Traditions, Superstitions and Folk-lore Part 9

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 antic.i.p.ated from the hearty enjoyment of l.u.s.ty 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 superst.i.tion 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 superst.i.tion 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 Glas...o...b..ry 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 G.o.d 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 superst.i.tion 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 Baccha.n.a.ls 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 Glas...o...b..ry thorn esteemed that Bristol merchants exported large quant.i.ties. 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 n.o.bility of the realm, even when the times of monkish superst.i.tion 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 _crataegus 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 Glas...o...b..ry.

The sacred character of the white thorn especially, appears to have become interwoven with a great variety of superst.i.tious 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 sanct.i.ty 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 sanct.i.ty of the aubepine, or white thorn, was what gave rise to the mediaeval 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 pa.s.sage 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 sanct.i.ty 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s. 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 a.s.sures 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 a.s.sayed 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 a.s.sayed, 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 superst.i.tion have relationship, in some of its phases, to the cla.s.sic myth of Kephalos (the head of the sun), Procris (the dew), and Eos (the east or morning)? Mr. c.o.x 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 _seance_ 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 superst.i.tion, 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 superst.i.tions 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 pa.s.sing through both Keltic, Teutonic, Greek, and Roman channels, these superst.i.tions 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 n.o.ble 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 G.o.ddesses and their attendants, who were themselves developments of the primitive conception of the _cloud-women_; but witches, even in their degraded state, exhibit a mult.i.tude 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 a.s.semblages of G.o.ddesses 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 coa.r.s.e representations of weather tokens of the early spring; they are a.n.a.logous 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 cla.s.sical mythology were the Fates or Destinies, named Parcae. 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 compa.s.s 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 superst.i.tion 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 superst.i.tion, to the cla.s.sic solar myth which records the doom of Meleager. The Mrae, the three sisters, or the Fates, informed Althaea, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed it away, plunged it into water, and hid it in a secret place.

In later years, Meleager slew a brother of Althaea, 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. c.o.x 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 superst.i.tion into its more modern form would seem to be indicated by a pa.s.sage 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 superst.i.tion 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 t.i.tle-page of this curious work, vividly ill.u.s.trates 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 superst.i.tious 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 G.o.d 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 superst.i.tion, 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 p.r.o.nounced _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 superst.i.tion 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."