynde,
And hys steede loude on the eare!
Although, in compliance with his contract with the demon, "the rede
bolte of vengeaunce shot forth wyth a glare, and strooke him a corpse to
the grounde,"
Stylle as the traveller pursues hys lone waye
In horroure at nighte o'er the waste,
He hears Syr Tregeagle with shrieks rushe awaye,
He hears the Black Hunter pursuing his preye,
And shrynkes at his bugle's dread blasts.
Here we find Odin (the spectre huntsman), by successive degrees,
transformed into Sir Tregeagle, with a black knight attendant. The pair
does not inaptly represent the Sir Ashton, of Bamford's poem, and the
"Black Lad" of the Ashton Legend. The term "Th' Owd Lad" is a common
expression in several parts of Lancashire, and means literally "Old
Nick," or the devil.[32]
Both knights were baffled in affairs of the heart, and the doom of the
one resembles that of the other. Bamford concludes his poem with the
following stanzas:--
But strangest of all, on that woe-wedding night,
A black horse was stabled where erst stood the white;
The grooms, when they found him, in terror quick fled,
His breath was hot smoke, and his eyes burning red;
He beat down a strong wall of mortar and crag,
He tore his oak stall as a dog would a rag,
And no one durst put forth a hand near that steed
Till a priest had read Ave, and pater, and creed.
And then he came forth, the strange beautiful thing,
With speed that could lead a wild eagle on wing;
And raven had never spread plume on the air
Whose lustrous darkness with his might compare.
He bore the young Ashton--none else could him ride--
O'er flood and o'er fell, and o'er quarry pit wide;
The housewife, she blest her, and held fast her child,
And the men swore both horse and his rider were wild.
And then when the knight to the hunting field came,
He rode as he sought rather death than his game.
He halloo'd through woods where he wandered of yore,
But the lost Lady Mary he never saw more!
And no one durst ride in the track where he led,
So fearful his leaps, and so madly he sped;
And in his wild phrenzy he gallop'd one day
Down the church steps at Rochdale, and up the same way.
The practice of giving a local name and local significance to this
tradition and its hero has been previously shown to be by no means
unusual. At Fontainebleau Odin is transformed into Hugh Capet; the
ancient British king, Hegla, rode at the head of the hunt on the banks
of the Wye, in the reign of Henry II.; King Arthur, in Normandy,
Scotland, and other places, is elevated to the post of honour; in
Sleswig it is the Duke Abel; and at Danzig it is Theordoric the Great.
Wordsworth, in the lines quoted at the head of this chapter, designates
the personage who hunts with Gabriel's hounds as an "impious lord."
The mythical connection between unwearied but unwilling toil and
arrogance and presumption is referred to by the Rev. G. W. Cox in the
following terms:--"The myth of Ixîôn exhibits the sun as bound to the
four-spoked wheel which is whirled round everlastingly in the sky.[33]
In that of Sisyphos we see the same being condemned to the daily toil of
heaving a stone to the summit of a hill from which it immediately rolls
down. This idea of tasks unwillingly done, or of natural operations as
accomplished by means of punishment, is found also in the myth of Atlas,
a name which like that of Tantalos denotes endurance and suffering, and
so passes into the notion of arrogance and presumption." In a note he
adds,--"The Hellenic Atlas is simply the Vedic Skambha."
The story of the "spectre huntsman," under various modifications, is
found in different parts of the country. They seem invariably to suggest
the common origin to which I have referred, however much it may be
obscured by relatively modern additions or poetic embellishments.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] QUERY:--May not the "marks of the comb" be, in reality, striæ
resulting from glacial action?
[30] Since this was written, I have been told in a public company, in
Manchester, by an intelligent man, that the squeaking of a pig did give
the name to Winwick. My suggestion that the old name of the brook, the
"Wynwede," with the common suffix "wick," a village, was sufficient to
explain the etymology, was, of course, laughed at as a relatively very
prosaic affair indeed.
[31] See the following chapter.
[32] Mr. Roby's version of the tradition states that a half-witted lad
met Sir Ralph Ashton, when driving a cow towards the Knight's residence.
The boy, who was unacquainted with his superior, in answer to questions,
said his father was dead, and he was driving the cow to Sir Ralph's as
the heriot due under the circumstance. He further asked if the stranger
did not think that, on Sir Ralph's death, the devil, his master, would
demand his soul as heriot. The question so astonished the Knight that he
sent the cow back to the poor widow. Dr. Hibbert Ware mentions a similar
tradition, but the Knight's name is not Ralph, but Robert Ashton.
[33] "This wheel reappears in the Gaelic story of the Widow and her
Daughters, Campbell, ii. 265, and in Grimm's German tale of the Iron
Stove. The treasure house of Ixîôn, which none may enter without being
either destroyed like Hesioneus or betrayed by marks of gold or blood,
reappears in a vast number of popular stories, and is the foundation of
the story of Bluebeard."
CHAPTER X.
GIANTS, MYTHICAL AND OTHERWISE.
His other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size;
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr'd on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea beast
Leviathan, which God of all His works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.
_Milton._
Amongst the traditionary beings which linger yet in the legends of
nearly every race or tribe, few are more universal than those relating
to giants or men of colossal size and superhuman power. Geoffrey of
Monmouth gravely informs us that, before the arrival of his legendary
Trojan, Brutus, Britain was "called Albion, and was inhabited by none
but a few giants." According to the same authority, Ireland was
originally peopled by a similar race of monsters. He asserts that the
magician Merlin transported the materials for the building of Stonehenge
from the Irish mountain Killaraus, to Salisbury Plain. Merlin assured
Uther Pendragon that the stones were "mystical, and of a medical
virtue," and that "the giants of old brought them from the farthest
coasts of Africa, and placed them in Ireland while they inhabited that
country."
The ancient Britons believed Stonehenge to have been built by giants,
hence its name, in their language, _Choir-gaur_, which signifies the
"Giant's Dance."
The earliest reliable notice of the British Islands is, however, to be
found in the work "De Mundo," section three, attributed to Aristotle
(B.C. 340). The writer says:--"Beyond the Pillars of Hercules is the
ocean which flows round the earth. In it are two very large islands,
called Britiannic; these are Albion and Ierne."
The Ramayana, which is the next Sanscrit work in point of age to the
Vedas, gives a singular account of the conquest of Ceylon, in which some
mythic giants and monsters appear together with monkey warriors. Rama,
by the aid of celestial weapons, conquered demons. He obtained his wife,
Sita, by snapping the bow of her gigantic father. The said bow was
conveyed from place to place by an eight-wheeled carriage, drawn by
eight hundred men! His wife having been carried off through the sky by
the demon monarch of Ceylon, "at whose name heaven's armies flee," Rama
entered into an alliance with Sugriva, king of the monkeys, whose
general, Hanuman, at the head of his monkey army, aided Rama in the
conquest of his enemy's territory. The demon king was slain, and Sita
recovered. The latter successfully underwent the ordeal of walking
through blazing fire, in order to demonstrate her purity.
The confusion which existed in ancient times respecting wild men,
monsters, and some kind of gigantic ape or monkey, has had some little
light thrown upon it by the recent experiences of M. Du Chaillu in
Equatorial Africa. In his "Journey to Ashango-land," he says:--
"After reconsidering the whole subject, I am compelled also to state
that I think it highly probable that gorillas, and not chimpanzees, as I
was formerly inclined to think, were the animals seen and captured by
the Carthaginians under Hanno, as related in the 'Periplus.' Many
circumstances combine in favour of this conclusion. One of the results
of my late journey has been to prove that gorillas are nowhere more
common than on the tract of land between the bend of the Fernand Vaz and
the sea-shore; and, as this land is chiefly of alluvial formation, and
the bed of the river constantly shifting, it is extremely probable that
there were islands here in the time of Hanno. The southerly part of the
land is rather hilly, and, even if it were not then an island, the
Carthaginians, in rambling a short distance from the beach, would see a
broad water (the Fernand Vaz) beyond them, and would conclude that the
land was an island.... The passage in the 'Periplus,' which I mentioned
in 'Equatorial Africa,' is to the following effect:--'On the third day
after sailing from thence, passing the streams of fire, we came to a bay
called the Horn of the South. In the recess was an island like the
first, having a lake, and in this there was another island full of wild
men. But much the greater part of them were women with hairy bodies,
whom the interpreters called gorillas.... But, pursuing them, we were
not able to take the men; they all escaped from us by their great
agility, being _cremnobates_ (that is to say, climbing precipitous rocks
and trees), and defending themselves by throwing stones at us. We took
three women, who bit and tore those who caught them, and were unwilling
to follow. We were obliged, therefore, to kill them, and took their
skins off, which skins were brought to Carthage, for we did not navigate
further, provisions becoming scarce.'" Du Chaillu adds his opinion that
"the hairy men and women met with were males and females of the
_Troglodytes gorilla_. Even the name 'gorilla,' given to the animal in
the 'Periplus,' is not very greatly different from its native name at
the present day, 'ngina' or 'ngilla,' especially in the indistinct way
in which it is sometimes pronounced."
Mr. Robert Hunt seems to regard the giants of "old Cornwall" as
something generically distinct from those depicted in Mr. Dasent's
translation of Asbjörnsen and Moe's collection of "Norse Tales." He
says:--
"May we venture to believe that the Cornish giant is a true Celt, or may
he not belong to an earlier race? He was fond of home, and we have no
record of his ever having passed beyond the wilds of Dartmoor. The
giants of Lancashire, and Cheshire, and Shropshire have a family
likeness, and are no doubt closely related; but if they are cousins to
the Cornish giants, they are cousins far removed."
So far from entertaining a doubt as to the common origin of these
mythical monsters, on account of the diversity of local costume in which
they are presented, I rather feel disposed to express astonishment at
the vast amount of similarity they yet retain, after being subjected for
centuries to so many diverse influences. The Titans and the Cyclops, of
the polished Greeks, some of whom are said to have covered nine acres of
land when laid on the earth; the Goëmagot, who succumbed in the famous
wrestling match to the Trojan chief Corineus, on the cliff at Plymouth,
and who, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, was twelve cubits high, and
tore up huge oak trees as if they were hazel wands; that prince of
pedestrians, Bolster, immortalised by the pencil and burin of George
Cruickshank, who took his six miles at a stride, over a Cornish valley,
without discomfort; the trolls and giants of the Norse, who, like their
Greek cousins, warred with the ascendant gods; the ogres and huge
club-wielding monsters of our nursery days, that in Lancashire, as in
other parts of England (Cornwall included), yielded to the prowess of
the redoubtable "Jack, the Giant-killer," or "Jack, the Tinkeard,"
present too many corresponding family features and mental and physical
coincidences to permit a serious doubt of their common parentage. The
Teutonic giants of the German tales collected by the brothers Grimm,
bear unmistakable relationship both to those of Cornwall and the north
of England. Indeed, "Gogmagog," the very name of the Shropshire colossus
who was located in the ruins of the Roman city Uriconium, is preserved
in that of the Cornish giant wrestler above referred to. There are
Gog-Magog hills, too, near Cambridge; and the Corporation of London yet
retains the huge wooden images which represent this mythic monster split
into two, and converted into the giant warders of the ancient city--the
well-known Gog and Magog. I have seen at Norwich two huge wooden dolls,
which, if they do not actually represent the said Gog and Magog, are
evidently intended as portraits of some very near relatives of those
ponderous misshapen relics of the past.
Much useless discussion has been devoted to the attempt to show that
mankind, or at least some portion thereof, in the "pre-historic time,"
was of Cyclopean or gigantic stature. All known evidence of a reliable
character, however, condemns this hypothesis as untenable. The power of
ignorance and rumour to magnify small facts into monstrous fictions is
aptly illustrated by the story of the famous three black crows. The
deeds of a man of uncommon stature, or extraordinary strength, would
furnish, under certain circumstances, a sufficient modicum of truth to
lay the foundation of a most extravagant myth. We have a modern
illustration of the proneness of ignorant or superstitious persons to
hyperbole in matters of this kind, in the statements of early voyagers
anent the aborigines of Patagonia. Our early school geographies informed
us that this then relatively unknown portion of South America was
peopled by a race of giants. Indeed, I think it was even intimated that
these colossi were most probably the _bonâ fide_ descendants of the
supposed mythical monsters of the days of old. Some Spanish officers, in
1785, measured several of these Patagonian giants, and they reported
that the greatest monster of the lot only reached seven feet one inch
and a quarter! I can never remember England being without two or three
exhibited giants, who would look with contempt upon such pretensions to
the honours of the caravan, to say nothing of the "reception room" of
such "gentlemanly freaks of nature" as Chang, the Chinese Anak, Mons.
Brice, or Captain Bates, with his colossal wife, _née_ Miss Swan. But
Captain Wallis informs us that, on his carefully measuring several of
these Patagonian prodigies, he found that the stature of the greater
part of them ranged between five feet ten inches and six feet! The
well-known regiment of grenadiers raised by Frederick William the First,
of Prussia, would have completely dwarfed these once celebrated
Patagonian Titans. One of them, a Swede, measured eight feet six inches.
"O'Brien, the Irish giant," who died in 1783, was eight feet four inches
in height. His real name was Byrne. His skeleton is preserved in the
museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London. Chang, at nineteen
years of age, was said to be seven feet nine and a half inches in
height. He stated that a deceased sister was eight inches taller than
himself! The proneness to exaggeration or hyperbole to which I have
referred was shared in even by such men as Julius Cæsar and Tacitus; or,
at the least, they dealt largely in the article at second-hand. They
believed and recorded the then vulgar notion that the German
"barbarians," our own ancestors, were a race of gigantic men.
Indeed the belief in giants and other monsters was almost universal
amongst the more educated section of the Roman people. Pliny speaks of
the existence of men in India whose height exceeded five cubits. He
assures his readers, on the most unimpeachable authority, that "they are
never known to spit, are not troubled with pain in the head or teeth, or
grief of the eyes, and seldom or never complain of any soreness in any
other parts of the body, so hardy are they, and of so strong a
constitution, through the moderate heat of the sun." He likewise talks
of a people who, having no heads, stand on their necks. These monsters
were said to carry their eyes in their shoulders. He describes the
Choromandæ as a savage people, without a distinct speech. Their bodies
were rough and hairy. They gnashed their teeth and made a hideous noise.
Their eyes were red, and their teeth of the canine order. This same
India, according to Pliny, possessed a great variety of other
monstrosities, such as men without noses, men with feet a cubit long,
while those of their wives were so small that they were called
"sparrow-footed."
That such stories were ordinarily accepted as true, even in Shakspere's
days, is attested by the fact that the great poet and dramatist places
in the mouth of Othello, in his eloquent defence before the senate of
Venice, when explaining his method of courtship, the following words:--
Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents, by flood and field;
Of hair-breadth scapes i'th imminent deadly breach;
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence
And portance in my travel's history;
Wherein of antres vast, and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak, such was the process;
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.
Again, in the Tempest, after the appearance of Prospero's magic repast,
Sebastian says,--
Now I will believe
That there are unicorns; that in Arabia
There is one tree, the Phœnix' throne; one phœnix
At this hour reigning there.
And Gonzala adds,--
When we were boys,
Who would believe that there were mountaineers
Dew-lapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at them
Wallets of flesh? or that there were such men,
Whose heads stood in their breasts.
The Amorites, the most important tribe of the aborigines of Palestine,
are described in the Jewish Rabbinical writings as of enormous stature.
Amos indeed, speaks of them, figuratively, as being as high as cedars
and as strong as oaks. It is stated in Deuteronomy that the iron bed of
Og, King of Bashan, was nine cubits long and four in breadth. This bed,
however, by some, is believed to have been really a kind of divan. The
Rabbinical writers were not, however, content with even a literal
interpretation of these passages. In the _Jalkut Shimoni_ we are told
that Moses informed Azräel, the Angel of Death, that the dimensions of
Og and Sihon were so great that they escaped drowning at the great
Deluge, the water of which reached no higher than their ancles!
According to the _Sevachir_, Og placed his feet on the fountains of the
Great Deep, and, by putting his hand on the windows of Heaven, he
stopped the Deluge! On the water being made so hot, however, that the
monster's lower extremities became parboiled, he was compelled to
desist. He nevertheless mounted the ark, and survived the great
catastrophe. He was said to consume daily one thousand oxen, one
thousand head of game, and one thousand measures of wine. He was a
famous hand at uplifting mountains and other objects of similarly
trifling magnitude! He met with a mishap, however, whilst conveying a
rock "three miles in extent," with which he proposed to annihilate the
Israelitish army at one blow! We are further informed that Joshua, who
was ten ells high, perceiving that the rock was crumbling to pieces
around the giant's shoulders, struck him on the ancle with an axe ten
ells in length, and thus lamed him for life. Sihon was so powerful that
no creature on earth could withstand him. It seems, however, that he
derived his strength not altogether from his immense physique, but from
a demon with which he was connected, inasmuch as the Israelites speedily
vanquished both him and his gigantic Amorite followers, after the said
demon had been effectually confined in chains. The Amorites may have
been men of large stature in comparison with the surrounding tribes.
This is by no means improbable. Two recent travellers, Mr. Porter and
the Rev. Cyril Graham, testify to the Cyclopean character of the remains
of some of the ancient cities of Bashan, which they succeeded in
discovering, after infinite toil and fatigue, the former in 1853 and the
latter in 1857. Some of the houses are described as being built of
immense masses of squared stones of the neighbouring basalt rock,
without mortar or other cement, with an enormous basaltic "flag" for the
roof, and a similar one for a door or gateway. Some of the latter Mr.
Graham found still in position, and capable of being turned on the stone
pivots which supplied the place of hinges.
Mr. Gladstone, in his "Juventus Mundi," contends that the "Cyclops, a
godless race," are the children of Poseidon, and that Poseidon (the
Greek Neptune) was the chief god of the Phœnicians. He adds, "Syria
was inhabited by Canaanites; and it has been observed that the names
given in Scripture to that race indicate great stature and physical
force, which became the basis of a tradition that they were a race of
giants. To the Greek mind this would naturally convey that they were the
children of Poseidon, as the Phœnician god."
The ruins at Baalbec, and the sites of other ancient Phœnician
cities, present numerous specimens of colossal masonry, of most
extraordinary dimensions. In a wall at Baalbec three large blocks of
stone are described as still _in situ_, at the height of twenty feet
from the ground, which measure each twelve feet in width, twelve feet in
depth, and sixty feet in length. Mr. John D. Baldwin, in his
"Pre-historic Nations," contends that the ancient Phœnicians were of
Cushite of Hamite origin. Speaking of their stupendous architectural
remains, he says:--
"The Cushite origin of these cities is so plain that those most
influenced by the strange monomania which transforms the Phœnicians
into Semites now admit that the Cushites were the first civilisers in
Phœnicia. These old builders, whose sculpture produced such
astonishing effects in coarse rock, resorted to wood and metal for the
finish and ornamentation of their work. The stone they used was not
Parian marble, therefore they covered it with ornament of another
material, and 'what remains of their monuments is not the monument
itself, but the gross support that served to bear the whole system of
decoration under which the stone was concealed.'"
In relatively recent times, India appears to have been regarded as
especially the land of giants, marvels, and enchantments. Honest old Sir
John Mandeville, in his quaint, credulous, innocent way, tells us that
there are, in one of the Indian islands, "folks of great stature, as
giants, and they be hideous to look upon, and they have but one eye, and
that is in the middle of the front, and they eat nothing but raw flesh
and raw fish." He further adds that they were clothed in the skins of
beasts, they drank milk, preferred man's flesh to all other food, and
they had no houses to live in. In another Indian island, Sir John tells
us he was informed that giants dwelt "of great stature--some fifty
cubits long;" but he adds, with commendable caution, "I saw none of
these, for I had no lust to go to those parties, because no man cometh
neither into that Isle nor into the other, but he is devoured anon. Men
say that many times the giants take men into the sea out of their ships
and bring them to land, two in one hand and two in another, eating them
going, all raw and all quick."
The extravagance manifested in these giant legends may have arisen from
two distinct sources, besides the one to which I have alluded. In the
first place _giant_ did not originally mean bulk or extraordinary
height. The Hebrew word _nephilim_, used in the Bible, according to Dr.
Derham, is sometimes employed to signify "_violent_ men," and it is
translated by a word carrying such a meaning by several ancient writers.
He considers that "monsters of rapine and wickedness" are referred to
rather than giants in stature. And it is perfectly true that vice and
violence are almost always characteristic of these legendary huge-limbed
gentry; while the conqueror, who represents the better morals of the age
of the myths, is generally of the dimensions of ordinary humanity.
The discovery of certain fossil bones of colossal size for a time seemed
to countenance the belief in the physical existence of this mythic race.
Buffon, indeed, describes and figures large bones as the remains of
giants, which are now well known to pertain to a species of extinct
fossil elephant.
In a letter from Dr. Mather to Dr. Woodward, published in the Royal
Society's Transactions, reference is made to a discovery, at Albany, in
New England, in 1705, of enormous bones and teeth. The doctor calls them
the bones of a giant, and refers to them as corroborative of the
statement in Genesis, c. 6, v. 4. The bones in question, however, turned
out to belong to the great American fossil pachyderm, the _Mastodon
giganteus_. There is a tradition amongst the red Indians, that a race of
men, relatively large in stature, existed contemporaneously with these
animals, and that both were destroyed by the Great Spirit with
thunderbolts. One account says,--that "as a troop of these terrible
quadrupeds were destroying the deer, the bisons, and the other animals
created for the use of the Indians, the 'Great Man,' slew them all with
his thunder, except the Big Bull, who, nothing daunted, presented his
enormous forehead to the bolts, and shook them off as they fell, till,
being at last wounded in the side, he fled towards the great lakes,
where he is to this day."
Dr. Hitchcock, in one of his geological works, informs us that "Felix
Plater, Professor of Anatomy at Basle, referred the bones of an
elephant, found at Lucerne, to a giant at least nineteen feet high, and,
in England, similar bones were regarded as those of the fallen angels!"
The discovery of remains of a fossil elephant beneath the cliff at
Plymouth was not very long ago held by some to furnish demonstrative
evidence not only of the strictly historical character of Geoffrey of
Monmouth's idle romance respecting the landing of Brute and his Trojans
in England, but of the precise locality where the mythic champion
wrestler, Corineus, hurled the equally mythic giant, Gogmagog, from the
cliff into the sea![34]
At Coggeshall, in Essex, similar remains have been found. One of the
earliest notices of these interesting discoveries is by old Norden, who
says that at Coggeshall "ther were to be seene 2 teeth of a monstrous
man or gyant of so great magnitude and weight as 100 of anie men's teeth
in this age cannot countervayle one of them."
White Watson alludes to the discovery, last century, of the skull of a
fossil elephant, at Wirksworth, in Derbyshire, which was commonly
believed at the time to be the brain-pan of an enormous giant.
In the second place, it does not appear a difficult matter to recognise
in these giant legends, one form in which the memory of the dethronement
of the gods of the various Aryan myths has been preserved. In fact, the
very feats performed by the giants in Cornwall, such as the hurling of
huge rocks, and striding across valleys, are, as I have previously
shown, attributed in Lancashire and the north of England to the devil. A
tradition yet exists that the Roman highways, which cross each other
not far from Fulwood Barracks, near Preston, extended from the North Sea
to the South Sea, and from the East Sea to the West Sea, and that the
devil made them himself in one night. Indeed in mythical and
traditionary lore, giants and devils are frequently convertible
personages.
Mr. A. Russel Wallace, in his "Malay Archipelago," tells us that the
present inhabitants of the island of Java, "who now only build rude
houses of bamboo and thatch," look upon the ruins of the colossal
edifices, the remarkable examples of ancient sculpture, and other
evidences of the extinct civilisation amidst which they dwell, "with
ignorant amazement," and regard them as "the undoubted productions of
giants or of demons." The mythology of the Southern Aryans presents a
similar confusion; their tribe of demons, the Râkshasas or Atrins
(devourers), Kelly regards as the "earliest originals of the giants and
ogres of our nursery tales. They can take any form at will, but their
natural one is that of a huge misshapen giant 'like a cloud,' with hair
and beard of the colour of red lightning. They go about open-mouthed,
gnashing their monstrous teeth and snuffing after human flesh. Their
strength waxes most terrible in twilight, and they know how to increase
its effect by all sorts of magic. They carry off their human prey
through the air, tear open the living bodies, and with their faces
plunged amongst the entrails they suck up the warm blood as it gushes
from the heart. After they have gorged themselves they dance merrily."
These Râkshasas, certainly look very like the originals of the monsters
described by Sir John Mandeville.
The story of the Titans, overthrown by Zeus, and cast into Tartarus, is
the Hellenic form of this giant myth, which Milton has imitated in his
Paradise Lost, where Satan and his host, formerly angels and archangels,
are hurled from heaven into the bottomless pit. Milton's devils are, in
fact, veritable giants. Speaking of Satan, the poet describes him as
In bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size;
Titanian or Earth-born, that warr'd on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea beast
Leviathan, which God of all His works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.
Again, speaking of his ponderous weapon, he says,--
His spear, to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills to be the mast
Of some great admiral, were but a wand.
The "mission" of these Pandemonium giants is precisely analogous to that
of the rest of the fraternity. Satan says to Beelzebub,--
Of this be sure,
To do ought good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to His high will
Whom we resist. If then His providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil.
The trolls and giants of the Norse traditions are evidently but other
forms of the common myth, notwithstanding the metamorphoses which they,
in some respects, seem to have undergone. Dasent points out some kinder
qualities which the giants occasionally exhibit. He says:--"One
sympathises, too, with them, and almost pities them as the
representatives of a simple primitive race, whose day is past and gone,
but who still possessed something of the innocence and virtue of ancient
times, together with a stock of old experience, which, however useful it
might be as an example to others, was quite useless to help themselves."
Yet he regards them as the embodiment of "sheer brute force," which
yields to the "slight and lissom foe" representing virtue and reason.
The "upstart Æsir gods," to whom they are opposed, are described as
endowed with "that diviner wrath which, though burning hot, was still
under the control of reason." The trolls, on the contrary, are subject
to wild paroxysms of merely brutal animal rage, which discloses their
true parentage. The fact that their enemies, the Æsir gods, were
afterwards dethroned, and stigmatised, along with the classical deities,
as cacodæmons, and became associated with the giants as evil spirits,
will perhaps explain why some of the race have been endowed with
attributes which do not pertain to the rest. It appears that they knew
of their common destiny; that they sometimes suspended hostilities, and
even intermarried; and looked forward with joint melancholy gloom to
that, to them, awful day, "the twilight of the gods," when both should
fall before the light of the Christian revelation.
The Venerable Bede, in describing the martyrdom of St. Alban, expressly
states that the magistrate or judge "was standing at the altar, and
offering sacrifice to devils," the said devils being the gods of the
Romans. He afterwards informs us that, when the bishops Germanicus and
Lupus were on a voyage to Britain, "on a sudden they were obstructed by
the malevolence of demons, who were jealous that such men should be sent
to bring back the Britons to the faith. They raised storms and darkened
the sky with clouds." Their efforts were fruitless, nevertheless, as the
piety of the bishops prevailed against them. The Old Nick of the
English, literally the devil, is but one form of Odin dethroned.
Professor Henry Morley, in his "English Writers," says,--"Odin, under
the name of Nikarr, from a root signifying stroke of violence, which
appears in the Greek νίκη victory; in the Latin _necare_ and
Anglo-Saxon _næcan_, to kill; and in the English Knock; having been
first cut up into Nickers, has become the Old Nick of more recent
times."
Dasent speaks of the trolls "as more systematically malignant than the
giants, and with the term were bound up notions of sorcery and unholy
power." He justly adds,--
"But mythology is a woof of many colours, in which the hues are shot and
blended, so that the various races of supernatural beings are shaded off
and fade away almost imperceptibly into each other; and thus, even in
heathen times, it must have been hard to say exactly where the giant
ended and the troll began. But when Christianity came in and heathendom
fell; when the godlike race of the Æsir became evil demons instead of
good genial powers, then all the objects of the old popular belief,
whether Æsir, giants, or trolls, were mingled together in one
superstition, as 'no canny.' They were all trolls, all malignant, and
thus it is that, in these tales, the traditions about Odin and his
underlings, about the frost giants, and about sorcerers and wizards, are
confused and garbled; and all supernatural agency that plots man's ill
is the work of _trolls_, whether the agent be the arch enemy himself, or
giant, or witch, or wizard."
Mr. Hunt appears to regard some of the giant traditions of Cornwall as
having direct reference to the aboriginal inhabitants of the country.
There may be some truth in this, as the existence of such demi-giants as
his Tom, who defeated giant Blunderbus by the skilful employment of the
wheel and axle of his wagon, would seem to indicate. The wheel and axle,
however, is an Aryan sun emblem, and one type of the "chark" or
"fire-bringing" instrument, invented, according to the Greeks, by
Prometheus. This unquestionably demonstrates its descent from the
ancient solar myths. Conquered men driven to the caves and mountain
fastnesses, and addicted to violence and cruelty, would soon be
described figuratively by language which literally referred to older
superstitions; just as we now designate sanguinary savages as monsters,
fiends, and even "devils incarnate." This, no doubt, offers the most
probable interpretation of the Gog-Magog story, as well as of many
others of its class. Dasent says,--
"Between this outcast nomade race, which wandered from forest to forest,
and from fell to fell, without a fixed place of abode, and the old
natural powers and frost giants, the minds of the race which adored Odin
and the Æsir soon engendered a monstrous man-eating cross-breed of
supernatural beings, who fled from contact with the intruders as soon as
the first great struggle was over, abhorred the light of day, and looked
upon agriculture and tillage as a dangerous innovation which destroyed
their hunting fields, and was destined finally to root them out from off
the face of the earth."
