CHAPTER IX.

VIEW OF COUNTRY LIFE DURING THE AGE OF SHAKSPEARE, CONTINUED—AN ACCOUNT OF SOME OF ITS _SUPERSTITIONS_.

The popular creed, during the age of Shakspeare, was perhaps more extended and systematised than in any preceding or subsequent period of our history. For this effect we are indebted, in a great measure, to the credulity and superstition of James the First, the publication of whose Demonology rendered a profession in the belief of sorcery and witchcraft a matter of fashion and even of interest; for a ready way to the favour of this monarch was an implicit assumption of his opinions, theological and metaphysical, as well as political.

It must not be inferred, however, that at the commencement of the seventeenth century, the human mind was unwilling or unprepared to shake off the load which had oppressed it for ages. Among the enlightened classes of society, now rapidly extending throughout the kingdom, the reception of these doctrines was rather the effect of court example than of settled conviction; but as the vernacular bards, and especially the dramatic, who ever hold unbounded influence over the multitude, thought proper, and certainly, in a poetical light, with great effect, to adopt the dogmata and machinery of James, the reign of superstition was, for a time, not only upheld, but extended among the inferior orders of the people.

"Every goblin of ignorance," observes Warton, speaking of this period, "did not vanish at the first glimmerings of the morning of science. Reason suffered a few demons still to linger, which she chose to retain in her service under the guidance of poetry. Men believed, or were willing to believe, that spirits were yet hovering around, who brought with them _airs from heaven, or blasts from hell_, that the ghost was duely released from his prison of torment at the sound of the curfew, and that fairies imprinted mysterious circles on the turf by moon-light. Much of this credulity was even consecrated by the name of science and profound speculation. Prospero had not yet _broken and buried his staff_, nor _drowned his book deeper than did ever plummet sound_. It was now that the alchymist, and the judicial astrologer, conducted his occult operations by the potent intercourse of some preternatural being, who came obsequious to his call, and was bound to accomplish his severest services, under certain conditions, and for a limited duration of time. It was actually one of the pretended feats of these fantastic philosophers, to evoke the queen of the Fairies in the solitude of a gloomy grove, who, preceded by a sudden rustling of the leaves, appeared in robes of transcendent lustre. The Shakspeare of a more instructed and polished age would not have given us a magician darkening the sun at noon, the sabbath of the witches, and the cauldron of incantation."[315:A]

The history of the popular mythology, therefore, of this era, at a time when it was cherished by the throne, and adopted, in its fullest extent, by the greatest poetical genius which ever existed, must necessarily occupy a large share of our attention. So extensive, indeed, is the subject, and so full of interest and curiosity, that to exhaust it in this division of the work, would be to encroach upon that symmetry of plan, that relative proportion which we wish to preserve. The four great subjects, therefore, of _Fairies_, _Witchcraft_, _Magic_, and _Apparitions_, will be deferred to the Second Part, and annexed as Dissertations to our remarks on the _Midsummer-Night's Dream_, _Macbeth_, the _Tempest_, and _Hamlet_.

As a consequent of this decision, the present chapter, after noticing, in a _general_ way, the various credulities of the country, will dwell, at some length, on those periods of the year which have been peculiarly devoted to superstitious rites and observances, and include the residue of the subject under the heads of _omens_, _charms_, _sympathies_, _cures_, and _miscellaneous superstitions_.

It is from the _Winter-Night's Conversation_ of the lower orders of the people that we may derive, in any age, the most authentic catalogue of its superstitions. This fearful pleasure of children and uneducated persons, and the eager curiosity which attends it, have been faithfully painted by Shakspeare:—

"_Hermione._ Pray you sit by us, And tell's a tale.

_Mamillius._ Merry, or sad, shall't be?

_Her._ As merry as you will.

_Mam._ A sad tale's best for winter: I have one of sprites and goblins.

_Her._ Let's have that, sir. Come on, sit down:—Come on, and do your best To fright me with your sprites: you're powerful at it.

_Mam._ There was a man,——

_Her._ Nay, come, sit down; then on.

_Mam._ Dwelt by a church-yard;—I will tell it softly; Yon crickets shall not hear it.

_Her._ Come on then, And give't in mine ear."[316:A]

For the particulars forming the subject-matter of these tales, and for their effect on the hearers, we must have recourse to writers contemporary with the bard, whose object it was to censure or detail these legendary wonders. Thus Lavaterus, who wrote a book _De Spectris_, in 1570, which was translated into English in 1572, remarks that "if when men sit at the table, mention be made of spirits and elves, many times wemen and children are so afrayde that they dare scarce go out of dores alone, least they should meete wyth some evyl thing: and if they chaunce to heare any kinde of noise, by and by they thinke there are some spirits behynde them:" and again in a subsequent page, "simple foolish men—imagine that there be certayne elves or fairies of the earth, and tell many straunge and marvellous tales of them, which they have heard of their grandmothers and mothers, howe they have appeared unto those of the house, have done service, have rocked the cradell, and (which is a signe of good luck) do continually tary in the house."[317:A] He has the good sense, however, to reprobate the then general custom, a practice which has more or less prevailed even to our own times, of frightening children by stories and assumed appearances of this kind. "It is a common custome," he observes, "in many places, that at a certaine of time the yeare, one with a nette or visarde on his face maketh Children afrayde, to the ende that ever after they should laboure and be obediente to their Parentes: afterward they tel them that those which they saw, were Bugs, Witches, and Hagges, which thing they verily believe, and are commonly miserablie afrayde. How be it, it is not expedient so to terrifie Children. For sometimes through great feare they fall into dangerous diseases, and in the nyght crye out, when they are fast asleep. Salomon teacheth us to chasten children with the rod, and so to make them stand in awe: he doth not say, we must beare them in hande they shall be devoured of Bugges, Hags of the night, and such lyke monsters."[317:B] But it is to Reginald Scot that we are indebted for the most curious and extensive enumeration of these fables which haunted our progenitors from the cradle to the grave. "In our childhood," says he, "our mother's maids have so terrified us with an _ouglie divell_ having hornes on his head, fier in his mouth, and a taile in his breech, eies like a bason, fanges like a dog, clawes like a beare, a skin like a Niger, and a voice roaring like a lion, whereby we start and are afraid when we heare one crie Bough: and they have so fraid us with _bull-beggers_, _spirits_, _witches_, _urchens_, _elves_, _hags_, _fairies_, _satyrs_, _pans_, _faunes_, _syrens_, _kit with the can'sticke_, _tritons_, _centaurs_, _dwarfes_, _giants_, _imps_, _calcars_, _conjurors_, _nymphes_, _changlings_, _Incubus_, _Robin good-fellowe_, the _spoorne_, the _mare_, the _man in the oke_, the _hell-waine,_ the _fierdrake_, the _puckle Tom thombe_, _hob gobblin_, _Tom tumbler_, _boneless_, and such other bugs, that we are afraid of our own shadowes: in so much as some never feare the divell, but in a darke night; and then a polled sheepe is a perillous beast, and manie times is taken for our father's soule, speciallie in a churchyard, where a right hardie man heretofore scant durst passe by night, but his haire would stand upright."[318:A]

That this mode of passing away the time, "the long solitary winter nights," was as much in vogue in 1617 as in 1570 and 1580, is apparent from Burton, who reckons among the _ordinary recreations_ of _winter_, tales of _giants_, _dwarfs_, _witches_, _fayries_, _goblins_, and _friers_.[318:B]

The predilection which existed, during this period of our annals for the marvellous, the terrible, and romantic, especially among the peasantry, has been noticed by several of our best writers. Addison, in reference to the genius of Shakspeare for the wild and wonderful in poetry, remarks, that "our forefathers loved to astonish themselves with the apprehensions of witchcraft, prodigies, charms, and inchantments. There was not a village in England that had not a ghost in it; the churchyards were all haunted; every large common had a circle of fairies belonging to it; and there was scarce a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit[318:C];" and Mr. Grose, after enumerating several popular superstitions, extends the subject in a very entertaining manner. "In former times," says he, "these notions were so prevalent, that it was deemed little less than atheism to doubt them; and in many instances the terrors caused by them embittered the lives of a great number of persons of all ages; by degrees almost shutting them out of their own houses, and deterring them from going from one village to another after sun-set. The room in which the head of a family had died, was for a long time untenanted; particularly if they died without a will, or were supposed to have entertained any particular religious opinions. But if any disconsolate old maiden, or love-crossed bachelor, happened to dispatch themselves in their garters, the room where the deed was perpetrated was rendered for ever after uninhabitable, and not unfrequently was nailed up. If a drunken farmer, returning from market, fell from Old Dobbin and broke his neck,—or a carter, under the same predicament, tumbled from his cart or waggon, and was killed by it,—that spot was ever after haunted and impassable: in short, there was scarcely a bye-lane or cross-way but had its ghost, who appeared in the shape of a headless cow or horse; or clothed all in white, glared with its saucer eyes over a gate or stile. Ghosts of superior rank, when they appeared abroad, rode in coaches drawn by six headless horses, and driven by a headless coachman and postilions. Almost every ancient manor-house was haunted by some one at least of its former masters or mistresses, where, besides divers other noises, that of telling money was distinctly heard: and as for the churchyards, the number of ghosts that walked there, according to the village computation, almost equalled the living parishioners: to pass them at night, was an achievement not to be attempted by any one in the parish, the sextons excepted; who perhaps being particularly privileged, to make use of the common expression, never saw any thing worse than themselves."[319:A]

Of these superstitions, as forming the subject of _a country conversation in a winter's evening_, a very interesting detail has been given by Mr. Bourne; the picture was drawn about a hundred years ago; but, though even then partially applicable, may be considered as a faithful general representation of the two preceding centuries.

"Nothing is commoner in _Country Places_," says this historian of credulity, "than for a whole family in a _Winter's Evening_, to sit round the fire, and tell stories of _apparitions_ and _ghosts_. Some of them have seen spirits in the shapes of cows, and dogs and horses; and some have seen even the devil himself, with a cloven foot.

"Another part of this conversation generally turns upon _Fairies_. These, they tell you, have frequently been heard and seen; nay that there are some still living who were stolen away by them, and confined seven years. According to the description they give of them, who pretend to have seen them, they are in the shape of men, exceeding little: They are always clad in green, and frequent the woods and fields; when they make cakes (which is a work they have been often heard at) they are very noisy; and when they have done, they are full of mirth and pastime. But generally they dance in Moon-light when mortals are asleep, and not capable of seeing them, as may be observed on the following morn; their dancing places being very distinguishable. For as they dance hand in hand, and so make a _circle_ in their dance, so next day there will be seen _rings_ and _circles_ on the grass.

"Another tradition they hold, and which is often talked of, is, that there are particular places allotted to spirits to walk in. Thence it was that formerly, such frequent reports were abroad of this and that particular place being haunted by a spirit, and that the common people say now and then, such a place is dangerous to be passed through at night, because a spirit walks there. Nay, they'll further tell you, that some spirits have lamented the hardness of their condition, in being obliged to walk in cold and uncomfortable places, and have therefore desired the person who was so hardy as to speak to them, to gift them with a warmer walk, by some well grown _hedge_, or in some _shady vale_, where they might be shelter'd from the rain and wind.

"The last topick of this conversation I shall take notice of, shall be the tales of _haunted_ houses. And indeed it is not to be wondered at, that this is never omitted. For formerly almost every place had a house of this kind. If a house was seated on some melancholy place, or built in some old romantic manner; or if any particular accident had happened in it, such as murder, sudden death, or the like, to be sure that house had a mark set on it, and was afterwards esteemed the habitation of a ghost. In talking upon this point, they generally show the occasion of the house's being _haunted_, the merry pranks of the spirit, and how it was laid. Stories of this kind are infinite, and there are few villages which have not either had such an house in it, or near it."[321:A]

The quotations which we have now given from writers contemporary with, and subsequent to, Shakspeare, will point out, in a _general_ way, the prevalent superstitions of the _country_ at this period, and the topics which were usually discussed round the fire-side of the cottage or manorial hall, when the blast blew keen on a December's night, and the faggot's blaze was seen, by fits, illumining the rafter'd roof.

The progress of science, of literature, and rational theology, has, in a very great degree, dissipated these illusions; but there still lingers, in hamlets remote from general intercourse, a somewhat similar spirit of credulity, where the legend of unearthly agency is yet listened to with eager curiosity and fond belief. These vestiges of superstitions which were once universally prevalent, have been seized upon with avidity by many modern poets, and form some of the most striking passages in their works. More particularly the ghostly and traditionary lore of the cotter's winter-night, has been a favourite subject with them. Thus Thomson tells us, that

————— "the village rouzes up the fire, While well attested, and as well believed, Heard solemn, goes the goblin-story round; Till superstitious horror creeps o'er all:"[321:B]

and Akenside, still more poetically, that

—————————— "by night The village-matron round the blazing hearth Suspends the infant-audience with her tales, Breathing astonishment! of witching rhymes, And evil spirits; of the death-bed call Of him who robb'd the widow, and devour'd The orphan's portion; of unquiet souls Risen from the grave to ease the heavy guilt Of deeds in life conceal'd; of shapes that walk At dead of night, and clank their chains, and wave The torch of hell around the murderer's bed. At every solemn pause the crowd recoil, Gazing each other speechless, and congeal'd With shivering sighs: till eager for th' event, Around the beldame all erect they hang, Each trembling heart with grateful terrors quell'd."[322:A]

The lamented Kirke White has also happily introduced a similar picture; having described the day-revels of a Whitsuntide wake, he adds,

——————————— "then at eve Commence the harmless rites and auguries; And many a tale of ancient days goes round. They tell of wizard seer, whose potent spells Could hold in dreadful thrall the labouring moon, Or draw the fix'd stars from their eminence, And still the midnight tempest.—Then anon, Tell of uncharnel'd spectres, seen to glide Along the lone wood's unfrequented path, Startling the nighted traveller; while the sound Of undistinguished murmurs, heard to come From the dark centre of the deep'ning glen, Struck on his frozen ear:"[322:B]

and lastly Mr. Scott, in his highly interesting poem entitled Rokeby, speaking of the tales of superstition, adds,

"When Christmas logs blaze high and wide, Such wonders speed the festal tide, While Curiosity and Fear, Pleasure and pain, sit crouching near, Till childhood's cheek no longer glows, And village-maidens lose the rose. The thrilling interest rises higher, The circle closes nigh and nigher, And shuddering glance is cast behind, As louder moans the wintery wind." Cant. ii. st. 10.

