Curiosities of Superstition Part 26

No sort of reason that we can imagine, can be found for this belief; and in this case the idea is a complex one.

"The notion of a hiccough being an indication that some one is thinking of the person affected, is equally common in Europe and in India.

"The same may be said of the superst.i.tion regarding an itching of the palm of the hand; and further the idea that the palm should be rubbed against something to make the event the more sure, prevails both in India and in England. In England it should be 'rubbed against wood,' in India on the forehead."[67]

We supply but one more ill.u.s.tration, and that shall be in folk lore; a nursery story which presents virtually the same features in the East as in the West. The following is the Hindu parallel to the old Saxon nursery tale of "The Woman that found a Silver Penny." The coincidence will be seen to be complete.

"Once upon a time, a little bird, on its way through the woods, picked up a pea, and took it to the _barbhunja_ to be split; but, as ill luck would have it, one half of it stuck fast in the mill-handle, and the _barbhunja_ being unable to get it out, the little bird went off to the carpenter, and said, 'Carpenter, carpenter, come and cut the mill-handle; my pea is in the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?' 'Be off,' said the carpenter, 'is it likely I shall come and cut the mill-handle for the sake of a single pea?'

"Then the little bird went to the king, and said, 'King, king, chide the carpenter; the carpenter won't cut the mill-handle; my pea has stuck in the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?' 'Be off with you,' said the king, 'do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to chide the carpenter?'

"Then the little bird went to the queen, and said, 'Queen, queen, speak to the king; the king won't chide the carpenter; the carpenter won't cut the mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?' But the queen said, 'Be off with you, do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to talk to the king?'

"Then the little bird went to the snake, and said, 'Snake, snake, bite the queen; the queen won't talk to the king; the king won't chide the carpenter; the carpenter won't cut the mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?' But the snake said, 'Be off with you, do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to bite the queen?'

"Then the little bird went to the stick, and said, 'Stick, stick, beat the snake; snake won't bite queen; queen won't talk to king; king won't chide carpenter; carpenter won't cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?' But the stick said, 'Be off with you, do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to beat the snake?'

"Then the little bird went to the fire, and said, 'Fire, fire, burn stick; stick won't beat snake; snake won't bite queen; queen won't talk to king; king won't chide carpenter; carpenter won't cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?' But the fire said, 'Be off with you, do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to burn the stick?'

"Then the little bird went to the sea, and said, 'Sea, sea, quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat snake; snake won't bite queen; queen won't talk to king; king won't chide carpenter; carpenter won't cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?' But the sea said, 'Be off with you, do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to quench the fire?'

"Then the little bird went to the elephant, and said, 'Elephant, elephant, dry up the sea; sea won't quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat snake; snake won't bite queen; queen won't talk to king; king won't chide carpenter; carpenter won't cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?' But the elephant said, 'Be off with you, to dry up the sea would take the whole host of elephants; do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to a.s.semble all of my kith and kin?'

"Then the bird went to the _bhaunr_, (a tangled creeping plant,) and said, '_Bhaunr_, _bhaunr_, snare the elephant; elephant won't drink up sea; sea won't quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat snake; snake won't bite queen; queen won't talk to king; king won't chide carpenter; carpenter won't cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?' But the _bhaunr_ said, 'Be off with you, do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to snare the elephant?'

"Then the bird went to the mouse, and said, 'Mouse, mouse, cut _bhaunr_; _bhaunr_ won't snare elephant; elephant won't drink up sea; sea won't quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat snake; snake won't bite queen; queen won't talk to king; king won't chide carpenter; carpenter won't cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?' But the mouse said, 'Be off with you, do you think that for the sake of a single pea I am going to cut the _bhaunr_?'

"Then the bird went to the cat, and said, 'Cat, cat, eat mouse; mouse won't cut _bhaunr_; _bhaunr_ won't snare elephant; elephant won't drink up sea; sea won't quench fire; fire won't burn stick; stick won't beat snake; snake won't bite queen; queen won't talk to king; king won't chide carpenter; carpenter won't cut mill-handle; my pea is in the socket of the mill-handle; what shall I eat, what shall I drink, and what shall I take to foreign countries?' And the cat said, 'By all means; the mouse is my natural prey, why should I not eat it?'

"So the cat went to eat the mouse; and the mouse went to cut the _bhaunr_, saying,--

'Hamko khao, a o, mat koi, Ham bhaunr ko katat loi.'