Mackenzie informs us that the Esquimaux with whom he conversed had a
tradition that the English were giants, with wings, who could kill with
a glance of their eye, and swallow at a mouthful an entire beaver.
If the European emigrants who have conquered North America from the Red
Indian, and nearly extirpated his race, had been as superstitious as
their forefathers were some two or three thousand years ago, we should
have had a similar class of mixed myths resulting from their warlike
contact. Indeed, we have, notwithstanding the influence of Christianity,
some faint indications that the superstitious element in this direction
has not yet completely died out.
Many of these mythic giants are little more than degraded forms of the
original Aryan personifications of the forces of Nature. Rivers have
been deified, and so have mountains. Atlas was a giant, who held the
earth on his shoulders. The one-eyed Cyclops, with the deformed Vulcan
at their head, forging thunderbolts in a cave at Mount Etna, personify
volcanic force. Giants were supposed to be buried alive at the base of
such mountains as Etna, Stromboli, and Vesuvius, and their struggles to
free themselves the cause of the earthquakes and other terrestrial
convulsions to which the localities were specially subjected. The
whirlpool and rock in the Straits of Messina, which cause no special
alarm to modern navigators, created so much terror in the minds of
ancient sailors, and made such havoc of their frail craft, that they
became regarded as malicious demons, and were named Scylla and
Charybdis. The noise of the furious waves, dashing upon the rocky
cavernous coast, fancy likened to the howling of dogs and wolves. Hence
the fable that a female monster, surrounded by troops of such animals,
prowled about the neighbourhood, awaiting the opportunity of devouring
mariners wrecked on the coast. The celebrated basaltic rock in the north
of Ireland was called the "Giant's Causeway" simply because the early
inhabitants, knowing nothing of geology, thought it a result of
superhuman or demoniacal labour. The equally celebrated cave in
Derbyshire, doubtless, received the name of the "Devil's Hole" for a
similar reason. Many of Mr. Hunt's Cornish giants live in the violently
upheaved masses of granite which receive the Atlantic tempests in their
wildest fury. Some, indeed, having become more modernised, live in
castles on the rocky mountains. Others of these myths have become
entangled with the Tregeagle traditions, which, I have previously shown,
embody much of the Teutonic "wild hunt" or "furious host" superstitions.
The Rev. George W. Cox, in his "Mythology of the Aryan Nations,"
contends that the beings spoken of as Cyclops in the Iliad and the
Odyssey, are personifications of distinct natural forces. The former he
says "are manifestly the dazzling and scorching flashes which plough up
the storm-clad heavens." In the latter the phenomenal features are of a
very different character. Polyphêmos is "the son of Poseidon (Neptune)
and the nymph Thoôsa; in other words he is emphatically the child of the
waters, and of the waters only--the huge mists which wrap the earth in a
dark cloud." The one-eyed monster, blinded by Odysseus, is the sun
himself, shorn of his beams, glaring ghastly through the blackening
mist. He says:--"This terrible being may be seen drawn with wonderful
fidelity to the spirit of the old myth in Turner's picture of the
overthrow of the troops sent by Cambyses to the shrine of the Lybian
Ammon; and they who see the one-eyed monster glaring down on the devoted
army, where the painter was probably utterly unconscious that he was
doing more than representing the simoom of the desert, will recognise at
once the unconscious accuracy with which the modern painter conveys the
old Homeric conception of Polyphêmos. In this picture, as in the storms
of the desert, the sun becomes the one great eye of an enormous monster,
who devours every living thing that crosses his path, as Polyphêmos
devoured the comrades of Odysseus. The blinding of this monster is the
natural sequel when his mere brute force is pitted against the craft of
his adversary. In his seeming insignificance and his despised estate, in
his wayworn mien and his many sorrows, Odysseus takes the place of the
Boots or Cinderella of Teutonic folk-lore; and as the giant is
manifestly the enemy of the bright being whose splendours are for the
time being hidden beneath a veil, so it is the representative of the sun
himself who pierces out his eye; and thus Odysseus, Boots, and Jack the
Giant-killer alike overcome and escape from the enemy, although they may
be said to escape with the skin of their teeth."
Grimm relates a Norwegian legend, which clearly indicates that many of
these gigantic monsters of the old mythologies were simply
impersonations of elemental strife or powerful natural forces. Olaf, the
saint and king, being anxious to build a very large church without
taxing heavily his people, bargained with a giant or troll, who
undertook the labour on condition that he should receive as his reward
the sun and the moon, or, in default, the royal saint himself. When the
immense structure was nearly completed, Olaf wandered about in sore
dismay, wondering how the giant's demand could be met. Suddenly he heard
a child crying in the inside of a hill or small mountain. On listening
attentively, he overheard a giantess say to the child these
words:--"Hush! hush! to-morrow, _Wind and Weather_, your father, will
come home and bring with him the sun and the moon, or St. Olaf himself."
It appears that the simply calling an evil spirit by his name was
sufficient to utterly annihilate him. So Olaf marched up with a bold
front to the giant, and said,--"_Wind and Weather_, you have set the
spire awry!" The giant suddenly fell from the top of the edifice, and
was smashed to pieces. And further, each piece was found to have become
converted into a flint stone!
Giants were introduced pretty freely, especially during the earlier
period of modern English literature, into allegorical works both in
prose and poetry. There is a forcible illustration of this in Stephen
Hawe's "Pastime of Pleasure." Prince Graunde Amour, goes forth in search
of adventures. False Report, a dwarf, deceives him, but he slays a giant
with three heads, named Imagination, Falsehood, and Perjury. John
Bunyan, too, has his Giant Despair, etc., and others will readily occur
to the reader's mind. In the Arthurian romance of Sir Gawayne, that hero
is said to have been endowed with "supernatural increase and decline of
strength that _corresponded to the movement of the sun_." This is not
without significance, as a personification of natural force. It
corresponds, too, in a remarkable degree, with Mr. Cox's interpretations
of some of the elder Greek myths.
Lord Bacon, in his "Wisdom of the Ancients," referring to what is called
the allegorical theory, as a method of interpreting the ancient
mythology, says,--"I freely and willingly confess that I am inclined to
the opinion, that not a few of the fables of the antient poets contained
from their very origin a hidden mystery and allegory, for who can be so
obstinately blind to evidence, that, when he hears that after the
extermination of the giants, Fame was brought forth as a posthumous
sister to them, he does not immediately apply the story to these party
murmurs and seditious rumours which are wont to spread themselves
amongst a people for a while after the suppression of rebellions? Or
when he hears that the giant Typhon cut away and carried off the sinews
of Jupiter, and that they were stolen from him, and restored to Jupiter
by Mercury; how can he but perceive immediately that this is to be
referred to powerful rebellions, by which the sinews of kings, their
revenue and authority, are cut out; yet not so but by mildness of
address and wisdom of edicts, as it were by stolen means, the minds of
subjects within a short time are reconciled, and the power of kings
restored to them. Or when he hears that in that memorable expedition of
the gods against the giants, the ass of Silenus became by his braying an
instrument of great value in dispersing these giants; must he not
clearly see that this was imagined of those vast projects of rebels,
which are mostly dissipated by light rumours and vain consternation?
There is also another not unimportant an indication of the existence of
a hidden and involved sense; namely, that some of the fables are so
absurd and senseless in their outward narration, that they seem to show
their nature at first sight, and cry for exposition by means of a
parable. Above all, one consideration has been of great weight and
importance with me--that most of the fables of mythology appear by no
means to have been invented by those who relate them, such as Homer,
Hesiod, and the rest; for where it clearly made manifest to us that they
proceeded from that age and those authors by whom they are celebrated,
and thence transmitted to us, we should surely, I conjecture, not have
been induced to expect anything great or lofty from such an origin as
this. But he who considers the subject more attentively will discover
that they are related to posterity as things already received and
believed, not then for the first time imagined and offered to mankind.
And this it is which has increased their estimation in my eyes, as being
neither discovered by the poets themselves nor belonging to their age,
but a kind of sacred relics, the light air of better ages, which,
_passing through the traditions of earlier nations_, have been breathed
into the trumpets and pipes of these Grecians."
The passage of these giant traditions into the romances of modern
chivalry may easily be traced. King Arthur himself was a hero of
colossal proportions. He is still thought, as we have already seen, like
Barbarossa and others, to lie entranced in the recesses of more than one
mountain. He was attended by the magician Merlin, and he and his
followers performed superhuman feats. He slew many giants of prodigious
size, including Ritho, who had clothed himself in furs made from the
beards of vanquished kings, and the Spanish giant, who had borne away
Helena, the niece of Hoel, and fled with her to the top of St. Michael's
Mount.
In Pulci's "Morgante Maggiore," Orlando, one of Charlemagne's Paladins,
slays the two giants, Passamont and Alabaster, and converts, or rather
accepts of the miraculous conversion of, a third, Morgante, to
Christianity.
The hero, Beowulf, the Geát, in the oldest Anglo-Saxon poem extant, is
believed by Kemble and others to be a personified warrior form of Gautr,
Odin's name in the Edda, as the god of abundance. The giant Grendel,
whom he slew, was a malignant demon that carried desolation around. He
is described as holding "the moors, the fen, and fastnesses." Professor
Morley, in his English summary of the poem, says,--"Forbidden the homes
of mankind, the daughters of Cain brought forth in darkness misshapen
giants, elves, and orkens, such giants as warred long with God, and he
was one of these." This giant is believed to have had his haunt at
Hartlepool, on the coast of Durham. His mother, who was a kind of
aquatic demon, was thought to occupy a "bottomless" pool, from which the
town, in part, takes its name.
The King Arthur legend, which the Rev. John Whitaker locates at
Manchester, notwithstanding its relatively modern Norman-French
externals, still exhibits a strong flavour of the older traditions.
According to an episode in the "_Morte Darthur_," this Saxon champion,
Sir Tarquin, or Torquin, was giant enough to conquer and capture three
knights in one encounter. Indeed, he is sometimes described as the
"Giant." There is a tradition yet extant in the neighbourhood, that the
said Tarquin threw the huge stone, which lies by the roadside near
Longford Bridge, from his residence at Knot Mill, to its present
location, a distance of nearly two miles. The stone really is the
pedestal of an ancient cross, similar to the many yet to be seen in
various parts of Lancashire and Cheshire. It presents, however, the
peculiarity of two square mortise holes for the support of the upright
shaft. These, popular tradition says, Tarquin expressly made for the
insertion of his thumb and finger when engaged in hurling the ponderous
mass as a "quoit" or plaything. It is likewise said to have been used,
at some distant period, as a "plague-stone," and that the two holes were
filled with vinegar or some other disinfectant. This story is not
improbable. The sacred character of such a relic would add to the faith
of the neighbouring inhabitants in the efficacy of the means adopted to
avoid infection. It is said that provisions, etc., were left on or near
the stone by the country people, and that the towns-folk deposited the
understood price in one of the holes containing the vinegar, which was
believed to render the coins innocuous as plague conductors. Sir Lionel
of Liones, the first of the brothers of Sir Lancelot of the Lake, who
succumbed to Tarquin's prowess whilst endeavouring to rescue the three
captives referred to, tells us, "He never beheld so stout a knight, so
handsome a man, and so well accoutered a hero." He lived in a plain,
surrounded by a dense forest. His castle, John Whitaker says, was formed
out of the ruins of the Roman fortress at Castlefield, Manchester. Sir
Ector de Maris, another brother of Sir Lancelot, rambling in search of
adventures, and hearing that "within a mile was a castle, strong and
well ditched, and by it, upon the left hand, a ford; and that over this
grew a fair tree, on the branches of which were hung the shields of the
many gallant knights who had been overcome by the owner of the castle;
and at the stem was a basin of copper, with a Latin inscription, which
challenged any knight to strike it, and summon the castellans to a
contest. Ector came to the place, saw the shields, recognised many that
belonged to his associates at the Round Table, and particularly noticed
his brother's. Fired at the sight, he beat violently on the basin, and
then gave his horse drink at the ford. And immediately a knight appeared
on horseback behind him, and called him to come out of the water. He
turned himself directly. He engaged the knight, was conquered, and taken
prisoner by him." The story goes on to relate that--"The brother of both
these unfortunate heroes, Sir Lancelot, whom we left sleeping before, in
the forest adjoining to the castle, _had been carried from thence by
enchantment_, and confined for some time." He, however, recovered his
liberty, and "in the midst of a highway he heard that a knight dwelt
very near, _who was the most redoubted champion that ever existed_, and
had conquered, and now kept in prison, no less than sixty-four of King
Arthur's knights. He hastened to the place. He came to the ford and
tree, and let his horse drink at the ford, and then beat upon the basin
with the end of his spear. This he did so long and so heartily, that he
drove the bottom out; and yet no one answered. He then rode along the
gates of the castle almost half an hour. At last he descried Sir Torquin
coming upon the road with a captive knight. He advanced and challenged
him. The other gallantly accepted the challenge, defying him and all his
fellowship of the Round Table. They fought. The encounter lasted no less
than four hours. Sir Lancelot at last slew his antagonist, took the keys
of his castle, and released all the prisoners within it, who instantly
repaired to the armoury there, and furnished themselves completely."
In a succeeding adventure, a few days afterwards, Sir Lancelot
encountered in the forest, at the entrance of a village, what the
romance terms a "foul churl," who "dashed at him with a great club, full
of iron spikes." Sir Lancelot, in return, drew his sword, and "smote him
dead upon the earth." He proved to be the porter of a neighbouring
castle, inhabited by "two great giants, well armed save their heads, and
with two horrible clubs in their hands." Lancelot, nothing daunted, with
his shield, "warded off one giant's stroke, and clove the other with his
sword from the head downward to the chest. When the first giant saw that
he ran away mad with fear; but Sir Lancelot ran after him, and smote him
through the shoulder, and shove him down his back, so that he fell
dead." This victory released "a band of sixty ladies and young damsels,"
some of whom had been imprisoned by the giants during seven years.
A correspondent of the _Irish Times_, in a recent paper on "Legends of
the Tichborne Family," says,--"The preservation of the Round Table, or
what was shown as such by Henry VIII. to Charles of France, is due to
them. This table is, I believe, shown in what are the remains of the
ancient chapel or church of St. Stephen, Winchester. It is now riddled
with Cromwell's bullets, having been unsuccessfully defended against him
by one of the Tichbornes and Lord Ogle. Whether at such a table ever sat
The faultless king,
That passionate perfection,
matters little. Who would not now say with the bard,
I know the Round Table, my friend of old.
We know it through its offsprings, 'Elaine,' 'Enid,' 'Guinevere,' and a
host of others. The table, with its twenty-four names, is the origin of
our romance of romances--_la creme de la creme_--of legends!"
Mr. Timbs, in "Historic Ninepins," says, "the existing representative
Round Table is of wood, and is preserved at Winchester, and hangs upon
the interior eastern wall of the County Hall. The decorations of the
table indicate a date not later nor much earlier than the reign of Henry
VIII., and the figure of Arthur has been repainted within the time of
living memory." King Edward III. founded an order in commemoration of
the British warrior, and in 1344 entertained the knights at Windsor
Castle at a Round Table two hundred feet in diameter.
Several circular mounds in various parts of England, including a
remarkable one near Penrith, are by traditionary wisdom each honoured
with the name of "King Arthur's Round Table." Bishop Percy tells us that
the term "round table" is not a speciality of the King Arthur legends,
but that it is common to all the ages of chivalry. In support of this he
refers to Dugdale's description of a grand tournament given by Roger de
Mortimer, at Kenilworth, in the reign of Edward the First. Dugdale
says,--"Then began the Round Table, so called by reason that the place
wherein they practised those feats was environed with a strong wall made
in a round form." This is confirmed by an expression common with Matthew
Paris, when describing jousts and tournaments. He styles them
"_Hastiludia Mensæ Rotundæ_." Wace makes mention of the Round Table of
Arthur in his metrical romance, but Geoffrey of Monmouth has no
reference to it, either in his pretended "History," or in his "Life of
Merlin." Nevertheless in the romance, the "Morte Darthur," it is
expressly stated that Merlin made it "in token of the roundness of the
world." It is evidently, like other circular forms, a sun type, or
phallic symbol. Ellis, in his "Specimens of the Early English Romances,"
on the authority of the metrical one of which Merlin is the hero,
says,--"The Round Table was intended to assemble the best knights in the
world. High birth, great strength, activity and skill, fearless valour,
and firm fidelity to their suzerain were indispensably requisite for an
admission into this order. They were bound by oath to assist each other
at the hazard of their own lives; to attempt singly the most perilous
adventures; to lead, when necessary, a life of monastic solitude; to fly
to arms on the first summons; and never to retire from battle till they
had defeated the enemy, unless when night interfered and separated the
combatants." The number of knights belonging to the order appears to
have varied at different times; but one hundred or upwards is most
generally referred to. The table was originally constructed by the
magician Merlin for Uther Pendragon, Arthur's father. It passed from him
to Leodigan, King of Carmalide, the father of Guenevere, the wife of
Arthur. The famous round table formed part of the dower of the queen on
her marriage with the popular hero.
The manner in which traditions sometimes become interwoven with legends
of more modern date is aptly illustrated by the fact recorded in the
"Vetus Ceremoniale" MS., and endorsed by Du Cange, "that the chivalrous
order of the Knights of the Round Table was instituted by King Arthur
and the Duke of Lancaster." If Arthur ever lived at all, he lived in
the fifth and sixth centuries. Geoffrey of Monmouth says, after being
mortally wounded, "he gave up the crown of Britain to his kinsman,
Constantine, the son of Cader, Duke of Cornwall, in the five hundred and
forty-second year of our Lord's incarnation." Roger de Poictou, the
first _Earl_ of Lancaster, flourished in the twelfth; and Henry, the
first _Duke_, about a couple of centuries afterwards! But dates are
little regarded by those who traffic in the "mythic lore" of the
mysterious "olden time."
The Rev. G. W. Cox successfully shows that the principal materials of
the Arthurian legends are identical with those which underlie the
Hindoo, Grecian, Teutonic, and other Aryan myths. He contends that
Arthur is another phase of Achilleus, or Sigurd, or Perseus. He
says,--"Round him are other brave knights, and these not less than
himself must have their adventures; and thus Arthur and Balin answer
respectively to Achilleus and Odysseus in the Achaian hosts. A new
element is brought into the story with the Round Table, which forms part
of the dowery of Guinevere." This dowery he regards as the equivalent
of, and as fatal to him as the treasures of the Argive Helen were to
Menelaus. Referring to the "San Græal," he says,--"This mystic vessel is
at once a storehouse of food as inexhaustible as the table of the
Ethiopians, and a talismanic test as effectual as the goblets of Oberon
and Tristram. The good Joseph of Arimathea, who had gathered up in it
the drops of blood which fell from the side of Jesus when pierced by the
centurion's spear, was nourished by it alone through his weary
imprisonment of two and forty years; and when, at length, having either
been brought by him to Britain, or preserved in heaven, it was carried
by angels to the pure Titurel, and shrined in a magnificent temple, it
supplied to its worshippers the most delicious food, and preserved them
in perpetual youth. As such it differs in no way from the horn of
Amaltheia, or any other of the oval vessels which can be traced back to
the emblem of the Hindu Sacti." He afterwards adds,--"The myth which
corrupted the worshippers of Tammuz in the Jewish temple has supplied
the beautiful picture of unselfish devotion which sheds a marvellous
glory on the career of the pure Sir Galahad."
The Arthur of romance is in fact the creation of writers of a later age,
or later ages, than the conquest of Britain by the Angles and Saxons,
and not of contemporary bardic historians. The British chieftain, who
fought against Ida and his Angles in the North of England, and whose
territory is believed to have extended from the Clyde to the Ribble,
with a varying boundary on the east, is named Urien. He is the great
hero of the bard Taliesin. Amongst his other great qualities, the poet
enumerates the following:--"Protector of the land, usual with thee is
headlong activity and the drinking of ale, and ale for drinking, and
fair dwelling and beautiful raiment." Llywarch Hen, or the old, another
Keltic poet, born about the year 490, incidentally mentions Arthur as
chief of the Cymry of the south, or, as Professor Morley puts it, "what
Urien was in the north, Arthur was in the south." Llywarch Hen was
present at the bloody battle in which his lord Geraint (one of the
knights introduced into the succeeding romances), and a whole host of
British warriors perished. The said bard likewise brought away the head
of Urien in his mantle, after his decapitation by the sword of an
assassin.
Amongst the kings and lords who attended Arthur's first feast at
"Carlion," in Wales, was, according to Sir Thomas Malory's "Morte
Darthur," "King Uriens of Gore, with four hundred knights with him."
The earliest of the written Arthurian romances are to be found in the
History of the Britons ascribed to Nennius, but who he was, or when the
work was compiled, is not known. Some ascribe it to the end of the
eighth, others to the end of the tenth century. Geoffrey of Monmouth
published his historical romance in the twelfth century. He, however, in
his dedicatory epistle to Robert, Earl of Gloucester, acknowledges,
somewhat regretfully, that he "found nothing said" about Arthur and
several other of his mythical Kings in either Gildas or Bede. William of
Malmesbury, in the first part of his history, speaks of this semi-mythic
warrior in the following terms: "That Arthur, about whom the idle tales
of the Bretons (nugæ Britonum) craze to this day, one worthy not to have
misleading fables dreamed about him, but to be celebrated in true
history, since he sustained for a long time his tottering country, and
sharpened for war the broken spirits of his people." This was most
probably written a few years before the appearance of Geoffrey's work.
About forty years afterwards, his countryman, Gerald, condemned
Geoffrey's history as spurious. He had arrived at this conclusion in the
following singular manner. One Melerius, a Welshman of Caerleon, had "an
extraordinary familiarity with unclean spirits," and he was enabled, by
"their assistance, to fortel future events.... He knew when anyone spoke
falsely in his presence, for he saw the devil; as it were, leaping and
exulting on the tongue of the liar.... If the evil spirits oppressed him
too much the Gospel of St. John was placed on his bosom, when, like
birds, they immediately vanished; but when that book was removed, and
the History of the Britons by Geoffry Arthur was substituted in its
place, they instantly reappeared in great numbers, and remained a longer
time than usual on his body and on the book!!" William of Newbury, too,
some half a century after the publication of Geoffrey's work, repudiated
it in the following emphatic manner:--"A certain writer has come up in
our times to wipe out the blots on the Britons, weaving together
ridiculous figments about them, and raising them with impudent vanity
high above the virtue of the Macedonians and the Romans. This man is
named Geoffrey, and has the by-name of Arturus, because he cloaked with
the honest name of History, coloured in Latin phrase, the fables about
Arthur, taken from the old tales of the Bretons, with increase of his
own.... Moreover, in his book, that he calls the History of the Britons,
how saucily and how shamelessly he lies almost throughout, no one,
unless ignorant of the old histories, when he falls upon that book, can
doubt." William concludes with the following emphatic sentence:
"Therefore, as in all things we trust Bede, whose wisdom and sincerity
are beyond doubt, so that fabler with his fables shall be straightway
spat out by us all." Geoffrey's work was, as Professor Morley observes,
"a natural issue of its time, and is, indeed, the source of one of the
purest streams of English poetry." It was afterwards abridged,
translated, versified, and paraphrased. New fancies were added,
sometimes from Breton traditions, and sometimes from the fertile brains
of more modern poets and writers of romance. The "Mort Artus," "The
Quest of the Sangreal," and the "Lancelot of the Lake" stories were
written by Archdean Walter Map, the friend of Gerald de Barri, commonly
called Giraldus Cambrensis. Map flourished during the latter portion of
the twelfth century. In 1485, Caxton printed a complete collection of
the Arthur legends, "after a copy," as he says, "unto me delivered,
which copy Sir Thomas Malorye did take out of certain books of French
and reduced it into English." It is entitled, "A Book of the noble
Hystoryes of King Arthur, and of certen of his Knyghtes, which book was
reduced in to Englysshe by Sir Thomas Malory, Knight."
Some other giant traditions yet hold their ground in Lancashire and the
neighbourhood. One at Worsley, near Manchester, the seat of the Earl of
Ellesmere, appears to be but a duplication of the Tarquin legend.
Perhaps the immense tunneling, and the miles of underground canal in
connection with the Bridgewater Trust collieries, and other results of
Brindley's engineering skill, may have influenced the relatively modern
vulgar mind in the transference of the locality of Tarquin's stronghold
from Castlefield to Worsley. Or perhaps the second adventure of Sir
Lancelot, when he encountered the "foul churl" and his giant masters,
may have fastened itself upon this locality.
Dorning Rasbotham, 1787, visited the township of Turton, in Lancashire,
for the purpose of inspecting what he described as the "_Hanging_ or
_Giant's Stone_." He says:--
"The tradition of the common people is that it was thrown by a certain
giant, upon a certain occasion (the nature of which they do not
specify), from Winter Hill, on the opposite range, to this place; and
they whimsically fancy that certain little hollows in the stone are the
impression made by the giant's hand at the time he threw it; but I own I
could not find out the resemblance which was noticed to me. It appears,
however, to have long excited attention; for, though it is a hard grey
moor-stone, a rude mark of a cross, of about seven inches by six, hath,
apparently, at a very distant period of time, been cut upon the top of
it. It is elevated upon another piece of rock; and its greatest length
is fourteen feet, its depth in the thickest part five feet eight inches,
and its greatest breadth upon the top, which is nearly flat, about nine
feet. A thorough-going antiquarian would call this a Druidical remain."
Traditions of this class are very common, especially in districts were
huge rocks lay apparently unconnected with the general mountain masses.
As I have previously observed, striated boulders, brought from a great
distance by what geologists term the "glacial drift," are especially
regarded as _débris_ resulting from giant warfare or amusement. Many
rocks of this class lying to the south of Pendle Hill, near Great
Harwood, I am informed, are still looked upon by the vulgar as stones
which have been hurled by giants from the surrounding hills. If we
regard them as the "frost giants" of the Scandinavian myths, it is by no
means an inapt personification of the gigantic force exhibited by
iceberg or glacier action.
A tradition in the neighbourhood of Stockport yet asserts that on the
site of a ruined building, with the remains of a moat, called "Arden or
Hardon Hall," on the southern bank of the river Tame, an ancient castle
once existed. John O'Gaunt is said to have slept in it. The tradition,
moreover, further informs us that at some very remote period a huge
giant occupied the same fortress, and that he and a colossal rival, on
the Rother or Mersey at Stockport, carried on a long desultory warfare
by throwing stones and shooting arrows at each other. The Arden
monster, at length becoming disgusted at the tediousness of this
ineffectual style of combat, assembled his retainers, attacked the
Stockport giant in his stronghold, slew him, and utterly exterminated
his followers.
May not this tradition have some remote connection with the struggles
between the Christian Northumbrians and the Mercian pagans in the
seventh century? The Mersey formed then the boundary line between the
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, as it now separates Lancashire from Cheshire. Or,
as John O'Gaunt is mixed up in some way with it, may not an old legend
have become confounded with events attendant upon some of the
insurrectionary movements of the early Norman barons, or of the Wars of
the Roses? Stockport was once a strongly fortified position, and is yet
considered one of the "keys of the county of Lancaster."
The giant and the ogre seem to have eventually passed into the tyrant
lord, who imprisoned in the dungeons of his strong castle captive
knights who succumbed to his prowess, and fair maidens whom he had
abducted. The magical or sorcery element, likewise, is still to be found
clinging to similar modern stories; and, notwithstanding the more
polished manners and elegant costume in which they are presented, they
quite as much partake of the character of the nursery tales about
champions and ogres of the "Jack, the Giant-killer" type, as modern
gentlemen do of their savage aboriginal ancestry. Hallam, referring to
the plundering barons of the "middle ages," and the legends engrafted
upon their ferocious deeds, says:--"Germany appears to have been, upon
the whole, the country where downright robbery was most unscrupulously
practised by the great. Their castles, erected on almost inaccessible
heights among the woods, became the secure receptacles of predatory
bands, who spread terror over the country. From these barbarian lords of
the dark ages, as from a living model, the romances are said to have
drawn their giants and other disloyal enemies of true chivalry."
The giants, as I have shown, are evidently of an age much earlier than
the mediæval barons, but they and their doings may have furnished
_nuclei_ around which the older myths may be said to have
re-crystallised themselves. Hallam, again, when discussing the question
of chivalry, refers to the connection of the relatively modern romances
and the older traditions. He says:--
"The real condition of society, it has sometimes been thought, might
suggest stories of knight errantry, which were wrought up into the
popular romances of the middle ages. A baron, abusing the advantage of
an inaccessible castle in the fastnesses of the Black Forest or the
Alps, to pillage the neighbourhood and confine travellers in his
dungeon, though neither a giant nor a Saracen, was a monster not less
formidable, and could, perhaps, as little be destroyed without the aid
of disinterested bravery. Knight errantry, indeed, as a profession,
cannot rationally be conceived to have had any existence, beyond the
precincts of romance. Yet there seems no improbability in supposing that
a knight, journeying through uncivilised regions in his way to the Holy
Land, or to the court of a foreign sovereign, might find himself engaged
in adventures not very dissimilar to those which are the theme of
romance. We cannot indeed expect to find any historical evidence of such
incidents."
The disinterested chivalrous motive of the knight-errants of mediæval
romance appears to have intimate relationship to the unselfishness of
the heroes of the Greek solar myths, whose toil was always undergone for
the benefit of others rather than themselves. The knight-errants'
devotion to their "lady-loves," especially in some of its features,
seems allied to the solar heroes' love for the dawn-goddesses.