After this brief outline of the common superstitions of the country, as they existed in the days of Shakspeare, and as they still linger among us, we shall proceed, in conformity with our plan, to notice those Days which have been peculiarly devoted to superstitious rites and observances.

In entering upon this subject, however, it will be necessary to remark, that as several of these days are still kept by the vulgar in the same manner, and with the same spirit of credulity which subsisted in the reign of Elizabeth, it would be superfluous to enter at large into a detail of their ceremonies, and that to mark the coincidence of usage, occurring at these periods, will be nearly all that can be deemed requisite. Thus on _St. Paul's Day_, on _Candlemas Day_, and on _St. Swithin's Day_, the prognosticators of weather still find as much employment, and as much credit as ever.[323:A] _St. Mark's Day_ is still beheld with dread, as fixing the destinies of life and death, and _Childermas_ still keeps in countenance the doctrine of lucky and unlucky days.

A similarity nearly equal may be observed with regard to the rites of lovers on ST. VALENTINE'S DAY. The tradition, that birds choosing their mates on this day, occasioned the custom of drawing valentines, has been the opinion of our poets from Chaucer to the present hour. Shakspeare alludes to it in the following passage:

"Good-morrow friends. Saint Valentine is past; _Begin these wood-birds but to couple now_?"[324:A]

The ceremony of this day, however, has been attributed to various sources beside the rural tradition just mentioned. The legend itself of St. Valentine, a presbyter of the church, who was beheaded under the Emperor Claudius, we are assured by Mr. Brand, contains nothing which could give rise to the custom; but it has been supposed by some to have originated from an observance peculiar to carnival time, which occurred about this very period. It was usual, on this occasion, for vast numbers of knights to visit the different courts of Europe, where they entertained the ladies with pageantry and tournaments. Each lady, at these magnificent feasts, selected a knight, who engaged to serve her for a whole year, and to perform whatever she chose to command. One of the never-failing consequences of this engagement, was an injunction to employ his muse in the celebration of his mistress.

Menage, in his Etymological Dictionary, has accounted for the term _Valentine_, by stating that Madame Royale, daughter of Henry the Fourth of France, having built a palace near Turin, which, in honour of the Saint, then in high esteem, she called _the Valentine_, at the first entertainment which she gave in it, was pleased to order that the ladies should receive their lovers _for the year_ by lots, reserving to herself the privilege of being independent of chance, and of _choosing_ her own partner. At the various balls which this gallant princess gave, during the year, it was directed that each lady should receive a nosegay from her lover, and that, at every tournament, the knight's trappings for his horse should be furnished by his allotted mistress, with this proviso, that the prize obtained should be hers. This custom, says Menage, occasioned the parties to be called _Valentines_.

Mr. Brand, in his observations on Bourne's Antiquities, thinks, that the usages of this day are the remains of an antient superstition in the Church of Rome, of choosing _patrons_ for the year ensuing, at this season; "and that, because ghosts were thought to walk on the night of this day, or about this time[325:A];" but Mr. Douce, with more probability, considers them as a relic of paganism. "It was the practice in ancient Rome," he observes, "during a great part of the month of February, to celebrate the _Lupercalia_, which were feasts in honour of Pan and Juno, whence the latter deity was named _februata_, _februalis_, and _februlla_. On this occasion, amidst a variety of ceremonies, the names of young women were put into a box, from which they were drawn by the men as chance directed. The pastors of the early Christian church, who by every possible means endeavoured to eradicate the vestiges of Pagan superstitions, and chiefly by some commutation of their forms, substituted, in the present instance, the names of particular saints instead of those of the women: and as the festival of the _Lupercalia_ had commenced about the middle of February, they appear to have chosen Saint Valentine's day for celebrating the new feast, because it occurred nearly at the same time. This is, in part, the opinion of a learned and rational compiler of the lives of the saints, the Reverend Alban Butler. It should seem, however, that it was utterly impossible to extirpate altogether any ceremony to which the common people had been much accustomed; a fact which it were easy to prove in tracing the origin of various other popular superstitions: and accordingly the outline of the ancient ceremonies was preserved, but modified by some adaptation to the Christian system. It is reasonable to suppose that the above practice of choosing mates would gradually become reciprocal in the sexes; and that all persons so chosen would be called _Valentines_, from the day on which the ceremony took place."[326:A]

The modes of ascertaining the _Valentine_ for the ensuing year, were nearly the same in Shakspeare's age as at the present period; they consisted either in drawing lots on Valentine-eve, or in considering the first person whom you met early on the following morning, as the destined object. In the former case the names of a certain number of one sex, were, by an equal number of the other, put into a vase; and then every one drew a name; which for the time was termed their _Valentine_, and was considered as predictive of their future fortune in the nuptial state; in the second there was usually some little contrivance adopted, in order that the favoured object, when such existed, might be the first seen. To this custom Shakspeare refers, when he represents Ophelia, in her distraction, singing,

"Good morrow, 'tis Saint Valentine's day, All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine."[326:B]

The practice of addressing verses, and sending presents, to the person chosen, has been continued from the days of James I., in which the gifts of Valentines have been noticed by Moresin[327:A], to modern times; and we may add a trait, not now observed, perhaps, on the authority of an old English ballad, in which the lasses are directed to pray _cross-legged_ to Saint _Valentine_, for good luck.[327:B]

It was a usage of the sixteenth century, in its object laudable and useful, for the inhabitants of towns and villages, during the summer-season, to meet after sunset, in the streets, and for the wealthier sort to recreate themselves and their poorer friends with banquets and bonefires. Of this custom Stowe has left us a pleasing account:—"In the moneths of June, and July," he relates, "on the Vigiles of festivall dayes, and on the same festivall dayes in the evenings, after the sun-setting, there were usually made bonefires in the streets, every man bestowing wood or labour towards them. The wealthier sort also before their dores, neere to the said bonefires, would set out tables on the vigiles, furnished with sweet bread, and good drink, and on the festivall dayes with meates and drinks plentifully, whereunto they would invite their neighbours and passengers also to sit, and be merry with them in great familiarity, praysing God for his benefits bestowed on them. These were called bonefires, as well of amity amongst neighbours, that beeing before at controversie, were there by the labour of others reconciled, and made of bitter enemies, loving friends; as also for the virtue that a great fire hath, to purge the infection of the ayre."[328:A] These rites were, however, more particularly practised on MIDSUMMER-EVE, the Vigil of Saint John the Baptist, a period of the year to which our ancestors paid singular attention, and combined with it several superstitious observances. "On the Vigill of Saint John Baptist," continues Stowe, "every man's dore beeing shadowed with greene Birch, long Fennell, Saint John's Wort, Orpin, white Lillies, and such like, garnished upon with Garlands of beautifull flowers, had also Lamps of glasse, with Oyle burning in them all the night, some hung out branches of yron curiously wrought, containing hundreds of Lamps lighted at once, which made a goodly shew."[328:B]

Of some of the superstitions connected with this Eve, Barnabe Googe has left us an account in his translation of Neogeorgius, which was published, and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, in 1570:—

"Then doth the joyfull feast of John the Baptist take his turne, When bonfires great, with lofty flame, in every towne doe burne, And young men round about with maydes doe daunce in every street, With garlands wrought of mother-wort, or else of vervaine sweet, And many other flowers faire, with violets in their hands; Where as they all doe fondly thinke that whosoever stands, And thorow the flowers behold the flame, his eyes shall feele no paine. When thus till night they daunced have, they throgh the fire amaine With striving mindes doe run, and all their herbs they cast therein; And then, with words devout and prayers, they solemnly begin, Desiring God that all their illes may there confounded be; Whereby they thinke, through all that yeare, from agues to be free."[328:C]

This _Midsummer-Eve Fire_ and the rites attending it, appear to be reliques of pagan worship, for Gebelin in his _Allegories Orientales_ observes, that at the moment of the Summer Solstice the ancients, from the most remote antiquity, were accustomed to light fires, in honour of the New Year, which they believed to have originally commenced in fire. These fires or Feux de joie were accompanied with vows and sacrifices for plenty and prosperity, and with dances and leaping over the flames, "each on his departure snatching a firebrand of greater or less magnitude, whilst the rest was scattered to the wind, in order that it might disperse every evil as it dispersed the ashes."[329:A]

Many other superstitions, however, than those mentioned by Googe, were practised on this mysterious eve. To one of the most important Shakspeare alludes in the _First Part of King Henry the Fourth_, where Gadshill says of himself and company, "We have the receipt of _fern-seed_, we walk _invisible_."[329:B] Jonson and Fletcher have also ascribed the same wonderful property to this plant, the first in his _New Inn_.

—————— "I had No medicine, Sir, to go invisible, No _fern-seed_ in my pocket;"[329:C]

the second in the _Fair Maid of the Inn_,—

————— "had you Gyges' ring, Or the _herb_ that gives invisibility?"[329:D]

It was the belief of our credulous ancestors, that the _fern-seed_ became visible only on St. John's Eve, and at the precise moment of the birth of the Saint; that it was under the peculiar protection of the Queen of Faery, and that on this awful night, the most tremendous conflicts took place, for its possession, between sorcerers and spirits; for

"The wond'rous one-night seeding ferne,"

as Browne calls it[330:A], was conceived not only to confer _invisibility at pleasure_, on those who succeeded in procuring it, but it was also esteemed of sovereign potency in the fabrication of charms and incantations. Those, therefore, who were addicted to the arts of magic, and possessed sufficient courage for the enterprise, were believed to watch in solitude during this solemn period, in order that they might seize the seed on the instant of its appearance.

The achievement, however, was accompanied with great danger; for if the adventurer were not protected by spells of mighty power, he was exposed to the assaults of demons and spirits, who envied him the possession of the plant, and who generally took care that he should lose either his life or his labour in the attempt. "A person who went to gather it, reported that the spirits whisked by his ears, and sometimes struck his hat, and other parts of his body; and at length, when he thought he had got a good quantity of it, and secured it in papers and a box, when he came home, he found both empty."[330:B]

Another superstition, of a nature highly impressive and terrible, consists in the idea that any person fasting on _Midsummer-Eve_, and sitting in the church-porch, will at midnight see the spirits of those who are to die in the parish during that year, approach and knock at the church door, precisely in the order of time in which they are doomed to depart. It is related, by the author of _Pandemonium_, that one of the company of watchers, on this night, having fallen into a profound sleep, his ghost or spirit, whilst he lay in this state, was seen by the rest of his companions, knocking at the church-door.[330:C]

Of these wild traditions of the "olden time" Collins has made a most striking use in his Ode to Fear:—

"Ne'er be I found, by thee o'eraw'd, In that thrice-hallow'd eve, abroad, When ghosts, as cottage-maids believe, Their pebbled beds permitted leave; And goblins haunt, from fire, or fen, Or mine, or flood, the walks of men!"

The observance of _Midsummer-Eve_ by rejoicings, spells, and charms, has continued until within these fifty years, especially in Cornwall, in the North of England, and in Scotland. Bourne, in 1725, tells us, that "on the Eve of St. John Baptist, commonly called _Midsummer-Eve_, it is usual in the most of country places, and also here and there in towns and cities, for both old and young to meet together, and be merry over a large fire, which is made in the open street. Over this they frequently leap and play at various games, such as running, wrestling, dancing, &c. But this is generally the exercise of the younger sort; for the old ones, for the most part, sit by as spectators, and enjoy themselves and their bottle. And thus they spend their time till mid-night, and sometimes till cock-crow[331:A];" and Borlase, in his History of Cornwall, about thirty years later, states, that "the Cornish make bonefires in every village on the Eve of St. John Baptist's and St. Peter's Days."[331:B]

It was a common superstition in the days of Shakspeare, and for two centuries preceding him, that the future husband or wife might be discovered on this Eve or on St. Agnes' night, by due fasting and by certain ceremonies; thus, if a maiden, fasting on _Midsummer-Eve_, laid a clean cloth at midnight, with bread, cheese, and ale, and sate down, with the street door open, the person whom she is fated to marry will enter the room, fill the glass, drink to her, bow and retire.[332:A] A similar effect, as to the visionary appearance of the destined bridegroom, was supposed to follow the sowing of hempseed on this night, either in the field or church-yard. Mr. Strutt, depicting the manners of the fifteenth century, has given this latter superstition, from the mouth of an imaginary witch, in the following rhymes:—

"Around the church see that you go, With kirtle white and girdle blue, At midnight thrice, and hempseed sow; Calling upon your lover true, Thus shalt thou say; These seeds I sow: swift let them grow, Till he, who must my husband be, Shall follow me and mow:"[332:B]

a charm which appears to have been in vogue even in the time of Gay, who, in his Shepherd's Week, makes Hobnelia say,—

"At _eve_ last _midsummer_ no sleep I sought, But to the field a bag of hempseed brought; I scatter'd round the seed on every side, And three times in a trembling accent cried, "This hempseed with my virgin hand I sow, Who shall my true-love be, the crop shall mow." I straight look'd back, and if my eyes speak truth, With his keen scythe behind me came the youth." The Spell, line 27.