'Oh, oh, eat, oh! eat me no one, I will take and cut the _bhaunr_.' And the _bhaunr_ went to snare the elephant, saying, 'Oh, cut, oh! cut me no one, I'll take and snare the elephant.' And so on with each one, till it came to the carpenter, who extracted the pea, and the bird took it, and went away rejoicing."

The close resemblance between this fable and the English one of "The Silver Penny," attests a common origin. For it cannot be supposed that either was conveyed by means of oral communication from one country to the other; and the only feasible conclusion seems to be that they are different versions of a nursery tale which belonged to our common Aryan forefathers. There can be no doubt as to its antiquity.[68]

Among the earlier superst.i.tions of Scotland was a belief in the efficacy of charms, or metrical incantations; a belief prevailing in almost every country and period, and indirectly attesting man's strong inward conviction of the existence of another world. That communications could be maintained with the unseen creatures that live in the air, and "the ooze;"

above, beneath, and around us; that they could be made to a.s.sume a bodily form and presence; that storms could be raised or dispelled, evil prevented, secrets discovered, diseases cured, love engendered,--and that all this was possible by the utterance of certain words arranged in metrical form, though generally perfectly meaningless, was never doubted.

Many of those used in Scotland evidently had their origin in the reputed efficacy of verses among the ancients; and being of an early date, they are often "intermixed with the formula of the Roman Catholic ritual." Thus we read that one Elspeth Reoch (in 1616) had been supernaturally instructed to cure distempers by resting on her right knee while pulling a certain herb "betwixt her midfinger and thumb, and saying of, _In nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti_." An old and popular charm for curing cattle (1607), is given by Dalyell as follows:--[69]

"I charge thee for arrow shot, For deer shot, for womb shot, For eye shot, for tongue shot, For liver shot, for lung shot, For heart shot,--all the most: In the Name of the FATHER, the SON, and HOLY GHOST.

To wind out of flesh and bone, Into oak and stone: In the Name of the FATHER, the SON, and HOLY GHOST.

Amen."

Sometimes these invocations were accompanied by the administration of medicinal herbs which had been gathered before sunrise. A woman accused of witchcraft, in 1588, declared that she saw "the guid nychtbours makand thair sawis with pains and fyres, and gadderit thair herbis before the sone rysing as sche did." Among the various remedies prescribed for "the trembling fever," or ague, by Katharine Oswald, one related to plucking up a nettle by the root, three successive mornings, before sunrise. A favourite time for this herb-gathering rite was Midsummer; a relic of the old Pagan superst.i.tion connected with the sun's position in the Zodiac.

The metrical charm then made use of was popular also in England,--

"Haile be thou, holie hearte, Growing on the ground; All in the Mount Calvarie First wast thou found.

Thou art good for manie a sore, And healest manie a wound; In the Name of Sweet JESUS, I take thee from the ground."

"Bleeding at the touch," has been accepted in several countries as a revelation of guilt. A man suspected of murder was brought to the side of the murdered man's body, and forced to touch it; if the suspicions were just, blood immediately oozed from the wound, or at the mouth, or nose.

Even at the man's approach this sign of crime would appear. It is easy to see how precarious and dangerous a test was this; how readily it might release the guilty, and betray the innocent. Naturally therefore it was not accepted without reluctance. A man and his sister had quarrelled; he died suddenly, and his body was found in his own house, naked, and with a wound on the face, but bloodless. "Although many of the neighbours in the town came into the house to see the dead corpse, yet she, the sister, never offered to come, howbeit her dwelling was next door, nor had she so much as any seeming grief for his death. But the minister and bailiffs of the town taking great suspicion of her in respect of her carriage, commanded that she should be brought in. But when she came, she came trembling all the way to the house; she refused to come nigh to the corpse, or to touch, saying, that she never touched a dead corpse in her life. But being earnestly entreated by the minister and bailiffs, and her brother's friends, who was killed, that she would but touch the corpse softly, she granted to do it. But before she did it, the sun shining in at the house, she expressed herself thus: 'Humbly desiring, as the LORD made the sun to shine and give light into that house, that also He would give light in discovering that murder.' And with these words, she touching the wound of the dead man very softly, it being white and clean, without any spot of blood or the like, yet immediately, while her finger was upon it, the blood rushed out of it, to the great admiration of all the beholders, who took it as one discovery of the murder, according to her own prayer."

It will seem astonishing to readers of the present day that a poor creature's life could be taken away on such fanciful and uncertain evidence.