If "giants" represent so many mythical characteristics it is not
unlikely that something of the kind may be found in connection with
their corporeal antitheses, the dwarfs. Timbs, in his "Historic
Ninepins," has the following pertinent remarks on this subject:--
"Tom Thumb, it is conjectured, if the truth should be discovered, would
be found to be a mythological personage. His adventure bears a near
analogy to the rite of adoption into the Brahminical order, a ceremony
which still exists in India, and to which the Raja of Tanjore submitted
many years ago. In Dubois's work there is an account of a diminutive
deity, whose person and character are analogous to those of Tom Thumb.
He, too, was not originally a Brahmin, but became one by adoption, like
some of the worthies in the Ramayana. Compare the multiplicity of Tom
Thumb's metamorphoses with those of Taliesin, as quoted by Davies, we
shall then see that this diminutive personage is a slender but distinct
thread of communication between the Brahminical and Druidical
superstitions.[35] Even independent of the analogy between his
transformations and those of Taliesin, his station in the court of King
Arthur (evidently the mythological Arthur), marks him as a person of the
highest fabulous antiquity in this island; while the adventure of the
cow, to which there is nothing analogous in Celtic mythology, appears to
connect him with India."
In the mythology of the southern Aryans, there are demon dwarfs, as well
as the demon giants previously referred to. The former are termed Panis.
Vishnu, at the request of Indra, assumed the form of a dwarf, and
obtained the famous boon of three paces from Bali, the conqueror of the
gods. According to the Ramayana, then "the thrice-stepping Vishnu
assumed a miraculous form, and with three paces took possession of the
worlds. For with one step he occupied the whole earth, with a second the
eternal atmosphere, and with a third the sky. Having then assigned to
the Asura Bali an abode in Patala (the infernal region), he gave the
empire of the three worlds to Indra."
FOOTNOTES:
[34] Since the above was written, I have cut from a newspaper the
following astounding paragraph:--"A story is told of a large cave just
discovered near St. Josephs, Mo., in which was a human skeleton,
thirty-eight feet six inches long, with a head six feet in
circumference. Where is Barnum?" I suspect, however, that even Barnum
would fancy this story is a little "too good to be true." The mendacious
Falstaff regretted that "the world was given to lying," and yet his
mythical one hour's conflict (by Shrewsbury clock) with the valiant
Hotspur, was a rational hoax in comparison to the above.
[35] At page 34, reference is made to the so-called "Druid temple at
Bramham, near Harrowgate, Yorkshire." These huge rocks, locally termed
"Bramham Crags," are not situated in either a parish, township, or
hamlet of that name. Does the appellation Bramha-m throw any additional
light on Mr. Timbs's suggestion? If it be merely an accidental
coincidence, it is certainly a remarkable one, and deserves further
consideration.
CHAPTER XI.
WERE-WOLVES AND THE TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS.
Thou almost makes me waver in my faith,
To hold opinion with Pythagoras,
That souls of animals infuse themselves
Into the trunks of men; thy currish spirit
Governed a wolf, who, hanged for human slaughter,
Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
And whilst thou layest in thy unhallowed dam,
Infused itself in thee; for thy desires
Are wolfish, bloody, starved, and ravenous.
_Shakspere._
There may still be traced in Europe, and even in England, some remains
of the Eastern belief in metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls.
The superstitious reverence for the robin, the wren, and other birds of
the Aryan lightning class, points to the belief that the bodies of birds
and animals were supposed to be sometimes tenanted by the souls of men,
and even by the gods themselves; or at least, that the latter did
frequently assume their forms for some special purpose or other. Several
nursery stories, such as "Beauty and the Beast," "The White Cat,"
"Little Red Riding Hood," etc., yet very popular amongst others than the
juvenile section of the population, point in a similar direction. These
stories are no mere modern inventions. Mr. Cox regards "Beauty and the
Beast" but as one form of the Greek myth "Erôs and Psychê." One of the
favourite feats of the celebrated British magician, Merlin, was the
conversion of men into beasts. Cæsar says: "It is especially the object
of the Druids to inculcate this--that souls do not perish, but, after
death, pass into other bodies; and they consider that, by this belief
more than anything else, men may be led to cast away the fear of death,
and to become courageous." Shakspere has several remarkable references
to this superstition, one of which is quoted at the head of this
chapter. Another instance occurs in _Hamlet_, in the scene where
Ophelia, in her mental aberration, quotes snatches of old ballads. She
says, "They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we
are, but we know not what we may be. God be at your table."
Caliban, when remonstrating with the drunken Stephano and Trinculo, on
their dallying with the fine clothes at the mouth of the cave of
Prospero, instead of taking the magician's life at once, says:--
I will have none on't; we shall lose our time,
And all be turned to barnacles, or to apes
With foreheads villainous low.
The elfin sprite Puck, after placing the ass's head on to Bottom, and
terrifying Peter Quince's celebrated amateur _corps dramatique_,
exclaims:--
I'll follow you, I lead you about a round
Through bog, through bush, through brake, through briar;
Sometimes a horse I'll be, sometimes a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometimes a fire;
And neigh, and bark, and grunt and roar, and burn,
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.
Another instance will be found in "The Twelfth Night," where the clown,
under the pretence of his being "Sir Topas, the Curate," questions
Malvolio, when confined in a dark room, as a presumed lunatic:--
_Mal._--I am no more mad than you are; make the trial of it in any
constant question.
_Clown._--What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild-fowl?
_Mal._--That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.
_Clown._--What thinkest thou of his opinion?
_Mal._--I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion.
_Clown._--Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness: thou shalt
hold the opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits, and
fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou dispossess the soul of thy
grandam. Fare thee well.
At an early age, Walter Savage Landor transmitted to Dr. Samuel Parr an
essay on the origin of the religion of the Druids. His biographer, John
Forster, thus summarises its argument:--"It appeared to Landor that
Pythagoras, who settled in Italy, and had many followers in the Greek
colony of the Phocæans at Marseilles, had engrafted on a barbarous and
bloodthirsty religion the human doctrine of the metempsychosis; for that
finding it was vain to say, 'Do not murder,' as none ever minded that
doctrine, he frightened the savages by saying, 'If you are cruel even to
beasts and insects, the cruelty will fall upon yourselves; you will be
the same.' He explained also the 'beans' of the old philosopher in the
exact way that Coleridge took credit for afterwards originating; though
in this both moderns had been anticipated by sundry other discoverers,
beginning with Plutarch himself." The answer of the "kindly old scholar"
is both learned and characteristic. He says, "I thank you for your very
acute and masterly reasoning about Pythagoras, but I am no convert to
his being in Gaul; for the doctrine of transmigration is much older, and
prevailed among the Celts and Scythians long before Pythagoras. It is
believed, even now, in the north of Europe, and would naturally suggest
itself to any reflecting barbarian. However, you have done very well in
your hypothesis."
According to Herodotus, the Egyptians were the first who believed in the
immortality of the soul. After the demise of the body the soul was
supposed to pass from one of the lower animals to another, until it had
been duly located in the forms of all, terrestrial, aquatic, and winged.
After this had been accomplished, the human form was again assumed.
Three thousand years were considered necessary to the effecting of this
complete metempsychosis.
The Pythagorean doctrine appears to have been originally regarded in the
light of a purification. One commentator thus summarises it:--"The
souls, previous to their entering into human bodies, floated in the air,
from whence they were inhaled by the process of breathing at the moment
of birth. At the moment of death, they descended into the lower world,
where they were probably supposed to dwell a certain number of years,
after which they again rose into the upper world, and floated in the
air, until they entered into new bodies. When by this process their
purification had become complete, the souls were raised to higher
regions, where they continued to exist, and to enjoy the presence and
company of the gods."
It is a general opinion that the history of no ancient sage or
philosopher has been so much obscured as that of Pythagoras. The fables
and miracles interwoven into the biographies of Porphyrius, Diogenes
Laertius, and Iamblicus, have largely contributed to this result.
The Indoo doctrine, although differing slightly in detail, presents
sufficient resemblance both to that of Pythagoras and that of the
Egyptians to suggest their common origin. All agree in averring that the
souls of men, after death, pass into other bodies. A most religious
life, however, amongst the Indoos, exempted the individual from the
penalty of the metempsychosis, the soul, on its departure, being
immediately absorbed into the divine essence. Mr. Colebrooke, in the
Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, published a translation of
some extracts from the _Brahma-sútras_, or aphorisms on the Vedenta
doctrine by Bâdarâyana, amongst which is the following, bearing on this
subject:--
"The soul passes from one state to another invested with a subtle frame,
consisting of elementary particles, the seed or rudiment of a grosser
body. Departing from that which it occupied, it ascends to the moon,
where, clothed with an aqueous form, it experiences the recompence of
its works; and whence it returns to occupy a new body with resulting
influence of its former deeds. But he who has attained the true
knowledge of God does not pass through the same stages of retreat, but
proceeds directly to reunion with the Supreme Being, with which he is
identified, as a river at its confluence with the sea merges therein
altogether. His vital faculties and the elements of which his body
consists are absorbed completely and absolutely; both name and form
cease; and he becomes immortal without parts or members."
In the Welsh romance, "The History of Taliesin," composed not earlier
than the thirteenth century, though often attributed to the sixth (the
era of the poet) is a curious story of successive transformations.
Caridwen, the wife of Tegid Voel, had an ugly son she desired to make
learned as a set-off to his deformity. She procured a cauldron, and
proceeded to boil a charmed mixture in order to procure "the three
blessed drops of the grace of inspiration." During her absence, the
three charmed drops flew from the cauldron on to the finger of one of
her watchers, and he, sucking his finger, to relieve himself of the
pain, imbibed the inspiration. In fear, he took to his heels, and she
ran after him. What followed is thus given in Professor Morley's summary
of the romance in English:--
"And he saw her and changed himself into a hare. But she changed herself
into a grey-hound and turned him. And he ran towards a river and became
a fish. But she, in form of an otter, chased him until he was fain to
become a bird. Then she, as a hawk, followed him, and gave him no rest
in the sky. Just as he was in fear of death, he saw a heap of winnowed
wheat on the floor of a barn, and dropped among the wheat and turned
himself into one of the grains. Then she transformed herself into a
high-crested black hen, and scratched among the wheat with her feet, and
found him out and swallowed him."
From this germ the woman, in due course, was delivered of a son, who,
after some romantic adventures, was named Taliesin, "the shining
forehead." The three drops had done their work effectually, it seems,
for he became a perfect prodigy.
Nash, in his "Christ's Teares over Jerusalem," published in 1613,
records a curious instance of faith in this transformation superstition
in England. He says, "They talk of an oxe that told the bell at
Wolwitch, and howe from an oxe he transformed himself to an old man, and
from an old man to an infant, and from an infant to a young man."
In an old work, entitled a "Help to Discourse," published in 1633, is
the following passage:--"Q. Wherefore hath it anciently been accounted
good luck if a _wolfe crosse our way_, but ill lucke if a hare crosse
it?--A. Our ancestors, in times past, as they were merry conceited, so
were they witty; and thence it grew that they held it good lucke if a
wolf crost the way and was gone without any more danger and trouble; but
ill lucke if a hare crost and escaped them, that they had not taken
her." Lupton, in "Notable Things," published in 1660, refers to Pliny as
reporting "that men in ancient times did fasten upon the gates of their
towns the heads of _wolves_, whereby to put away witchery, sorcery, or
enchantment, which many hunters observe or do to this day, but to what
use they know not." Werenfels informs us that when a "superstitious
person goes abroad he is not so much afraid of the teeth as the
unexpected sight of a wolf, lest he should deprive him of his speech."
Brand, referring to the superstition which asserts that if a wolf first
sees a man, the latter is suddenly struck dumb, says, "To the relators
of this Icaligar wishes as many blows as at different times he had seen
wolves without losing his voice. This is well answered." He further
notices the belief "_that men are sometimes transformed into wolves, and
again from wolves into men_," and adds, "Of this vulgar error, which is
as old as Pliny's time, that author exposes the falsehoods."
Many other authorities refer to this superstition. Giraldus Cambrensis
relates a story of a priest being addressed one evening, on his way from
Ulster to Meath, by a wolf, who informed him that he belonged to a
certain sept or clan in Ulster, "two of whom, male and female, were
every seven years compelled, through a curse laid on them by St.
Natalis, to depart both from their natural form and from their native
soil." They therefore took the form of wolves. If alive at the end of
seven years, two others of the sept "took their places under like
conditions, and the first pair returned to their pristine nature and
country." Camden expresses his disbelief of a story he heard in
Tipperary, that there were men who every year were turned into wolves.
Gervase, of Tilbury, speaks of were-wolves being common in England in
his time (the thirteenth century); and reference is made to a wolf-woman
in the Mabinogion, or fairy tales of the Welsh, of about the same
period. King John, of England, was suspected of being a were-wolf. It is
asserted in an old chronicle that, in some such capacity, he uttered
such frightful noises, after he was laid in his grave, in Worcester
Cathedral, that the pious monks dug up his body, and removed it from the
consecrated ground. One of the mediæval metrical romances, by an unknown
English author, refers to this superstition. It is a translation of the
"_Roman de Guillaume de Palerne_," and is entitled the "Romance of
William the Werwolf."
Herodotus says the Greeks and Scythians settled on the shores of the
Black Sea regarded the Neurians as wizards, and asserted that each
individual was for a few days in the year transformed into a wolf. He
speaks of a race of men who slept for six months at a time, and of
others who could change themselves at will into the shape of wolves, and
as easily resume their original form when desirable. He talks likewise
of the Troglodytes, or cave dwellers, a race of men, who having no human
language, screeched like bats, and fed upon reptiles. They were likewise
remarkable for their swiftness of foot.
Some of the Greek traditions represent the transformation of a man into
a were-wolf as a punishment for having sacrificed a human victim unto a
god. The offender was taken to the edge of a lake; he swam over, and, on
reaching the other side, was changed into a wolf. In this condition he
remained, roaming abroad with others of the species, for a period of
nine years. If during this time he had abstained from eating human
flesh, he resumed his original form, which, however, had not been exempt
from the influence of increased age. There is remarkable coincidence in
some respects between this myth and that related by Giraldus Cambrensis
previously referred to, the significance of which Kelly justly regards
as "worthy of note."
The Romans believed in the existence of the man-wolf, but attributed the
phenomenon to magical arts. Petronius has recorded an incident which
presents this superstition in a very graphic form. One Niceros, at a
banquet given by Trimalchio, relates the following story:--
"It happened that my master was gone to Capua to dispose of some
second-hand goods. I took the opportunity, and persuaded our guest to
walk with me to our fifth milestone. He was a valiant soldier, and a
sort of grim water-drinking Pluto. About cock-crow, when the moon was
shining as bright as mid-day, we came amongst the monuments. My friend
began addressing himself to the stars, but I was rather in a mood to
sing or count them; and when I turned to look at him, lo! he had already
stripped himself and laid down his clothes near him. My heart was in my
nostrils, and I stood like a dead man; but he made a mark round his
clothes, and on a sudden became a wolf. Do not think I jest; I would not
lie for any man's estate. But to return to what I was saying. When he
became a wolf he began howling, and fled into the woods. At first I
hardly knew where I was, and afterwards, when I went to take up his
clothes, they were turned into stone. Who then died with fear but I? Yet
I drew my sword, and went cutting the air right and left, till I reached
the villa of my sweetheart. I entered the court-yard. I almost breathed
my last, the sweat ran down my neck, my eyes were dim, and I thought I
should never recover myself. My Melissa wondered why I was out so late,
and said to me, 'Had you come sooner you might at least have helped us,
for a wolf has entered the farm and worried all our cattle; but he had
not the best of the joke, for all he escaped, for our slave ran a lance
through his neck.' When I heard this I could not doubt how it was, and,
as it was clear daylight, I ran home as fast as a robbed innkeeper. When
I came to the spot where the clothes had been turned into stone, I could
find nothing except blood. But when I got home I found my friend, the
soldier, in bed, bleeding at the neck like an ox, and a doctor dressing
his wound. I then knew that he was a turnskin; nor would I ever have
broke bread with him again, no not if you had killed me."
In Germany many strange stories are told respecting these
transformations. The result of wounding a were-wolf generally appears to
be that the human shape is speedily resumed, but the injury inflicted
remains notwithstanding. One of these stories is to the following
effect:--A farmer and his wife were haymaking together, when suddenly
the wife requested her husband to throw his hat at any wild beast that
might come in his way. She then immediately disappeared. Soon afterwards
a wolf was perceived to be swimming across a neighbouring river in the
direction of the party of haymakers. The farmer, remembering his wife's
injunction, threw his hat at the wolf, which the ravenous beast seized
and tore to pieces. One of the men, however, stabbed the wolf with a
pitchfork. This dissolved the spell; the wolf-form disappeared, but the
dead body of the farmer's wife lay on the ground before the eyes of the
astonished spectators!
These transformations are believed, in some instances, to be effected by
a mere change of the external covering, like that of the cloud-maidens
referred to in chapter I. of the present work. These mythical ladies
were said to possess "shirts of swan plumage," by means of which they
"transformed themselves into water foul, especially swans." The
"frost-giants," Thiassi and Suttungr, had each an "eagle-shirt," in
which disguise they warred against the gods. The possession of these
feathery garments was essential to their retention of the power of
transformation. A variety of myths, fairy stories, etc., have sprung
from the supposed capture and marriage of these maidens by men who have
discovered them bathing, and stealthily appropriated their magic
raiment. These swan-shirts, in the more modern myths, become the
supernatural garments of the fairies, mermaids, etc., married to
mortals, and without which they find it impossible to leave their
husbands and resume their elfic nature.
On the west coast of Ireland the fishermen are loth to kill the seals,
which once abounded in some localities, owing to a popular superstition
that they enshrined "the souls of thim that were drowned at the flood."
They were supposed to possess the power of casting aside their external
skins, and disporting themselves in human form on the sea-shore. If a
mortal contrived to become possessed of one of these outer coverings
belonging to a female, he might claim her and keep her as his bride.
This seems to point to the origin of the stories about "mermaids" and
some similar sea monsters.
Dr. Hertz gives many examples of the prevalence of the were-wolf
superstition in Germany. In some instances the bear occupies the place
of the wolf. A girdle made of wolf or bear skin is supposed yet to
possess the power of transforming a man into one or other of these
animals. The skin of a man who has been hanged is considered equally
potent. The girdle must have a buckle which possesses seven tags or
tongues, and it is powerless when not affixed to the body. One were-wolf
could carry a cow in his mouth. He devoured human beings, too, as well
as cattle. He had, however, taught his wife how to treat him when in his
lupine form. "She used to unbuckle his belt, and he became a rational
man again." The wolf and the murderer were frequently hung on the same
gallows, hence the old Saxon name for this structure, _varagtreo_, or
wolf-tree. The mere certain recognition of a were-wolf is generally
sufficient to dissolve the spell. In cases of doubt, steel or iron is
thrown over the suspected animal. If this be done to a genuine
were-wolf, "the skin splits crosswise on the forehead, and the naked man
comes out through the opening." Kelly adds, "It frequently happens that
the were-wolf is frozen, that is to say, invulnerable by ordinary
weapons or missiles. In that case he must be shot with elder-pith, or
with balls made of inherited silver." The were-wolf of the eastern
portion of the continent of Europe appears to be confounded with the
vampire superstition, as in the Sclavonic tongues the same word is used
to designate both these mythic monsters.
Baron Langon, in his "Evenings with Prince Cambacérès," relates a story
of a vampire, or blood-sucker, named Rafin, on the authority of the
celebrated Fouché. The astute chief of the police, if not absolutely
imposed upon, was, certainly, much perplexed with the case. He says,--"I
gave orders to have Rafin arrested, and he was placed in confinement. I
paid him a visit. He was strongly bound, and in spite of his cries,
supplications, and resistance, I resolutely plunged into his flesh a
surgical instrument, which, without producing any injury, would cause an
effusion of blood. When he perceived my object he became furiously
irritated, and made inconceivable efforts to attack me. He threatened me
with his future revenge; but, heedless of his violence, I thrust the
instrument into him. No sooner did the first drop of blood appear than
the six old wounds opened afresh. All efforts to stop the bleeding
proved fruitless--and Rafin died." Some of the witnesses regarded the
affair as a police trick, Fouché says,--"As to myself, I have sifted the
matter deeply, and I am perplexed to the last degree. I cannot admit the
reality of vampires; yet it is certain that I witnessed the facts I have
stated." Two women were said to have pined away and died, owing to their
intercourse with this man.
As recently as the year 1718, a solemn judicial enquiry took place at
Caithness respecting the sufferings of one William Montgomery, who was
reduced to a most miserable condition owing to the "gambols of a legion
of cats." In Kirkpatrick Sharpe's introduction to Law's "Memorials," we
read that the said Montgomery's man servant averred that the feline
disturbers of his master's peace "spoke among themselves." The
hypochondriac, at length, driven to desperation, attacked the enemy with
"broadsword and axe," and utterly routed the caterwauling conclave,
killing some and wounding others. The said cats turned out to be
veritable witches, as was proved by the fact that two neighbouring "old
women died immediately, and a third lost a leg, which, having been
broken by a stroke of the hatchet, withered and dropped off."
It was customary, as recently as the sixteenth century, to punish
alleged were-wolves as remorselessly as supposed witches. Many suffered
at the stake. Kelly says, on the authority of Boquet (_Discours des
Sorciers_), that "a gentleman, looking out one evening from a window of
his château, saw a hunter whom he knew, and asked the man to bring him
something on his return from the chase. The hunter was attacked in the
plain by a great wolf, and, after a sharp conflict, cut off one of the
fore paws with his hunting knife. On his way back he called at the
château, and putting his hand into his game bag, to show the gentleman
the wolf's paw, he drew out a human hand with a gold ring, which the
gentleman at once recognised as his wife's. He looked for her, and found
her in the kitchen with one arm concealed under her apron, and, on
uncovering it, saw that the hand was gone. The lady was brought to
trial, confessed(!), and was burnt at Ryon. Boquet says he had this
story from a trustworthy person who had been on the spot a fortnight
after the event."
In Denmark, Iceland, Germany, and the North of England, there exist many
similar stories, but they are more or less connected with witchcraft,
with which, indeed, they seem to have much in common. The chief feature
is the transformation of a man into a horse, by a woman throwing a magic
halter over his head while he is lying in bed. The woman, who is a
disguised witch, then mounts the horse and gallops to the trysting
place, where her compeers meet to revel. If the man-horse can contrive
to slip the magic bridle from his head, and throw it over that of the
woman, she is suddenly transformed into a mare, and in turn is ridden
almost to death by her previous victim. One witch-mare, at Yarrowfoot, a
few years ago, according to Mr. Henderson, was found afterwards to be
shod in the usual manner, and sold to her own husband, who, on removing
the bridle, saw standing before him his wife, with a horseshoe nailed
to each hand and foot! Glanvil, in his "Saducismus Triumphatus," relates
an instance in which a "great army of witches" was charged with
performing this horse transformation feat on a large scale, at Blocula,
in Sweden, in 1669.
There is a German story of a joiner at Bühl, who, being troubled with
the nightmare, saw the elf enter his room, through a hole, in the shape
of a cat. He caught the animal and nailed one of its paws to the floor.
In the morning he was surprised to find his feline prisoner transformed
into a handsome young woman perfectly naked. He married her, however;
but, after they had had three children, she disappeared suddenly, in the
form of a cat, through the hole by which she had entered, her husband
having inadvertently removed the material with which he had blocked it
up.
In East Prussia, they have a story of a girl, who, without her
knowledge, was every evening transformed into a cat, and awoke much
fatigued. One night her lover caught a cat, which had regularly
tormented and scratched him at night, and secured it in a sack. The next
morning he found the cat transformed into his naked sweetheart. The
story adds she was cured by the parson of the parish.
In 1633, a "second batch" of Lancashire witches was tried, found guilty,
and sentenced to death, at Lancaster; but after more elaborate
investigation into the circumstances, first at Chester, under the
presidency of the bishop, and afterwards at London, by the physicians
and surgeons to the king, and again by the king himself, Charles I.,
fully convinced of their innocence, extended to them his royal pardon.
The deposition of the principal witness, "Edward Robinson, sonne of
Edmond Robinson, of Pendle Forest, mason, taken at Padiham, before
Richard Shuttleworth and John Starkey, Esquires, two of his Majestie's
Justices of Peace," affords curious evidence of the strength of this
superstition little more than two centuries ago. The deponent sayeth
that at the time he was occupied in "gettinge Bullas hee sawe two grey
hounds, vizt., a blacke and a browne one, come runninge over the next
field towards him. He verilie thinketh the one to be Mr. Butters and the
other to be Mr. Robinsons, the said Mr. Butter and Mr. Robinson then
havinge such like. And the said Grey Hounds came and fawned on him, they
having about their necks either of them a Coller, to either of which
Collers was tyed a strynge, which Collers, as this Informer affirmeth,
did shine like gold, and he thinkinge that some either of Mr. Butters or
Mr. Robinsons familie should have followed them, but seeinge noe bodie
to followe them, hee tooke the said Grey-hounds thinkinge to hunte with
them, and presentlie a hare did rise verie neere before him, at the
sight whereof he cried 'Loo, loo, loo,' but the doggs would not runn,
wherevpon hee beinge verie angrie tooke them, and with the string that
were at their Collers tyed either of them to a little bush at the next
hedge, and with a rodd that he had in his hand hee beate them, and
instead of the blacke grey-hound one Dickensons wife stud vpp, a
neighbour whom this Informer knoweth, and instead of the browne
Greyhound a little Boy, whom this Informer knoweth not, at which sight
this Informer being afrayd, endeavoured to runn awaie, but beinge stayed
by the woeman, vizt., Dickensons wife, shee put her hand into her
pocket, and pulled forth a piece of silver much like to a fayre
shillinge, and offered to give it him to hold his tongue, and not to
tell, which hee refused, sayinge, 'nay, thou art a witch,' wherevpon
shee put her hand into her pocket againe, and pulled out a thing like
unto a bridle that gingled, which shee put on the little Boyes head
which stood vpp in the browne greyhounds stead, wherevpon the said Boye
stood vpp a white horse. Then ymmediatlie the said Dickensons wife tooke
this Informer before her vpon the said horse." As in the case previously
referred to, the party galloped off to a feast of witches. It is true
Dr. Webster, who carefully examined the witness, informs us, in his
"Display of Witchcraft," that "the boy Robinson, in more mature years,
acknowledged that he had been instructed and suborned to make these
accusations by his father and others, and that, of course, the whole was
a fraud." Nevertheless, the belief in the probability of such
transformations must have been very general and deeply rooted, otherwise
such impostors could not have practised their villainy with the impunity
they did. Witches, we have previously seen, were often transformed into
hares. Margery Grant, the recently deceased Scotch witch, referred to in
a previous chapter, "believed herself to be transmutable, and avers that
she was, at times, actually changed by evil-disposed persons into a pony
or a hare, and rode for great distances, or hunted by dogs, as the case
might be."
Mr. A. Russel Wallace, in his "Malay Archipelago," says that it is yet
"universally believed in Lombock that some men have the power to turn
themselves into crocodiles, which they do for the sake of devouring
their enemies, and many strange tales are told of such transformations."
He adds that the islands of Bali and Lombock, situated to the east of
Java, "are the only islands in the whole Archipelago in which the Hindoo
religion still maintains itself--and they form the extreme point of the
two great zoological divisions of the Eastern hemisphere."
The owl and the eagle, both lightning birds of the Aryan mythology,
received divine honours from the Greeks. The eagle was Jove's emblem,
the owl that of Pallas, or Athenê. The latter was sometimes called
Glaucopis, or "owl-eyed," significant of the supernatural light which
was presumed to radiate from her lightning orbs.
The owl is not the only bird that is believed to have been transformed
into a human being skilled in the art of baking bread. The cuckoo and
the woodpecker have been subjected to a similar metamorphosis. The
legend of the owl and the baker's daughter appears to be still popular
in Gloucestershire. The story is generally told with a view to prevent
children and others from indulging in harsh conduct towards the poor.
Douce relates the legend in the following terms:--
"Our Saviour went into a baker's shop where they were baking, and asked
for some bread to eat: the mistress of the shop immediately put a piece
of dough into the oven to bake for him; but was reprimanded by her
daughter, who, insisting that the piece of dough was too large, reduced
it to a very small size; the dough, however, immediately began to swell,
and presently became a most enormous size, whereupon the baker's
daughter cried out, 'Heugh, heugh, heugh!' which owl-like noise probably
induced our Saviour to transform her into that bird for her wickedness."
Dasent, in his "Popular Tales from the Norse," gives a very minute
version of this tradition, in which the purely heathen superstition is
related with the nomenclature modernised. The names, however, are its
only Christian attributes. It markedly exhibits the tendency of the
vulgar to confound one mystery or tradition with another, to which I
have previously referred. Dasent gives the story as follows:--
"In those days, when our Lord and St. Peter wandered upon earth, they
came once to an old wife's house, who sat baking. Her name was Gertrude,
and she had a red mutch on her head. They had walked a long way, and
were both hungry, and our Lord begged hard for a bannock to stay their
hunger. Yes, they should have it. So she took a little tiny piece of
dough and rolled it out, but as she rolled it, it grew until it covered
the whole griddle.
"Nay, that was too big; they couldn't have that. So she took a tinier
bit still; but when that was rolled out it covered the whole griddle
just the same, and that bannock was too big, she said; they couldn't
have that either.
"The third time she took a still tinier bit--so tiny that you could
scarce see it; but it was the same story over again--the bannock was too
big.
"'Well,' said Gertrude, 'I can't give you anything; you must just go
without, for all these bannocks are too big.'
"Then our Lord waxeth wroth, and said. 'Since you loved me so little as
to grudge me a morsel of food, you shall have this punishment--you shall
become a bird and seek your food between bark and bole, and never get a
drop to drink save when it rains.'