Another mode, which prevailed in the 16th and 17th centuries, of procuring similar information on this festival, through the medium of dreams, consisted in digging for what was called the plantain coal; the search was to commence exactly at noon, and the material, when found, to be placed on the pillow at night. Of a wild-goose expedition of this kind Aubrey reports himself to have been a spectator. "The last summer," says he, "on the day of St. John Baptist, 1694, I accidentally was walking in the pasture behind Montague-house: it was twelve o'clock. I saw there about two or three and twenty young women, most of them well habited, on their knees, very busy, as if they had been weeding. I could not presently learn what the matter was; at last, a young man told me that they were looking for a coal under the root of a plantain, to put under their heads that night, and they should dream who would be their husbands: it was to be found that day and hour." He adds, "the women have several magical secrets handed down to them by tradition for this purpose, as, on St. Agnes' night, 21st January, take a row of pins, and pull out every one one after another, saying a paternoster, or 'our father,' sticking a pin in your sleeve, and you will dream of him or her you shall marry[333:A];" spells to which Ben Jonson alludes, when he says,—

——— "On sweet St. Agnes' night Please you with the promis'd sight; Some of husbands, some of lovers, Which an empty dream discovers."[333:B]

That it was the custom, in Elizabeth's and James's days, to tell tales or perform plays and masques on Christmas-Eve, on Twelfth Night, and on _Midsummer-Eve_, may be drawn from the dramas of Shakspeare, and the masques of Jonson. The _Midsummer-Night's Dream_ of the former, appears to have been so called, because its exhibition was to take place on that night, for the _time of action_ of the piece itself, is the vigil of May-Day, as is that of the _Winter's Tale_ the period of sheep-shearing. It is probable also, as Mr. Steevens has observed, that Shakspeare might have been influenced in his choice of the fanciful machinery of this play, by the recollection of the proverb attached to the season, and which he has himself introduced in the _Twelfth-Night_, where Olivia remarks of Malvolio's apparent distraction, that it "is a very _Midsummer madness_[334:A];" an adage founded on the common opinion, that the brain, being heated by the intensity of the sun's rays, was more susceptible of those flights of imagination which border on insanity, than at any other period of the year.

The next season distinguished by any very remarkable tincture of the popular creed, is Michaelmas, or the Feast of ST. MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS. When ever this day comes, says Bourne, "it brings into the minds of the people, that old opinion of _Tutelar Angels_, that every man has his _Guardian Angel_; that is one particular angel who attends him from his coming in, till his going out of life, who guides him through the troubles of the world, and strives as much as he can, to bring him to heaven."[334:B]

That the doctrine of the ministry of angels, and their occasional interference with the affairs of man, is an _old opinion_, cannot be denied. It pervades the whole of the Old and New Testaments, and appears to have been an article of the patriarchal creed; for from the Book of Job, perhaps the oldest which exists, may be drawn not only the doctrine of the ministration of angels, but that of their division into certain distinct orders, such as angels, intercessors, destroyers, &c.[334:C] With this general information we ought to have been content: but superstition has been busy in promulgating hierarchies, the offspring of its own heated imagination; in minutely ascertaining the numbers and offices of angels in heaven and on earth; and in naming and appropriating certain of them as the guardians and protectors of kingdoms, cities, families, and individuals. The mythologies of Persia, Arabia, and Greece, abound with these arbitrary arrangements; Hesiod declares that the angels appointed to watch over the earth, amount exactly to thirty-thousand[335:A]; and Plato divides the world of spirits good and bad into nine classes, in which he has been followed by some of the philosophising Christians. The angelic hierarchy of Dionysius, however, is the one usually adopted; he professes to interfere only with good spirits, and divides his angels, perhaps in imitation of Plato, into nine orders; the first he terms _seraphim_, the second _cherubim_, the third _thrones_, the fourth _dominations_, the fifth _virtues_, the sixth _powers_, the seventh _principalities_, the eighth _archangels_, and the ninth _angels_.[335:B] Not content with this he goes still farther, and has assigned to every country, and almost to every person of eminence, a peculiar angel, thus to Adam he gives _Razael_; to Abraham, _Zakiel_; to Isaiah, _Raphael_; to Jacob, _Peliel_; to Moses, _Metraton_, &c., speaking, as Calvin observes, not as if by report, but as though he had slipped down from heaven, and told of the things which he had seen there.[335:C]

Of this systematic hierarchy the greater portion formed, during the age of Shakspeare, and for nearly a century afterwards, an important part of the popular creed, as may be ascertained from an inspection of Scot on Witchcraft in 1584, Heywood's _Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells, their Names, Orders, and Offices_, in 1635, and from Burton's Anatomie of Melancholy, which, though first published in 1617, continued to re-appear in frequent editions until the close of the seventeenth century.

The doctrine of _Guardian Angels_, as appropriated to individuals, more especially appears to have been entertained by Shakspeare and his contemporaries; an idea pleasing to the human mind, though, in the opinion of the most acute theologians, not warranted by Scripture; where only the general ministry of angels is recorded; and, accordingly, the collect of the day, in our admirable Liturgy, merely refers to, and prays for, such general interference in our behalf.

The assignment of a good angel, or of a good and bad angel to every individual, as soon as created, is supported by the English Lavaterus in 1572, and recorded as the general object of belief, by the rational Scot, in his interesting discourse on spirits.

"Saint Herome in his Commentaries," says Lavaterus, "and other fathers do conclude, that God doth assigne unto every soule assoone as he createth him his peculiar Angell, which taketh care of him. But whether that every one of the elect have hys proper angell, or many angells be appoynted unto him, it is not expresly sette foorth, yet this is most sure and certayne, that God hath given his angells in charge to have regard and care over us. Daniel witnesseth in his tenth chapter, that angells have also charge of kingdomes, by whom God keepeth and protecteth them, and hindreth the wicked counsels of the devill. It may be proved by many places of the Scripture, that all Christian men have not only one angell, but also many, whome God imployeth to their service. In the 34 psalm it is sayde, the angell of the Lorde pitcheth his tentes rounde about them whiche feare the Lorde, and helpeth them: which ought not to be doubted but that it is also at this daye, albeit we see them not. We reade that they appearing in sundrye shapes, have admonished menne, have comforted them, defended them, delivered them from daunger, and also punished the wicked. Touching this matter, there are plentiful examples, whiche are not needefull to be repeated in this place. Somtimes they have eyther appeared in sleep, or in manner of visions, and sometimes they have perfourmed their office, by some internall operations: as when a man's mynde foresheweth him, that a thing shall so happen, and after it happeneth so in deede, which thyng I suppose is doone by God, through the minesterie of angells. Angells for the most part take upon them the shapes of men, wherein they appeare."[337:A]

"Monsieur Bodin, M. Mal. and manie other papists," observes Scot, who gives us his opinion on the nature of angels, "gather upon the seventh of Daniel, that there are just ten millians of angels in heaven. Manie saie that angels are not by nature, but by office. Finallie, it were infinite to shew the absurd and curious collections hereabout. I for my part thinke with Calvine, that angels are creatures of God; though Moses spake nothing of their creation, who onelie applied himselfe to the capacitie of the common people, reciting nothing but things seene. And I saie further with him, that they are heavenlie spirits, whose ministration and service God useth: and in that respect are called angels. I saie yet againe with him, that it is verie certaine, that they have no shape at all; for they are spirits, who never have anie: and finallie, I saie with him, that the Scriptures, for the capacitie of our wit, dooth not in vaine paint out angels unto us with wings; bicause we should conceive, that they are readie swiftlie to succour us. And certeinlie all the sounder divines doo conceive and give out, that both the names and also the number of angels are set downe in the Scripture by the Holie-ghost, in termes to make us understand the greatnesse and the manner of their messages; which (I saie) are either expounded by the number of angels, or signified by their names.

"Furthermore, the schoole doctors affirme, that foure of the superior orders of angels never take anie forme or shape of bodies, neither are sent of anie arrand at anie time. As for archangels, they are sent onlie about great and secret matters; and angels are common hacknies about everie trifle; and that these can take what shape or bodie they list: marie they never take the forme of women or children. Item, they saie that angels take most terrible shapes: for _Gabriel_ appeared to _Marie_, when he saluted hir, _facie rutilante, veste coruscante, ingressu mirabili, aspectu terribili_, &c.: that is, with a bright countenance, shining attire, wonderfull gesture, and a dredfull visage, &c. _It hath beene long, and continueth yet a constant opinion, not onlie among the papists; but among others also, that everie man hath assigned him, at the time of his nativitie, a good angell and a bad._ For the which there is no reason in nature, nor authoritie in Scripture. For not one angell, but all the angels are said to rejoise more of one convert, than of ninetie and nine just. Neither did one onlie angel conveie Lazarus into Abraham's bosome. And therefore I conclude with Calvine, that he which referreth to one angel, the care that God hath to everie one of us, dooth himselfe great wrong."[338:A]

That Shakspeare embraced the doctrine common in his age, which assigns to every individual, at his birth, a good and bad angel, an idea highly poetical in itself, and therefore acceptable to a fervid imagination, is evident from the following remarkable passages:

"There is a good angel about him—but the devil out-bids him too."[338:B]

"You follow the young prince up and down like his ill angel."[338:C]

"Thy daemon, that's thy spirit which keeps thee, is Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable, Where Cæsar's is not; but near him, thy angel Becomes a Fear, as being o'erpowered—— ———————— I say again, thy spirit Is all afraid to govern thee near him; But, he away, 'tis noble;"[338:D]

and in Macbeth the same imagery is repeated—

—————— "near him, My genius is rebuk'd; as, it is said, Mark Antony's was by Cæsar's."[338:E]

These lines from _Antony and Cleopatra_ and _Macbeth_, which are founded on a passage in North's Plutarch, where the soothsayer says to Antony, "thy Demon, (that is to say, the good angell and spirit that keepeth thee) is affraied of his," sufficiently prove that the Roman Catholic doctrine of a good and evil angel is _immediately_ drawn from the belief of Pagan antiquity in the agency of good and evil genii, a dogma to which we know their greatest philosophers were addicted, as is apparent from the Demon of Socrates.

Of the general, and as it may be termed, the patriarchal, doctrine of the ministry of angels, no poet has made so admirable an use as Milton, who tells us, in his Paradise Lost, that

"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep, All these, with ceaseless praise, his works behold, Both day and night. How often, from the steep Of echoing hill or thicket, have we heard Celestial voices, through the midnight air, Sole or responsive to each other's note, Singing their great Creator! oft, in bands, While they keep watch; or, nightly walking round, With heavenly touch of instrumental sounds, In full harmonic number join'd; their songs Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to heaven."[339:A]

We must be permitted to observe, in this place, that Dr. Horsley has, with great propriety, drawn a marked distinction between the full-formed hierarchy of fanciful theologians, and the Scripture-account of angelic agency; while he reprobates the one, he supports the other; "those," says he, "who broached this doctrine (of an hierarchy of angels governing this world) could tell us exactly how many orders there are, and how many angels in each order; that the different orders have their different departments in government assigned to them; some, constantly attending in the presence of God, form his cabinet council; others are his provincial governors; every kingdom in the world having its appointed guardian angel, to whose management it is intrusted: others again are supposed to have the charge and custody of individuals. This system is, in truth, nothing better than Pagan polytheism." He then subsequently and most judiciously gives us the following summary of Biblical information on the subject: "that the holy angels," he remarks, "are often employed by God in his government of this sublunary world, is indeed clearly to be proved by holy writ: that they have powers over the matter of the universe analogous to the powers over it which men possess, greater in extent, but still limited, is a thing which might reasonably be supposed, if it were not declared: but it seems to be confirmed by many passages of holy writ, from which it seems also evident that they are occasionally, for certain specific purposes, commissioned to exercise those powers to a prescribed extent. That the evil angels possessed, before the fall, the like powers, which they are still occasionally permitted to exercise for the punishment of wicked nations, seems also evident. That they have a power over the human sensory (which is part of the material universe), which they are occasionally permitted to exercise, by means of which they may inflict diseases, suggest evil thoughts, and be the instruments of temptations, must also be admitted."[340:A]

We shall conclude these observations on St. Michael's Day by adding, that in both the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it was the custom of landlords to invite their tenants on this day, and to dine them in their great halls on _Geese_; birds which were then only kept by the gentry, and therefore esteemed a great delicacy. We must consequently set aside the tradition which attributes the introduction of this bird on the festival of St. Michael to Queen Elizabeth; the tale avers, that, being on her road to Tilbury Fort, she dined on Michaelmas Day 1588, at Sir Neville Umfreville's seat, near that place, and that the knight, recollecting her partiality for high-seasoned food, had taken care to procure for her a savoury goose, after eating heartily of which she called for a _half-pint bumper of Burgundy_, and had scarcely drank it off to the destruction of the _Spanish Armada_, when she received the news of that joyful event; delighted with the speedy accomplishment of her toast, she is said to have annually commemorated this day with a goose, and that, of course, the example was followed by the Court and through the kingdom at large. The custom, however, must be referred to a preceding age, in which it will be found that the nobility and gentry had usually this delicious bird at their tables, both on St. Michael's and St. Martin's Day.[341:A]

We now approach another remarkably superstitious period of the year, the observance of which took place on the 31st of October, being the _Vigil of All Saints' Day_, and has been therefore commonly termed ALL HALLOW EVE. In the North of England, and in Scotland, this was formerly a night of rejoicing and of the most mysterious rites and ceremonies. As beyond the Tweed the harvest was seldom completely got in before the close of October, _Halloween_ became a kind of Harvest-home-feast; thus, Mr. Shaw informs us, in his History of the Province of Moray, that "a solemnity was kept, on the Eve of the first of November, as a thanksgiving for the safe Ingathering of the produce of the fields. This I am told, but have not seen it, is observed in Buchan, and other countries, by having _Hallow-Eve Fires_ kindled on some rising ground."[341:B] In England Hallow-eve has been generally called _Nut-crack Night_, from one of the numerous spells usually had recourse to at this season; and in Shakspeare it is alluded to under the customary appellation of _Hallowmas_, where Speed tells Valentine in the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, that he knows him to be in love, because he has learnt "to speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas[341:C];" a simile which refers to a relique of the Roman Catholic Festival of _All Souls Day_ on the 2d of November, when prayers were offered up for the repose of the souls of the departed; it being the custom, in Shakspeare's time, and is still, we believe, observed in some parts of the North, for the poor on _All-Saints-Day_ to go _a souling_, as they term it, and in a plaintive or _puling_ voice to petition for _soul-cakes_. "In various parts of England," remarks Brady, "the remembrance of monastic customs is still preserved by giving oaten cakes to the poor neighbours, conformably to what was once the general usage, particularly in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Herefordshire, &c. when, by way of expressing gratitude, the receivers of this liberality offered the following homely benediction:

"God have your _saul_, Bones and all;"

bearing more the appearance, in these enlightened days, of rustic scoff, than of thankfulness."[342:A]

What has rendered All-Hallow-Eve, however, a period of mysterious dread, is the tradition, that on this night the host of evil spirits, witches, wizards, &c. are executing their baneful errands, and that the fairy court holds a grand annual procession, during which, those who have been carried off by the fairies may be recovered, provided the attempt be made within a year and a day from the abstraction of the person stolen. That this achievement, which was attended with great peril, could only be performed on Hallow-Eve, and that this night was esteemed the anniversary of the elfin tribe, may be established on the evidence of our northern poets. Montgomery, in his _Flyting against Polwart_, published about 1584, thus mentions the procession:

"In the hinder end of harvest, on All-hallow een, When our _gude neighbours_ dois ride, if I read right, Some buckled on a bunewand, and some on a been, Ay trottand in troups from the twilight; Some saidled a she-ape, all grathed into green, Some hobland on a hemp stalk, hovard to the hight, The king of Pharie and his court, with the elf queen, With many elfish incubus was ridand that night;"[343:A]

and in the ballad called _Young Tamlane_, whose antiquity is ascertained from being noticed in the _Complaynt of Scotland_, the chief incident of the story is the recovery of Tamlane from the power of the fairies on this holy eve:—

"This night is Hallowe'en, Janet; The morn is Hallowday; And, gin ye dare your true love win, Ye have nae time to stay.

