CHAPTER XXIX.

The Vernal Equinox--Beauty of Loch Leven--Astronomical Notes--How an old Woman supposed to possess the Evil Eye escaped a cruel death.

The vernal equinox has come and gone, unaccompanied this year [April 1872], as it was unheralded and unannounced, by anything like the storms that from the earliest times have been observed to be attendant on the sun's crossing the equator. It is by no means certain, however, that these storms may not even now be a-brewing, to make themselves yet felt in all their fierceness, for we have noticed in recent years particularly that what are called the "equinoctial gales" quite as frequently follow, as accompany or precede, the exact equality of day and night. We have just had a fortnight of genuine March weather--clear, cold days, and frosty nights--the air snell and biting, to be sure, and keen of edge, as might be expected on the uplands; but in places sheltered from the east and north it is delightfully bright and sunny, the incessant song of birds, the hum of wild bees, and the gay fluttering of early butterflies, making one think of Whitsuntide rather than All Fools' Day; the twittering of swallows and the cheery notes of the cuckoo alone are wanting to make the illusion perfect, and these, unless the weather should undergo some extraordinary and unexpected change, must certainly soon be heard, much earlier this year, we should think, than usual. We are particularly favoured in this respect along the northern shores of Loch Leven. Here, to quote Burns--

"Simmer first unfaulds her robe, and here the langest tarry;"

and as we wander afield we often apply the words of Horace to our own little spot, as from some neighbouring height we view it cozily nestling in the sunlight--

Ille terrarum mihi præter omnes Angulus ridet;

which may be rendered--

Whate'er the beauties others boast, This spot of ground delights me most.

Or, as we prefer putting it in our own case--

Of brighter skies and sunnier climes let others boast and jabber, Give me the sunny, southern shores of mountain-girt Lochaber!

Or yet again, if you will have it still more literally in Gaelic--

'S anns' leam na spot eil' fo 'a ghréin, M' oisinneag bheag, ghrianach féin.

During the present clear, cold spring nights the starry heavens are very beautiful. Jupiter, just below Castor and Pollux, is at his brightest, and very favourably situated for observation, his cloudy belts and bright diamond-point-like satellites being visible in an instrument of very moderate powers. If between nine and ten o'clock the reader will turn to the north-east, he will find a constellation pretty high up in the heavens, and consisting of five or six principal stars, none of them, however, of the first magnitude, opening towards the pole star in the form of a widely spread-out W. This constellation will be an object of more than usual interest during the present year. It is Cassiopeia, or The Lady in her Chair, the scene of a very startling and strange phenomenon in 1572, which, it has been asserted with some confidence, is not at all unlikely to be repeated in 1872. In 1572 a new star of great splendour appeared in Cassiopeia, occupying a place that had hitherto been blank. It was first observed on the 6th August, by Schuler, of Wittemburg, shortly after which it arrested the attention of the celebrated Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who watched its rapid increase of brilliancy night after night with the liveliest interest. Its magnitude at last rivalled, if it did not even exceed, that of Jupiter, with an effulgence equally bright and