"He had scarce said the last word before she was turned into a great
black woodpecker, or Gertrude's bird, and flew from her kneading trough
right up the chimney; and till this very day you may see her flying
about, with her red mutch on her head, and her body all black, because
of the soot in the chimney; and so she hacks and taps away at the trees
for her food, and whistles when rain is coming, for she is ever athirst,
and then she looks for a drop to cool her tongue."
Brand informs us that "the woodpecker's cry denotes wet."
Grimm tells a German version of the story, in which the hard-hearted
baker is a man, but whose wife and six daughters were made of more
charitable materials. They privately bestowed what he had publicly
refused, and were rewarded by being converted into the "seven stars"
(the Pleiades), while the baker was transformed into a cuckoo. The
cuckoo is believed to continue his spring cry only so long as the "seven
stars" are visible in the heavens. Another version says the cuckoo was a
baker's or miller's man. He cheated the poor, and "when the dough
swelled by God's blessing in the oven, he drew it out and nipped off a
portion of it, crying each time 'gukuk,' which signifies 'look! look!'
For this crime he was converted into a cuckoo, and condemned to the
perpetual repetition of the monotonous cry."
A Lancashire superstition exists referred to in Chapter IX., in which
the plover is identified as the transmuted soul of a Jew. At least, when
seven of them are seen together, they are called the "seven whistlers,"
and their musical chorus bodes ill or harm to those who hear it. The
tradition represents them as the "souls of those Jews who assisted at
the crucifixion, and in consequence were doomed to float in the air for
ever."
Wordsworth, in his beautiful poem, "The White Doe of Rylstone," has
preserved the memory of a Yorkshire tradition which asserts that the
soul of the lady founder of Bolton Abbey revisited the ruins of the
venerable pile, in the form of a spotless white doe.
When Lady Aäliza mourned
Her son, and felt in her despair,
The pang of unavailing prayer;
Her son in Wharf's abysses drowned,
The noble boy of Egremound,
From which affliction, when God's grace
At length had in her heart found place,
A pious structure fair to see,
Rose up this stately Priory!
The lady's work,--but now laid low;
To the grief of her soul that doth come and go,
In the beautiful form of this innocent doe:
Which, though seemingly doomed in its breast to sustain
A softened remembrance of sorrow and pain,
Is spotless, and holy, and gentle, and bright,--
And glides o'er the earth like an angel of light.
The Manx wren, the robin, and the stork are supposed to be inhabited by
the souls of human beings. MacTaggart, speaking of the wren,
says,--"Manx herring fishers dare not go to sea without one of these
birds taken dead with them, for fear of disasters and storms. Their
tradition is of a _sea spirit_ that hunted the _herring track_, attended
always by storms, and at last it assumed the figure of a wren and flew
away. So they think that when they have a dead wren with them all is
snug. The poor bird had a sad life of it in that singular island. When
one is seen at any time, scores of Manxmen start and hunt it down." The
stork in Prussia, on the contrary, is protected from injury, owing to
the belief that "he is elsewhere a man." Gervase of Tilbury informs us
that in England it was regarded as both bird and man. It was a very
wide-spread belief that the human soul left its earthly tabernacle in
the form of a bird. The "Milky-way" is, in Finland and Lithuania, the
"Birds' way," or the "Way of Souls." Grimm tells us that every member of
a certain Polish noble family are turned into eagles at death. He adds
the eldest daughter of the Pileck line, if they die unmarried, are
transformed into doves, but, if married, into owls. Kelly relates an
anecdote of a gentleman in Soho, London, who believed that the departing
soul of his brother-in-law, in the form of a bird, tapped at his window
at the time of his death. The mother and sister, in Grimm's story of
"The White and the Black Bride," push the true bride into the stream. At
the same or the following moment a snow-white swan is discovered
swimming gracefully down the river.
M. Paul B. Du Chaillu, in his recent work, "A Journey to Ashango-land;
and further penetration into Equatorial Africa," gives two curious
illustrations of the existence of a belief in men being sometimes
transformed into beasts. He says,--
"I cannot avoid relating in this place a very curious instance of a
strange and horrid form of monomania which is sometimes displayed by
these primitive negroes. It was related to me so circumstantially by
Akondogo, and so well confirmed by others, that I cannot help fully
believing in all the principal facts of the case. Poor Akondogo said
that he had had plenty of trouble in his day, that a leopard had killed
two of his men, and that he had a great many palavers to settle on
account of these deaths. Not knowing exactly what he meant, I said to
him, 'Why did you not make a trap to catch the leopard?' To my
astonishment, he replied, 'The leopard was not of the kind you mean. It
was a man who had changed himself into a leopard, and then became a man
again.' I said, 'Akondogo, I will never believe your story. How can a
man be turned into a leopard?' He again asserted that it was true, and
gave me the following history:--'Whilst he was in the woods with his
people, gathering india-rubber, one of his men disappeared, and,
notwithstanding all their endeavours, nothing could be found of him but
a quantity of blood. The next day another man disappeared, and in
searching for him more blood was found. All the people got alarmed, and
Akondogo sent for a great doctor to drink the mboundou, and solve the
mystery of these two deaths. To the horror and astonishment of the old
chief, the doctor declared it was Akondogo's own child (his nephew and
heir), Akosho, who had killed the two men. Akosho was sent for, and,
when asked by the chief, answered that it was truly he who had committed
the murders; that he could not help it, for he had been turned into a
leopard, and his heart longed for blood; and that after each deed he had
turned into a man again. Akondogo loved his boy so much that he would
not believe his own confession, until the boy took him to a place in the
forest where lay the two bodies, one with the head cut off, and the
other with the belly torn open. Upon this, Akondogo gave orders to seize
the lad. He was bound with ropes, taken to the village, and then tied in
a horizontal position to a post, and burnt slowly to death, all the
people standing by until he expired.'
"I must say the end of the story seemed to me too horrible to listen to.
I shuddered, and was ready to curse the race that was capable of
committing such acts. But on careful enquiry, I found it was a case of
monomania with the boy Akosho, and that he really was the murderer of
the two men. It is probable that the superstitious belief of these
morbidly imaginative Africans in the transformation of men into
leopards, being early instilled into the minds of their children, is the
direct cause of murders being committed under the influence of it. The
boy himself, as well as Akondogo and all the people, believed he had
really turned into a leopard, and the cruel punishment was partly in
vengeance for witchcraft, and partly to prevent the committal of more
crimes by the boy in a similar way, for, say they, the man has a spirit
of witchcraft."
Again, after informing us that the Ashango people believed (not knowing
that he was really wounded in his disastrous retreat from their
country), that he, being "Oguisi," or "the spirit," was invulnerable,
and that their poisoned arrows glanced from his body without doing him
any injury, he further adds, that Magouga, one of his native guides,
said "he had heard that at one time I had turned myself into a leopard,
had hid myself in a tree, and had sprung upon the Mouaou people as they
came to make war upon my men; that at other times I turned myself into a
gorilla, or into an elephant, and struck terror and death among the
Mouaou and Mobana. Magouga finished his story by asking me for a 'war
fetich,' for he said I must possess the art of making fetiches, or I and
my men could not have escaped so miraculously."
It is necessary to remind the reader that Du Chaillu and others have
failed to find any remains of ancient civilisation on the western coast
of Equatorial Africa, and that he expressly states his belief in the
native tradition that the ancestors of the present tribes migrated from
the east.
The Rev. G. W. Cox, in his "Mythology of the Aryan Nations," referring
to the origin of Greek "Lykanthropy," says,--"The question to be
answered is, whence came the notions that men were changed into wolves,
bears, and birds, and not into lions, fishes, or reptiles; and to this
question Comparative Mythology seems to me to furnish a complete answer;
nor can I disavow my belief that this loathsome vampire superstition was
in the first instance purely the result of a verbal equivocation which,
as we have seen, has furnished so fruitful a source of myths." Mr. Cox
regards the superstition to have originated in "that confusion between
Leukos bright, as a general epithet, and the same word Lukos as a
special name for the wolf, from which sprung first the myth of the
transformation of Lycaon, and then probably the wide-spread superstition
of Lykanthropy."
Respecting the Eastern origin of this superstition, Kelly says,--"The
were-wolf tradition has not been discovered with certainty amongst the
Hindoos, but there is no European nation of Aryan descent in which it
has not existed from time immemorial. Hence, it is certain that the
tradition itself, or the germs of it more or less developed, must have
been brought by them all from Arya; and if Dr. Schwartz has not actually
proved his case, he seems at least to have conjectured rightly in
assigning, as one of these germs, the Aryan conception of the howling
wind as a wolf. The Maruts and other beings who were busy in the storm
assumed various shapes. The human form was proper to many or all of
them, for they were identical with the Pitris or Fathers, and it would
have been a very natural thought, when a storm broke out suddenly, that
one or more of these people of the air had turned into wolves for the
occasion. It was also a primæval notion that there were dogs and wolves
amongst the dwellers in hell; and Weber, who has shown that this belief
was entertained by the early Hindoos, is of opinion that these infernal
animals were real were-wolves, that is to say, men upon whom such a
transformation had been inflicted as a punishment."
The darkness of night is personified by the wolf in the folk-lore of the
Teutonic nations. It is the Fenris of the Edda. In this sense the mythic
wolf and "Little Red Riding Hood" are transparent enough. The ruddy glow
of the evening sunlight is extinguished in the darkness of night. The
Rev. G. W. Cox says that in one version of the story "Little Red Cap
escapes his malice as Memnon rises again from Hades." This resurrection
typifies the dawn springing from the darkness of the night on the
following morning.
The Greek myth developed into the story that Zeus, when visiting Lycaon,
was fed by his numerous sons with human flesh, and that he, in his anger
at such treatment, turned them all into wolves. Similar transformations
are frequent in the classical myths. Kirke turned the followers of
Odysseus into swine, and Callisto was turned into a bear by the anger of
Artemis.
This were-wolf, or man-wolf, myth, from the Anglo-Saxon _wer_, a man,
has doubtless undergone much change and mutilation in its descent to
modern times. The earlier Apollo of the Greeks, at the time of Homer
even, was not the Sun-god he afterwards became. He was the "god of the
summer storms," and, as such, he himself appeared in the form of a wolf.
His mother, Latona, as Kelly observes, was regarded as "the dark
storm-cloud, escorted at Jove's command by the Northwind," and she "came
as a she-wolf from Lycia to the place where she was delivered of her
twins.... In mythical language, Apollo was the son of Zeus; that is to
say, he was Zeus in another form. The two gods were, in fact, like Indra
and Rudra, only different personifications of the same cycle of natural
phenomena."
The Laureate, in his recent poem, "The Coming of Arthur," has the
following beautiful poetic illustration of that which, no doubt,
underlies much of the were-wolf superstitions:--
Thick with wet woods, and many a beast therein,
And none or few to scare or chase the beast;
So that wild dog and wolf and boar and bear
Came night and day, and rooted in the fields,
And wallow'd in the gardens of the king.
And ever and anon the wolf would steal
The children and devour, but now and then,
Her own brood lost or dead, lent her fierce teat
To human sucklings; and the children, housed
In her foul den, there at their meal would growl,
And mock their foster-mother on four feet,
Till, straighten'd, they grew up to wolf-like men,
Worse than the wolves.
CHAPTER XII.
SACRED AND OMINOUS BIRDS, ETC.
The fatal cuckoo, on yon spreading tree,
Hath sounded out your dying knell already.
_Cowley._
Amongst the various lightning birds of the Aryan mythology, some were
regarded as portentous of evil; others, as the robin, the stork, and the
woodpecker, on the contrary, were regarded with favour, and especially
protected. The red breast of the robin, the red legs of the stork, and
the red mutch of the woodpecker, were believed to result from their
lightning origin. In Germany the robin is held in as much regard as it
is in England. The Anglo-Saxon name, _Hrodhbeorht_, or _Hrodhbriht_,
signifies flamebright, which was one of the appellations of Thor. In
illustration of the reverence paid to the redbreast, a writer in "Notes
and Queries" relates the following beautiful story, which he had from
his nurse, a native of Cærmarthenshire:--
"Far, far away, is a land of woe, darkness, spirits of evil, and _fire_.
Day by day does the little bird bear in his bill a drop of water to
quench the flame. So near to the burning stream does he fly, that his
dear little feathers are scorched; and hence he is named _Bronrhuddyn_
(_i.e._, breast-burned, or breast-scorched). To serve little children,
the robin dares approach the infernal pit. No good child will hurt the
devoted benefactor of man. The robin returns from the land of fire, and
therefore he feels the cold of winter far more than his brother birds.
He shivers in the brumal blast; hungry he chirps before your door. Oh!
my child, then, in gratitude throw a few crumbs to poor redbreast."
I have not to this day forgotten the sense of shame and sorrow with
which I was overwhelmed, when, as a boy, being permitted for the first
time to discharge a fowling-piece at a small bird in a shrubbery, I
discovered that the feathered songster whose life I had taken was a
robin-redbreast.
The stork is, in Germany especially, ever a welcome guest, and wheels
(sun emblems) are placed on the roofs of houses in Hesse, in order to
encourage the storks to build their nests thereupon. Their presence is
supposed to render the building safe against the ravages of fire.
Mannhardt mentions an instance in which, to avenge the abstraction of
her young, it is said a stork carried a flaming brand in her beak, threw
it into the nest, and thus set the house on fire. The German name for
stork, Grimm says, is literally child or soul-bringer. Hence the belief
that the advent of infants is presided over by this bird, which obtains
so largely in Denmark and Germany.
Amongst the remains of birds and animals consumed as food by the framers
of the Danish "kjökkenmöddings," or shell-mounds, the absence of the
bones of the domestic fowl, two species of swallow, the sparrow and the
stork, has been commented upon by several archæologists. This is
attributable, doubtless, to the sacred character with which they were
invested by the inhabitants of the district when the said mounds were
formed. For a similar reason, as has been previously observed, no bones
of the hare have been found in these ancient "kitchen-middens."
Amongst the birds of evil omen, the owl appears to rank with the
foremost. Bourne says, "If an owl, which is reckoned a most abominable
and unlucky bird, send forth its hoarse and dismal voice, it is an omen
of the approach of some terrible thing; that some dire calamity and some
great misfortune is near at hand." Chaucer speaks of the "owl eke that
of deth the bode bringeth." Amongst the Romans its appearance was
regarded as a most certain portent of death. In the year 312, on the day
on which Constantine saw the vision of the cross in the heavens, with
the legend "In hoc signo vinces," Zosimus, the pagan historian, informs
us that his opponent, Maxentius, was disconcerted by the adverse portent
of a flight of owls. Speaking of the prodigies which were said to
accompany the passing away of Augustus Cæsar, Xiphilinus says that an
"owl sung on the top of the Curia." Our Elizabethan and later poets
often refer to this superstition. In one of Reed's old plays we have:--
When screech owls croak upon the chimney tops,
It's certain then you of a corse shall hear.
Spencer speaks of "the ill-fac'd owl, death's dreadful messenger," and
Pennant, when describing what is called the tawny owl, says, "this is
what we call the screech owl, to which the folly of superstition had
given the power of presaging death by its cries." Shakspere makes Lennox
say, on the night of the murder of Duncan, that--
The obscure bird
Clamoured the live-long night.
Puck, in Midsummer Night's Dream, says,--
Now the hungry lion roars,
And the wolf be-howls the moon;
Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,
All with weary task fordone.
Now the wanted brands do glow,
Whilst the scritch-owl, scritching loud,
Puts the wretch, that lies in woe,
In remembrance of a shroud.
Referring to the advent of the Duke of Gloucester, afterwards King
Richard III., King Henry says:--
The owl shriek'd at thy birth; an evil sign!
The night crow cry'd, aboding luckless time;
Dogs howled, and hideous tempests shook down trees.
And again, in Julius Cæsar, on the night of the murder of the great
dictator, Casca, amongst the numerous other prodigies which he witnessed
says:--
And yesterday the bird of night did sit,
Even at noon-day, upon the market place,
Hooting and shrieking.
The rejoinder put into the mouth of Cicero, shows that Shakspere, while
he appreciated the dramatic value of the "folk-lore" of superstitious
people like the terrified Casca, was fully alive to the folly of the
popular interpretation of the phenomena referred to. He says:
Indeed, it is a strange-dispos'd time;
But men may construe things after their fashion
Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.
This is still more markedly indicated in the dialogue between Hotspur
and Owen Glendower, in the first part of King Henry IV.:--
_Glendower_: At my nativity
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
Of burning cressets; and at my birth
The frame and huge foundation of the earth
Shaked like a coward.
_Hotspur_: Why, so it would have done
At the same season, if your mother's cat
Had but kittened, though yourself had ne'er been born.
_Glendower_: I say the earth did shake when I was born.
_Hotspur_: And I say the earth was not of my mind,
If you suppose as fearing you it shook.
_Glendower_: The heavens were all on fire, the earth did tremble.
_Hotspur_: O, then the earth shook to see the heavens on fire,
And not in fear of your nativity.
Diseased nature often times breaks forth
In strange eruptions: oft the teeming earth
Is with a kind of cholic pinched and vexed,
By the imprisoning of unruly wind
Within her womb; which for enlargement striving,
Shakes the old beldam earth, and topples down
Steeples and moss-grown towers.
In the Greek mythology the owl was the symbol of Athenê. Hence, as
before observed, she was styled "Glaucopis," or owl-eyed. According to
Payne Knight, this symbol was adopted for the wise goddess because the
owl was "a bird which seems to surpass all other creatures in acuteness
of organic perception, its eye being calculated to observe objects which
to all others are enveloped in darkness, its ear to hear sounds
distinctly, and its nostrils to discriminate effluvia with such nicety
that it has been deemed prophetic, from discovering the putridity of
death even in the first stages of disease." As in the case of the dog,
referred to in Chapter IX., it is by no means improbable that the
extremely delicate sense of smell possessed by the owl, lies at the root
of this superstition. Its after development into a prophetic power
respecting approaching death, even without previous disease, can easily
be understood, after the original physical conditions had entered into
the mythical realm of legend and superstition.
The cuckoo is generally regarded, like the owl and the raven, as a bird
of ill omen. According to Mannhardt, on first hearing its note, the
German peasant rolls himself on the grass, as he does when he hears
thunder. The observance of this ceremony is supposed to insure to the
individual freedom from aches and pains during the year. It is
considered to be unlucky to hear the cuckoo for the first time without
coin in the pocket. The more fortunate peasants yet instinctively turn
over their money to insure "luck" on first hearing this bird's cry.
The old English rhyme is well known in Lancashire:--
Cuckoo, cherry tree,
Good bird tell me,
How many years have I to live.
In some places there is a triple rhyme, the last line reading thus:
How many years before I dee? (die).
I remember well indulging in my youth, with other boys, in the
divination described by Sir Henry Ellis, as follows:--"Easy to foretel
what sort of summer it would be by the position in which the larva of
_Cicàda (Aphrophora) spumaria_ was found to lie in the froth
(_cuckoo-spit_) in which it is enveloped. If the insect lay with its
head upwards, it infallibly denoted a dry summer; if downwards, a wet
one." The said spume was fully believed to have been deposited upon the
vegetation by the expectoration of the cuckoo.
Cuckoos are believed to become sparrowhawks in winter. The Rev. H. B.
Fristram, at a recent meeting of the British Association, held at
Newcastle-on-Tyne, stated when he once remonstrated with a man for
shooting a cuckoo, "the defence was that it was well known that
_sparrowhawkes turned into cuckoos_ in the summer." Grimm states that in
Germany, after St. John's day, about the time when it becomes mute, the
cuckoo is believed to change into a hawk. Referring to these facts,
Kelly pertinently asks, as "the form of the cuckoo remotely resembles
that of the falcon tribe, may we hazard a conjecture that hence, in
German tradition, that bird in some degree represents the fire-bringing
falcon of the Aryans?" Mannhardt says, "The cuckoo is the messenger of
Thor, the god in whose gift were health and strength, length of days,
and marriage blessings, and therefore it is that people call upon the
bird to tell how long they have to live, how soon they will be married,
and how many children they shall have; and that in Schaumberg the person
who acts at a wedding as master of the ceremonies carries a cuckoo on
his staff."
Kelly says:--"The cuckoo's connection with storms and tempests is not
clearly determined, but the owl's is indisputable. Its cry is believed
in England to foretell rain and hail, the latter of which is usually
accompanied with lightning, and the practice of nailing it to the barn
door, to avert the lightning, is common throughout Europe, and is
mentioned by Palladius in his treatise on agriculture."
The wren, as I have shown in a previous chapter, is mercilessly hunted
to death in the Isle of Man, although he partakes of the sanctity of the
robin in most parts of England. Not so in Ireland, however. General
Vallancy says:--"The Druids represented this as the king of all birds.
The superstitious respect shown to this little bird gave offence to our
first Christian missionaries, and by their commands he is still hunted
and killed on Christmas-day; and on the following (St. Stephen's-day) he
is carried about hung by the leg in the centre of two hoops crossing
each other at right angles, and a procession is made in every village,
of men, women, and children, singing an Irish catch importing him to be
the king of all birds."
The wren is sometimes treated in a similar manner in the south of
France. It is generally, however, regarded as a sacred bird, as in
England and Scotland. To take its life or to rob its nest even, in the
Pays de Caux, is regarded as a crime of such atrocity that it will
"_bring down the lightning_" upon the homestead of the offender. Robert
Chambers, in his "Popular Rhymes," has the following couplet on this
subject:--
Malisons, malisons, mair than ten,
That harry the Ladye of Heaven's hen!
It would seem from these facts that the poor little bird has met with a
somewhat similar fate to that of Odin and the rest of the Æsir gods, and
has been transformed, occasionally at least, into a spirit of evil.
In Perigord, according to De Nore, the swallow is called "_La Poule de
Dieu_" and is regarded as "the messenger of life." The cricket, too, is
held in similar estimation. May not the latter have acquired its
reputation from its fondness of the domestic hearth, and its presumed
immunity from the effects of fire?
The raven, sacred to Odin and Apollo, the German and Greek forms of the
Aryan Rudra, was, and indeed is yet, pre-eminently the bird of ill-omen.
Lady Macbeth, in the fulness of her murderous impulse, exclaims:--
The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlement.
And Hamlet, impatient at the grimaces of the actor, representing, in the
play, the murderer of his father, exclaims:--
Leave thy damnable faces and begin. Come--
The croaking raven
Doth bellow for revenge.
And, again, Othello says:--
Oh, it comes o'er my memory
As doth the raven o'er the infected house,
Boding to all.
All know what powerful use Edgar Allan Poe has made of this "grim,
ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore," in his marvellous
poem, "The Raven."
The raven's power of scenting carrion from a great distance may have
originally influenced, as in the case of the dog and owl, its selection
as a personification of impending death or other calamity.
The raven was the standard of the Scandinavian vikingrs, as the eagle
was of the Ancient Romans, and is of the French of the present day.
Asser, in his "Life of Alfred the Great," when describing a victory
gained by that king near Kynwith Castle says: "they gained a very large
booty, and among other things the standard called Raven; for they say
that the three sisters of Hindwai and Hubba, daughters of Lodobroch,
wove that flag and got it ready in one day. They say, moreover, that in
every battle, wherever that flag went before them, if they were to gain
the victory, a live crow would appear flying in the middle of the flag;
but if they were doomed to be defeated it would hang down motionless,
and this was often proved to be so." Doubtless much of the still
lingering aversion for crows, ravens, and magpies, is but the remains of
the dislike of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors to the emblem of their once
dreaded mortal enemies, or it is, perhaps, more probable that each
people had preserved a similar traditionary faith in the supernatural
character of the bird from their common remote ancestors. Indeed,
reference is made to the raven as a war emblem in the fragment of heroic
Anglo-Saxon poetry, containing part of a description of the battle at
Finnesburg, which was found on the cover of a MS. of homilies, in the
library at Lambeth Palace, by Dr. Hicks, in the sixteenth century. On
the defeat of the warriors, the MS. says,--"The raven wandered, swart
and sallow brown." There is, as I have previously observed, in Chapter
IX., a tradition in Cornwall that King Arthur is yet alive in the form
of a raven, and superstitious persons yet refuse to kill the bird from a
belief in its truth.
Many other birds possess somewhat similar attributes to the raven, such
as crows, magpies, jackdaws, &c. Ramesey (Elminthologia, 1668)
says:--"If a crow fly but over the house and croak thrice, how do they
fear, they, or some one else in the family, shall die." The croaking of
crows and ravens foreboded rain. In this particular they resembled the
woodpecker. It was, nay, it is yet held that to see a crow on the left
hand is a sinister omen. In the "Defensative against the Poyson of
supposed Prophesies," by the Earl of Northampton, published in 1583, we
find the following:--"The flight of many crowes upon the left side of
the campe made the Romans very much afrayde of some badde lucke; as if
the greate god Jupiter had nothing else to do (said Carneades) but to
drive jack-dawes in a flock together."
The evil boding of the "seven whistlers," or flock of plovers, in
Lancashire, has been previously referred to. In Lancashire and the north
of England magpies are termed pyanots. The old formula, which attributes
certain results as the consequence of their appearance, is still firmly
believed in, viz.:--"One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding
and four for death." Intelligent persons, yet, from mere habit, on the
sight of a magpie, involuntary turn round three times, or mark a cross
with the toe on the ground, in order to avert the calamity supposed to
be attendant upon its untoward presence. The original name, when fully
expressed, appears to have been maggott pie. Shakspere mentions it
under this designation, when, in Macbeth, he refers to its use in
divination. He says:--
Augurs and understood relations have
By maggot pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth
The secret'st man of blood.
The woodpecker, perhaps, of all the fire-bringing birds, has most
permeated the ancient mythologies. The Latins named it Picus, whose
brother (or double), Pilumnus, was the god of bakers and millers. In
early times the millers pounded their corn with a pestle, and _pilum_
signified both pestle and javelin, which are equally types of the
thunderbolt. The tapping of the beak of the woodpecker was regarded as
partaking of a similar character. On the birth of a child it was
customary at Rome to prepare a couch for Pilumnus and Picumnus, who were
believed to bring the fire of life, and were supposed to remain until
the vitality of the infant was indisputable. The Romans likewise styled
the woodpecker Martus and Feronius, from the god Mars and the Sabine
goddess Feronia. The name Feronia is indicative of fire or soul
bringing, and is intimately connected with that of Phoroneus, the
Prometheus of a Peloponnesian legend, relating to the original
procuration of the heavenly fire. Dr. Kuhn says both names are identical
with the epithet commonly applied to the Aryan fire-god Agni,
_Churanyu_, which signifies "one who pounces down, or bears down
rapidly."
Picus was the son of Saturn, and the first King of Latium, as well as a
fire-bringing bird. This, Kelly observes, "is only another way of saying
that he, too, like Manu, Minyas, Minos, Phoroneus, and other
fire-bringers, is the first man; and therefore it is that, under the
name of Picumnus, he continued in latter times to be the guardian genius
of children, along with his brother Pilumnus."
A remarkable coincidence between the Anglo-Saxon pedigree of Odin, which
makes Beav, or Beovolf, one of his ancestors, and the story of the first
King of Latium, is noticed by Grimm. Beewolf--that is, bee-eater--is the
German name for the woodpecker.
Many other birds were believed to forecast the weather, such as the barn
door fowl, the stormy petrel, the heron, and the crane, all of which
appear but to be modifications of the Aryan lightning birds so often
referred to. In the Greek version of the myth, the raven represents the
dark cloud. Originally, however, the cloud referred to was white; but
Apollo, having sent his favourite bird to the fountain for water, was
imposed upon by the feathered idler and glutton; he, therefore, turned
his plumage black, and condemned him as a punishment to a continuous
croaking for water to quench his thirst.
Amongst insects, the lady-bird appears to have been a fire-bringer, and
is yet much in vogue in matters of augury. Gay says:--
This lady-fly I take from off the grass,
Whose spotted back might scarlet red surpass.
Fly lady-bird, north, south, or east or west,
Fly where the man is found that I love best.
I know not whether the dandelion can be classed among the lightning
plants, but I remember well the blowing away of its ripened winged seeds
with the view to ascertain the time of the day, as well as to solve much
more profound mysteries.
In the "Athenian Oracle" the following curious rejoinder appears to the
query:--"Why rats, toads, ravens, screech owls, are ominous; and how
they came to foreknow fatal events?" The writer replies: "Had the
querist said unlucky instead of ominous he might easily have met with
satisfaction; a rat is so because it destroys many a Cheshire cheese,
&c. A toad is unlucky because it poisons." [This is now known to be
erroneous.] "As for ravens and screech owls, they are just as unlucky as
cats, when about their courtship, because they make an ugly noise, which
disturbes their neighbourhood. The instinct of rats leaving an old ship
is because they cannot be dry in it, and an old house because, perhaps,
they want victuals. A raven is much such a prophet as our conjurors or
almanac makers, foretelling events after they are come to pass: they
follow great armies, as vultures, not as foreboding battle, but for the
dead men, dogs, horses, &c., which, especially in a march, must be daily
left behind them. But the foolish observations made on their croaking
before death, etc., are for the most part pure humour, and have no
grounds besides foolish tradition or a sickly imagination." Old Reginald
Scot, as early as the sixteenth century, stoutly contended "that to
prognosticate that guests approach to your house on the chattering of
pies or haggisters, [a Kentish term for magpie,] is altogether vanity
and superstition."
The _Shipping Gazette_, in April, 1869, contained a communication
entitled "A Sailor's Notion about Rats," in which the following passage
occurs:--"It is a well authenticated fact that rats have often been
known to leave ships in the harbour previous to their being lost at sea.