The night it is good Hallowein, When fairy folk will ride; And they, that wad their true love win, At Miles Cross they maun bide."[343:B]

It is still recorded by tradition, relates Mr. Scott, that "the wife of a farmer in Lothian having been carried off by the fairies, she, during the year of probation, repeatedly appeared on Sunday, in the midst of her children, combing their hair. On one of these occasions she was accosted by her husband; when she related to him the unfortunate event which had separated them, instructed him by what means he might win her, and exhorted him to exert all his courage, since her temporal and eternal happiness depended on the success of his attempt. The farmer, who ardently loved his wife, set out on Hallowe'en, and, in the midst of a plot of furze, waited impatiently for the procession of the fairies. At the ringing of the fairy bridles, and the wild unearthly sound which accompanied the cavalcade, his heart failed him, and he suffered the ghostly train to pass by without interruption. When the last had rode past, the whole troop vanished, with loud shouts of laughter and exultation; among which he plainly discovered the voice of his wife, lamenting that he had lost her for ever."[344:A]

Numerous have been the ceremonies, spells, and charms, which formerly distinguished All-Hallow-Eve. In England, except in a few remote places in the North, they have ceased to be observed for the last half century; but in the West of Scotland they are still retained with a kind of religious veneration, as is sufficiently proved by the inimitable poem of Burns, entitled _Halloween_, which, in a vein of exquisite poetry and genuine humour, minutely details the various superstitions, which have been practised on this night from time immemorial. Of these, as including all which prevailed in England, and which were, in a great degree, common to both countries, in the time of Shakspeare, we shall give a few sketches, nearly in the words of Burns, as annexed in the notes to his poem, merely observing that one of the spells, that of sowing hemp-seed, is omitted, as having been already described among the rites of Midsummer-Eve.

The _first_ ceremony of Hallow-Eve consisted in the lads and lasses pulling each a _stock_, or plant of kail. They were to go out, hand in hand, with eyes shut, and to pull the first they met with. Its being big or little, straight or crooked, was prophetic of the size and shape of the grand object of all their spells—the husband or wife. If any _yird_, or earth, stuck to the root, that was considered as the _tocher_, or fortune; and the taste of the _custoc_, that is, the heart of the stem, was deemed indicative of the natural temper and disposition. Lastly, the stems, or, to give them their ordinary appellation, the runts, were placed somewhere above the head of the door; and the Christian names of the people whom chance brought into the house, were, according to the priority of placing the _runts_, the names in question.

In the _second_, the lasses were to go to the barn-yard, and pull each, at three several times, a stalk of oats. If the third stalk wanted the _top-pickle_, that is, the grain at the top of the stalk, the party in question would come to the marriage-bed any thing but a maid.

The _third_ depended on the burning of nuts, and was a favourite charm both in England and Scotland. A lad and lass were named to each particular nut, as they laid them in the fire, and accordingly as they burnt quietly together, or started from beside each other, the course and issue of the courtship were to be determined.

In the _fourth_, success could only be obtained by strictly adhering to the following directions. Steal out, all alone, to the _kiln_, and, darkling, throw into the _pot_, a clue of blue yarn; wind it in a new clue off the old one: and, towards the latter end, something will hold the thread; demand, who holds it? and an answer will be returned from the kiln-pot, by naming the christian and sirname of your future spouse.

To perform the _fifth_, you were to take a candle, and go alone to a looking-glass; you were then to eat an apple before it, combing your hair all the time; when the face of your conjugal companion, _to be_, will be seen in the glass, as if peeping over your shoulder.

The _sixth_ was likewise a solitary charm, in which it was necessary to go _alone_ and _unperceived_ to the _barn_, and open both doors, taking them off the hinges, if possible, least the _being_, about to appear, should shut the doors, and do you some mischief. Then you were to take the machine used in winnowing the corn, and go through all the attitudes of letting down the grain against the wind; and on the third repetition of this ceremony, an apparition would be seen passing through the barn, in at the windy door, and out at the other, having both the figure of your future companion for life, and also the appearance or retinue, marking the employment or station in life.

To secure an effective result from the _seventh_, you were ordered to take an opportunity of going, unnoticed, to a _Bear-stack_, and fathom it three times round; when during the last fathom of the last time, you would be sure to catch in your arms the appearance of your destined yoke-fellow.

In order to carry the _eighth_ into execution, one or more were injoined to seek a south running spring or rivulet, where "three lairds lands meet," and to dip into it the left shirt-sleeve. You were then to go to bed in sight of a fire, and to hang the wet sleeve before it to dry; it was necessary, however, to lie awake, when at midnight, an apparition, having the exact figure of the future husband or wife, would come, and turn the sleeve, as if to dry the other side of it.[346:A]

For the due performance of the _ninth_, you were directed to take three dishes; to put clean water in one, foul water in another, and to leave the third empty: you were then to blindfold a person, and lead him to the hearth where the dishes were ranged, ordering him to dip the left hand; when, if this happened to be in the clean water, it was a sign that the future conjugal mate would come to the bar of matrimony a maid; if in the foul, a widow; if in the empty dish, it foretold, with equal certainty, no marriage at all. This ceremony was to be repeated three times, and every time the arrangement of the dishes was to be altered.[347:A]

Such are the various superstitions which were formerly observed at peculiar periods of the year, and which still maintain a certain portion of credit among the peasantry of Scotland and the North of England. To the catalogue of Saints thus loaded with the rites of popular credulity, may be added one whose celebrity seems to be entirely founded on the casual notice of Shakspeare. In his Tragedy of _King Lear_, Edgar introduces _St. Withold_ as an opponent, and a protector against the assaults, of that formidable Incubus, the Night-mare:—

"Saint Withold footed thrice the wold; He met the Night-mare, and her nine-fold; Bid her alight, And her troth plight, And, aroint thee, witch, aroint thee!"[347:B]

Warburton informs us, that this agency of the Saint is taken from a story of him in his legend, and that he was thence invoked as the patron saint against the distemper, called the night-mare; but Mr. Tyrwhitt declares, that he could not find this adventure in the common legends of St. Vitalis, whom he supposes to be synonymous with St. Withold. It is probable that Shakspeare took the hint, for the ascription of this achievement to Withold, from Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, where a similar power is attributed to St. George. That writer, after mentioning that there are magical cures for the night-mare, gives the following as an example:—

"St. George, S. George, our ladies knight, He walkt by daie, so did he by night: Untill such time as he hir found, He hir beat and he hir bound. Untill hir troth she to him plight, She would not come to hir (him) that night:"[348:A]

a form which is quoted nearly verbatim, and professedly as a night-spell, in the _Monsieur Thomas_ of Fletcher.[348:B] It should be observed, that the influence over _incubi_ ascribed by our poet to St. Withold, has been subsequently given to other Calendarian saints, and especially to that dreaded personage St. Swithin, who is indebted to Mr. Colman, in his alteration of _Lear_, for the transference of this singular power.

The mass of popular credulity, indeed, is so enormous, that, limited, as we are in this chapter, to the consideration of only a portion of the subject, it is still difficult, from the number and variety of the materials, to present a sketch which shall be sufficiently distinct and perspicuous. It is highly interesting, however, to observe to what striking poetical purposes Shakspeare has converted these imbecillities of mind, these workings of fear and ignorance; how by his management almost every article which he has selected from the mass of vulgar delusion, assumes a capability of impressing the strongest and most cultivated mind with grateful terror or sublime emotion. No branch, for instance, of the popular creed has been more extended, or more burdened with folly, than the belief in OMENS, and yet what noble imagery has not the poet drawn forth from this accumulation of fear-struck fancy and childish apprehension.

With the view of placing the detail of this vast groupe in a clearer light, it will be necessary to ascertain, what were the principal _omens_ most accredited in the days of Shakspeare, and after giving a catalogue of those most worthy of notice, to exhibit a few pictures by the poet as founded on some of the most remarkable articles in the enumeration, and afterwards to fill up the outline with additional circumstances from other resources.

How prone the subjects of Elizabeth were to pry into futurity, through the medium of _omens_, _auguries_, and _prognostications_, may be learnt from the following passage in Scot, taken from his chapter on the "common peoples fond and superstitious collections and observations." "Amongst us," says he, "there be manie wemen and effeminat men (manie papists alwaies, as by their superstition may appeere) that make great divinations upon the shedding of salt, wine, &c. and for the observation of daies, and houres use as great witchcraft as in anie thing. For if one chance to take a fall from a horse, either in a slipperie or stumbling waie, he will note the daie and houre, and count that time unlucky for a journie. Otherwise, he that receiveth a mischance, wil consider whether he met not a cat, or a hare, when he went first out of his doores in the morning; or stumbled not at the threshold at his going out; or put not on his shirt the wrong side outwards; or his left shoo on his right foote.

"Many will go to bed againe, if the neeze before their shooes be on their feet; some will hold fast their left thombe in their right hand when they hickot; or else will hold their chinne with their right hand whiles a gospell is soong. It is thought verie ill lucke of some, that a child, or anie other living creature, should passe betweene two friends as they walke together; for they say it portendeth a division of freendship.—The like follie is to be imputed unto them, that observe (as true or probable) old verses, wherein can be no reasonable cause of such effects: which are brought to passe onlie by God's power, and at his pleasure. Of this sort be these that follow:

"Remember on S. Vincent's daie, If that the sunne his beames displaie.—

If Paule th' apostles daie be cleare, It dooth foreshew a luckie yeare.—

If Maries purifieng daie, Be cleare and bright with sunnie raie, Then frost and cold shall be much more, After the feast than was before, &c."[350:A]

In the almanacks of Elizabeth's and James's reigns, it was customary, not only to mark the days supposed to have an influence over the weather, but to distinguish, likewise, those considered as lucky or unlucky for making bargains, or transacting business on; and, accordingly, Webster represents a character in one of his plays declaring—

"By the almanack, I think To choose good days and shun the critical;"[351:A]

and Shakspeare, referring to the same custom and the same doctrine, makes Constance in _King John_ exclaim,—

"What hath this day deserv'd? What hath it done; That it in golden letters should be set, Among the high tides, in the kalendar? Nay rather ————————————— —— if it must stand still, let wives with child Pray, that their burdens may not fall this day, Lest that their hopes prodigiously be cross'd: But (except) on this day, let seamen fear no wreck; No bargains break, that are not this day made: This day, all things begun come to an ill end; Yea, faith itself to hollow falsehood change!"[351:B]

But of omens predictive of good and bad fortune, or of the common events in life, the catalogue may be said to have no termination, and we must refer the reader, for this degrading display of human weakness and folly, to the Vulgar Errors of Browne, and to the Commentaries of Brand on Bourne's Antiquities, confining the subject to that class of the ominous which has been deemed portentive of the great, the dreadful, and the strange, and which, being surrounded by a certain degree of dignity and awe, is consequently best adapted to the genius of poetry.

That danger, death, or preternatural occurrences should be preceded by warnings or intimations, would appear comformable to the idea of a superintending providence, and therefore faith in such omens has been indulged in, by almost every nation, especially in the infancy of its civilisation. The most usual monitions of this kind are, _Lamentings heard in the air_; _shakings and tremblings of the earth_; _sudden gloom at noon-day_; _the appearance of meteors_; _the shooting of stars_; _eclipses of the sun and moon_; _the moon of a bloody hue_; _the shrieking of owls_; _the croaking of ravens_; _the shrilling of crickets_; _the night-howling of dogs_; _the clicking of the death-watch_; _the chattering of pies_; _the wild neighing of horses, their running wild and eating each other_; _the cries of fairies_; _the gibbering of ghosts_; _the withering of bay-trees_; _showers of blood_; _blood dropping thrice from the nose_; _horrid dreams_; _demoniacal voices_; _ghastly apparitions_; _winding sheets_; _corpse-candles_; _night-fires_, and _strange and fearful noises_. Of the greater part of this tremendous list Shakspeare has availed himself; introducing them as the precursors of murder, sudden death, disasters, and superhuman events. Thus, previous to the assassination of Julius Cæsar, he tells us, that—

"In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets— —Stars with trains of fire and dews of blood 'appear'd,' Disasters in the sun; and the moist star, Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands, Was sick almost to dooms-day with eclipse:"[352:A]

and again, as predictive of the same event, he adds, in another place—

—————— "There is one within, Besides the things that we have heard and seen, Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch. A lioness hath whelped in the streets; And graves have yawn'd and yielded up their dead: Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds, In ranks, and squadrons, and right form of war, Which drizzled blood upon the capitol: The noise of battle hurtled in the air, Horses do neigh, and dying men did groan; And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets."[352:B]

The circumstances which are related as preceding and accompanying the murder of Duncan are, perhaps, still more awful and impressive. "The night," says Lennox,

—————— "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 prophecying, with accents terrible, Of dire combustion, and confus'd events, New hatch'd to the woeful time. The obscure bird Clamour'd the livelong night: some say, the earth Was feverous, and did shake.

_Macb._ 'Twas a rough night."

"_Old M._ Threescore 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 intomb, When living light should kiss it?

_Old M._ 'Tis unnatural, Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last, A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at, and kill'd.

_Rosse._ And Duncan's horses, (a thing most strange and certain,) Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race, Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out, Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make War with mankind.

_Old M._ 'Tis said, they eat each other.