We read that a Sir James Standsfield was found lying dead in a stream. His body was interred precipitately. Two days afterwards it was exhumed and partially dissected, the neck in particular being laid open, in order to ascertain the cause of death. After being well cleansed, blood burst from that side supported by his son Philip, on returning the body to the coffin for re-interment--not an unlikely result from the straining of the incisions--and it deeply stained his hand. He was arraigned, on this slight ground, for parricide; and in the course of the trial it was gravely argued that it was the will of Providence to disclose by this peculiar incident a secret crime.

The preservation of health and the prolongation of life are necessarily objects of interest to all mankind, and it was natural enough that around them should flourish a rank growth of superst.i.tions.

To ailing or diseased persons all kinds of potions, pills, and powders were administered in the past as they are in the present; but whereas we are now content with the mystic characters endorsed on his formula by the physician, our ancestors were not satisfied unless certain mystical words, numbers, or ceremonies accompanied them. The sign of the cross was in constant requisition; or the medicine was to be taken according to mystical numbers--thrice or nine times, as the case might be. For hooping-cough was prescribed a draught from the horn of a living ox, nine times repeated. The patient was also put "nine several times" in the miller's hopper.

The importance ascribed to the figure of a circle is probably a relic of the influence of the old sun-worship. Consumptive invalids, or children suffering from hectic fever, were thrice pa.s.sed through a circular wreath of woodbine, cut during the increase of the March moon, and let down over the body from head to foot. We read of a sorceress who healed sundry women by "taking a garland of green woodbine, and causing the patient to pa.s.s thrice through it." Afterwards, the garland was cut in nine pieces, which were cast into the fire--generally an indispensable particular in ceremonies of this kind. Another pa.s.sed her patient through a heap of green yarn, which the nurse shook, and then divided it into nine pieces, which were buried in the lands of three owners. A certain Thomas Grieve directed a patient to pa.s.s thrice through a heap of yarn, which he duly burned. He also cured the wife of a Michael Glanis by having a hole broken on the north side of the chimney, and putting a hoop of yarn thrice through it, and taking it back at the door; and thereafter compelling the patient to go nine times through the said hoop of yarn.

White of Selborne tells us of a custom, prevalent in his time in the south of England, of stripping feeble and diseased children, and transmitting them head foremost through an artificial cleft in a young tree, the several parts of which were held forcibly asunder. The wound was then bound up carefully, and it was expected that the child would recover as the tree healed. If the cleft did not unite, the remedy proved abortive; and if the tree were cut down, the patient relapsed or died.

Borlase speaks of a similar custom in Cornwall, except that a perforated stone was used instead of a cleft tree.

In Persia, according to Alexander, pa.s.sage through a long fissure or crevice in a rock, by crawling on hands and knees, is employed as a test of legitimate birth. And in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, to pa.s.s between the pillars supporting an altar and the neighbouring wall, was practised as a like test. It has been suggested, as the meaning of these various transmissions through cleft, aperture, skein of yarn, and garland, that they are symbolical of regeneration; a second birth, whereby a living soul is cleansed from its former impurities and imperfections.

Wilford speaks of a sanctified fissure in a rock in the East, to which pilgrims resort "for the purpose of regeneration, by the efficacy of a pa.s.sage through this sacred type."

The faculty of divining events, pa.s.sing at a distance from the seer, or of pa.s.sively receiving a knowledge that such events are taking place, is the well-known "second sight," which plays so important a part in many Scottish stories. "In the stricter acceptation of this faculty," we are told, "contemporary objects and incidents are beheld at the time, however remote their locality, but neither those which have pa.s.sed, nor those which have yet to come. If extending to futurity, the subject of the vision is about to be realised. Therefore the second sight borders only on prognostication. It is affirmed to be more peculiar to Scotland, for very faint a.n.a.logy to such a property has been claimed for other countries: and that the highlanders chiefly, together with the inhabitants of the insular districts, or that portion of the kingdom less advanced, have enjoyed it in the highest perfection. Marvellous to be told, they have said that their cattle are gifted with it as well as themselves."

The faculty was one which knew no distinction of age or s.e.x, or cla.s.s; it was enjoyed by man and woman, young and old, rich and poor, high-born and plebeians, and in many cases was inherited. It might occasionally be imparted by a gifted person, or acquired by study and preparation. It is a proof, were proof needed, of the living influence of the imagination, that the vision beheld by one individual only, might be revealed to a companion visionary, thus confirmed in his belief in the value of his new prerogative; simply by the pressure of the seer's right foot on the novice's left, holding one hand on his head, while he was admonished to look over the master's right shoulder. Thus, Lilly, the astrologer--Butler's "hight Sidrophel"--relates how one John Scott desired William Hodges, an astrologer in Staffordshire, to show him the person and features of the person he should marry. Hodges carried him into a field not far from his home; pulled out his magic crystal; bade Scott set his foot against his, and after awhile desired him to inspect the crystal, and observe what he saw there. Of course he saw exactly what his fevered wishes were resolved to see.