Some of those wiseacres who want to convince us _against the evidence of
our senses_ will call this superstition. As neither I have time, nor you
space, to cavil with such at present, I shall leave them alone in their
glory." It is difficult to decide whether the superstition, the bad
logic, or the self-sufficiency of the writer of this sentence most
predominates. It is a pity he did not edify the "wiseacres" as to how
"the evidence of our senses" could by any possibility bring us in
contact with the motive of rats, with whom we have had no intercourse
either of a mental or moral kind. But perhaps the said "Shipmaster" has,
after taking rats into his council, rejected their advice, and lost his
bark in consequence. Truly it is a difficult matter to determine where
abject superstition ends and ordinary credulity begins. The fact that
rats do sometimes migrate from one ship to another, or from one barn or
corn stack to another, from various causes, ought to be quite sufficient
to explain such "evidence of our senses" as informs us that "rats have
often been known to leave ships in harbour _previous_ to their being
lost at sea." If they left the ship at all _in harbour_, it, of
necessity must have been _before_ the vessel was lost at sea. The error
lies in the assertion, without the slightest "evidence of our senses" to
support it, that sailor rats are genuine Zadkiels, and can peep into
futurity by the aid of some supernatural power denied to mariners of the
genus _homo_.
This superstition, nevertheless, is evidently one of considerable
antiquity. Shakspere refers to it in the Tempest. Prospero, describing
the vessel in which himself and daughter had been placed with the view
to their certain destruction at sea says:--
They hurried us aboard a bark;
Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared
A rotten carcase of a boat, not rigged,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats
Instinctively had quit it.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE DIVINING OR "WISH"-ROD, AND SUPERSTITIONS RESPECTING TREES AND
PLANTS.
Some sorcerers do boast they have a rod
Gather'd with vowes and sacrifice,
And (borne about) will strangely nod
To hidden treasure, where it lies;
_Mankind_ is (sure) that rod divine,
For to the _wealthiest ever they incline_!
_S. Sheppard, 1651._
Faith in the power of the "wish" or "divining rod" is by no means
extinct in the North of England. In modern times it is chiefly believed
to be potent in the detection of metallic veins, hidden treasure, or
subterranean springs of water. Our ancestors, however, held that this
mystic instrument was endowed with the faculty of bringing "luck" or
good fortune to its possessor, and of causing his slightest wish or
desire to receive fulfilment. I have a faint recollection of a story
relative to the use of the divining rod, with the view to ascertain the
locality of the "buried treasure," since discovered, in the valley of
the Ribble, near Preston, and now known as the celebrated "Cuerdale
hoard." This treasure, in all human probability, was consigned to the
earth immediately after the famous battle of Brunanburh, in the earlier
portion of the tenth century. Although it remained undisturbed about
nine hundred years, a tradition survived, which asserted that the place
of the deposit could be seen from the promontory overlooking the valley
on which Walton, or "Law," Church is situated. The late Mr. B. F. Allen,
of Preston, remembered a farmer ploughing deeply the whole of an
extensive field in the neighbourhood, in the hope of discovering the
long-lost treasure, some professor of the art of divination by the
"wish-rod" having pronounced in favour of the probability of a successful
result. Singularly enough, even after the accidental discovery of the
treasure chest of the days of Athelstan, the country people of the
neighbourhood still nursed the memory of the tradition with great
fondness, firmly believing that the "find" referred to was but a
foretaste of what was to come. I was forcibly struck with the tenacity
of this species of tradition, when engaged digging on the site of the
Roman station at the junction of the Darwen and the Ribble, in 1855. The
turning up of a few scattered brass coins of the higher empire, led to a
rumour that we had come upon "th' buried goud" at last, and caused us
some inconvenience. The Cuerdale hoard, it must be remembered, consisted
entirely of coins, marks, and bracelets and other ornaments _in silver_.
Mr. Martland, who farmed the land at the time, told me some curious
stories respecting this mound at Walton-le-Dale, which would indicate
that treasure-seekers had been more than once practising their vocation
in the neighbourhood. Some thirteen or fourteen years previously, a hole
nine or ten feet long was dug in one night by some unknown persons. A
silver coin (most probably Roman) was found on the filling up of the
trench. Mr. Martland likewise remembered hearing of a somewhat similar
hole having been excavated between forty or fifty years previously,
under equally mysterious circumstances, and not far from the same spot.
The locality was watched every evening for a fortnight, before the hole
was filled up, with the view to ascertain whether the midnight
excavators would resume their labours. Nothing was discovered which
either identified the parties or explained their object. The general
impression, however, was that they were treasure hunters, and that they
had acted under some magical or supernatural direction.
In a manuscript of the early part of the seventeenth century, by John
Bell, the necessary formulæ for the procuration and preparation of the
divining rod are thus described:--
"When you find in the wood or elsewhere, on old walls or on high hills
or rocks, a rowan which has grown out of a berry let fall from a bird's
bill, you must go at twilight in the evening of the third day after our
Lady's day, and either uproot or break off the said rod or tree; but you
must take care that neither iron or steel come nigh it, and that it do
not fall to the ground on the way home. Then place the rod under the
roof, at a spot under which you have laid sundry metals, and in a short
time you will see with astonishment how the rod gradually bends under
the roof towards the metals. When the rod has remained fourteen days or
more in the same place, you take a knife or an awl which has been
stroked with a magnet, and previously stuck through a great Frögroda
(?), slit the bark on all sides, and pour or drop in cock's blood,
especially such as is drawn from the comb of a cock of one colour; and
when this blood has dried the rod is ready, and gives manifest proof of
the efficacy of its wondrous nature."
The same writer referring to the subject of rabdomanteia or
rod divination, relates the following, on the authority of
Theophylact:--"They set up two staffs, and having whispered some verses
and incantations, the staffs fell by the operations of dæmons. Then they
considered which way each of them fell, forward or backward, to the
right or left hand, and agreeably gave responses, having made use of the
fall of their staffs for their signs."
This superstition appears to have been very prevalent in the earliest
times. The divination of the Chaldeans has passed into a proverb.
Ezekiel refers to it, and Hosea denounces the Jews for their faith in
such heathen ceremonies. He exclaims--"My people ask counsel at their
stocks, and _their staff_ declareth unto them." It was practised by the
Alani, according to Herodotus, and we have the authority of Tacitus for
the estimation in which it was held by the ancient Germanic tribes.
Sir Henry Ellis refers to an effort by miners to discover a metallic
lode, by means of the divining rod, as recently as 1842. He thus
describes the experiment:--"The method of procedure was to cut the twig
of a hazel or an apple tree, of twelvemonths' growth, into a forked
shape, and to hold this by both hands in a peculiar way, walking across
the land until the twig bent, which was taken as an indication of the
locality of a lode. The person who generally practices this divination
boasts himself to be the seventh son of a seventh son. The twig of hazel
bends in his hands to the conviction of the miners that ore is present;
but then the peculiar manner in which the twig is held, bringing
muscular action to bear upon it, accounts for its gradual deflection,
and the circumstance of the strata walked over always containing ore,
gives a further credit to the process of divination."
The following curious anecdote, referring to this subject, appears in
the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1752:--"M. Linnæus, when he was upon his
voyage to Scania, hearing his secretary highly extol the virtues of his
divining wand, was willing to convince him of its insufficiency, and for
that purpose concealed a purse of one hundred ducats under a ranunculus
which grew by itself in a meadow, and bid the secretary find it if he
could. The wand discovered nothing, and M. Linnæus's mark was soon
trampled down by the company who were present; so that when M. Linnæus
went to finish the experiment by fetching the gold himself, he was
utterly at a loss where to seek it. The man with the wand assisted him,
and pronounced it could not lie the way they were going, but quite the
contrary, so pursued the direction of his wand, and actually dug out the
gold. M. Linnæus adds that such another experiment would be sufficient
to make a proselyte of him." Lilly relates an effort of his to discover
hidden treasure by the divining rod. He, however, frankly confesses that
he failed in his object.
The divining rod in form resembled the letter Y, and, independently of
its other magical qualities, owed some of its supposed power to its form
and the number of its limbs. The peculiar and regular equiangular form
of the branches of the mistletoe, doubtless, had much influence in its
selection as a mystical plant endowed with supernatural properties. The
number three, and its multiple nine, together with the mystic
Abracadabra, the double triangle of the Gnostics, have been regarded
from the most remote ages as of mystical import. The association of the
"seventh son of a seventh son" (another mystic number) with the
procedure, is likewise indicative of a mathematical element at the root
of this superstition.
Mr. Gladstone, in his "Juventus Mundi," says,--"With respect to the
Trident" (of Poseidon or Neptune), "an instrument so unsuited to water,
it appears evidently to point to some tradition of a Trinity, such as
may still be found in various forms of Eastern religion, other than the
Hebrew. It may have proceeded, among the Phœnicians, from the common
source of an older tradition; and this seems more probable than its
direct derivation from the Hebrews, with whom, however, we know that the
Phœnicians had intercourse."
The horseshoe, which is so frequently seen nailed to stable and shippon
doors, as a charm against the machinations of witches, is said to owe
its virtue chiefly to its shape. Any other object presenting two points
or forks, even the spreading out of the two fore-fingers, is said to
possess similar occult power, though not in so high a degree as the
rowan wish-rod. In Spain and Italy forked pieces of coral are in high
repute as witch scarers. A crescent formed of two boar's tusks is
frequently appended to the necks of mules, to protect the animals from
witchcraft. The boar's tusk I have previously shown to be an Aryan
lightning emblem.
Kelly is of opinion that the mandrake, on account of its form and
supposed lightning origin, possessed, in common with the wish-rod, the
power of conferring good fortune on its possessor. The root of the
mandrake is believed to bear some resemblance to a human being, and
appears to have been used in England by sorcerers as an image of the
victim operated upon, as well as figures made of clay or wax. In his
"Art of Simpling," Coles says that witches "take likewise the roots of
the mandrake, according to some, or, as I rather suppose, _the roots of
briony_, which simple folke take for the true mandrake, and make thereof
an ugly image, by which they represent the person on whom they intend to
exercise their witchcraft." He adds--"Some plants have roots with a
number of threads, like beards, as mandrakes, whereof witches and
imposters make an ugly image, giving it the form of a face at the top of
the root, and leave those strings to make a broad beard down to the
feet." Dr. Kuhn and others are of opinion that the form of the wish-rod
originated in a somewhat similar idea; or rather that the two
superstitions had, in this respect, a common origin. It appears that
these rods are yet dressed like dolls in some parts of Germany, and that
they are occasionally attached to the body of a child about to be
christened. Schönwerth informs us that in the Oberpfalz the newly-cut
wish-rod is formally baptised, and the sign of the cross made over it
three times by the operator. Kelly adds--"This is not all. In every
instance the divining or wish-rod has a forked end. This is an essential
point, as all authorities agree in declaring. Now a forked rod (or a
'forked raddish') is the simplest possible image of the human figure."
The English mandrake, used by witches and treasure hunters, is, as Coles
observes, the _briony_, the veritable _atropa mandragora_ not being
found in the northern portion of the continent of Europe. It flourishes
luxuriantly in the Grecian islands. Mr. John Ingram, in his "Flora
Symbolica," says the mandragora is "the emblem of _rarity_." He
adds,--"Amongst the Oriental races the mandrake, probably on account of
its fœtid odour and venomous properties, is regarded with intense
abhorrence; the Arabs, Richardson says, call it 'the devil's candle,'
because of its shiny appearance in the night; a circumstance thus
alluded to by Moore in his 'Lalla Rookh':--
Such rank and deadly lustre dwells,
As in those hellish fires that light
The mandrake's charmed leaves at night.
"There is an old, deeply-rooted superstition connected with this ominous
plant, which we have reason to believe is not yet altogether eradicated
from the minds of the uneducated, that the mandrake grows up under the
gallows, being nourished by the exhalations from executed criminals; and
that when it is pulled out of the ground it utters lamentable cries, as
if possessed of sensibility:
The phantom shapes--oh, touch them not--
That appal the murderer's sight,
Lurk in the fleshy mandrake's stem,
That shrieks when pluck'd at night.
So says Moore in verse, only repeating what many have said gravely in
prose.
"Another terrible quality imputed to this wretched plant was that the
person pulling it out of the ground would be seriously injured by its
pestilential effects, some even averring that death speedily resulted
from them; in order therefore to guard against this danger, the
surrounding soil was removed, and the plant fastened securely to a dog,
so that when the animal was driven away he drew up the root, and paid
the penalty of the deed."
Dr. Kuhn contends that this human form was given to the mandrake and the
wish-rod because both were believed to be of divine or supernatural
origin, and represented a species of demi-god, of the lightning tribe.
Kelly contends that "a comparison with ancient Hindoo usages fully
confirms the truth of this conclusion. The human form is expressly
attributed in the Rig Veda and other Sanscrit books to the pieces of
asvattha wood used for kindling sacred fire--so many inches for the head
and neck, so many for the upper and lower parts of the trunk, the thighs
and legs respectively--and the operator is warned to be very careful
where he churns, for perdition will issue from most parts of the arani,
whereas he who churns in the right spot will obtain fruition of all his
wishes; he will gain wealth, cattle, sons, heaven, long life, love, and
good fortune. Evidently the tabular part or block of the chark is
equivalent to the wish-rod, and the reason of this is that they are both
embodiments of the lightning."
Doubtless, as has been contended by Dr. Kuhn and many others, the
caduceus or rod of Hermes may be referred to a similar origin; that it
is, in fact, but the Greek development of the original Aryan myth. The
wands of conjurers, the batons of military commanders, and even the
sceptres of monarchs, together with Neptune's trident and Jove's
thundering implement, may without extravagance be assigned to a similar
origin.
The divining rod was made either of hazel, the rowan or mountain ash, or
some other of the European representatives of either the palasa tree, or
the "imperial _mimosa_ of the East." The story of the origin of these
trees, as related in the Veda, is somewhat curious. It exhibits the root
of the superstitious reverence, so common amongst all the Aryan tribes,
in which certain trees and plants are held, and of the belief in their
medical and magical properties. It appears that the demons had stolen
the heavenly soma, or drink of the gods, and cellared it in some
mythical rock or cloud. The falcon (a lightning bird) undertook to
restore to the thirsty deities their much prized liquor. The feathered
hero triumphed, but he gained his honours at the expense of a claw and a
plume, of which an arrow from one of "the enemy" deprived him during his
retreat. Both fell to the earth and took root. From the feather sprung
the parna or palasa tree, which possessed red sap and bore scarlet
blossoms. From the claw a species of thorn was developed. This Dr. Kuhn
contends is the _Mimosa catechu_, or the "imperial _mimosa_" referred
to. The falcon being regarded as a lightning-god, the plants and trees
sprung from him were supposed to possess largely the divine attributes
of their progenitor. The Aryan tribes, on migrating into distant lands,
found, of course, that the botanical characteristics of their new homes
differed from those pertaining to that they had left. They, therefore,
selected what, to them, appeared the nearest representatives of the
_parna_ and the _mimosa_, and endowed them with their supernatural
properties. Amongst the most reverenced in Europe were the fern, which
appears to be but a modern form of the word _parna_; the mountain ash,
or rowan; the hazel, and the black and white thorn, and the springwort
or St. John's-wort. Kelly says:--"Among the many English names of the
mountain ash are witchen tree, witch elm, witch hazel, witch wood;
quicken tree, quick beam (_quick_--alive, _beam_, German _baum_--tree);
roan tree, roun tree, rowan. These last three synonyms are from the
Norse tongues, and denote, as Grimm conjectures, the runic or mysterious
and magic character of the tree."
Several peculiarities of the mountain ash correspond with others which
characterise the Hindoo palasa. Both bear red berries, and their leaves
are profusely luxuriant. These characteristics are supposed to
correspond to the blood shed by the falcon and the form of his lost
feather. The spikes of the thorn, by a similar process of reasoning, are
identified with the claw detached by the arrow of the pursuing demon.
The late Bishop Heber, referring to the mimosa of India, relates facts
which clearly identify some of the superstitions of the East with others
in Britain. He appears likewise to have anticipated that time would
disclose their common origin. He says:--"Near Boitpoor, in Upper India,
I passed a fine tree of the mimosa genus, with leaves, at a little
distance, so much resembling those of the mountain ash, that I was for a
moment deceived, and asked if it did not bring fruit. They answered no;
but that it was a very noble tree, being called the imperial tree, for
its excellent properties; that it slept all night, and awakened and was
alive all day, withdrawing its leaves if anyone attempted to touch
them. Above all, however, it was useful as a preservative against magic.
A sprig worn in the turban, or suspended over the bed, was a perfect
security against all spells, evil eye, etc.; inasmuch as the most
formidable wizard would not, if he could help it, approach its shade.
One indeed, they said, who was very renowned for his power, (like
Lorinite, in the Kehama,) of killing plants and drying up their sap with
a look, had come to this very tree and gazed on it intently; but, said
the old man, who told me this with an air of triumph, look as he might,
he could do the tree no harm. I was amazed and surprised to find the
superstition which in England and Scotland attaches to the rowan tree
here applied to a tree of nearly similar form. What nation has in this
been the imitator? _Or from what common centre are these common notions
derived?_"
M. Du Chaillu, in his second journey to Western Equatorial Africa, found
a similar superstitious reverence for certain trees amongst the negro
inhabitants. He says:--"At an Ishogo village named Diamba, which we
passed about two o'clock, I saw two heads of the gorilla (male and
female) stuck on two poles placed under the village tree in the middle
of the street. In explanation of this I may mention here that in almost
every Ishogo and Ashango village which I visited there was a large tree
standing about the middle of the main street, and near the mbuiti or
idol-house of the village. The tree is a kind of Ficus, with large,
thick, and glossy leaves. It is planted a sapling when the village is
first built, and is considered to bring good luck to the inhabitants as
a talisman. If the sapling lives, the villagers consider the omen a good
one; but if it dies, they all abandon the place and found a new village
elsewhere. This tree grows rapidly, and soon forms a conspicuous object,
with its broad crown yielding a pleasant shade in the middle of the
street. Fetiches, similar to those I have described in the account of
Rabolo's village, on the Fernand Vaz, are buried at the foot of the
tree; and the gorillas' heads on poles at Diamba were no doubt placed
there as some sort of fetich. The tree, of course, is held sacred. An
additional charm is lent to these village trees by the great number of
little social birds (_Sycobius_, three species) which resort to them to
build their nests amongst the foliage. These charming little birds love
the society of man as well as that of their own species. They associate
in these trees, sometimes in incredible quantities, and the noise they
make with their chirping, chatting, and fuss in building their nests and
feeding their young is often greater even than that made by the negroes
of the village."
The _Caledonian Mercury_, a very few years ago, published the following
paragraph, which clearly demonstrates that the superstitious reverence
for the mountain ash still exists in a most unmistakable manner in North
Britain:--
"_Superstition in Strathearn._--It is not many years ago since two women
were seen pulling the tether in a field a few miles from Crieff, with
what object everyone knows. Even more recently a Crieff merchant, who
had adopted the motto 'Pay to-day and trust to-morrow,' had a piece of
rowan tree suspended over his doorway, and after his death a bit of the
same wood was found in each of his pockets as a preventive against the
power of witches. At this moment an honest farmer in a neighbouring
parish has a branch of the rowan tree above his byres, and it is said
that every stranger who enters his gates passes under this magic wood."
The author of "Sylvan Sketches," (1825), informs us, on the authority of
Lightfoot, that "in the Highlands of Scotland, at the birth of an
infant, the nurse takes a green stick of ash, one end of which she puts
into the fire, and while it is burning receives in a spoon the sap that
oozes from the other, which she administers to the child as its first
food." The infant Zeus, of the Greeks, was first fed by the Melian
nymphs with honey "the fruit of the ash," and with goat's milk. Kelly
says:--
"There was a positive, as well as a mythic, reason why the Greeks should
give the ash a name signifying sweetness, because the _Fraxinus ornus_,
a species of ash indigenous in the south of Europe, yields manna from
its slit bark. They may also have conceived that honey dropped upon the
earth as dew from the heavenly ash, for Theophrastus mentions a kind of
honey which fell in that form from the air, and which was therefore
called _aeromelia_."
Weber and Dr. Kuhn refer to a passage in one of the sacred books of the
Hindoos, in which an analogous practice is referred to. It reads, "The
father puts his mouth to the right ear of the new-born babe, and murmurs
three times, 'Speech! speech!' Then he gives it a name, 'Thou art Veda;'
that is its secret name. Then he mixes clotted milk, honey, and butter,
and feeds the babe with it out of pure gold." Referring to this subject,
Kelly exclaims:--
"Amazing toughness of popular tradition! Some thousands of years ago the
ancestors of this Highland nurse had known the _Fraxinus ornus_ in Arya,
or on their long journey through Persia, Asia Minor, and the south of
Europe, and they had given its honey-like juice as divine food to their
children; and now their descendant, imitating their practice in the
cold North, but totally ignorant of its true meaning, puts the nauseous
sap of her native ash into the mouth of her hapless charge, because her
mother, and her grandmother, and her grandmother's mother had done the
same thing before her. 'The reason,' we are told by a modern native
authority, 'for giving ash-sap to new-born children in the Highlands of
Scotland, is, first, because it acts as a powerful astringent; and
secondly, because the ash, in common with the rowan, is supposed to
possess the property of resisting the attacks of witches, fairies, and
other imps of darkness.'" Mr. Kelly regards the astringent argument as
evidently not the reason why the practice was first adopted, but an
excuse, and a bad one, for its continuance. In many places mothers yet
pass their infants through split ash trees in the belief that it will
cure them of, or protect them from, the rickets or rupture.
Brand regards the Christian pastoral crook, as well as the "lituus or
staff with the crook at one end, which the augurs of old carried as
badges of their profession, and instruments in the superstitious
exercise of it," as originally intimately connected with the divining
rod. He refers to Hogarth's "Analysis of Beauty," in which the great
satirical artist gives an engraving of what he terms a "_lusus naturæ_,"
which represents a "very elegant" branch of the ash tree. Brand seems to
endorse Mr. Gostling's opinion, as expressed in the "Antiquarian
Repertory," who says, "I should rather style it a distemper or
distortion of nature; for it seems the effect of a wound by some insect,
which, piercing to the heart of the plant with its proboscis, poisons
that, while the bark remains uninjured and proceeds in its growth, but
formed into various stripes, flatness, and curves, for want of the
support which nature designed it. The beauty some of these arrive at
might well consecrate them to the fopperies of heathenism, and their
rarity occasions imitations of them by art. The pastoral staff of the
Church of Rome seems to have been formed from the vegetable litui,
though the general idea is, I know, that it is an imitation of the
shepherd's crook." Gostling's paper is accompanied by engravings of
"carved branches of the ash." Brand speaks of one of these curious
"freaks of nature," which he saw in the possession of an old woman at
Beeralstown, in Devonshire, as "extremely beautiful." He was very
anxious to purchase it, but the old lady refused to "part with it on any
account, thinking it would be unlucky to do so."
Several modern writers on comparative mythology class the wish or
divining rod amongst the numerous forms which the stauros, as a phallic
emblem, has presented itself. The Rev. G. W. Cox, in his "Mythology of
the Aryan Nations," is very explicit on this point. He says,--"The
wooden emblem carries us, however, more directly to the natural
mythology of the subject. The rod acquired an inherent vitality, and put
forth leaves and branches in the Thyrsoi of the Dionysiac worshippers
and the Seistron of Egyptian priests. It became the tree of life, and
reappeared as the rod of wealth and happiness given by Apollôn to
Hermes, the mystic spear which Abaris received from the Hyperborean
Sun-god, and which came daily to Phoibus in his exile laden with all
good things. It was seen as the lituus of the augur, the crooked staff
of the shepherd, the sceptre of the king, and the divining rod which
pointed out hidden springs or treasures to modern conjurors. In a form
which adhered still more strictly to the first idea the emblem became
the stauros or cross of Osiris, and a new source of mythology was thus
laid open. To the Egyptians the cross thus became the symbol of
immortality, and the god himself was crucified to a tree which denoted
his fructifying power.... It is peculiar neither to the Egyptians nor
Assyrians, neither to Greeks, Latins, Gauls, Germans or Hindus." Mr. Cox
includes among its various forms the "trident of Poseidon or Proteus,
and the fylfot or hammer of Thor, which assumes the form of a cross
pattée." Increase of wealth by natural fruition evidently lies at the
root of many of the myths which relate to hidden treasures, whether
buried in the interior of mountains or elsewhere, as well as to the
properties of magic purses, festive tables, cornucopiæ, etc.
The following paragraph appeared in the newspapers in March, 1866. It
appears, from it, that in the eastern counties the bible has superseded
the "wish-rod" as an instrument of divination:--
"NOVEL USE FOR THE BIBLE.--At the Norwich assizes, on Wednesday, the
case of Creak _v._ Smith was tried. It was an action for slander, the
slanderous words imputed to the defendant being as follows:--'You are
the thief, and no other man. You have robbed the fatherless and the
motherless, and got in at the window. I can prove it by the turn of the
Bible.' One of the witnesses for the plaintiff explained what was meant
by the expression, 'I'll prove it by the turn of the Bible.' He said
that the defendant had told him that a friend of his, having asked him
whether he had ever heard anything about the Bible being turned, bade
him come to his house and he would show him what it was. That evening,
when this person went home, he told his wife what he had said to
defendant, and she went through the ceremony, which was done by holding
a Bible by a string, twisting it round, and as it was turning calling
out the names of all in the house until she came to the plaintiff's name
last of all, when it turned round the other way, showing that he was the
guilty man. This ceremony was performed by her a second time by the
husband's bedside, with the same triumphant result.--The jury gave a
verdict for 20s. damages."
Since most of the above was written I have read the following, in Mr.
Robert Hunt's "Drolls, Traditions, and Superstitions of Old Cornwall,"
which seems to throw a doubt upon the antiquity of the divining rod, _at
least as far as Cornish mining is concerned_. The statement, however, in
no way invalidates the fact that the hazel, ash, and other trees were
held in great veneration from the most remote antiquity either in
Cornwall or elsewhere:--
"It may appear strange to many that having dealt with the superstitions
of the Cornish people, no mention has been made of the Divining Rod
(_the Dowzing Rod_, as it is called), and its use in the discovery of
mineral lodes. This has been avoided, in the first place, because any
mention of the practice of '_dowzing_' would lead to a discussion, for
which this work is not intended; and in the second place, because the
use of the hazel-twig is not Cornish. The divining or dowzing rod is
certainly not older than the German miners, who were brought over by
Queen Elizabeth to teach the Cornish to work the mines, one of whom,
called Schutz, was some time Warden of the Stannaries. Indeed there is
good reason for believing that the use of this wand is of more recent
date, and consequently, removed from the periods which are sought to be
illustrated by this collection. The divining rod belongs no more to them
than do the modern mysteries of twirling hats, of teaching tables to
turn, and--in their wooden way--to talk."
Of course, as Mr. Hunt assigns not the good reason referred to for his
statement, it can but be regarded as the expression of an individual
opinion. It may, perhaps, be _locally true_, either wholly or in part.
However, whatever may be its value, in such matters it is incumbent on
the earnest seeker after truth to conceal no apparently incongruous
facts or hostile opinions.
The writer of an article on "Stick and Table Turning," published in "All
the Year Round," makes the following comments on the manner in which
this superstition exhibits itself during the present generation:--
"A good deal of attention was paid by the newspapers to certain alleged
achievements of two diviners, or dowsers, about twenty years ago. They
were West of England men, named Adams and Mapstone. A farmer near
Wedmore, in Somerset, wishing for a supply of water on his farm, applied
to Mapstone. Mapstone used a hazel rod in the usual way, and when he
came over a particular spot declared that water would be found fifteen
or twenty feet beneath the surface. Digging was therefore commenced at
that spot, and water appeared at a depth of nineteen feet. The other
expert, Adams, who claimed to have been instrumental in the discovery of
nearly a hundred springs in the West of England, went one day by
invitation to the house of Mr. Phippen, a surgeon, at Wedmore, to dowse
for water. He walked about in the garden behind Mr. Phippen's house
until the stick became so agitated that he could not keep it steady; it
bent down at a spot which he asserted must have clear water underneath
it. Mr. Phippen caused a digging to be made, and water was really found
at the spot indicated. As a means of testing Adams's powers in relation
to metals, three hats were placed in a row in the kitchen, and three
silver spoons under one of the hats. Adams walked among the hats, and
his rod told him which of them covered the treasure. Then three kinds of
valuables, gold, silver, and jewels, were placed under three hats, one
kind under each, and he found out which was which. On one occasion he
dowsed for water in the grounds of the Rev. Mr. Foster, of Sodbury, in
Gloucestershire. Using the same method as before, he announced the
presence of water at a particular spot, twenty feet beneath the surface.
A pamphlet published by Mr. Phippen concerning these curious facts
attracted the attention of Mr. Marshall, partner in the great flax
factory at Leeds. Water was wanted at the mill, and the owners were
willing to see whether dowsing could effect anything in the matter. Mr.
Marshall invited Adams to come down and search for springs. On one
occasion, when blindfolded, Adams failed, but hit the mark pretty nearly
in the second attempt, excusing himself for the first failure on the
ground that 'he was not used to be blindfolded.' Of the main
experiments, Mr. Marshall afterwards said, in a letter to the
newspapers, 'I tested Adams by taking him over some deep borings at our
manufactory, where he could have no possible guide from anything he
could see; and he certainly pointed out nearly the position of the
springs, as shown by the produce of the bore-holes, some being much more
productive than others. The same was the result at another factory,
where Adams could have had no guide from what he saw, and could not have
got information otherwise.'"