_Posse._ Thy did so; to the amazement of mine eyes, That look'd upon't."[353:A]

In the play of _King Richard II._ also, the poet has with great taste and skill selected the following prodigies, as forerunners of the death or fall of kings:—

"'Tis thought, the king is dead; we will not stay. The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd, And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven; The pale-fac'd moon looks bloody on the earth, And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change; Rich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap,— The one, in fear to lose what they enjoy, The other, to enjoy by rage and war: These signs forerun the death or fall of kings."[354:A]

Omens of the same portentous kind are said to have attended the births of Owen Glendower and Richard III., and Shakspeare has accordingly availed himself of the tradition in a manner equally poetical and striking; the former says of himself,—

———————— "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 Shak'd like a coward:—— The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds Were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields:"[354:B]

and Henry VI., in his interview with Richard in the Tower, reproaching the tyrant for his cruelties, tells him, as indicative of his future deeds, that

"The owl shriek'd at thy birth, an evil sign; The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time; Dogs howl'd, and hideous tempests shook down trees; The raven rook'd her on the chimney's top, And chattering pies in dismal discords sung."[354:C]

_Dreams_, considered as prognostics of good or evil, are frequently introduced by Shakspeare.

"My dreams will sure prove ominous to day,"

exclaims Andromache[355:A]; while Romeo declares,

"My dreams presage some joyful news at hand."[355:B]

But it is chiefly as precursors of misfortune that the poet has availed himself of their supposed influence as omens of future fate. There are few passages in his dramas more terrific than the dreams of Richard the Third and Clarence; the latter, especially, is replete with the most fearful imagery, and makes the blood run chill with horror.

_Dæmoniacal voices and shrieks, or monitory intimations and appearances_ from the tutelary genius of a family, were likewise imagined to precede the deaths of important individuals; a superstition to which Shakspeare alludes in the following lines from his _Troilus and Cressida_:

"_Troil._ Hark! you are call'd: Some say, the Genius so Cries, _Come!_ to him that instantly must die."[355:C]

This superstition was formerly very prevalent in England, and still prevails in several districts of Ireland, and in the more remote parts of the Highlands of Scotland. Howell tells us, that he saw at a lapidary's in 1632, a monumental stone, prepared for four persons of the name of Oxenham, before the death of each of whom, the inscription stated a white bird to have appeared and fluttered around the bed, while the patient was in the last agony[355:D]; and Glanville, remarks Mr. Scott, mentions one family, the members of which received this solemn sign by music, the sound of which floated from the family-residence, and seemed to die in a neighbouring[355:E] wood. It is related, that several of the great Highland families are accustomed to receive intimations of approaching fate by domestic spirits or tutelary genii, who sometimes assume the form of a bird or of a bloody spectre of a tall woman dressed in white, shrieking wildly round the house. Thus, observes Mr. Pennant, the family of Rothmurcas had the _Bodach-an-dun_, or the Ghost of the Hill; the Kinchardines, the _Spectre of the Bloody Hand_; Gartinley house was haunted by _Bodach-Gartin_; and Tullock Gorms by _Maug-Moulach_, or _the Girl with the Hairy Left Hand_. In certain places, he says, the death of the people is supposed to be foretold by the cries of _Benshi_, or the _Fairy's Wife_, uttered along the very path where the _funeral_ is to pass; and it has been added by others, that when the Benshi becomes visible, she appears in the shape of an old woman, with a blue mantle and streaming hair.

Of this omen, and of another of a similar kind, Mr. Scott has made his usual poetical use in the _Lady of the Lake_, where he relates of Brian, the lone Seer of the Desert, that

"Late had he heard in prophet's dream, The fatal Ben-Shie's boding scream, Sounds, too, had come in midnight blast, Of charging steeds, careering fast Along Benharrow's shingly side, Where mortal horseman ne'er might ride."

This last passage, he informs us, "is still believed to announce death to the ancient Highland family of M'Lean of Lochbuy. The spirit of an ancestor slain in battle, is heard to gallop along a stony bank, and then to ride thrice around the family-residence, ringing his fairy bridle, and thus intimating the approaching calamity."[356:A]

That the apparition of the Benshie, and the whole train of spectral and dæmoniacal warnings, were in full force in Ireland, during the seventeenth century, we have numerous proofs; the former was commonly called the _Shrieking Woman_, and of the latter a most remarkable instance is given by Mr. Scott, from the MS. Memoirs of the accomplished Lady Fanshaw. "Her husband, Sir Richard, and she, chanced, during their abode in Ireland, to visit a friend, the head of a sept, who resided in his ancient baronial castle, surrounded with a moat. At midnight, she was awakened by a ghastly and supernatural scream, and looking out of bed, beheld, by the moon-light, a female face and part of the form, hovering at the window. The distance from the ground, as well as the circumstance of the moat, excluded the possibility that what she beheld was of this world. The face was that of a young and rather handsome woman, but pale, and the hair, which was reddish, loose and dishevelled. The dress, which Lady Fanshaw's terror did not prevent her remarking accurately, was that of the ancient Irish. This apparition continued to exhibit itself for some time, and then vanished with two shrieks similar to that which had first excited Lady Fanshaw's attention. In the morning, with infinite terror, she communicated to her host what she had witnessed, and found him prepared not only to credit, but to account for the apparition. 'A near relation of my family,' said he, 'expired last night in this castle. We disguised our certain expectation of the event from you, lest it should throw a cloud over the cheerful reception which was your due. Now, before such an event happens in this family and castle, the female spectre whom you have seen always is visible. She is believed to be the spirit of a woman of inferior rank, whom one of my ancestors degraded himself by marrying, and whom afterwards, to expiate the dishonour done to his family, he caused to be drowned in the castle moat.'"[357:A]

Another set of omens predictive of disaster, supernatural agency, and death, was drawn from the appearances of lights, tapers, and fires. When a flame was seen by night resting on the tops of soldiers' lances, or playing and leaping by fits among the masts and sails of a ship, it was deemed the presage of misfortune; of defeat in battle in the one instance, and of destruction by tempest in the other. As the forerunner of a storm, Shakspeare has introduced it in his _Tempest_, where Ariel says,—

—————— "Sometimes I'd divide And burn in many places; on the top-mast, The yards and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly, Then meet and join."[358:A]

It was also conceived, that the presence of unearthly beings, ghosts, spirits, and demons, was instantly announced by an alteration in the tint of the lights which happened to be burning; a very popular notion, which the poet adopts in his _Richard the Third_, the tyrant exclaiming, as he awakens,

"_The lights burn blue_—it is now dead midnight; Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.—— Methought, the souls of all that I had murder'd, Came to my tent."[358:B]

But, the chief superstition annexed to this branch of omens, was founded on the idea, that lights and fires, commonly called _corpse-candles_ and _tomb-fires_, preceded deaths and funerals; an article of belief which was equally prevalent among the Celtic and Teutonic nations; and was cherished therefore with the same credulity in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, as in Scandinavia, Germany, and England. In this island, during the sixteenth century, it was generally credited by the common people, that when a person was about to die, a pale flame would frequently appear at the window of the room in which he was laid, and, after pausing there for a moment, would glide towards the church-yard, minutely tracing the path where the future funeral was to pass, and glowing brightly, for a time, on the spot where the body was to be interred. Sometimes, however, instead of lights, a procession was seen by the dim light of the moon: "there have bin seene some in the night," says the English Lavaterus, "when the moone shin'd, going solemnlie with the corps, according to the custome of the people, or standing before the dores, as if some bodie were to be caried to the church to burying."[359:A] In Northumberland the fancied appearance of the corpse-light was termed seeing the _Waff_ (the blast or spirit) of the person whose death was to take place.

In Wales this superstition was formerly so general, especially in the counties of Cardigan, Caermarthen, and Pembroke, that scarcely any individual was supposed to die without the previous signal of a corpse-candle. Mr. Davis, a Welshman, in a letter to Mr. Baxter, observes, that "they are called candles, from their resemblance, not of the body of the candle, but the fire; because that fire doth as much resemble material candle-lights, as eggs do eggs: saving that in their journey, these candles are sometimes visible, and sometimes disappear; especially if any one comes near to them, or in the way to meet them. On these occasions they vanish, but presently appear again behind the observer, and hold on their course. If a little candle is seen, of a pale or bluish colour, then follows the corpse, either of an abortive, or some infant; if a large one, then the corpse of some one come to age. If there be seen two, three, or more, of different sizes,—some big, some small,—then shall so many corpses pass together, and of such ages or degrees. If two candles come from different places, and be seen to meet, the corpses will do the same; and if any of these candles be seen to turn aside, through some bye-path leading to the church, the following corpse will be found to take exactly the same way."[359:B]

Among the Highlanders of Scotland, likewise, the same species of omen was so implicitly credited, that it has continued in force even to the present day. Of this Mrs. Grant has given us, in one of her ingenious essays, a most remarkable instance, and on the authority, too, of a very pious and sensible clergyman, who was accustomed, she says, "to go forth and meditate at even; and this solitary walk he always directed to his churchyard, which was situated in a shaded spot, on the banks of a river. There, in a dusky October evening, he took his wonted path, and lingered, leaning on the churchyard-wall, till it became twilight, when he saw two small lights rise from a spot within, where there was no stone, nor memorial of any kind. He observed the course these lights took, and saw them cross the river, and stop at an opposite hamlet. Presently they returned, accompanied by a larger light, which moved on between them, till they arrived at the place from which the first two set out, when all the three seemed to sink into the earth together.

"The good man went into the churchyard, and threw a few stones on the spot where the lights disappeared. Next morning he walked out early, called for the sexton, and shewed him the place, asking if he remembered who was buried there. The man said, that many years ago, he remembered burying in that spot, two young children, belonging to a blacksmith on the opposite side of the river, who was now a very old man. The pastor returned, and was scarce sat down to breakfast, when a message came to hurry him to come over to pray with the smith, who had been suddenly taken ill, and who died next day."[360:A]

_Fiery and meteorous exhalations_, shooting through the lower regions of the air, and sinking into the ground, were also deemed predictive of death. The individual was pointed out by these fires either falling on his lands or garden, or by gleaming with a lurid light over the family burying-place. Appearances of this kind were called _tomb-fires_ by the Scandinavians, and _tan-we_ by the Welsh, who believed that no freeholder died without a meteor having been seen to sparkle and vanish on his estate. In fact, as Shakspeare has expressed it, there could happen

"No natural exhalations in the sky:"

but were considered as

———————— "prodigies, and signs, Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven."[361:A]

The idea that _sudden and fearful noises_ are frequently heard before death takes place, and are indications of such an event, was very common at the period of which we are writing, both on the continent and in this country. "It happeneth many times," says the English Lavaterus, "that when men lye sicke of some deadly disease, there is something heard going in the chamber, like as the sicke men were wonte, when they were in good health: yea and the sicke parties themselves, do many times heare the same, and by and by gesse what wil come to passe. And divers times it commeth to passe, that when some of our acquaintaunce or friends lye a dying, albeit they are many miles off, yet there are some great stirrings or noises heard. Sometimes we think that the house will fall on our heads, or that some massie and waightie thing falleth downe throughout all the house, rendring and making a disordered noise: and shortlie within few monthes after, we understande that those things happened, the very same houre that our friends departed in. There be some men of whose stocke none doth dye, but that they observe and marke some signes and tokens going before: as that they heare the dores and windowes open and shut, that some thing runneth up the staires, or walketh up and downe the house, or doth some one or other such like thing.

"There was a certain parishe priest, a very honest and godly man, whom I knewe well, who in the plague time, could tell before hand, when any of his parishe should dye. For in the night time he heard a noise over his bed, like as if one had throwne downe a sacke full of corne from his shoulders: which when he heard he would say: Nowe an other biddeth me farewell. After it was day, he used to inquire who died that night, or who was taken with the plague, to the end he might comfort and strengthen them, according to the duty of a good pastour.

"In Abbeys, the Monks, servaunts or any other falling sicke, many have heard in the night, preparation of chests for them, in such sorte as the coffin makers did afterwards prepare in deede.

"In some country villages, when one is at death's dore, many times there are some heard in the evening, or in the night, digging a grave in the Churcheyarde, and the same the next day is so found digged, as these men did heare before."[362:A]

The next class of superstitions which we shall notice in this chapter, is that depending on CHARMS and SPELLS, a fertile source of knavery and credulity, and which has been chiefly exercised, in our poet's time and since, by old women. Of this occupation, and its attendant folly and imposition, the bard has given us a sketch, in his _Merry Wives of Windsor_, in the person of the _Old Woman of Brentford_, who is declared by _Ford_ to be "a witch, a quean, an old cozening quean!—We are simple men; we do not know what's brought to pass under the profession of _fortune-telling_. She works by _charms_, by _spells_, by the figure, and such daubery as this is; beyond our element: we know nothing."[362:B]

That women of this description, or as Scot has delineated them, in one instance, indeed, deviating from the _portly_ form of Shakspeare's cunning Dame, "_leane_, hollow-eied, old, beetle browed women[362:C]," were, as dealers in charms, spells and amulets, a very numerous tribe, in the days of Elizabeth and James, we have every reason to believe, from contemporary evidence; but it appears that the trade of _fortune-telling_ was then, as now, chiefly exercised by the wandering horde of _gipsies_, to whose name and characteristic knavery, our great poet alludes, in _Antony and Cleopatra_, where the Roman complains that Cleopatra,

"Like a right _gipsy_, hath, _at fast and loose_, Beguil'd him to the very heart of loss."[362:D]

Of this wily people, of the juggle referred to in these lines, and of their profession of fortune-telling, Scot thus speaks in his thirteenth book:—"The AEGYPTIANS juggling witchcraft or sortilegie standeth much in _fast or loose_, whereof though I have written somewhat generallie already (p. 197), yet having such opportunitie I will here shew some of their particular feats; not treating of their common tricks which is so tedious, nor of their _fortune-telling_ which is so impious; and yet both of them meere cousenages."[363:A] He then describes two games of _fast and loose_; one with a handkerchief, and the other with whip cords and beads; but as these much resemble the modern trick of _pricking at the belt or girdle_, explained by Sir J. Hawkins, in a note on the passage just quoted from our poet, it will not be necessary to notice them further in this place.