Ceremonies of a more fantastic character were sometimes involved, and round the novice's body was coiled a hair rope with which a corpse had been bound to its bier. He was then required to look through a hole left by the removal of a fir knot; and, on stooping, he was instructed to look back between his legs, until an advancing funeral procession should cross the boundary of the estates of two different owners. The inconvenience of this complicated performance is obvious; it might also be dangerous; for if the wind changed while the novice was girded with the mystical cord, he was liable to the penalty of death.

A seer gifted with this wonderful faculty could not divest himself of it, though often he would fain have done so. However acquired, it was a perilous endowment, fraught with physical and mental suffering, and reputed to be no gift from on high, but to have come from the Father of Evil.

The objects seen were generally sad and sorrowful; calamities to persons or nations. Woodrow says that before the Marquis of Argyll went to London in 1660, he was playing "at the bullets," or bowls, with some Scottish gentlemen; when one of them, as the Marquis stooped down to lift the bullet, "fell pale," and said to those about him: "Bless me, what is this I see? my lord with his head off, and all his shoulder full of blood?"

On one occasion, a gentleman joined a company, all of whom were very frank and cheerful. He had no sooner entered than one of the guests, who had not previously known him, showed much depression of spirit. Without taking any notice of it the new-comer quickly rose, and went his way. The other thereupon showed great concern, and wished he would remain; for he saw him, he said, with a shroud up to his neck, and he knew that this sign foreboded his death. In vain some of the company would have persuaded the doomed man to take warning, but he departed, and having ridden a short distance, he and his horse fell, and he broke his neck.

On the morning of the battle of Bothwell Bridge, that sore defeat to the Covenanters--so vigorously described by Scott in his "Old Mortality"--Mr.

John Cameron, minister at Lochhead in Kintyre, fell into a fit of melancholy, so that Mr. Morison, of his elders, observing him through his chamber door, sore weeping and wringing his hands, knocked until he opened to him. Then he asked what was the matter? Were his wife and children well? "Little matter for them," he answered; "our friends at Bothwell are gone." Mr. Morison told him it might be a mistake, and the offcome of his gloomy thoughts: "No, no," said he, "I see them flying as clearly as I see the wall." As near as they could calculate by the accounts they afterwards obtained, this incident at the Lochhead of Kintyre was contemporaneous with the flight of the Covenanters at Bothwell.

Munro, the Scotch soldier of fortune, who bore himself so gallantly in the wars of Gustavus Adolphus, tells a story of a vision that was seen by a soldier of his company on the morning of the storm of Stralsund in 1628.

One Murdo Macleod, born in a.s.sen, a soldier of tall stature and valiant courage, being sleeping on his watch, awoke at break of day, and "jogged"

two of his comrades lying by him, much to their indignation at his "stirring them." He replied: "Before long, you shall be otherwise stirred." A soldier called Allan Tough, a Lochaber man, recommending his soul to G.o.d, asked him what he had seen: "That you shall never behold your country again." The other replied, the loss was but small, if the rest of the company were well. He answered: "No, for there was great hurt and dearth of many very near." The other again asked, what others he had seen who would perish. He then told by name sundry of his comrades who would be killed. The other asked, what would become of himself. Eventually, he described by their clothes all the officers who would be hurt. "A pretty quick boy near by," asked him, what would become of the Major (that is, Munro himself?) "He would be shot, but not deadly," was the answer,--and so it proved.

A good deal is said of this _Taisch_, or "Second Sight," in Dr. Johnson's "Journey to the Hebrides," and some striking anecdotes are told. It was just the thing to interest his moody temperament, with its terrible dread of death and its longing to lift the curtain that hides from us the Unseen. He seems, however, to have been unable to convince himself of the actual existence of such a power; all the evidence he could collect failed to advance his curiosity to conviction, so that he could not believe, while remaining willing to believe. To use the n.o.ble words of Goethe, n.o.bly rendered by Coleridge:

"As the sun, Ere it is risen, sometimes paints its image In the atmosphere, so often do the spirits Of great events stride on before the events, And in To-day already walks To-morrow."