This superstition has been imported into Australia, where it seems to
flourish with remarkable vigour, notwithstanding the boasted
enlightenment and civilisation of the race and age. The following
paragraph, which appeared in a Melbourne newspaper in the early part of
the year 1867, speaks for itself:--
"In the area of Kiora, lying to the southward of Ararat, the settlers,
who are very anxious to discover springs of water upon their selections,
have engaged the services of an old man, apparently between sixty and
seventy years of age, who professes to discover springs by the aid of a
divining rod. He has already pointed out two spots where he confidently
states water will be found at a moderate depth, and the farmers are now
engaged in practically proving his skill. We are told that the diviner
holds a slender strip of steel between the finger and thumb of both
hands, and walks about the land with it in this position. When water is
approached, the rod trembles violently, and the motion ceases as the
place is left. One of the settlers, Mr. Tomkins, with the view of
testing his accuracy, had the diviner blindfolded (after pointing out
the spot where water would be found) and taken to another portion of his
land, but he states that the motion of the rod led him, with but little
hesitation, back to the same place. The old man refuses to take money
for his services till water be obtained, and when proved to exist asks
£3 from each individual. He states that the rod was owned by his father,
and that it will not indicate water in the hands of any of his brothers.
While engaged at Kiora he showed some of the farmers letters which he
had received from a number of squatters engaging his services on their
stations in a similar capacity; and he left to fulfil these engagements,
with a view of returning for payment when the sinking is concluded. He
professes to name within three feet of the depth at which water will be
obtained, but cannot say if it will prove fresh or salt."
A superstition somewhat akin to that in which the divining rod plays so
prominent a part, still lingers in various parts of the country. It is
believed that a loaf of wheaten bread, containing a quantity of
quicksilver in its centre, will, on being placed in a running stream,
rest over the spot where a drowned body lies. The experiment was tried
very recently, and an account of it appeared in the newspapers. In this
instance, however, the "faithful believers" were grievously
disappointed, as the loaf floated past the spot where the body was
afterwards discovered.
Another form of this superstition is referred to by Dr. Randal Caldicot,
who, evidently, lacked not faith in its efficacy. He says,--"When any
Christian is drowned in the river Dee, there will appear over the water
where the corpse is, a light, by which means they do find the body, and
it is therefore called the holy Dee."
Aubrey, in his "Miscellanies," quotes a letter addressed to Mr. Baxter,
referring to the Welsh "corpse-candle" superstitions, in which the
writer _naively_ says that the light "doth as much resemble a material
candle-light as eggs do eggs."
CHAPTER XIV.
WELL WORSHIP AND SUPERSTITIONS CONNECTED WITH WATER.
I can see the place as it was of yore,
When its crystal riches would ripple and pour
From a fountain channel fresh and dank,
'Mid flowering rush and grassy bank;
When the pale cheek left the city wall,
And the courtier fled the palace hall,
To seek the peaceful shadows that fell
On the waters of the "Holy Well."
. . . . .
Some birds came to plume their wing,
And lave their beaks in the healing spring;
And gorgeous butterflies stopp'd to play
About the place on a sultry day.
Folks came from the east and came from the west,
To take at that fountain health and rest;
From the north and the south they came to dwell,
By the far-famed stream of the "Holywell."
_Eliza Cook._
Perhaps no ancient superstition has had a more enduring existence than
what Mr. Hunt terms "well-worship." This may have arisen, to some
extent, from the fact that water, under certain conditions, possesses
undoubted "medical virtues." The necessity of personal cleanliness to
ensure ordinary comfort, and the value of aqueous agency in its
achievement, would doubtless exercise some influence, even in remote
times. Add to this the horrors of a "water famine," the intense
suffering resulting from prolonged thirst, and we can well imagine that
the early tribes of men who worshipped fire would feel a corresponding
reverence for what may be termed its natural complement--water. The
sun's heat was powerless for good, nay, it was potent for evil, unless
in close alliance with the "gentle rain from heaven." From their union
springs the warm moisture essential to vegetable growth. Water, too, in
more modern times, has been largely employed as a symbol of purity; and,
in the Roman Catholic Church, especially, has been consecrated to
religious purposes, and rendered "holy." It is, indeed, employed by all
Christian sects, in the rite of baptism, as symbolising purity. Hence
it is not surprising that many springs, and especially in the
neighbourhood of religious houses, should in the middle ages have been
invested with a sacred character, or that superstition of a more ancient
and a heathen origin should yet, as it were, haunt their precincts. On
this subject Mr. Robert Hunt makes the following eloquent and pertinent
observations:--"The purity of the liquid impresses itself, through the
eye, upon the mind, and its power of removing all impurity is felt to
the soul. 'Wash and be clean,' is the murmuring call of the waters, as
they overflow their rocky basins, or grassy vases, and deeply sunk in
depravity must that man be who could put to unholy uses one of nature's
fountains. The inner life of a well of waters, bursting from its grave
in the earth, may be religiously said to form a type of the soul
purified by death, rising into a glorified existence and the fulness of
light. The tranquil beauty of the rising waters, whispering the softest
music, like the healthful breathing of a sleeping infant, sends a
feeling of happiness through the soul of the thoughtful observer, and
the inner man is purified by its influence, as the outer man is cleansed
by ablution."
Many such wells as those in connection with the "Old Friary," at
Preston, which gave the name to Ladywell-street, in that borough, like
that which performed a similar office for the now notorious "Hollywell
street," near the Strand, in London, have passed away, and left nothing
behind but the street nomenclature referred to. Others, however, like
the St. Mary's well, at the foot of the hill on which the old priory of
Penwortham was situated, yet retain, in many minds, not only their
reputation for the medical value of their waters, but a vague remnant of
reverence and even superstition is still to a large extent associated
with them.
A spring in the parish of Brindle, near Preston, has some traditionary
associations in connection with it which I am inclined to think date
back far into pagan antiquity, notwithstanding the fact that it has been
for centuries named "St. Helen's well." The name has become corrupted by
the neighbouring peasantry in a most singular manner. On my first visit
to the locality, I inquired of an elderly woman if she could inform me
in what direction I should proceed to find _St. Helen's well_. She at
first said she had never heard of such a place, but after considerable
hesitation she at length exclaimed with some animation, in the dialect
of the district, "Oh! it ull be Stelling well yo mean, I'll be bun." A
writer under the signature, "Leicestriensis," in vol. 6, p. 152, of
"Notes and Queries," speaking of a St. Austin's well, near Leicester
says:--"On making some inquiries, a few years ago, of the 'oldest
inhabitant' of the neighbourhood, respecting _St. Augustine's well_, he
at first pleaded ignorance of it, but at length, suddenly enlightened,
exclaimed, 'Oh! you mean Tosting's well.'" Cakes baked for the
lace-makers' feasts in Buckinghamshire, in honour of St. Andrew, their
patron saint, are locally termed "Tandry Cakes." These are both curious
and instructive specimens of the manner in which names of places and
persons undergo changes in their transmission from generation to
generation by popular tradition.
St. Helen's well, which is now sadly neglected, is situated about a mile
and a half to the south-west of the village of Brindle. Dr. Kuerden, who
resided in the neighbourhood, thus refers to it, about two centuries
ago:--
"Over against Swansey House, a little towards the hill, standeth an
ancient fabric, once the manor house of Brindle, where hath been a
chappel belonging to the same, and, a little above it, a spring of very
clear water rushing straight upwards into the midst of a fayre fountain,
walled square about in stone and flagged in the bottom, very transparent
to be seen, and a strong stream issuing out of the same. The fountain is
called Saint Ellen's Well, to which place the vulgar neighbouring people
of the Red letter do much resort, with pretended devotion, on each year
upon St. Ellen's day, where and when out of a foolish ceremony they
offer or throw into the well pins, which there being left may be seen a
long time after by any visitor to that fountain."
There is a St. Helen's well, near Sefton, in West Lancashire, into which
pins were formerly thrown by the credulous, as at Brindle.
The superstitions connected with this "pin dropping" into certain wells
are somewhat varied in character. They, however, seem to have generally
some relation to divination or fortune-telling, and appear to have found
their chief patrons in the fair sex. The well superstitions of this
class are widely spread. Dudley Costello tells us that in many parts of
Brittany they keep a very watchful eye over the morals of the young
women. The fountain of Bobdilis, near Landividian, is famous as an
ordeal to test propriety of conduct. The pin which fastens the habit
shirt is dropped into the water, and if it touch the bottom with the
point downwards the girl is freed from all suspicion; if, on the
contrary, it turns the other way and sinks head foremost, her reputation
is irretrievably damaged.
The author of "Wanderings in Brittany" informs us that there is a "magic
well" of this class at or near Barenton, to which peasants yet bring
their children when ill of fever, having faith in the healing powers of
the water. He thus describes the manner in which the deity of the spring
is invoked:--"You say 'Ris! Ris! Fontaine de Barenton,' dropping a pin
the while into the spring, whereupon it breaks into ripples and bubbles;
if it laughs you are to be fortunate; if it remains mute you will be
unlucky. Tradition and poetry both say the water fizzes around a sword
point, but we had nothing larger than pins to try it with, and to these
it responded gaily." He adds that "when the country was in great want of
rain, a procession was formed to the fountain, and the priest dipped the
foot of the cross, out of the church, into the water, after which rain
is sure to fall abundantly. This ceremony has been successful very
lately." The same writer refers to another superstition, in connection
with the "magic well," which plainly indicates its pagan origin. He
says:--"The peasants believe the priests can punish them by sprinkling
water from the spring on the large stone, the _Perron of Merlin_, above
the well, which brings rain throughout the whole parish for many days."
"Seleucus," in "Notes and Queries," speaks of a well, with a
superstition connected with it similar to the one at Brindle, in the
Welsh peninsula of Gower. It is called the "Cefyn Bryn or the Holy
Well." He says, "it is still supposed to be under the especial patronage
of the Virgin Mary, and a crooked pin is the offering of every visitor
to its sacred precincts. It is believed that if this pin be dropped in
with fervent faith, all the many pins which have ever been thrown into
it may be seen rising from the bottom to greet the new one. Argue the
impossibility of the thing, and you are told, it is true it never
happens _now_, such earnestness of faith being, 'alas!' extinct."
In the same work, vol. 6, p. 28, Robert Rawlinson speaks of a spring
near Wooler, in Northumberland, locally known as "_Pin Well_." He says
"the country maids, in passing this spring, drop a crooked pin into the
water. In Westmorland there is also a _pin well_, into the water of
which rich and poor drop a pin in passing. The superstition in both
cases consists in the belief that the well is under the charge of a
fairy, and that it is necessary to propitiate the little lady by a
present of some sort: hence the pin, as most convenient. The crooked pin
of Northumberland may be explained upon the received hypothesis in
folk-lore, that crooked things are lucky things, as a 'crooked
sixpence,' &c."
Mr. Hunt, in his chapter on the "Superstitions of the Wells," gives
numerous examples of its prevalence in the remote West of England. The
water in the well of St. Ludvan formerly miraculously enlarged the
sense of sight, and loosened the tongue of the true believer; but a
demon that the good saint, after a terrible struggle, exorcised from out
the body of a child and laid in the Red Sea, in his rage, "by spitting
in the water," destroyed its efficacy in these matters. But it is
believed still that any child baptised in its waters is certain never to
succumb to the genius of Calcraft, and his hempen instrument of death.
"On a cord of silk," however, we are informed that "it is stated to have
no power." Some years back, notwithstanding, a woman was actually hanged
here for the murder of her husband, whom she had poisoned with arsenic
in order to clear the way for a more favoured lover. As she was born
near the magic well, and was supposed to have been baptised with its
waters, the greatest consternation prevailed in the neighbourhood. The
much prized fountain had lost its cherished virtue! What was to be done
under such a lamentable state of things? The necks of the inhabitants
would in future be in equal jeopardy with those of the rest of her
Majesty's subjects! It was, however, by some indefatigable enquirer, at
last discovered that a mistake had been made; the murderer had not been
born in the parish, and consequently had not been baptised with the
liquid which flowed from the well of St. Ludwin. Great was the joy of
the inhabitants on the receipt of this welcome news. The spring not only
recovered its ancient prestige, but became more famous than ever.
The Gulvell Well, in Fosses Moor, answered the demands of lone married
women or love-sick spinsters respecting their absent husbands or
sweethearts. Mr. Hunt relates how a mother, one Jane Thomas, with her
babe in her arms, recently, after a severe mental struggle, obeyed the
injunction of an old hag, a "sort of guardian of the well," and tested
its efficacy. "She knelt on the mat of bright green grass which grew
around, and leaning over the well so as to see her child's face in the
water, she repeated after her instructor,
Water, water, tell me truly,
Is the man I love duly
On the earth or under sod.
Sick or well--in the name of God!
Some minutes passed in perfect silence, and anxiety was rapidly turning
cheeks and lips pale, when the colour rapidly returned. There was a gush
of clear water from below, bubble rapidly followed bubble, sparkling
brightly in the morning sunshine. Full of joy the young mother rose from
her knees and exclaimed, 'I am happy now.'" It appears that if the party
inquired after should be sick, the water bubbles, but in a filthy,
muddy, condition. If he should be dead, it remains perfectly quiescent,
to the dismay of the person seeking information.
There is a singular superstition attached to the well of St. Keyne,
"namely, that whichever of a newly-married couple should first drink
thereof was to enjoy the sweetness of domestic sovereignty ever after."
Referring to this superstition, Mr. Hunt says:--"Once, and once only,
have I paid a visit to this sacred spot. Then and there I found a lady
drinking of the waters from her thimble, and eagerly contending with her
husband that the right to rule was hers. The man, however, mildly
insisted upon it that he had the first drink, as he had rushed before
his wife, and, dipping his fingers into the waters, had sucked them.
This, the lady contended, was not drinking, and she, no doubt, through
life had the best of the argument."
There is one well in Cornwall which has long had a reputation for the
cure of insanity. Carew, in his "Survey," describes the formula adopted
to ensure a successful result:--"The water running from St. Nun's well
fell into a square and enclosed walled plat, which might be filled at
what depth they listed. Upon this wall was the frantic person put to
stand, his back towards the pool, and from thence, with a sudden blow in
the breast, tumbled headlong into the pond; where a strong fellow,
provided for the nonce, took him and tossed him up and down, alongst and
athwart the water, till the patient by foregoing his strength had
somewhat forgot his fury. Then was he conveyed to the church, and
certain masses said over him; upon which handling, if his right wits
returned, St. Nun had the thanks; but if there appeared small amendment,
he was bowssened again and again, while there remained in him any hope
of life or recovery."
A well on the line of the Roman Wall, near Walltown, in Northumberland,
has two distinct traditions attached to it and its neighbourhood! It is
locally termed the "King's Well," or "King Arthur's Well." Hutchison
says:--"Travellers are shown a well among the cliffs, where it is said
Paulinus baptised King Egbert; but it is more probable it was Edwin,
king of Northumberland." Dr. Collingwood Bruce says:--"The well has no
doubt been a place of historical interest and importance, but unhappily
modern drainage is robbing it of its treasures. Another interesting
circumstance is connected with this locality. In the crevices of the
whin-rock near the house chives grow abundantly. The general opinion is
that we are indebted for these plants to the Romans, who were much
addicted to the use of these and kindred vegetables. Most of the early
writers refer to this subject; let the reader take a passage from
Camden:--'The fabulous tales of the common people concerning this Wall,
I doe wittingly and wilfully overpasse. Yet this one thing which I was
enformed of by men of good credit, I will not conceale from the reader.
There continueth a settled perswasion among a great part of the people
there about, and the same received by tradition, that the Roman soldiers
of the marches did plant here every where in old time for their use
certain medicinable herbs, for to cure wounds; whence it is that some
emperic practitioners of chirurgery in Scotland, flock here every year
in the beginning of summer, to gather such simples and wound-herbes; the
vertue whereof they highly commend as found by long experience, and to
be of singular efficacy.'"
Many wells have been famous for the cure of "rickety" children. The
mothers generally plunged them _three times into the water_, as they
drew them three times through the cleft rowan or ash tree, with a
similar object. In my youth I remember being solemnly informed, on
bathing for the first time at the cold bath below the Maudlands, on
Preston Marsh, that three distinct plunges into the fearfully cold
liquid was the orthodox number, especially if medical benefit was the
object sought.
The "Maddern or Madron Well, in Cornwall," and another, appear to be the
only wells in that district that, like the one in Brindle, properly come
under the designation of "_pin wells_." The curative properties of the
former were held in very high repute. Bishop Hale, of Exeter, relates,
in his "Great Mystery of Godliness," a singular anecdote respecting its
presumed miraculous power. Referring to the case of a well-known
cripple, he says, "This man, for sixteen years, was forced to walke upon
his hands, by reason of the sinews of his leggs were soe contracted that
he cold not goe or walke on his feet, who upon monition in a dream to
wash in that well, which accordingly he did, was suddenly restored to
the use of his limbs; and I sawe him both able to walk and gett his own
maintenance. I found here was neither art nor collusion--the cure done,
author our invisible God," etc.
In a MS., dated 1777, formerly in the library of Thomas Artle, Esq., and
published by Davis Gilbert, F.R.S., in his "Parochial History of
Cornwall," there is some curious information respecting this class of
superstitions, which throws some light on the practices, formerly of
ordinary occurrence, at St. Helen's Well, Brindle. The writer says:--
"In Madron Well--and, I have no doubt, in many others--may be found
frequently the pins which have been dropped by maidens desirous of
knowing 'when they were to be married.' I once witnessed the whole
ceremony performed by a group of beautiful girls, who had walked on a
May morning from Penzance. Two pieces of straw, about an inch long each,
were crossed and the pin run through them. This cross was then dropped
into the water, and the rising bubbles carefully counted, as they marked
the number of years which would pass ere the arrival of the happy day.
This practice also prevailed amongst the visitors to the well at the
foot of Monacuddle Grove, near St. Austell. On approaching the waters,
each visitor is expected to throw in a crooked pin; and, if you are
lucky, you may possibly see the other pins rising from the bottom to
meet the most recent offering. Rags and votive offerings to the genius
of the waters are hung around many of the wells."
We have accounts of similar customs in North Britain and in the
Hebrides. J. F. Campbell, in his "Popular Tales of the West Highlands,"
says:--"Holy healing wells are common all over the Highlands, and people
still leave offerings of pins and nails, and bits of rag, though few
would confess it. There is a well in Islay, where I myself have, after
drinking, deposited copper caps amongst a hoard of pins and buttons, and
similar gear, placed in chinks in the rocks and trees at the edge of the
'Witches Well.' There is another well with similar offerings freshly
placed beside it, in an island in Loch Meree, in Ross-shire, and many
similar wells are to be found in other places in Scotland."
A spring in connection with the ancient abbey at Glastonbury retained
its reputation for sanctity and medical virtue until a very recent
period. In consequence of some astounding, or, indeed, miraculous cure
supposed to have been effected by its agency, immense numbers of
invalids flocked to it in the years 1750 and 1751. It is said that, in
the month of May, in the latter year, ten thousand persons visited
Glastonbury, under the influence of this superstition.
Since the above was written, the following paragraph, from the
_Banffshire Journal_, has come under my notice. It demonstrates the
retention to the present day not only of the ancient superstition
respecting wells, but likewise of some others to which I have referred
in previous chapters:--
"A MODERN SCOTCH WITCH.--On the 23rd of February, there died at Mill of
Ribrae, parish of Forglen, Margaret Grant, at the advanced age of 69
years; and as she represented a class which is regarded as becoming very
few in number in the present day, two or three remarks on the chief
features of her character may not be unacceptable. Margaret was
superstitious, and fully and firmly believed, up to her dying day, that
she possessed power to remove or avert the ills and aliments of both man
and beast, especially of the latter; and this by means of various
incantations, ceremonies, and appliances--such as fresh cuttings of
'ra'n tree,' some of which she always carried about with her. She would
carefully place so many before and so many behind the particular beast
she meant to benefit. Another potent charm was what she called 'holy
water,' taken, no doubt, from some 'old and fabulous well.' This she
also generally carried along with her, and used partly in sprinkling the
pathway of the individuals she designed to bless--the rest to be mixed
in common water to wash the hands and face. In the case of such as she
was desirous should prosper, and be defended from evil, she would go
round and round their dwellings, carrying along a rod of her
wonder-working 'ra'n tree'--and this was usually done at a very early
hour in the morning. She also believed herself to be transmutable, and
that she was at times actually changed by evil-disposed persons into a
pony or hare, and rode for great distances, or was hunted by dogs, as
the case might be. We have heard of several other strange enchantments
which Margaret practised when she had opportunity, and was allowed. But
in all her foibles there was ever conspicuous the design of doing good."
From this it would appear that Margaret Grant was a witch of the white
kind, they having, as I have previously shown, power only for good. The
black were potent only for evil, and the grey ones were a combination of
the other two.
I have previously referred to the "well-dressings," or the decoration of
springs and fountains, yet very common in some counties, and especially
in Derbyshire, and suggested that they owe their origin to the Roman
Floralia, or to a still older custom, the common Aryan root of both.
Crofton Croker speaks of the existence of "well worship" in Ireland; Dr.
O'Conner, in his "Travels in Persia," notices its prevalence in the
East; and Sir William Betham, in his "Gael and Cymbri," says, "The Celtæ
were much addicted to the worship of fountains and rivers as
divinities." He adds, "They had a deity called Divona, or the river-god."
It seems, therefore, very clear that this superstition, in one form or
another, is not only widely disseminated, but that its origin may, with
safety, be ascribed to a very remote period in the history of humanity.
The deification of rivers and streams appears to have very generally
prevailed amongst the ancients. Young and beautiful women, under the
general name of Naiads, in the Greek and Roman mythologies, were
believed to preside over brooks, springs, and rivers. Many of the heroic
personages described by the early Greek poets are said to be the
offspring of nymphs of this class.
Each river was supposed to be under the protection of its presiding
deity. Their sources were especially sacred, and religious ceremonies
were performed in their immediate vicinity. As at the Clitumnus, so
beautifully described by Byron, in "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," temples
were erected near the fountains which gave them birth, and small pieces
of money were frequently thrown into their crystal streams with the view
to the propitiation of the presiding deities. Sacrifices were offered to
them, and no bather was allowed to lave his limbs near the source of any
consecrated stream, because the contact of the naked body was held to
pollute the water. Sir John Lubbock, in his dissertation on the
lacustrine dwellings which have recently been discovered in Alpine
districts of Europe, as well as in some other localities, has the
following pertinent observations on this subject:--
"It has been suggested that the early inhabitants of Switzerland may
have worshipped the Lakes, and that the beautiful bracelets, etc., may
have been offerings to the gods. In fact, it appears from ancient
writers that among the Gauls, Germans, and other nations, many lakes
were regarded as sacred. M. Aymard has collected several instances of
this kind. According to Cicero, Justin, and Strabo, there was a lake
near Toulouse in which the neighbouring tribes used to deposit offerings
of gold and silver. Tacitus, Virgil, and Pliny also mention the
existence of sacred lakes. Again, so late as the sixth century, Gregory
of Tours, who is quoted by M. Troyon and M. Aymard, tells us that on
Mount Helanus there was a lake which was the object of popular worship.
Every year the inhabitants of the neighbourhood brought to it offerings
of clothes, skins, cheeses, cakes, etc. Traces of a similar superstition
may still be found lingering in remote parts of Scotland and Ireland; in
the former country I have myself seen a sacred spring surrounded by the
offerings of the neighbouring peasantry, who seemed to consider pence
and half-pence as the most appropriate and agreeable sacrifice to the
spirit of the waters."
A correspondent of the _Inverness Courier_ states, as recently as last
year (1871), that he had recently witnessed a strange instance of the
existence of this superstition, "at a loch in the district of
Strathnaver, county of Sutherland." The editor says,--
"Dipping in the loch for the purpose of effecting extraordinary cures is
stated to be a matter of periodical occurrence, and the 14th appears to
have been selected as immediately after the beginning of August in the
old style. The hour was between midnight and one o'clock, and the scene,
as described by our correspondent, was absurd and disgraceful beyond
belief, though not without a touch of weird interest, imparted by the
darkness of the night and the superstitious faith of the people. 'The
impotent, the halt, the lunatic, and the tender infant were all waiting
about midnight for an immersion in Lochmanur. The night was calm, the
stars countless, and meteors were occasionally shooting about in all
quarters of the heavens above. A streaky white belt could be observed in
the remotest part of the firmament. Yet with all this the night was
dark--so dark that one could not recognise friend or foe but by close
contact and speech. About fifty persons, all told, were present near one
spot, and I believe other parts of the loch side were similarly
occupied, but I cannot vouch for this--only I heard voices which would
lead me so to infer. About twelve stripped and walked into the loch,
performing their ablutions three times. Those who were not able to act
for themselves were assisted, some of them being led willingly and
others by force, for there were cases of each kind. One young woman,
strictly guarded, was an object of great pity. She raved in a
distressing manner, repeating religions phrases, some of which were very
earnest and pathetic. She prayed her guardians not to immerse her,
saying that it was not a communion occasion, and asking if they could
call this righteousness or faithfulness, or if they could compare the
loch and its virtues to the right arm of Christ. These utterances were
enough to move any person hearing them. Poor girl! what possible good
could immersion do to her? I would have more faith in a shower-bath
applied pretty freely and often to the head. No male, so far as I could
see, denuded himself for a plunge. Whether this was owing to hesitation
regarding the virtues of the water, or whether any of the men were
ailing, I could not ascertain. These gatherings take place twice a year,
and are known far and near to such as put belief in the spell. But the
climax of absurdity is in paying the loch in sterling coin. Forsooth,
the cure cannot be effected without money cast into the waters! I may
add that the practice of dipping in the loch is said to have been
carried on from time immemorial, and it is alleged that many cures have
been effected by it.'"
Some pools, streams, or lakes, such as Acheron and Avernus, were
associated with the infernal regions, or the nether world, and its
mythical inhabitants. The mother of the monster Grendel, slain by the
Anglo-Saxon hero, Beowulf, according to the ancient poem, dwelt in the
recesses of a bottomless pool, beneath the dark shadow of a dense wood
in the neighbourhood of Hartlepool, on the coast of Durham. The Scottish
Kelpie is a kind of "mischievous water spirit said to haunt fords and
ferries at night, _especially in storms_."
Burns says in his "Address to the Deil":--
When thowes dissolve the snawy hoord,
An' float the jinglin icy-boord,
Then water-kelpies haunt the foord,
By your direction:
An 'nighted travellers are allur'd
To their destruction.
An' aft your moss-traversing spunkies
Decoy the wight that late and drunk is:
The bleezin, curst, mischievous monkeys
Delude his eyes,
Till in some miry slough he sunk is,
Ne'er more to rise.
In the same poem Burns refers to the devil himself as an aquatic spirit.
He says:--
Ae dreary, _windy_, winter night,
The stars shot down wi' sklentin' light,
Wi' you, mysel I got a fright
Ayout the lough;
Ye, like a rash-bush, stood in sight
Wi' waving sough.
The cudgel in my neive did shake,
Each bristl'd hair stood like a stake,
When wi' an eldritch, stoor quaick-quaick
Amang the springs,
Awa ye squattered, like a drake,
On whistling wings.
Commenting on this poem, Allan Cunningham relates a characteristic
anecdote. He says,--"The Prince and Power of the air is a favourite
topic of rustic speculation. An old shepherd told me he had, when a boy,
as good as seen him. 'I was,' said he, 'returning from school, and I
stopped till the twilight groping trouts in a _burn, when a thunder
storm came on_. I looked up, and just before me a _cloud_ came down as
dark as night--the _queerest-shaped cloud_ I ever saw; and there was
something terrible about it, for when it was close to me, I saw as plain
as I see you, a dark form within it, thrice the size of any earthly man.
It was the Evil One himself, there's nae doubt o' that. 'Samuel,' I
said, 'did you hear his _cloven foot_ on the ground?' 'No,' replied he,
'but I saw one of his _horns_--and O, what waves o' fire were rowing
after him!' The Devil frequently makes his appearance in our old
mysteries, but he comes to work unmitigated mischief, and we part with
him gladly. The '_Hornie_,' 'Satan,' 'Nick,' or 'Clootie,' who lives in
the imaginations of the peasantry, is not quite such a reprobate, though
his shape is anything but prepossessing. Nor is he an object of much
alarm; a knowledge of the scriptures and a belief in heaven are
considered sure protectors; and a peasant will brave a suspicious road
at midnight if he can repeat a psalm."
The _horn_ and the _cloven foot_ in such intimate connection with the
descent over the burn of a mysterious dark cloud accompanied by waves of
fire, is suggestive of the Aryan thunder and rain clouds and of their
attendant lightning-god. The peasant's faith in the efficacy of a psalm
in overcoming the evil influence is rather corroborative of this, as the
superstitious fear for the dethroned gods of the old mythology long
survived the introduction of Christianity in the country. It is yet
firmly believed in Lancashire that, after going through some mysterious
magic formula, and repeating the Lord's prayer _backwards_, that his
Satanic majesty will appear in the centre of a circle previously
defined. In my youth, "raising the devil," was not considered by the
knowing ones to be a particularly arduous task; the getting rid of him,
afterwards, was the great difficulty. Some contended that the recital of
a certain psalm or other passage from the scriptures was alone
efficacious. Others held that holy water was his especial abhorrence,
and that the repetition of the Lord's prayer, in its proper order, was
essential to success.
I remember well, when very young, being cautioned against approaching to
the side of stagnant pools of water partially covered with vegetation.
At the time, I firmly believed that, if I disobeyed this instruction, a
certain water "boggart" named "Jenny Greenteeth" would drag me beneath
her verdant screen and subject me to other tortures besides death by
drowning. This superstition is yet very common in Lancashire.