To _palmistry_, indeed, or the _art of Divination by the lines of the hand_, Shakspeare has allotted a great part of the second scene, in the first act, of _Antony and Cleopatra_, no doubt induced to this by the topographical situation of the opening characters, the play commencing at Alexandria in Egypt.

He has also occasionally adverted in other dramas to the multitude of _charms_, _spells_, and _periapts_ which were in use in his time; and he makes La Pucelle, in accordance with the necromantic powers attributed to her, solemnly invoke their assistance—

"Now help, ye charming spells, and periapts;"[363:B]

but as, to adopt the expression of Scot, he who "should go about to recite all charmes, would take an infinite worke in hand[363:C]," we shall confine ourselves to an enumeration, from this scarce and curious writer, of the evils and the powers, against, and for, which, these charms, were sought; and shall then add a few specimens of their nature, force, and composition. It appears that they were eagerly enquired after in the first place against burning, drowning, pestilence, sword, and famine, against thieves, spirits, witches, and diseases, and of the last class, especially against the venom of serpents, scorpions and other reptiles, the epilepsy, the king's evil, and the bite of a mad dog; and in the second, to enable the wearer to release a woman in travail, to conjure a thorn out of any member, or a bone out of the throat, to open all locks and doors, to know what is said and done behind our backs, to endure the severest tortures without shrinking, &c. &c.

One of the most efficacious of these charms, was a periapt or tablet, called an _Agnus Dei_. This, which was ordered to be constantly worn round the neck, consisted of a little cake, having the impression of a lamb carrying a flag on one side, and Christ's head on the other; and in the centre a concavity sufficiently large to contain the first chapter of St. John's Gospel, written on fine paper, in a very small character. It was a spell potent to protect the wearer against thunder and lightning, fire and water, sin, pestilence, and the perils of childbirth.[364:A]

A charm against shot, or a waistcoat of proof, was thus to be obtained:—"On Christmas daie at night, a thread must be sponne of flax, by a little virgine girle, in the name of the divell: and it must be by hir woven, and also wrought with the needle. In the brest or forepart thereof must be made with needle worke two heads; on the head at the right side must be a hat, and a long beard; the left head must have on a crowne, and it must be so horrible, that it maie resemble Belzebub, and on each side of the wastcote must be made a crosse."[364:B]

That some of these spells, however, were not carried into execution with quite so much ease, as the two we have just transcribed, will be evident from the directions annexed to the following, entitled a _charm for one possessed_: "The possessed bodie must go upon his or hir knees to the church, how farre soever it be off from their lodging; and so must creepe without going out of the waie, being the common high waie, in that sort, how fowle and durtie soever the same be; or whatsoever lie in the waie, not shunning anie thing whatsoever, untill he come to the church, where he must heare masse devoutlie, and then followeth recoverie."[365:A]

It appears, notwithstanding, that, even among the old women of the sixteenth century, there could be found some who, while they profited by, could, at the same time, despise, the credulity of their neighbours. "An old woman," says Scot, "that healed all diseases of cattell (for the which she never tooke any reward but a penie and a loafe) being seriouslie examined by what words she brought these things to passe, confessed that after she had touched the sicke creature, she alwaies departed immediatlie; saieng:

"My loafe in my lap, my penie in my pursse; Thou art never the better, and I am never the wursse."[365:B]

The same author, after relating the terrible curse or charm of St. Adelbert against thieves, facetiously adds,—"But I will answer this cruell cursse with another cursse farre more mild and civill, performed by as honest a man (I dare saie) as he that made the other.—

"So it was, that a certeine sir JOHN, with some of his companie, once went abroad a jetting, and in a moone light evening robbed a millers weire, and stole all his éeles. The poore miller made his mone to sir John himselfe, who willed him to be quiet; for he would so cursse the theefe, and all his confederates, with bell, booke and candell, that they should have small joy of their fish. And therefore the next sundaie, sir John got him to the pulpit, with his surplisse on his backe, and his stole about his necke, and pronounced these words following in the audience of the people.

All you that have stolne the miller's eeles, _Laudate Dominum de cœlis_, And all they that have consented thereto, _Benedicamus Domino_.

So (saith he) there is sauce for your éeles my maisters."[366:A]

A third portion of the popular creed may be considered as including the various kinds of superstitious CURES, PREVENTATIVES, and SYMPATHIES; a species of credulity which has suffered little diminution even in the present day; for, though the materials selected for the purpose be different, the folly and the fraud are the same. Instead of animal magnetism and metallic tractors, the public faith, in the days of Shakspeare, rested, with implicit confidence, on the virtues supposed to be inherent in bones, precious stones, sympathetic signs, powders, &c.; and the poet, accordingly, has occasionally introduced imagery founded on these imaginary qualities. Thus, in the _Merchant of Venice_, the high value which Shylock places on his _turquoise_ ring, was derived from this source, the turquoise or Turkey-stone, being considered as inestimable for its properties of indicating the health of the wearer by the increase or decrease of its colour, and for its protective power in shielding him from enmity and peril. That this was the cause of Shylock's deep regret for the loss of his ring, will appear probable from the more direct intimations of his contemporaries, Jonson and Drayton; the former, in his Sejanus, remarking of two parasites, that they would,

"—— true, as turkoise in the dear lord's ring, Look well or ill with him."[366:B]

and the latter declaring, that

"The turkesse,——who haps to wear, Is often kept from peril."[366:C]

A more distinct allusion to the sanative virtue of precious stones, is to be found in the celebrated simile in _As You Like It_:

"Sweet are the uses of adversity; Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head."[367:A]

This stone or jewel was supposed to secure the possessor from the effects of poison, and to be, likewise, a sovereign remedy for the stone.

These important effects are ascribed to it by numerous writers of Shakspeare's time,—by Gesner[367:B]; by Batman[367:C]; by Maplett[367:D]; by Fenton[367:E]; by Lupton[367:F]; by Topsell, and, subsequently, by Fuller.[367:G] It even formed, very early indeed, a part of medical treatment; for Lloyd, in his _Treasure of helth_, recommends its exhibition for the stone, and orders it, after having been _stampt_, to be "geven to the pacyent to drinke in warme wine."[367:H]

To the _Bezoar_ stone also was attributed great potency in expelling the plague and other pestilential diseases; and Gesner has given it an origin even more marvellous than the cures for which it has been celebrated; "when the hart is sick," says he, "and hath eaten many serpents for his recoverie, he is brought unto so great a heate, that he hasteth to the water, and there covereth his body unto the very eares and eyes, at which time distilleth many teares from which the (Bezoar) stone is gendered."[367:I]

The _Belemnites_ or hag-stones, perforated flints hung up at the bed's head, to prevent the night-mare, or in stables to secure the horses from being hag-ridden, and their manes elf-knotted, were, at this period, in common use. To one of the superstitious evils against which it was held as a protective, Shakspeare alludes, in his _Romeo and Juliet_, where Mercutio exclaims—

———— "This is that very Mab _That plats the manes of horses in the night_."[368:A]

"It was believed," remarks Mr. Douce, commenting on this passage, "that certain malignant spirits whose delight was to wander in groves and pleasant places, assumed occasionally the likenesses of women clothed in white; that in this character they sometimes haunted stables in the night-time, carrying in their hands tapers of wax, which they dropped on the horses' manes, thereby plaiting them in inextricable knots, to the great annoyance of the poor animals and vexation of their masters. These hags are mentioned in the works of William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris in the thirteenth century. There is a very uncommon old print by Hans Burgmair relating to this subject. A witch enters the stable with a lighted torch; and, previously to the operation of entangling the horse's mane, practises her enchantments on the groom, who is lying asleep on his back, and apparently influenced by the night-mare."[368:B]

The most copious account of the preservative and curative virtues which credulity has ascribed to precious stones, is to be drawn from the pages of Reginald Scot, who appears faithfully and minutely to have recorded the superstitions of his day. "An Agat (they saie) hath vertue against the biting of scorpions or serpents. It is written (but I will not stand to it) that it maketh a man eloquent, and procureth the favour of princes; yea, that the fume thereof dooth turn awaie tempests. Alectorius is a stone about the bignesse of a beane, as cleere as the christall, taken out of a cocks bellie which hath been gelt or made a capon foure yeares. If it be held in ones mouth, it assuageth thirst, it maketh the husband to love the wife, and the bearer invincible:——Chelidonius is a stone taken out of a swallowe, which cureth melancholie: howbeit, some authors saie, it is the hearbe whereby the swallowes recover the sight of their yoong, even if their eies be picked out with an instrument. Geranites is taken out of a crane, and Draconites out of a dragon. But it is to be noted, that such stones must be taken out of the bellies of the serpents, beasts, or birds, (wherein they are) whiles they live: otherwise, they vanish awaie with the life, and so they reteine the vertues of those starres under which they are. Amethysus maketh a droonken man sober, and refresheth the wit. The corall preserveth such as beare it from fascination or bewitching, and in this respect they are hanged about children's necks. But from whence that superstition is derived, and who invented the lie, I knowe not: but I see how redie the people are to give credit thereunto, by the multitude of coralls that waie emploied. Heliotropius stancheth bloud, driveth awaie poisons, preserveth health: yea, and some write that it provoketh raine, and darkeneth the sunne, suffering not him that beareth it to be abused. Hyacinthus dooth all that the other dooth, and also preserveth from lightening. Dinothera hanged about the necke, collar, or yoke of any creature, tameth it presentlie. A Topase healeth the lunatike person of his passion of lunacie. Aitites, if it be shaken, soundeth as if there were a little stone in the bellie thereof: it is good for the falling sicknesse, and to prevent untimelie birth. Chalcedonius maketh the bearer luckie in lawe, quickeneth the power of the bodie, and is of force also against the illusions of the divell, and phantasticall cogitations arising of melancholie. Corneolus mitigateth the heate of the mind, and qualifieth malice, it stancheth bloudie fluxes. Iris helpeth a woman to speedie deliverance, and maketh rainebowes to appeere. A Saphire preserveth the members, and maketh them livelie, and helpeth agues and gowts, and suffereth not the bearer to be afraid: it hath vertue against venome, and staieth bleeding at the nose, being often put thereto. A Smarag is good for the eiesight, and maketh one rich and eloquent. Mephis (as Aaron and Hermes report out of Albertus Magnus) being broken into powder, and droonke with water, maketh insensibilitie of torture. Heereby you may understand, that as God hath bestowed upon these stones, and such other like bodies, most excellent and woonderfull vertues: so according to the abundance of humane superstitions and follies; manie ascribe unto them either more virtues, or others than they have."[370:A]

This passage has been closely imitated by Drayton, in the ninth Nymphal of his Muse's Elysium[370:B]; he has made, however, some additions to the catalogue, one of which we have already noticed, and another will be shortly quoted.

Virtues of a kind equally miraculous were attributed to bones and horns; thus Scot tells us, that a bone taken out of a carp's head staunches blood; that the bone in a hare's foot mitigates the cramp, and that the unicorn's horn is inestimable[370:C]; and were we to enumerate the wonders performed by herbs, we might fill a volume. Many of them, indeed, were considered of such potency as to render the persons who rightly used them, either invisible or invulnerable, and, therefore, to those who were engaged to fight a legal duel, an oath was administered, purporting "that they had ne charme, ne herbe of vertue" about them.

Several diseases were held to be incurable, by ordinary means; such as wens, warts, the king's evil, agues, rickets, and ruptures; and the remedies which were adopted present a most deplorable instance of human folly. Tumours were to be dispelled by stroking them nine times with a dead man's hand, and the evil by the royal touch, a miraculous power supposed to have been first exercised by Edward the Confessor, and to have been since hereditary in the royal line, at least to the period of the decease of Queen Anne. Of the discharge of this important function by the Confessor, and of its regal descent, our poet has left us a pretty accurate description:—

"_Malcolm._ ——— Comes the king forth, I pray you?

_Doctor._ Ay, Sir: there are a crew of wretched souls, That stay his cure: their malady convinces The great assay of art; but, at his touch, Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand, They presently amend.

_Macduff._ What's the disease he means?

_Mal._ 'Tis call'd the evil: A most miraculous work in this good king; Which often, since my here-remain in England, I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven, Himself best knows; but strangely-visited people, All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despair of surgery, he cures; Hanging a golden stamp[371:A] about their necks, Put on with holy prayers: and 'tis spoken, To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction."[371:B]

That Shakspeare had frequently witnessed Queen Elizabeth's exercise of this extraordinary gift, is very probable; for it appears from Laneham, that even on her visits to her nobility, she was in the habit of exerting this sanative power. In his _Account of the Entertainment at Kenelworth Castle_, he records "by her highness accustomed mercy and charitee, nyne cured of the peynful and dangerous diseaz called the King's Evil, for that kings and queens of this realm without oother medsin (than by touching and prayer) only doo it."[371:C]

Most of the superstitious cures for warts and agues remain as articles of popular credulity; but the mode of removing ruptures and the rickets which prevailed at this period, and for some centuries before, is now nearly, if not altogether extinct. A young tree was split longitudinally, and the diseased child, being stripped naked, was passed, with the head foremost, thrice through the fissure. The wounded tree was then drawn together with a cord so as to unite it perfectly, and as the tree healed, the child was to acquire health and strength. The same result followed if the child crept through a stone perforated by some operation of Nature; of stones of this kind there are some instances in Cornwall, and Mr. Borlase tells us, in his History of that County, that there was one of this description in the parish of Marden, which had a perforation through it fourteen inches in diameter, and was celebrated for its cures on those who ventured, under these complaints, to travel through its healing aperture.