In "Brother Fabian's Manuscript" there is a description of a
water-sprite, which appears to be one of the many singular forms which
the memory of the dethroned Æsir god, Wodin or Odin, has assumed in the
popular imagination:--
Where, by the marishes, bloometh the bittern,
Nickar, the soulless one, sits with his ghittern;
Sits inconsolable, friendless and foeless,
Waiting his destiny, Nickar the soulless.
Sir Noel Paton, R.S.A., has recently exhibited a picture of this mythic
sprite, treated with great æsthetic power and poetic sympathy. The
colour, the light and shade, the surrounding accessories, as well as the
quaint melancholy features of the "doomed one," and his still quainter
frog-like feet, all combine to leave a single harmonious emotional
impression. This is further enhanced by the presence of the partially
obscured moon and the solitary star, as well as the sedges and other
plants, which, with the lonely bittern, (now extinct in Britain) affect
marshy places; and by the Batrachian reptile which crawls from the water
towards the feet of the "fallen god," who, whilst patiently awaiting his
destiny, lulls his senses to sleep with the music of his ghittern, a
singularly old-fashioned instrument apparently allied to the modern
guitar. This myth is evidently one form of the popular superstition
which connected natural phenomena of a peculiar character with the
memory of Nickarr (old Nick), or the dethroned Odin of our Teutonic
ancestors. Nickarr, it has previously been shown, was one of the
appellations pertaining to this deity.
The Scotch Kelpies were supposed to be delighted with the last agonies
of drowning men and of mariners in distress. Thomas Landseer, in the
notes which accompany his admirable illustrations of Burns's poem,
says:--"It is not twenty years since the piercing shrieks and
supplications for help, of a passage boat's company, which had been
landed on a sandbank at low water, in the Solway Firth, instead of on
the Cumberland coast, and who found, as the moon rose and the haze
dispersed, that they were in mid-channel, with a strong tide setting
fast in upon them, were mistaken by the people, both on the Scotch and
English shores, for the wailings of Kelpies! The consequence was that
the unhappy people (whose boat had drifted from them before their fatal
error was discovered) were drowned; though nothing had been easier, but
for the rooted superstition of their neighbours ashore, than to have
effectually succoured them."
The same writer makes the following sensible observations respecting the
superstitions referred to by Burns. The poet, however, evidently
attributed the phenomena to natural causes:--"This propensity to
attribute natural effects to supernatural causes is one of the best
known and least intelligible phenomena of the human mind. We are always
rejecting the evidence of our senses, to tamper with the imaginary
evidence supplied by analogous reasoning upon mere abstract principles.
The good wife never dreamed of referring her alarms to the natural
objects around her. A humming drone, at twilight by the waters, a
rustling in the leaves of the trees about her cottage--if these did not
bespeak the presence of the devil, what the d----l else could they
indicate? Thus our poet proceeds to tell us that beyond the same loch,
he himself had a visible encounter with something LIKE, indeed, to a
_bunch of rushes_, waving and shaking in the wind; and after an
admirable description of the emotions of fear, by which he was
oppressed, he incidentally mentions that the Great Unknown did
certainly, with an abrupt and hasty flight, take away like a drake; but
even the appropriate note of the fluttering fowl never once awakened his
suspicion that it might be the fowl proper and not the foul fiend!"
M. Du Chaillu, in his "Journey to Ashango-land," relates a singular
legend, believed in by the natives of Aviia, respecting a series of
rapids and a singularly picturesque waterfall which he discovered on the
river Ngouyai, and which bears some resemblance to the popular legend
about Wayland Smith and to those already referred to. He says:--"Like
all other remarkable natural objects, the falls of the Ngouyai, have
given rise, in the fertile imaginations of the negroes, to mythical
stories. The legend runs that the main falls are the work of the spirit
Fougamou, who resides there, and who was _in old times_ a mighty forger
of iron; but the rapids above are presided over by Nagoshi, the wife of
Samba, who has spoiled this part of the river in order to prevent people
from ascending and descending. The falls to which the name Samba is
given lie a good day's journey below the Fougamou, but, from the
description of the natives, I concluded they were only rapids like the
Nagoshi above. The Fougamou is the only great fall of water. It takes
its name from the spirit (mbuiri) who is said to have made it, and who
watches it constantly, wandering night and day round the falls. A legend
on this subject was related to us with great animation by our Aviia
guide, to the following effect: In former times people used to go to the
falls, deposit iron and charcoal on the river side and say, 'Oh! mighty
Fougamou, I want this iron to be worked into a knife or hatchet,' (or
whatever implement it might be), and, in the morning, when they went to
the place, they found the weapon finished. One day, however, a man and
his son went with their iron and charcoal, and had the impertinent
curiosity to wait and see how it was done. They hid themselves,--the
father, in the hollow of a tree, and the son, amongst the boughs of
another tree. Fougamou came with his son and began to work, when
suddenly the son said, 'Father, I smell the smell of people!' The father
replied, 'Of course you smell people, for does not the iron and
charcoal come from the hands of people?' So they worked on. But the son
again interrupted his father, repeating the same words, and then
Fougamou looked round and saw the two men. He roared with rage, and, to
punish the father and son, he turned the tree in which the father was
hidden into an ant-hill, and the hiding place of the son into a nest of
black ants. Since then Fougamou has not worked iron for the people any
more."
In another place, Du Chaillu says,--"I was much amused by the story one
of the men related about the dry and wet seasons. The remarkable dryness
of the present season had been talked over a good deal, and it was this
conversation which led to the story. As usual with the African, the two
seasons were personified, _Nchanga_, being the name of the wet, and
_Enomo_ that of the dry season. One day, the story went, Nchanga and
Enomo had a great dispute as to which was the older, and they came at
last to lay a wager on the question, which was to be decided in an
assembly of the people of the air or sky. Nchanga said, 'When I come to
a place rain comes.' Enomo retorted, 'When I make my appearance the
rains goes.' The people of the air all listened, and, when the two
disputants had ceased, they exclaimed, 'Verily, verily, we cannot tell
which is the eldest, you must be both of the same age.'"
CHAPTER XV.
CONCLUSION.
More strange than true. I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact;
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;
That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt;
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination:
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or, in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear.
_Shakspere._
In the preceding chapters the chief object I have had in view has been
to show that many superstitions and legends yet, or recently, familiar
to the people of our northern counties, were, like their congeners in
other portions of Europe, descendants from one common parentage. I have
dealt almost entirely with that species of folk-lore which I think has
been originally communicated _orally_ from one generation to another,
and not so much with that which may be termed the _literary_ fictions of
Europe and the East, except in so far as there is good reason to know
that the latter are built upon the former. Still Oriental scholars
assure us that "many of our best European fictions, as well single
stories as whole collections, may be traced from Europe to Arabia, and
from Arabia to India, and that the _Indian_ form of the story or
collection _almost invariably bears the marks of an earlier origin than
any other form_, and appears to be, if not the original form, at least
the oldest surviving one."[36]
Doubtless many other traditionary observances, now nearly obsolete,
might be traced to a similar origin to that which I have ascribed to
those treated of in this work. Sufficient, however, I believe, has been
done to demonstrate the fact that many of them are of much greater
antiquity than has generally been supposed. A national religion may be
changed in a relatively short period of time, but superstition and
tradition, in some form or other, hold their own amongst the populace
for ages after their original significance has perished.[37] Hallam,
referring to the religious condition of the Britons at the time of the
heptarchy, says "the retention of heathen superstitions was not
incompatible, in that age, with a cordial faith" in Christianity.
The late war in Mexico has afforded a striking modern instance of the
truth of this proposition. The Christianity of the native Mexican
Indians, according to a writer in the _Pall Mull Gazette_ (July, 1867),
"is of a very crude and undeveloped kind, and indeed it is very doubtful
whether in some parts of the country it has ever really eradicated the
old religion. _But it is quite certain that it has not eradicated the
old superstitions._ Just as many Pagan feasts in Southern Italy have
been converted into Christian feasts by mere change of name, so has the
Christianity of the Mexicans been grafted on to their old belief and
superstitions, and although they may not quite have believed that the
arrival of the Emperor Maximilian was really the fulfilment of the long
promised second advent of their ancient god Quetzalcoatle, yet he
nevertheless had a white face and a yellow beard, and came from the West
in a ship, and was of an illustrious descent, and there is no doubt of
the fact that the Mexican Indians received him with open arms, and with
a more or less superstitious veneration, looking to him for the
regeneration of their country and for a release from the dominion of the
Spanish creoles."
The Maories, like several branches of the Aryan race, deified, during
life, some of their own warriors. "Watches and white men also were at
first regarded as deities; the latter," says Sir John Lubbock, "not
perhaps unnaturally, as being armed with thunder and lightning." The
Dyaks of Saráwak regard the late Sir James Brooke as a species of deity.
After explaining the conditions under which they lived previous to his
advent amongst them, and the vast amelioration in the conditions of
their existence attendant upon his rule, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, in
his "Malay Archipelago," says,--
"And the unknown stranger who had done all this for them, and asked for
nothing in return, what could he be? How was it possible for them to
realise his motives? Was it not natural that they should refuse to
believe he was a man? for of pure benevolence combined with great power,
they had had no experience amongst men. They naturally concluded that he
was a superior being, come down upon earth to confer blessings upon the
afflicted. In many villages where he had not been seen, I was asked
strange questions about him. Was he not as old as the mountains? Could
he not bring the dead to life? And they firmly believe that he can give
them good harvests, and make their fruit trees bear an abundant crop."
Historians are now pretty generally satisfied, from the combined
evidences of philology, ethnology, and tradition, that the bulk of the
European nations had a common origin in the East, and that some Asiatic
tribes are descendent from the same original stock. I am not, however,
insensible to the value of the fact that the early action and thought of
all tribes or nations present a certain amount of resemblance, on
account of the similar conditions to which each has been subjected. The
aborigines of Australia, the South Sea Islands, and America, procured
fire by means of an instrument similar to the "chark" of the modern
Hindoos and their Aryan ancestors, but they did not give it the same
name. The modern Jews, of Semitic origin, sacrifice the common fowl on
the eve of the Feast of the Atonement. The belief in the mystical
character of chanticleer is equally shared by the Lancashire and Cornish
peasant, the Norseman, the Welshman, the ancient Roman, the modern
Hindoo, and some of the North-African tribes. Mr. Lapham, in describing
the "Animal Mounds" of Wisconsin, speaks of one carved into the shape of
a great serpent, in Adams County. He says,--"Conforming to the curve of
the hill, and occupying its very summit, is the serpent, its head
resting near the point, and its body winding back for seven hundred
feet, in graceful undulations, terminating in a triple coil at the tail.
The entire length, if extended, would be not less than one thousand
feet.... The outline of the work is clearly and boldly defined.... The
neck of the serpent is stretched out, and slightly curved, and its mouth
is opened wide, as if in the act of swallowing or ejecting an oval
figure, which rests partially within the distended jaws. This oval is
formed by an embankment of earth, without any perceptible opening, four
feet in height, and is perfectly regular in outline, its transverse and
conjugate diameters being one hundred and sixty, and eighty feet,
respectively." This looks, certainly, very like the gigantic Scotch
serpent mound, referred to at page 51 of this work, and the huge worm
hills of Durham and the North of England. Sir John Lubbock has treated
this branch of the subject exhaustively in his recent work on "The
Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man."
The Arabs and other Semitic tribes worshipped the sun as well as the
Aryans. The sun and fire worship, likewise, was found to obtain in more
than one state on the discovery of South America. Many writers have
arrived at the conclusion that "there was communication between the Old
World and America in very remote times." Mr. Baldwin (Pre-historic
Nations, p. 393) contends that "the antiquities of Mexico and Central
America reveal religious symbols, devices, and ideas nearly identical
with those found in all countries of the Old World where Cushite
communities formerly existed. They show us planet worship with its usual
orphic and phallic accompaniments. Humboldt, having travelled in
America, and observed remains of these civilisations, was convinced that
such communications formerly existed. He found evidence of it in the
religious symbols, the architecture, the hieroglyphics, and the social
customs made manifest by the ruins, which he was sure came from the
other side of the ocean; and, in his view, the date of this
communication was older than 'the present division of Asia into Chinese,
Mongols, Hindus,' etc. Humboldt did not observe symbols of phallic
worship, but the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg shows that they were
described by Spanish writers at the time of the Conquest. He points out
that they were prevalent in the countries of Mexico and Central
America, being very abundant at Colhuacan, on the Gulf of California,
and at Panuco. Colhuacan was a flourishing city, and the capital of an
important kingdom; 'there,' he says, 'phallic institutions had existed
from time immemorial.' At Panuco phallic symbols abounded in the temples
and on the public monuments. These, with the serpent devices, the sun
worship, and the remarkable knowledge of astronomy that existed in
connection with them, show a system of religion of which the Abbé is
constrained to say: 'Asia appears to have been the cradle of this
religion, and of the social institutions which it consecrated.'" The
ancient traditions preserved by the inhabitants seem to countenance this
view. They speak of a race of "bearded white men who came across the
ocean from the East."
A writer in a recent number of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ has the
following pertinent remarks on this curious and interesting
subject:--"One fact corroborative of the idea that the Old World, or at
least some of the inhabitants of Asia, were once aware of the existence
of America before its discovery by Columbus, is that many of the Arabian
ulema with whom I have conversed on this subject are fully convinced
that the ancient Arabian geographers knew of America; and, in support of
this opinion, point to passages in old works in which a country to the
west of the Atlantic is spoken of. An Arab gentleman, a friend of mine,
General Hussein Pasha, in a work he has just written on America, called
'En-Nesser-Et Tayir,' quotes from Djeldeki and other old writers to show
this."
This writer favours the view that the Chinese, at a very remote period,
became acquainted with the American continent, _via_ the Pacific Ocean.
Some writers regard the inscription on the celebrated Dighton rock, on
the east bank of the Taunton river, as Phœnician. This, however, has
been disputed. Others regard it as commemorative of an Indian triumph at
some remote period.
Dr. Charles Frederick Winslow, in his recently published work, "Force
and Nature," expresses himself strongly in favour of the truth of the
presumed ancient communication between the Asian and the American
continents. He says:--
"In order to sustain this position, I might, were it admissible, adduce
here, as collateral proof, an important and hitherto unpublished fact,
of an archæological character, in addition to my geographical and
geological observations made upon the coasts and islands of the Pacific
Ocean. The fact is this, brought to my knowledge by an unusually
extensive practice of my profession, that a uniform custom of
_dorsocision_ has existed throughout the Polynesian islands from periods
unknown, and beyond all tradition, embracing alike New Zealand, Esther
Island, Tahiti, the Marquesas, and Hawaii--a rite wholly different from,
but similar in its results to, the Jewish one of circumcision; and that
this has been performed at the eighth or ninth year in all of them, and
transmitted by father to son, with undeviating precision, from
generation to generation. A fact of this character so deeply rooted in
the moral, social, and traditional life of many peoples thus widely
distributed throughout that vast ocean, so remotely separated from each
other, and without intercourse, indicates even more strongly than
colour, caste or language, not only the unity of their progenitors, but
also the wide-spread existence of a single race, the vestiges of which
were left here and there above the waters when the land sank between
America and Asia, and received the older seas into a new basin."
Various hypotheses have been suggested as to the direction in which the
flora of the "Old World," and especially of the _miocene_ division of
the tertiary formations, migrated to America, or _vice versa_. Heer, the
celebrated Swiss naturalist, favours the Atlantic route, and regards
certain important relations between the fauna of the continents of
Europe and America as corroborative, to some extent, at least, of the
truth of the statement of the Egyptian priests to Plato, that there, at
one time, existed a continent named Atlantis, in the midst of the space
now occupied by the Atlantic ocean. Sir Charles Lyell, however, on
geological grounds, dissents from this view, and rather inclines to the
one propounded by Dr. Asa Gray and Mr. Bentham, that the route of the
migration was in the opposite or Pacific direction, "and took a course
four times as long across America and the whole of Asia." Lyell
says,--"It is the enormous depth and width of the Atlantic which makes
us shrink from the hypothesis of a migration of plants, fitted for a
sub-tropical climate in the Upper Miocene period, from America to
Europe, by a direct course from west to east. Can we not escape from
this difficulty by adopting the theory that the forms of vegetation
common to recent America and Miocene Europe, first extended from east to
west across North America and passed thence by Behring's Straits and the
Aleutian Islands to Kamtschatka, and thence by land, placed between the
40th and 60th parallels of latitude where the Kurile Islands and Japan
are now situated, and thence to China, from which they made their way
across Asia to Europe?"
Mr. Consul Plowden, in a report to the Earl of Clarendon, a few years
ago, mentions some Abyssinian superstitions which much resemble others
of Aryan origin. Although the Abyssinians are said to be descended from
the Semitic[38] branch of the human family, it must not be forgotten
that Christianity has prevailed amongst them from a very early period;
and, consequently, sympathetic intercourse must have taken place in the
less remote past between them and some of the offshoots of the Aryan
stock. Mr. Plowden says,--
"The Abyssinians are superstitious; they believe in the efficacy of
amulets; of writings in jargon mixed with Scripture; in the charms of
Mussulmans to control the hail and the rain; in spirits of the forest
and the river; in omens; in fortune-tellers; and in devils that may be
cast out by spells from their human victims, quoting the authority of
the New Testament for their belief--to these they attribute epilepsy and
other incurable diseases. One absurdity has, however, led to the death
of many innocent individuals; all workers in iron, and some others, are
supposed to convert themselves into hyenas, and to prey invisibly on
their enemies, and many have been slaughtered in this belief. This
singular idea, which is universal and tenacious, has its parallel in the
'loup-garou' of France and the 'wehr-wolf' of Germany."
Speaking of the natives of Minahasa, the north-east promontory of the
island Celebes, in the Malayan Archipelago, Mr. Russel Wallace, after
commending their modern qualities, refers to their original condition
when first discovered by Europeans. He says,--
"Their religion was that naturally engendered in the undeveloped human
mind by the contemplation of grand natural phenomena and the luxuriance
of tropical nature. The burning mountain, the torrent and the lake, were
the abode of their deities; and certain trees and birds were supposed to
have especial influence over men's actions and destiny. They held wild
and exciting festivals to propitiate these deities or demons; and
believed that men could be changed by them into animals, either during
life or after death."
These superstitions would themselves suggest some remote connection with
India; and, singularly enough, Mr. Wallace, in his map of the Malay
Archipelago, just includes them within the boundary line which divides
the Hindoo-Malayan from the Austro-Malayan region of this district.
Indeed, as has been before observed, he shows that in the neighbouring
island of Bali, the religion of the Brahmins still obtains, and that
magnificent ruins of their temples still exist in the island of Java.
Therefore it is not improbable some of these now reclaimed savages may
be only degenerate descendants from the original Hindoo-Aryan stock.
There is doubtless much force in Hallam's observation that "similarity
of laws and customs _may often_ be traced to natural causes in the state
of society rather than to imitation." Yet the strong tendency of all
humanity to imitation of every kind, the "toughness of tradition," and
the longevity of superstitious belief, are nevertheless equally powerful
agents in the mental development of humanity, and demand the most
careful consideration and regard, when the nature and character of
progressive civilisation, in any age or country, is subjected to
philosophical analysis.
It will be seen from the preceding chapters, that many traditions and
superstitions appear insensibly to glide into each other. Sometimes two
or more seem, as it were, to overlie one another, or to have become
indeed even more intimately compounded. With regard to superstitions,
this is very apparent in those which relate to witchcraft, were-wolves,
transformations, the furious host, the spectre huntsman, giants, heroes,
tyrant lords, etc. This is parallelled by many traditionary beliefs both
general and local. In whatever part of the country stands a ruined
castle or abbey or other religious establishment, the nearest peasant or
even farmer, will assure an enquirer that it was battered into ruin by
Oliver Cromwell! Here the secretary Cromwell, of Henry the Eighth's
reign, and the renowned Protector of the following century are evidently
amalgamated. Indeed the redoubted Oliver himself seems to have absorbed
all the castle-destroying heroes of the national history, Old Time
included. The Arthur legends appear to have been constructed upon a
somewhat similar principle. At the "pass of the Ribble," near Preston,
the site of Cromwell's victory over the Duke of Hamilton, every human
skull which is dug up or washed by the swollen river from out of its
banks, is believed to pertain to a "Scotch warrior" who fell in that
battle. Scottish armies have crossed the pass on several occasions from
the days of Athelstan to those of the "Young Pretender," but tradition
has fused them nearly all into one.
The sites of ruined churches, abbeys, etc., are believed yet to entomb
the ancient edifices, and superstitious people say that, by applying the
ear to the earth at midnight, on Christmas eve, they can hear the bells
ringing. It is not unlikely, when this practice was a common one, that
the sound of some distant bells might occasionally be feebly conducted
by the earth, and give countenance to this very universal superstition.
The strength of this species of traditionary faith was forcibly
illustrated, a few years ago, at the "Maudlands," Preston. Historical
records and discovered remains, as well as tradition, marked the
locality as the site of a Mediæval Hospital, dedicated to St. Mary
Magdalen. A "square mound," evidently an artificial earthwork, was a
conspicuous object. Learned antiquaries regarded this as of Roman
construction, although no actual remains had been discovered to attest
the truth of the conjecture. Popular superstition, however, declared
that the mound resulted from the pressure of the steeple of the church
of the Hospital, which was entombed beneath it, and that the truth of
this could be attested on any Christmas-Eve by the experiment referred
to. Doubts being entertained as to the Roman character of the work, some
local antiquaries caused excavations to be made in the mound. So
prevalent was this superstition, that, on the discovery of a small brick
chamber, scores of people eagerly visited the spot, and retired fully
convinced they had seen a portion of the steeple of the sunken edifice,
and that its discovery demonstrated the truth of the ancient tradition!
Singularly enough, in this instance, "antiquarianism" and "folk-lore"
proved equally at fault. Remains of pottery, bulbous shaped tobacco pipe
bowls, called by the populace both "fairy pipes" and "Cromwell pipes,"
etc., together with documentary and other evidence, enabled me, in my
"History of Preston and its Environs," to demonstrate that the mound in
question was the most modern structure then on the ground; that it
formed part of the defences of Preston constructed by Colonel Rosworm,
after the capture of the town by the Parliamentary troops under Sir John
Seaton, in 1643; and that the small brick chamber, in all probability,
was the remains of a powder and "match" magazine. However satisfactory
this appears to intelligent historical students and general readers,
still the sunken church and the Christmas-Eve bell-ringing yet finds
favour with some not otherwise ignorant persons. A precisely similar
legend is implicitly believed by many in connection with the Roman
outwork on Mellor Hill, on the line of ancient road from Manchester to
Ribchester.
Ancient castles and monasteries were supposed to have underground means
of intercommunication. One tradition of this class, near Preston,
presents some remarkable features. In my youth I and the public
generally firmly believed that some such work as the celebrated "Thames
tunnel" had, ages ago, been constructed beneath the bed of the Ribble
and its broad valley, to enable the monks at Tulketh to communicate
with the inmates of the priory on the opposite table land at Penwortham.
In the "History of Preston and its Environs," I have endeavoured to sift
out the little truth that may underlie this strange tradition. Finding
good evidence that each of these promontories had been occupied as
outposts or _speculæ_ in connection with the Roman station at the "Pass
of the Ribble," previously referred to, I have suggested that it is not
improbable the results of the rude system of telegraphy then in use
would be sufficient to utterly confound the ignorant peasantry of the
day, who would be unable to account for the rapid communication of
intelligence except by means of a secret underground passage. The monks
from Evesham, on the establishment of their "cell" at Penwortham, might,
from policy, countenance the tradition of their predecessors, especially
in troubled times, on account of the impression of power which such a
belief would naturally engender amongst the more ignorant of the
population. This way of accounting for the transmission of secret
information and even war material is by no means an uncommon one amongst
uneducated people in various parts of the world. In Abyssinia, according
to Mansfield Parkyns, the people firmly believe that the German
missionaries had "in the course of only a few days, perforated a tunnel
all the way (from Adowa) to Massowa, on the coast of the Red Sea, a
distance of above a hundred and fifty miles, whence they were to obtain
large supplies of arms, ammunition, etc."
In the churchyard at Ribchester the remains of a Roman temple dedicated
to Minerva have been discovered. Long before this, however, a singular
tradition was current respecting it. Leland, King Henry the Eighth's
antiquary, after visiting the spot, says:--"Ther is a place wher the
people fable that the _Jues_ had a Temple." Doubtless the edifice
discovered in the early part of the present century was the temple
referred to. In the middle period of Christianity in England, the only
old, or indeed, different religion to their own, known to the mass of
the people, would be the Jewish. Hence the confounding of the Pagan
Romans with their Israelitish successors.
The _Athenæum_ (Feb. 1868) contained the following paragraph, which
affords a marked modern illustration of this tendency to the confusion
of various traditions in the popular mind:--
"SAMSON MOHAMMEDAN.--At Miss Heraud's reading of 'Samson Agonistes,' the
Rev. Henry Allon, who presided, mentioned a fact illustrative of the way
in which tradition deals with ancient legends. As he stood on the site
of the Temple of Gaza, two learned Mussulmans assured Mr. Allon that
Samson was not a Jew but a Mussulman, and that he pulled down the
temple, not on the head of the Philistines, but on that of the assembled
Christians who had persecuted the Mohammedans."
I have before observed that the European languages referred to are _not
asserted to have sprang from the Sanscrit_, but that all, on the
contrary, have a common source. The Vedic hymns, however, are the oldest
preserved specimens of any of these cognate tongues.[39] Considerable
change must have taken place in the southern Aryan speech before the
period when they were written; yet they retain to a great extent,
reliable evidence of the common origin of the languages referred to. Max
Müller is very explicit on this subject. He says,--
"Even in the Veda, where _dyu_ occurs as a masculine, as an active noun,
and discloses the same germs of thought which in Greece and Rome grew
into the name of the supreme god of the firmament, Dyu, the deity, the
lord of heaven, the ancient god of light, never assumes any powerful
mythological vitality, never rises to the rank of a supreme deity. In
the earlier lists of Vedic deities, Dyu is not included, and the real
representative of Jupiter in the Veda is not Dyu, but Indra, a name of
Indian growth, and unknown in any other independent branch of Aryan
language. _Indra_ was another conception of the bright sunny sky, but,
partly because its etymological meaning was obscured, partly through the
more active poetry and worship of certain Rishis, this name gained a
complete ascendancy over that of Dyu, and nearly extinguished the memory
in India of one of the earliest, if not _the_ earliest, name by which
the Aryans endeavoured to express their first conception of the deity.
Originally, however, and this is one of the most important discoveries
which we owe to the study of the Veda--originally _Dyu_ was the bright
heavenly deity in India as well as in Greece."
The early mythology of the Aryans, and doubtless of all other savage
nations, was more or less a species of, perhaps unconscious,
anthropomorphism or a personification of the powers or forces of nature.
This is beautifully illustrated by a superstition yet existent among
the Ojibbeway Indians in North America. North-west of Fort Garry lies
the lake Manitobah, which has recently given its name to the new
province formed out of the Red River region. This name is derived from
the circumstance that a "mysterious voice" is said to be occasionally
heard at night in a small island in its midst. The Indians never
approach it, believing it to be the home of the Manitobah, or the
"Speaking God." The "voice" is said to result, as in the case of
Charybdis, from the beating of the waves upon the rocks and shingle of
the shore. One writer says:--"Along the northern coast of the island
there is a long low cliff of fine grained compact limestone, which,
under the stroke of the hammer, clinks like steel. The waves beating on
the shore at the foot of the cliff cause the fallen fragments to rub
against each other, and to give out a sound resembling the chimes of
distant church bells. This phenomenon occurs when the gale blows from
the north, and then, as the winds subside, low, wailing sounds, like
whispering voices, are heard in the air. Travellers assert that the
effect is very impressive, and they have been awakened at night under
the impression that they were listening to church bells."[40]
The kind of personification referred to would, in the case of primæval
man, have certainly but a very remote affinity to that conscious
artistic personification employed by the cultivated poets and sculptors
of after ages. Mr. G. W. Cox, in his "Mythology of the Aryan Nations,"
presents this distinction in very forcible language. He says,--
"The sun would awaken both mornful and inspiriting ideas, ideas of
victory and defeat, of toil and premature death. He would be the Titan,
strangling the serpents of the night before he drove his chariot up the
sky; and he would also be the being who, worn down by unwilling labour
undergone for men, sinks wearied into the arms of the mother who bore
him in the morning. Other images would not be wanting; the dawn and the
dew and the violet clouds would not be less real and living than the
sun. In his rising from the east he would quit the fair dawn, whom he
should see no more till his labour drew towards its close. And not less
would he love and be loved by the dew and by the morning herself, while
to both his life would be fatal as his fiery car rose higher in the sky.
So would man speak of all other things also; of the thunder and the
earthquake and the storm, not less than of summer and of winter. But it
would be no personification, and still less would it be an allegory or
metaphor. It would be to him a _veritable reality_, which he examined
and analysed as little as he reflected on himself. It would be a
sentiment and a belief, but in no sense a religion."
In other words, primæval savages did not work artistically, but simply
observed, thought, and expressed themselves in the only manner in which
they were able.
Kelly describes the usual course of a myth as "beginning in a figurative
explanation of meteoric facts, it next became a hieratic mystery, and
then descended from the domain of religion to that of magic and popular
story."
I have previously observed that the word "Edda," the title of the work
which records the wild mythical cosmogony of the Scandinavian race, (a
mixture of oriental and northern legend), means "Mother of Poetry."