The doctrine of _sympathetic_ indications and cures was very prevalent during the era of Elizabeth and James, and is repeatedly insisted upon by the writers of that age. One of the most generally credited of these was, that a murdered body bled upon the touch or approach of the murderer; an idea which has not only been adopted by our elder bards as poetically striking, but has been adduced, as a truth, by some of our very grave writers in prose. Among the Dramatists it will be sufficient to produce Shakspeare, who represents the corpse of Henry the Sixth as bleeding on the approach of the Tyrant Richard:—

"O, gentlemen, see, see! dead Henry's wounds Open their congeal'd mouths, and bleed afresh! Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity; For 'tis thy presence that exhales this blood From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells; Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural, Provokes this deluge most unnatural:"[372:A]

and Drayton seems to have been a firm believer in the same preternatural effect; for he informs us in his forty sixth _Idea_, that,

"In making trial of a murther wrought, If the vile actors of the heinous deed, Near the dead body happily be brought, Oft't hath been prov'd the breathless corps will bleed."[373:A]

Of the prose authorities, besides Lupton, and Sir Kenelm Digby mentioned in the notes of the Variorum Edition of our author, Lavaterus, Reginald Scot, and King James may be quoted, as reposing an implicit faith in the miracle. The _first_ of these writers tells us, in his English dress, of 1572, that "some men beeing slayne by theeves, when the theeves come to the dead body, by and by there gusheth out freshe blood, or else there is declaration by other tokens, that the theefe is there present;" and he then adds, "touching these and other such marvellous things there might be many histories and testimonies alleaged. But whosoever readeth this booke, may call to their remembraunce, that they have scene these and suche like things themselves, or that they have heard them of their freends and acquaintaunce and of such as deserve sufficient credit."[373:B] The _second_, in 1584, justifying what he terms common experience, says, "I have heard by credible report, and I have read many grave authors constantlie affirme, that the wound of a man murthered reneweth bleeding; at the presence of a deere freend, or of a mortall enimie[373:C];" and the third, in 1603, asserts, that "in a secret murther, if the dead carkasse bee at any time thereafter handled by the murtherer, it will gush out of bloud, as if the bloud were crying to the heaven for revenge of the murtherer, God having appointed that secret supernaturall signe, for triall of that secret unnaturall crime."[373:D]

The influence of sympathy or _affection_ as it was termed, at the period of which we are writing, over the passions and feelings of the human mind, is curiously, though correctly exemplified by the poet, in the character of Shylock, who tells the Duke—

"Some men there are, love not a gaping pig; Some, that are mad, if they behold a cat; And others, when the bag-pipe sings i' the nose, Cannot contain their urine; for _affection_, Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood Of what it likes and loaths."[374:A]

Another sympathy mentioned by Shakspeare, but of a nature wholly superstitious, relates to the Mandrake, a vegetable, the root of which was supposed to be endued with animal life, and to shriek so horribly when drawn out of the ground, as to occasion madness, and even death, in those who made the attempt:—

—————— "What with loathsome smells, And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth, That living mortals, hearing them, run mad; O! if I wake, shall I not be distraught?"[374:B]

exclaims Juliet; and Suffolk, in King Henry the Sixth, declares that every joint of his body should curse and ban his enemies,

"Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan."[374:C]

To avoid these dreadful effects, it was the custom of those who collected this root, to compel some animal to be the instrument of extraction, and consequently the object of punishment. "They doe affyrme," says Bulleine, "that this herbe (the Mandragora) commeth of the seede of some convicted dead men: and also without the death of some lyvinge thinge it cannot be drawnen out of the earth to man's use. Therefore they did tye some dogge or other lyving beast unto the roote thereof wyth a corde, and digged the earth in compasse round about, and in the meane tyme stopp'd their own eares for feare of the terrible shriek and cry of this Mandrack. In whych cry it doth not only dye itselfe, but the feare thereof kylleth the dogge or beast which pulleth it out of the earth."[374:D]

One of the most fantastic sympathies which yet lingers in the popular creed, is founded on the idea that when a person is seized with a sudden shivering, some one is walking over his future grave. "Probably," remarks Mr. Grose, "all persons are not subject to this sensation; otherwise the inhabitants of those parishes, whose burial grounds lie in the common foot-path, would live in one continual fit of shaking."[375:A]

Of all the modes of sympathetic credulity, however, none was more prevalent in the reign of James the First, than that which pretended to the cure of wounds and diseases; no stronger proof, indeed, can be given of the credulity of that age, than that Bacon was a believer in the sympathetic cure of warts[375:B], and, with James and his court, in the efficacy of Sir Kenelm Digby's sympathetic powder. To this far-famed medicine, the secret of which King James obtained from Sir Kenelm, it is said, by the Knight himself, in his Discourse on Sympathy, that Mr. James Howel, the well-known author of the Letters, was indebted for a cure, when his hand was severely wounded in endeavouring to part two of his friends engaged in a duel. The King, out of regard to Howel, sent him his own surgeon; but a gangrene being apprehended, from the violence of the inflammation, the sufferer was induced to apply to Sir Kenelm, of whose mode of treatment he had heard the most wonderful accounts.

"I asked him," relates Digby, "for any thing that had the blood upon it; so he presently sent for his garter, wherewith his hand was first bound; and as I called for a bason of water, as if I would wash my hands, I took a handfull of powder of vitriol, which I had in my study, and presently dissolved it. As soon as the bloody garter was brought me, I put it within the bason, observing in the interim, what Mr. Howel did, who stood talking with a gentleman in a corner of my chamber, not regarding at all what I was doing; but he started suddenly as if he had found some strange alteration in himself. I asked him what he ailed? 'I know not what ailes me; but I finde that I feel no more pain. Methinks that a pleasing kinde of freshnesse, as it were a wet cold napkin, did spread over my hand, which hath taken away the inflammation that tormented me before.' I reply'd, 'Since then that you feel already so good effect of my medicament, I advise you to cast away all your playsters; only keep the wound clean, and in a moderate temper betwixt heat and cold.' This was presently reported to the Duke of Buckingham, and a little after to the king, who were both very curious to know the circumstance of the businesse, which was, that after dinner I took the garter out of the water, and put it to dry before a great fire. It was scarce dry, but Mr. Howel's servant came running that his master felt as much burning as ever he had done, if not more: for the heat was such as if his hand were twixt coles of fire. I answered, although that had happened at present, yet he should find ease in a short time; for I knew the reason of this new accident, and would provide accordingly; for his master should be free from that inflammation, it may be before he could possibly return to him: but in case he found no ease, I wished him to come presently back again; if not, he might forbear coming. Thereupon he went; and at the instant I did put again the garter into the water, thereupon he found his master without any pain at all. To be brief, there was no sense of pain afterward; but within five or six dayes the wounds were cicatrized, and entirely healed."[376:A]

To this marvellous cure, which may in truth be attributed to the dismission of the plasters, we may add that a similar sanative and sympathetic power was conceived to subsist between the wounds and the instrument which inflicted them. Thus anointing the weapon with a salve, or stroking it in a peculiar manner, had an immediate effect on the wounded person. "They can remedie," says Scot, "anie stranger, and him that is absent, with that _verie sword_ wherewith they are wounded. Yea, and that which is beyond all admiration, if they stroke the sworde upwards with their fingers, the partie shall feele no paine: whereas if they drawe their finger downewards thereupon, the partie wounded shall feele intollerable paine."[377:A]

Independent of the superstitions which we have thus classed under distinct heads, there remain several to be noticed, not clearly referrible to any part of the above arrangement; but which cannot with propriety be omitted. These may, therefore, be collected under the term MISCELLANEOUS, which will be found to include many curious particulars, in no slight degree illustrative of the subject under consideration.

In the _Tempest_, towards the close of the fourth act, the poet represents Prospero and Ariel setting on spirits, in the shape of hounds, to hunt Stephano and Trinculo, while, at the same time, a noise of hunters is heard.[377:B] This species of diabolical or spectral chase was a popular article of belief, and is mentioned or alluded to in many of the numerous books which were written, during this period, on devils and spectres. Lavaterus, treating of the various modes in which spirits act, says, "heereunto belongeth those things which are reported touching the _chasing or hunting of Divels_, and also of the daunces of dead men, which are of sundrie sortes. I have heard of some which have avouched, that they have seene them[377:C];" and in a translation from the French of Peter de Loier's _Treatise of Spectres_, published in 1605, a chase of this kind is mentioned under the appellation of _Arthur's Chace_, "which many," observes this writer, "believe to be in France, and think that it is a kennel of black dogs, followed by unknown huntsmen, with an exceeding great sound of horns, as if it was a very hunting of some wild beast."[377:D]

Of a chase of this supernatural description, Boccacio, in the fourteenth century, made an admirable use in his terrific tale of Theodore and Honoria; a narrative which has received new charms and additional horrors from the masterly imitation of Dryden; and in our own days the same impressive superstition has been productive of a like effect in the spirited ballad of Burger.

The hell-hounds of Shakspeare appear to be sufficiently formidable; for, not merely commissioned to hunt their victims, they are ordered, likewise, as goblins, to

———————— "grind their joints With dry convulsions; shorten up their sinews With aged cramps; and more pinch-spotted make them, Than pard, or cat o'mountain. Hark, (_exclaims Ariel_) they roar.

_Prospero._ Let them be hunted soundly."[378:A]

The punishments which our poet has assigned to sinners in the infernal regions, are most probably founded on the fictions of the monks, who, not content with the infliction of mere fire as a source of torment, condemn the damned to suffer the alternations of heat and cold; to experience the cravings of extreme hunger and thirst, and to be driven by whirlwinds through the immensity of space. In correspondence with these legendary horrors, are the descriptions attributed to Claudio in _Measure for Measure_, and to the Ghost in _Hamlet_:—

"_Claudio._ 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 _imprison'd 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 uncertain thoughts Imagine howling!—'tis too horrible!"[379:A]

————— "I am thy father's spirit; Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night; And, for the day, _confined to fast in fires_, Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature, Are burnt and purg'd away."[379:B]

Imagery somewhat similar to this may be found in the vulgar Latin version of Job xxiv. 19.[379:C], and in the Inferno and Purgatorio of Dante[379:D]; but Shakspeare had sufficient authorities in his own language. An old homily, quoted by Dr. Farmer, speaking of the pains of hell, says "the fyrste is fyre that ever brenneth, and never gyveth lighte; the seconde is passying cold, that yf a greate hylle of fyre were cast therein, it shold torne to yce[379:E];" and Chaucer, in his _Assemblie of Foules_, describing the situation of souls in hell, declares that

—— "breakers of the lawe, sothe to saine, And lickerous folke, after that they been dede _Shall whirle about the world_, alway in paine Till many a world be passed."[379:F]

The same doctrine is taught in that once popular and curious old work _The Shepherd's Calendar_, which so frequently issued from the presses of Wynkyn De Worde, Pynson, and Julian Notary. Among the torments of the damned, the first enumerated

——— "is fire so hote to rekenne That no manere of thynge may slekenne, The secunde is colde as seith some That no hete of fire may over come;"

and Lazarus, describing the punishment of the ENVIOUS, says,—"I have seen in hell a flood frozen as ice, wherein the _envious_ men and women were plunged unto the navel; and then suddenly came over them a right cold and a great wind, that grieved and pained them right sore, and when they would evite and eschew the wonderful blasts of the wind, they plunged into water with great shouts and cries, lamentable to hear[380:A];" and again in the eighteenth chapter of the same work, it is related, as the reward of them that keep the ten commandments of the Devil, that

—— "a _great froste_ in a water rounes And after a _bytter wynde_ comes Whiche gothe through the soules with yre."

In the _Songes and Sonnets_, also, by Lord Surrey, and others, which were first published in 1557, the pains of hell are depicted as partaking of the like vicissitude:—

"The soules that lacked grace Which lye in bitter paine, Are not in suche a place, As foolish folke do faine;

Tormented all with _fyre_, And boyle in leade againe—

Then cast in _frozen pites_, To _freze_ there certein howres."[380:B]

Hunger and thirst, as forming part of the sufferings of the damned, are alluded to by Chaucer in his Parson's Tale[381:A], and by Nash in one of his numerous pamphlets: "Whether," says he, speaking of hell, "it be a place of horror, stench, and darkness, where men see _meat, but can get none, and are ever thirsty_."[381:B]

Heywood in his _Hierarchie of Angels_[381:C], and Milton in his _Paradise Lost_, have adopted Claudio's description of the infernal abode with regard to the interchange of heat and cold; the picture which the latter has drawn completely fills up the outline of Shakspeare:—

"Beyond —— a frozen continent Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms Of whirlwind and dire hail—— Thither by harpy-footed furies hal'd, At certain revolutions, all the damn'd Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce, From beds of raging fire, to starve in ice Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine Immovable, infix'd, and frozen round, Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire."[381:D]

The Platonic doctrine or superstition relative to the harmony of the spheres, and of the human soul, was a favourite embellishment, both in prose and poetry, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Spenser, Shakspeare, Hooker, Milton, have all adopted it as a mode of illustration, and it forms, in the works of our great Dramatist, one of his most splendid and beautiful passages:

"How sweet the moon-light sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit, and let the sounds of musick Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night, Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit, Jessica: Look, how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold; _There's not the smallest orb, which thou behold'st, But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubins: Such harmony is in immortal souls; But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it_."[382:A]

The opinion of Plato, as expressed in the tenth book of his _Republic_[382:B] and in his _Timæus_, represents the music of the spheres as so rapid, sweet, and variously inflected, as to exceed all power in the human ear to measure its proportions, and consequently it is not to be heard of man, while resident in this fleshly mould. The same species of harmony is averred by Hooker[382:C] and Shakspeare to reside in the human soul; but, says the latter, "whilst this muddy vesture of decay doth grossly close this musick in, we cannot hear it:" that is, whilst the soul is immured in the body, it is neither conscious of its own harmony, nor of that existing in the spheres; but no sooner shall it be freed from this incumbrance, and become a _pure spirit_, than it shall be sensible both to its _own concord of sweet sounds_, and to that _diapason_ or concentus which is addressed by the nine muses or syrens to the Supreme Being,

"That undisturbed song of _pure concent_, Aye sung before the sapphire-colour'd throne, To _Him_ that sits thereon."[382:D]

Of the various superstitions relative to the _Moon_, which prevailed in the days of Shakspeare, a few are still retained. The most common is that founded on the idea of a human creature being imprisoned in this beautiful planet. The culprit was generally supposed to be the sinner recorded in Numbers, chap. xv. v. 32., who was found gathering sticks upon the sabbath day; a crime to which Chaucer has added the iniquity of theft; for he describes this singular inhabitant as

"Bearing a bush of thornes on his backe, Which for his _theft_ might clime no ner the heven."[383:A]

The Italians, however, appropriate this luminary for the residence of Cain, and one of their early poets even speaks of the planet under the term of _Caino e le spine_.[383:B] Shakspeare, with his usual attention to propriety of character, attributes a belief in this superstition to the monster Caliban:

"_Calib._ Hast thou not dropped from heaven?