Language itself is largely made up of figures of speech, or as Jean Paul
Richter says it is a "dictionary of faded metaphors," the original
meaning of which is fully understood but by the philologist. It is not
surprising, therefore, that the unknown should, under certain
conditions, be figuratively described by means of the known, or that
personifications of this class eventuated in the belief in absolute
personal existences, in the minds of doubtless well-meaning, but,
nevertheless, ignorant men. A few verses from H. H. Wilson's translation
of the Vedic hymns will show the nature of this personification:--
"Dyaus (Sky) father, and Prithivi (Earth) kind mother,[41] Agni
(Fire) brother, ye Vasus (Bright ones) have mercy on us."
. . . . . . . .
"How long is it that the dawns have risen? How long will they rise?
"Those mortals who beheld the pristine Ushas dawning have passed
away: to us she is now visible, and they approach who will behold
her in after times.
"Ushas, endowed with truth, who art the sister of Bhava, the sister
of Varuna, be thou hymned first of the gods.
"Unimpeding divine rites, although wearing away the ages of mankind,
the dawn shines the likeness of the mornings that have passed, or
that are to be for ever, the first of those that are to come.
"She shines upon us like a young wife, rousing every living being to
go to his work. The fire had to be kindled by men: she brought light
by striking down darkness.
"She rose up, spreading far and wide, and moving towards every one
she grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant garment. The mother of
the cows, the leader of the dogs, she shone gold-coloured, lovely to
behold.
"She, the fortunate, who brings the eye of the god, who leads the
white and lovely steed (of the sun), the Dawn was seen revealed by
her rays, with brilliant treasures she follows every one.
"Thou, who art a blessing when thou art near, drive far away the
unfriendly; make the pastures wide, give us safety. Remove the
haters, bring treasures, liaise up wealth to the worshipper, thou
mighty Dawn.
"Shine for us with thy best rays, thou bright Dawn, thou who
lengthenest our life, thou the love of all, who givest us wealth in
cows, horses, and chariots."
Max Müller thus further illustrates the process of the transition
referred to:--
"To us it is clear that the story of Zeus descending as a golden rain
into the prison of Danaê was meant for the bright sky delivering the
earth from the bonds of winter, and awaking in her a new life by the
golden showers of spring. Many of the stories that are told about the
love of Zeus for human and half human heroines have a similar
origin.[42] The idea which we express by the phrase, 'King by the grace
of God,' was expressed in ancient language by calling Kings the
descendants of Zeus. This simple and natural conception gave rise to
innumerable local legends. Great families and whole tribes claimed Zeus
for their ancestor; and as it was necessary in each case to supply him
with a wife, the name of the country was naturally chosen to supply the
wanting link in these sacred genealogies. Thus _Æacus_ the famous king
of _Ægina_, was fabled to be the offspring of Zeus. This need not have
meant more than that he was a powerful, wise, and just king. But it soon
came to mean more. Æacus was fabled to have been really the son of Zeus,
and Zeus is represented as carrying off Ægina and making her the mother
of Æacus.... It is said that Zeus in the form of a bull carried off
_Europâ_. This means no more if we translate it back into Sanscrit, than
that the strong rising sun (Vrishan) carries off the wide-shining dawn.
This story is alluded to again and again in the Veda. Now _Minos_, the
ancient King of Crete, required parents; so Zeus and Europâ were
assigned to him."
The fabled ravishment of Leda by Jupiter in the form of a swan is
capable of a like interpretation. Light clouds were called swans, and
Mr. Cox regards a white mist, in this instance, to form an equivalent to
the golden shower of the Danaê legend.
In like manner the myth which fabled that Œdipus married his mother
after murdering his father, is divested of its revolting features. It is
held to imply no more than that the sun destroys the darkness and sinks
at evening into the twilight from whence he sprung.
Max Müller, in his "History of Sanscrit Literature," points out that
similar meanings clearly underlie the Vedic myths. He says:
"It is fabled that Prajâpati, the Lord of Creation, did violence to his
daughter. But what does it mean? Prajâpati, the Lord of Creation, is the
name of the sun; and he is called so because he protects all creatures.
His daughter Ushas is the dawn. And when it is said that he was in love
with her, this only means that, at sunrise, the sun runs after the dawn,
the dawn being at the same time called the daughter of the sun, because
she rises when he approaches. In the same manner it was said that Indra
was the seducer of Ahalyâ, this does not imply that the god Indra
committed such a crime; but Indra means the sun, and Ahalyâ the night;
and as the night is seduced and ruined by the sun of the morning,
therefore is Indra called the paramour of Ahalyâ."
This throws a new and satisfactory light upon what has long been
regarded as a serious blot upon the morals of the ancient Greeks, as
exhibited by the conduct of the most exalted of the deities which figure
in their picturesque and poetic, but certainly not very decorous,
mythological theogony.
Mr. Ruskin, in his lecture on "Light," delivered at Oxford recently,
gives several excellent examples of Greek personifications of this
class. He concludes as follows:--
"Then join with these the Northern legends connected with the air. It
does not matter whether you take Dorus as the son of Apollo or the son
of Helen; he equally symbolises the power of light; while his brother
Æolus, through all his descendants, chiefly in Sisyphus, is confused or
associated with the real god of the winds, and represents to you the
power of the air. And then, as this conception enters into art, you have
the myths of Dædalus, the flight of Icarus, and the story of Phrixus and
Helle, giving you continual associations of the physical air and light,
ending with the power of Athena over Corinth as well as over Athens.
Now, once having the clue, you can work out the sequels for yourselves
better than I can for you; and you will soon find even the earliest or
slightest grotesques of Greek art become full of interest to you. For
nothing is more wonderful than the depth of meaning which nations in
their first days of thought, like children, can attach to the rudest
symbols; and what to us is grotesque or ugly, like a little child's
doll, can speak to them the loveliest things."
We have already seen, in Chapter X., that Lord Bacon regarded the great
mass of the Greek myths as allegories. Another ingenious mode of
interpreting the artistically beautiful mythology of the Greeks is
eloquently expressed by Wordsworth, in his poem, "The Excursion":--
In that fair clime, the lonely Herdsman, stretched
On the soft grass through half a summer day,
With music lulled his indolent repose;
And, in some fit of weariness, if he,
When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear
A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds
Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetched
Even from the blazing chariot of the Sun
A beardless youth who touched a golden lute,
And filled the illumined groves with ravishment.
The mighty Hunter, lifting up his eyes
Towards the crescent Moon, with grateful heart
Called on the lovely Wanderer who bestowed
That timely light to share his joyous sport,
And hence a beaming Goddess with her nymphs
Across the lawn and through the darksome grove
(Not unaccompanied with tuneful notes
By echo multiplied from rock or cave)
Swept in the storm of chase, as moon and stars
Glance rapidly along the clouded heaven
When winds are blowing strong. The traveller slaked
His thirst from rill or gushing fount, and thanked
The Naiad. Sunbeams upon distant hills
Gliding apace, with shadows in their train,
Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed
Into fleet Oreads sporting visibly.
The Zephyrs, fanning, as they passed, their wings,
Lacked not for love fair objects whom they wooed
With gentle whisper. Withered boughs grotesque,
Stripped of their leaves and twigs by hoary age,
From depth of shaggy covert peeping forth
In the low vale, or on steep mountain side;
And sometimes intermixed with stirring horns
Of the live deer, or goat's depending beard;
These were the lurking Satyrs, a wild brood
Of gamesome deities; or Pan himself,
The simple shepherd's awe-inspiring god.
This figurative or poetical element in the classical mythology would,
doubtless, be understood by the more cultured sections of the ancient
populations of the later period, at least to a certain extent. For
instance; Ovid distinctly states that under the name Vesta direct
reference is made to fire. Socrates, too, understood nothing more than
the north wind in the name Boreas. I have previously referred to the
statement of Diodorus Siculus, that although the mythographers spoke of
Prometheus stealing fire from heaven, they merely intended to imply that
he was the inventor of the "chark," or fire-producing instrument. Some,
if not all, of the earlier Greek writers, however, including Homer and
Hesiod, appear, like the mass of the populace, to have treated their
mythic personages as actual concrete beings.
Farrer, in his "Origin of Language," forcibly illustrates the figurative
character of much of our ordinary every-day speech. He says,--"The
continual metaphors by which we compare our thoughts and emotions to the
changes of the outer world--sadness to a cloudy sky, calm to the silvery
rays of the moonlight, anger to waves agitated by the wind--are not, as
Schelling observed, a mere play of the imagination, but are an
expression, in two different languages, of the same thought of the
Creator, and one serves to interpret the other. 'Nature is visible
spirit, spirit invisible nature.'"
Shakspere is supposed to have founded some portions of his Tempest on a
narrative of the shipwreck of Sir John Somers on one of the Bermuda
islands. These islands were then uninhabited by man, and generally
believed to be "enchanted." Old Stowe, in his "Annals," speaking of this
shipwreck, among other things, says these islands "were, of all nations,
said and supposed to be enchanted and inhabited with witches and
devills, which grow by reason of accustomed monstrous thunder, storms,
and tempests." One of Shakspere's commentators, referring to this
passage, says,--"This account by old Stowe of the elemental growth and
generation of the hags and imps and devils and abortions of the island,
is fearfully fine. Caliban and Sycorax and Setebos, might well be
imagined to have first glared into life through the long fermenting
incantation of 'accustomed monstrous thunder.'" Ruskin says "the whole
play of the Tempest is an allegorical representation of the powers of
true, and, therefore, spiritual, liberty, as opposed to true, and,
therefore, carnal and brutal, slavery. There is not a sentence nor a
rhyme sung or uttered by Ariel or Caliban throughout the play which has
not this under meaning."
Herbert Spencer has truly said, "We too often forget that not only is
there 'a soul of goodness in things evil,' but very generally also, a
soul of truth in things erroneous."
Thus, these despised and contemned traditionary superstitions of our
progenitors are found, nevertheless, to enshrine much valuable material,
by a careful study of which we may obtain a deeper insight into some of
the more subtle or hidden features of the human soul, the nature and
progress of man's intellectual growth, of the origin and development of
language as a medium of mental intercommunion, and of the true natural
basis on which rest some of the greatest triumphs of plastic and poetic
art that have astonished, delighted, and instructed mankind for
countless generations.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] Penny Cyclop., article Syntipas.--Syntipas is the "title of a
collection of stories written in Greek, and bearing the name of Michael
Andreopulos, but the collection is evidently translated from an Oriental
work.... Many of the stories of Syntipas are found in an Arabic
manuscript of the 'Arabian Nights,' in the British Museum. The whole
style of the stories points evidently to an Indian origin. The same may
be said of the collection named Pancha Tantra, the original of the
Fables of Pilpay, and some other Indian stories."
[37] Sir John Lubbock, in his "Pre-historic Times," says,--"Nor will
tradition supply the place of history. At best it is untrustworthy and
short-lived. Thus in 1770 the New Zealanders had no recollection of
Tasman's visit. Yet this took place in 1643, less than 130 years before,
and must have been to them an event of the greatest possible importance
and interest. In the same way the North American Indians soon lost all
tradition of De Soto's expedition, although 'by its striking incidents
it was so well suited to impress the Indian mind.'" This is no doubt
true in relation to many matters which leave behind no religious or
superstitious element. When this, however, is superadded, tradition
becomes, as Dasent expresses it, remarkable for its toughness, or
enduring vitality. Other authorities say, however, that on Cook's
arrival, the tradition of Tasman's visit was preserved amongst the
natives of the Tonga or Friendly Islands.
[38] This is denied, however, as we have already seen, by Mr. Baldwin,
who traces the ancient Ethiopians, as well as the Egyptians and
Phœnicians, from the Cushites of Arabia.
[39] In Chapter I. I have referred to the reported discovery by the
French _savan_, M. Lejean, of a spoken language between Kashmir and
Afghanistan containing older idioms than Sanscrit, and nearer in
affinity to the cognate European tongues. At a recent meeting of the
Philological Society, Professor Goldstücker mentioned, as a curious
fact, that, in old Sanscrit musical manuscripts, the word _laya_ occurs
with the same meaning as in French and English. The word _laya_ has not
yet found its way into any Sanscrit glossary.
[40] How charmingly this is illustrated by the childish faith with which
we have all placed large whelk or other univalve shells to the ear, and,
after listening with wonder for a time at the musical murmurings there
heard, exclaimed that the tide was then flowing landward. Wordsworth
refers to this in the following beautiful lines:--
... I've seen
A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell,
To which, in silence hush'd, his very soul
Listened intently; for murmuring from within
Were heard sonorous cadences, whereby,
To his belief, the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native sea.
[41] May not this Prithivi be the forerunner of the Greek Dêmetêr and
the Roman Ceres, as well as of the harvest queen, or "kern-baby," and
the "mell-doll" of the autumnal festivals of the North of England?
[42] How beautifully and how truly has Eliza Cook expressed this
sentiment, without any reference to, or even knowledge of, the
philologist's interpretation of the Grecian or Aryan myth, in one
stanza, in her poem entitled "A Thing of Beauty is a Joy for ever":--
Oh! "beautiful for ever" is the sheen
Of April's sun, that, with a bridegroom's smile,
Nestles in nature's breast of balmy green;
With larks to sing a marriage song, the while
The "bridal of the earth and sky" is seen
Before the priest that bars all greed and guile;
With blissful promise there shall soon be born
Fair offspring in red grapes and yellow corn.
INDEX.
Abbeys, ruined, 290.
Abracadabra, 255.
Abury, 8.
Adonis, 160.
Æsir gods, the, 67, 169, 207.
Æsculapius (Asklêpios), 51, 135, 154.
Agni, 14, 16.
Ahi, the Dragon, 14, 41, 44, 47, 51.
Alchemy, 50.
Alisaunder, Kyng, romance, 47.
Allectricium, a precious stone, 135.
Allegorical theory of Greek Myths, 211, 298.
Allhalloween, 29.
Amara, lake, 23.
America, its ancient connection with Asia, 286.
Apollo, 241, 249, 298.
Apple howling, 66.
Arthur, King, 50, 161, et seq., 211, et seq., 241, 248, 272.
Aryan races, 2, 112, 162, 283, 289.
Ash trees, 68, 117, 150, 253, et seq.
Ashton black lad, 187, et seq.
Asuras, 23, 44.
Asvattha, 68, 257.
Asvins, 25.
Athenê, 245, 298.
Athenian ghost, 140.
Aubépine, see thorns.
Avalun, island of, 165.
Baal, Bel, 6, 10, 28, 31, 38, et seq., 57, 67, 83.
Baalbec, 8.
Baker's daughter, the, 235.
Baldr, 10, 67, 149, 159.
Ball-playing, Easter, 72.
Bargaist, 127.
Bean-geese, 182.
Bean-stalk, 68.
Beans, 68, 79, 225.
Bears, 231.
Beauty and the Beast, 224.
Belatucadrus, 11, 16.
Belisama, 6, 12, 15, 18.
Beltain fires, 31, 34, 83.
Beltane-day, 38.
Beowulf, 45, et seq., 213, 249.
Besoms, 96, 101, 116.
Bhrigus, 14.
Bible, divination by, 262.
Birds, lightning, 224, 235, 238, 242, et seq.
Birds, sacred and ominous, 67, 101, 132, 136, 157, 237, 242, et seq.
Black dog, see hound.
Black lad, Ashton, 187, et seq.
Blossoming staffs, 91.
Bluebeard, 195.
Boadicea's hare, 114.
Boars, 69, 111, 159, 163, 183, 255.
Boggart Ho' Clough, 128, 147, 151.
Boggarts, 124, et seq., 138, 184.
Bones, huge fossil, 110.
Bonfires, 30, 33, 40.
Book of Sports, 88.
Bottomless pools, 189, et seq, 213.
Boulders, erratic, 162, 221.
Boundary perambulation, 186.
Braggat Sunday, 78.
Brahmin temples at Java, etc., 290.
Bramham rocks, Yorkshire, 34, 223.
Brewing storms, 14, 17, 107, 114, 132, 156, et seq.
Brigantes, 5, 12.
Briony, 256.
Bronze age, 10, 44.
Broom, see besoms.
Brownies, 126.
Brutus and his Trojans, 5, 23, 197.
Buddhism, 4.
Bugbear, 128.
Bull or Bovine worship, 84, 112.
Buns, see cross-buns and cakes.
Bush (Inn sign), 117.
Cabalistic art, 119.
Cakes, 75, 77.
Calendar, the, 56.
Candles, Christmas and Easter, 55, 60, 71.
Carling Sunday, 78.
Carols, Christmas, 56.
Carr gulds, 186.
Castles, ruined, 290.
Cat, the white, 224.
Cats, 96, 114, 164, 224, 232, 233.
Cauldrons, 96, 107.
Cavalcade of the dead, 176.
Caverned heroes, 164, et seq.
Chark, 24, 35, 91, 208, 257, 285.
Charon, 15, 179.
Chasse Maccabei, 157.
Cheetham's, George, boggart, 128.
Cheshire May games, 90.
Chivalry, origin of, 221.
Chives, 272.
Christmas observances and superstitions, 53, et seq., 134, 144, 290.
Church-builders, goblin, 127.
Churches, sunken, 290.
Cinderella, 210.
Cloud-land, 68, 72.
Cloud-maidens, 18, 47, 97.
Cloud-water, 17, 110.
Coach, black, legend, 171, 192.
Coccium, 15.
Cocidius, 14.
Cockatrice, 136.
Cocks and hens, see fowls, barn door.
Colt-hole at Preston, 186.
Comets, 49.
Coral, 255.
Corpse candles, 266.
Country Justice in 1618, 105.
Cow-path, see milky-way.
Cows, dun, etc., 110, 112, 182.
Cows, heavenly, 47, 182.
Crickets, 274.
Crocodiles, 235.
Cromwell's castle battering, 290.
Cross-buns and crosses, 73, 75, 262.
Crows, 248.
Cuckoo, 235, 237, 245, et seq.
Cudgel, magic, 161.
Cuerdale hoard, 252.
Cushites, 6, 10, 203, 286, 289.
Cyclopean cities, etc., 203.
Cyclops, 203, 209.
Cymri, 13.
Darvell Gatheron, 37.
Davenport Brothers, 129.
Dawn, the, 47, 95, 111.
Dead, food for the, 61.
Deæ Matres, 107.
Dee, river, 21.
Demon pigs, 163.
Deva, 21, 44, 298.
Devil, 21, 97, 100, 130, 137, 144, 163, 178, 181, 190, 194, 206, 278,
289.
Dew, 94.
Diamonds, male and female, 94.
Divination, 30, 64, 91, 134, 155, see wish-rod, 218, 252, et seq.,
269, et seq.
Dogs, 130, 171, et seq., 240, 244.
Dorsocision, 288.
Dosmery pool, 189.
Dowzing rod, 263.
Dragon slayers, 43.
Dragons, 40, et seq., 80.
Druids, 6, 11, 29, 34, 67, 98, 221, 224, 246.
Dwarfs, 130, 139, 211, 222.
Eagles, 235, 238.
Easter superstitions and ceremonies, 70, et seq.
Eden, river, 18.
Egg, the, a sun-type, 71, 161.
Eggs, Easter, 71, 73, 114.
Elephants, fossil, 204.
Elves, 19, 25, 184.
Eôs, see dawn.
Equinox, vernal, 83.
Erratic boulders, 162, 221.
Evil, see king's evil.
Fairies, 92, 107, 124, et seq., 143.
Falcons, 257.
Familiar spirit, transfer of, 123.
Fates, the, 97.
Feathers, cock and pigeon, 138.
Fern-seed, 143, et seq., 258.
Fetiches, 240, 259.
Fire, need, 24, 36, 71.
Fire-worship, 9, 16, 28, 38, et seq., 267, 285.
Floralia, flowers, and well-dressing, 74, 83, 87, 93, 122, 275.
Fortune telling, 119.
Fossil bones, gigantic, 204.
Fowls, barn-door, 132, et seq., 253, 285.
Freyja, 19, 67, 113, 115, 149, 177.
Friday, Good, 75, 101.
Frost giants, 19, 26, 169, 231.
Furious host, 153, et seq.
Gabriel Ratchets, 153, 181.
Gaels, 5, 13.
Gallows, 160, 256.
Garland, the, 44, 87.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 5, 22.
Gertrude's bird, 236.
Ghosts, 92, 130, 134, 140, 151, 171, 179.
Giants, 17, 111, 162, 186, 197, et seq., 290.
Gipsies, 118.
Gjallar bridge, and horn, 166, 182.
Glastonbury thorn, 91.
Gnostics, 43, 116.
Goblin church builders, 163.
Gogmagog, 199, 208.
Goodfellow, Robin, variations of, 124, 138.
Gorillas, 198, 239, 259.
Greenteeth, Jenny, 279.
Grendel, 46, 213.
Gunpowder Plot, 32.
Guy of Warwick, 110.
Hakelberg, 156, 162, 164.
Halloween, 30, 38.
Halter, magic, 233.
Hares, 96, 113, 228, 243.
Hart, white, 154, 177.
Harvest blaster, 41, 48.
Havelock the Dane, lay of, 77.
Hecate, 109, 115.
Hel or Hela, 177, et seq., 240.
Helmwind, the, 166.
Heorot (Hartlepool), 45, 191.
Heriot, 182, 194.
Heroes, caverned, 164, et seq.
Hobgoblin, 128.
Hopkins, witchfinder, 105.
Horseshoes, 38, 255.
Hound, Odin's, and the headless, 171, et seq., 192.
Howling dog, see hound.
Huli, Indian festival, 58, 85.
Humber, river, 24.
Huntsman, Spectre, 153, et seq., 290.
Idunn, the goddess of youth, 19.
Indra, 8, 16, 22, 41, 45, 153, et seq., 222, 298.
Invisibility, 80, 143, et seq.
Iron forgers, mythic, 281.
Ituna Estuarium, 18.
Jack and the Bean-stalk, 68, 71.
Jack, the Giant-killer, 210, et seq.
Jackdaws, 248.
Jew, Wandering, 157, et seq., 237.
Jewish temple at Ribchester, 292.
Kelpies, water, 278, 280.
King's evil, touching for, 81.
Kings, divine right of, 8, 81.
Kjökkenmöddings, 243.
Kuyava, the harvest spoiler, 41.
Lady-bird, 250.
Lake dwellings, 114, 276.
Lakes, sacred and medicinal, 276, et seq.
Lambton worm, 44.
Lent-Mid, Sunday, 76.
Lifting of women at Easter, 74.
Lituus, or Augur's staff, 261.
Lizards, huge fossil, 52.
Luck of Eden Hall, 19.
Lykanthropy, 240.
Magpies, 248, 250.
Maidens, imprisoned, 47.
Mandrakes, 144, 255.
Mare's nest, 114.
Marriage, 36, 67, 75, 91, 146.
Maruts, 19, 153, 176, 184, 188, 240.
May-day superstitions and ceremonies, 74, 83, et seq., 97, 113.
Mead, 17, 260.
Medicines, 50, 68, 80, 94, 102, 112, 136, 271, et seq.
Merlin, 48.
Mermaids, 231.
Mersey, river, 25.
Metempsychosis, 224, et seq.
Midsummer fires, 38.
Milesians, 13.
Milk, red cow's, 111.
Milky-way, 182, 238.
Mimosa catechu, 257.
Miocene flora, migration of, 288.
Mistletoe, 67, 149, 255.
Mithras, 9, 16, 43.
Moa, remains of, 52.
Monkey tribes, 197.
Monsters, see dragons and giants.
Moon and Sun, African notions of, 32.
Morris dancing, 88.
Mother goddesses, 107.
Mothering Sunday, 76.
Mysteries, moralities, or miracle plays, 72, 91.
Myths, growth of, 26, 98, 114, 159, 165, 176, 183, 209, 298, et seq.
Nativity, time of the, 55.
Need-fire, see fire.
New Year, 56, et seq.
New Year's day superstitions, 62.
New Year's gifts, 58.
Nickers, "Old Nick," 46, 73, 194, 208, 278.
Nightmare, 184, 233.
November fires, 32.
Oak, the, 67, 75.
Obolus, 179, 181.
Odin, 8, 14, 16, 19, 46, 75, 155, et seq., 279.
Ogres, 206, 222.
Oguisi (African spirit), 35, 169, 239.
Orion, 154.
Oromasdes, 9, 16.
Orpheus, 184.
Osmunda regalis, 149.
Owls, 193, 235, 243.
Pace-egging, 73.
Palm Sunday, 78.
Pani, 47, 220.
Pantomimes, 54.
Peas, 68, 78.
Pennygent, mountain, 18.
Personifications, mythical, 16, et seq., 183, 209, 298.
Phallic worship and emblems, 20, 36, 75, 83, 88, 92, 216, 262, 286.
Phœnicians, 6, 203.
Picumnus, 249.
Pilumnus, 249.
Pitris, or fathers, 139, 240.
Plague stones, 213.
Plants, lightning, 67, 69, 80, 144, et seq., 252, et seq.
Plovers, 237.
Poison, ordeal by, 122.
Polyphêmos, 210.
Predictions, or Prophecy, 49, 50, 65, 119, 245, 248.
Prometheus (Pramathas) 35, 249.
Puck, 124, et seq., 225.
Pyanots, 248.
Pythagoras, 79, 225.
Quetzalcoatle, Mexican god, 285.
Rain, 17, 23, 26.
Râkshasas (demons), 206.
Ramayana, 197.
Rats, 250.
Ravens, 165, 168, 247, et seq.
"Raw head and bloody bones," 131.
Red thread, berries, etc., 110, 112, 138.
Ribble, the, 6, 15, 18.
Ribhus, 25, 66, 184, 188.
Riding Hood, Little Red, 224, 241.
Rings, fairy, 141.
River worship, 18, 275, et seq.
Robin, 237, 242.
Roby's traditions, 128.
Rods, divining, etc., 91, 155, 252, et seq.
Round table, see table, round.
Rowan, see ash trees.
Rudra, 153, 247.
Rush-bearing, 71, 87.
Sailors' superstitions, 115, 116, 250.
St. John's eve, 39, 144.
St. John's-wort superstitions, 143, et seq.
Salt, 181.
Samson, a Mohammedan, 292.
Sangreal, 20, 217, 219.
Sanscrit, 3, 5, 293.
Seals, 231.
Seasons, wet and dry, 68, 282.
Secret passages, 290.
Semitic races, 2, 11, 112, 289.
Serpents, 24, 41, 45, 51, 286.
Sesha, serpent, 23, 44.
Setantii, 5, 14, 23.
Setantiorum, Portus, 10, 23.
Seven Whistlers, see whistlers.
Shere Thursday, 80.
Sieves, 96, 108.
Simnels, 76, et seq.
Skriker, 173, 175.
Solar myths, 43, 98, 208, 211.
Soma, 16, 18, 23, 31, 42, 44, 68, 108, 117, 257.
Soul bringers, 243, 249.
Souls, damned, wandering or unquiet, 158, 170, 179, 231.
Speaking god at Manitobah, 294.
Spectre huntsman, see huntsman.
Spectre-hound, see hound.
Spiritualism and Spirit-rapping, 96, 129, 131.
Springwort, see St. John's-wort.
Stone weapons, 10, 43, 162.
Stonehenge, 6.
Stork, 237, 242.
Storm brewing, 14, 17, 107, 132, 156, et seq.
Style, old and new, 58, 65.
Sun-dancing, 70, 83.
Sun-worship, 8, 28, 32, et seq., 57, 70, see Fire-worship.
Swallows, 243, 247.
Swan maidens, 19, 230.
Swords and spears, mythical, 161.
Table, round, 214, et seq., 262.
Taliesin, Romance of, 227.
Tarquin's castle at Manchester, 168, 213.
Teanla fires, 31, 34.
Templars, Knights, 116.
Thor, 16, 26, 57, 64, 75, 80, 92, 107, 150, 160, 242, 262.
Thorns, sacred, 69, 72, 86, 91, 258.
Three, magic number, 255, 273.
Thunder, Anglo-Saxon notions of, 42, 49.
Thunderstorms 49, 67, 156, et seq.
Tom Thumb, 222.
Torchlight processions, 34, 39.
Transmigration, 113, 222, 224, et seq., 289.
Trash, dog-fiend, 173.
Treasures, hidden or buried, 41, 46, 195, 252, 262.
Trees, sacred or lightning, 67, 252, 259.
Tregeagle, 187, et seq., 210.
Trident, 255, 257, 262.
Trimürtti or Triad, 16, 273.
Trolls, see giants.
Tyrant lord or magistrate, 187, et seq., 222, 290.
Underground passages, 291.
Urien, the Arthur of the North of England, 217.
Ushas, see dawn.
Vampires, 232.
Varuna, 14, 22, 26.
Vedas and Vedic literature, 3, 16, 295.
Vishnu, 41, 222.
Vritra, 14, 22, 41, 47, 161.
Wandering Jew, 157, et seq.
Wash, the, 26.
Wassail bowl, 60.
Wells and water, superstitions respecting, 80, 87, 267, et seq.
Were-wolves, 224, et seq., 289.
Whales' bones, 110, 111.
Wheel, sun type, 36, 40, 57.
Whinney moor, a soul path, 180.
Whistlers, seven, 157, 181, 237, 248.
White doe, 154, 237.
Whitsun ales, 88.
Wild huntsman, 19, 69, 153, 187, et seq.
Will-o'-whisp, 175.
Wish-rod, 91, 155, 252, et seq.
Wishtness, 155, 192.
Witchcraft, 38, 45, 73, 91, 96, et seq., 126, 133, 184, 232, et seq.,
255, 261, 274.
Woodpecker, 235, 236, 242, 248, et seq.
Wren, 237, 246.
Yggdrasil, or cloud tree, 68.
Yule tide and yule logs, 55, et seq., 85.
Zwergs, 80, 139.
[Decoration]
A. Ireland and Co., Printers, Manchester.
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