_Steph._ Out o'the moon, I do assure thee: I was the man in the moon, when time was.

_Cal._ I have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee; My mistress shewed me thee, thy dog and bush."[383:C]

The influence of the moon over diseases bodily and intellectual; its virtue in all magical rites; its appearances as predictive of evil and good, and its power over the weather and over many of the minor concerns of life, such as the gathering of herbs, the killing of animals for the table, &c. &c. were much more firmly and universally accredited in the sixteenth century than at present; although we must admit, that traces of all these credulities may still be found; and that in medical science, the doctrine of lunar influence still, and to a certain extent, perhaps with probability, exists.

Shakspeare addresses the moon as the "sovereign mistress of true melancholy[383:D];" tells us, that when "she comes more near to the earth than she was wont," she "makes men mad[383:E];" and that, when she is "pale in her anger—rheumatic diseases do abound."[384:A] He tells us, also, through the medium of Hecate, that

"Upon the corner of the moon There hangs a vaporous drop profound"

of power to compel the obedience of infernal spirits[384:B]; and that its eclipses[384:C], its sanguine colour[384:D], and its apparent multiplication[384:E], are certain prognostics of disaster.

To kill hogs, to collect herbs, and to sow seed, when the moon was increasing, was deemed a most essential observance; the bacon was better, the plants more effective, and the crops more abundant in consequence of this attention. Implicit confidence was also placed in the new moon as a prognosticator of the weather, according to its position, or the curvature of its horns; and it was hailed by blessings and supplications; the women especially, both in England and Scotland, were accustomed to curtesy to the new moon, and on the first night of its appearance the unmarried part of the sex would frequently, sitting astride on a gate or stile, invoke its influence in the following curious terms:—

"All hail to the Moon, all hail to thee, I prithee good Moon declare to me, This night who my husband shall be."

The credulity of the country was particularly directed at this period, including the close of the sixteenth century, and the beginning of the seventeenth century, towards the numerous relations of the existence of MONSTERS of various kinds; and Shakspeare, who more than any other poet, availed himself of the superstitious follies of his time, hath repeatedly both introduced, and satirized, these objects, as articles of, and exciters of the popular belief. His Caliban, a monster of his own creation, and, poetically considered, one of the most striking products of his imagination, will be noticed at length in another place, and we shall here confine ourselves to his description of the monsters which, as objects of historical record, had lately become the theme of credulous wonder, and general speculation.

Othello, in his speech before the senators, familiarly alludes to

—— "the Cannibals that each other eat, The _Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders_:"[385:A]

and Gonzaga, in the _Tempest_, exclaims:

"Who would believe that there were mountaineers, _Dewlapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at them Wallets of flesh_? or that there were such _men, Whose heads stood in their breasts_."[385:B]

These monsters, and many others, which had been described in the editions of Maundeville's Travels, published by Wynkyn De Worde and Pynson in 1499-1503, &c. were revived, with fresh claims to belief, by the voyagers and natural historians of the poet's age. In 1581, Professor Batman printed his "Doome, warning all men to the judgemente," in which not only the _Anthropophagi, who eat man's flesh_, are mentioned, but various other races, such as the _Œthiopes_ with four eyes, the _Hippopodes_, with their nether parts like horses, the _Arimaspi_ with one eye in the forehead, &c. &c., and to these he adds "men called _Monopoli_, who _have no head, but a face in their breaste_."[385:C] In 1596 these marvels were corroborated by Sir Walter Ralegh's _Discoverie of Guiana_[385:D], an empire, which, he affirms, was productive of a similar generation; and Hackluyt, in 1598, tells us that, "on that branch which is called Caora, are a nation of a people _whose heades appeare not above their shoulders_: they are reported to have their eyes in their shoulders, and their mouthes in the middle of their breasts."

With the mere English scholar, classical authority was given to these tales by Philemon Holland's Translation of Pliny's Natural History in 1601, where are the following descriptions both of the _Anthropophagi_ and of the men _whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders_:—"The Anthropophagi or eaters of man's flesh whom we have placed about the North pole, tenne daies journey by land above the river Borysthenes, use to drinke out of the sculs of men's heads, and to weare the scalpes, haire and all, in steed of mandellions or stomachers before their breasts."[386:A] "The Blemmyi, by report, have no heads, but mouth and eies both in their breast[386:B];" and again, "beyond these westward, some there bee without heads standing upon their neckes, who carrie eies in their shoulders."[386:C]

It is, also, very probable that the attention of Shakspeare was still further drawn to these headless monsters by the labours of the engraver; for in Este's edition of Maundeville's Travels, an attempt is made to delineate one of these deformities, who is represented with the eyes, nose, and mouth situated on the breast and stomach; and in a translation of Ralegh's Guiana into Latin, by Hulse, in 1599, a similar plate is given.[386:D]

That our author viewed this partiality in the public mind for wonders and strange spectacles, with a smile of contempt, and was willing to seize an opportunity for ridiculing the mania, appears evident from a passage in his _Tempest_, where Trinculo, discovering Caliban extended on the ground, supposes him to be a species of fish, and observes, "Were I in England now (as once I was) and had but this _fish_ painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver: there would this monster make a man; any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian."[387:A]

_Wild Indians_, _curious fishes_, and _crocodiles_, seem to have been singularly numerous in London at this epoch, having been brought thither by several of our enterprising navigators; and by those who crowded from every part of the country to view them, many superstitious marvels were connected with their natural history. Of _three_ or _four savages_ which Frobisher took in his first voyage, one, we are told, "for very choler and disdain bit his tong in twaine within his mouth: notwithstanding he died not thereof, but lived untill he came in Englande, and then he died of colde, which he had taken at sea[387:B];" the survivors, there is every reason to suppose, were exhibited; for in the year 1577, there was entered on the books of the Stationers' Company, "A description of the portrayture and shape of those strange kinde of people which the worthie Mr. Martin Fourbosier brought into England in Ao 1576[387:C];" and Mr. Chalmers relates, that "Lord Southampton, and Sir Francis Gorges, engaging in voyages of discovery, sent out, in 1611, two vessels under the command of Harlie, and Nicolas, who sailed along the New England coast, where they were sometimes well, and often ill, received, by the natives; and returned to England, in the same year, with _five savages_, on board. In 1614, Captain Smith carried out to New England one of those savages, named _Tantum_; Captains Harlie and Hopson transported, in the same year, two others of those savages, called _Epenow_, and _Manawet_; one of those savages adventured to the European continent; and the _fifth Indian_, of whom no account is given, we may easily suppose died in London, and was exhibited for a show."[387:D]

We learn from a publication of Churchyard's in 1578, that Frobisher's crew found a "_straunge fish_ dead, that had been caste from the sea on the shore, who had a boane in his head like an Unicorne, which they brought awaye, and presented to our Prince, when thei came home[388:A];" and from the Stationers' Books, that, in 1604, an account was printed "of a monstrous _fish_, that appeared in the form of a woman from her waist upward, seene in the sea."[388:B] That the credulity of the public in Elizabeth's days was remarkably great in swallowing the most marvellous details in natural history, is proved by a curious scene in the "City Match" of Jasper Mayne, which, though first acted in 1639, refers to the age of Elizabeth, as to a period fertile in these wondrous exhibitions. A set of knaves are described as _hanging out the picture of a strange fish_, which they affirm is the _fifth_ they have shown; and the following dialogue takes place relative to the inscription on the place which included the monster:—

"_Holland._ Pray, can you read that? Sir, I warrant That tells where it was caught, and what fish 'tis.

_Plotwell._ _Within this place is to be seen, A wonderous fish. God save——the Queen._

_Hol._ Amen! She is my customer, and I Have sold her bone-lace often.

_Bright._ Why the Queen? 'Tis writ the King.

_Plot._ That was to make the rhime.

_Bright._ 'Slid, thou did'st read it as twere some picture of An _Elizabeth-fish_."[388:C]

A boy is then introduced, who sings a song upon the fish, commencing with these lines:

"We show no monstrous _crocodile_, Nor any prodigy of Nile;"[389:A]

which again alludes to the monster-loving propensities of good Queen Bess's subjects; for Batman in his work upon Bartholome, published in 1582, says,—"Of late years there hath been brought into England, the cases or skinnes of such _crocodiles_, to be seene, and much money given for the sight thereof; the policy of strangers," he adds, in the spirit of Shakspeare, "laugh at our folly, either that we are too wealthy, or else that we know not how to bestow our money[389:B];" and Bullokar, in his _English Expositor_ of 1616, confirms the charge by telling us, that a dead _crocodile_, "but in perfect forme," and nine feet long, had lately been exhibited in London, a fact to which he annexes the following tradition:—"It is written," he remarks, "that he will weep over a man's head when he hath devoured the body, and then he will eat up the head too. Wherefore—crocodiles tears signifie such tears as are fained, and spent only with intent to deceive or doe harme."[389:C] Of this superstition Shakspeare has made a poetical use in two of his dramas: Margaret in _Henry VI._ Part 2. complains that Gloucester beguiles the king,

—————— "as the mournful crocodile With sorrow snares relenting passengers:"[389:D]

and Othello, execrating the supposed duplicity of Desdemona, exclaims,

"If that the earth could teem with woman's tears, Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile."[389:E]

Many superstitions relative to the DYING, existed at this time, among all ranks of people, and a few of these have been preserved by our poet. One of the most general was built on the belief, that Satan, or some of his infernal host, watched the death-bed of every individual, and, if impenitence or irreligion appeared, immediately took possession of the soul. The death-scene of Cardinal Beaufort is an admirable exemplification of this appalling idea; Henry is appealing to the Almighty in behalf of the agonised sinner, and utters the following pious petition:—

"O thou eternal Mover of the heavens, Look with a gentle eye upon this wretch! O, beat away the busy meddling fiend That lays strong siege unto this wretch's soul, And from his bosom purge this black despair!"[390:A]

The powerful delineation of this scene from the pencil of Sir Joshua Reynolds, in which the "meddling fiend" is personified in all his terrors, must be considered in strict accordance with the credulity of the age; for "in an ancient manuscript book of devotions," relates Mr. Douce, "written in the reign of Henry VI., there is a prayer addressed to Saint George, with the following very singular passage: 'Judge for me whan the moste hedyous and damnable dragons of helle shall be redy to take my poore soule and engloute it in to theyr infernall belyes'[390:B];" and the books on demonology and spirits, written in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, clearly prove that this relic of popish superstition was still a portion of the popular creed.

Another singular conception was, that it was necessary in the agonies of death, to

"Pluck—men's pillows from below their heads,"[390:C]

in order that they might die the easier; a practice founded on the ridiculous supposition that, if pigeons' feathers formed a part of the materials of the pillow, it was impossible the sufferer should expire but in great misery, and that he would probably continue to struggle for a prodigious length of time in exquisite torture.

It was common at this period, and the practice, indeed, continued until the middle of the last century, to consider WELLS and FOUNTAINS as peculiarly sacred and holy, and to visit them as a species of pilgrimage, or for the healing virtues which superstition had fondly attributed to them. Many of these wells, which had been much frequented in London, during the days of Fitzstephen, were closed, or neglected, when Stowe wrote[391:A]; but in the _country_ the habit of resorting to such springs, and for purposes similar to those which existed in papal times, was generally preserved. Bourne, who published in 1725, speaks in language peculiarly descriptive of this superstitious regard for wells and fountains, not only as it was observed in ancient times, but at the period in which he lived. "In the dark ages of popery," he says, "it was a custom, if any _well_ had an awful situation, and was seated in some lonely melancholy vale; if its water was clear and limpid, and beautifully margin'd with the tender grass; or if it was look'd upon, as having a medicinal quality; to gift it to some _Saint_, and honour it with his name. Hence it is that we have at this day wells and fountains called, some _St. John's, St. Mary Magdalen's, St. Mary's Well, &c._

"To these kind of wells, the common people are accustomed to go, on a summer's evening, to refresh themselves with a walk after the toil of the day, to drink the water of the fountain, and enjoy the pleasing prospect of shade and stream.

"Now this custom (though, _at this time of day_, very commendable, and harmless, and innocent) seems to be the remains of that superstitious practice of the Papists, of paying adoration to wells and fountains; for they imagined there was some holiness and sanctity in them, and so worshipped them."[392:A]

It was in the north especially, where Mr. Bourne resided, that wells of this description were most frequently to be found, possessing the advantages of a romantic situation, and preserved with care through the influence of the traditionary legends of the neighbouring village; for these retreats were supposed to be the haunts of fairies and good spirits who were accustomed to meet

—————— "in dale, forest, or mead, By paved fountain, or by rushy brook."[392:B]

At these wells offerings were frequently made, either owing to the conceived sanctity of the place, or from gratitude for imagined benefit received through the waters of the spring; and as those who had recourse to these fountains were usually of the lower class, small pieces of money were given, or even _rags_ suspended on the trees or bushes which overhung the stream; whence these fountains in many places obtained the name of _Rag-wells_. One thus termed is mentioned, by Mr. Brand, as still exhibiting these tributary shreds at the village of Benton near Newcastle; Mr. Pennant records two at Spey and Drachaldy in Scotland; and Mr. Shaw tells us, that in the province of Moray _pilgrimages to wells_ are not yet obsolete.[393:A] In many places in the North, indeed, there are wells still remaining which were manifestly intended for the refreshment of the way-worn traveller, and are yet held in veneration. We have seen some of these with ladles of brass affixed to the stone-work by a chain, a convenience probably as ancient as the Anglo-Saxon era.

Several traditions of a peculiarly superstitious hue, have been cherished in this country with regard to the _bird-tribe_, and most of them have been introduced by our great poet as accessory either to the terrible, or the pathetic. The ominous croaking of the raven and the crow have been already mentioned, and we shall therefore, under the present head, merely advert to a few additional notices relative to the _owl_ and the _ruddock_, the former the supposed herald of horror and disaster, the latter the romantic minister of charity and pity.

To the fearful bodings of the clamorous owl, which we have already introduced when treating of omens, may now be added a superstition which formerly rendered this unlucky bird the peculiar dread of mothers and nurses. It was firmly believed, that the screech-owl was in the habit of destroying infants by sucking out their blood and breath as they laid in the cradle. "Lamiæ," observes Lavaterus, "are things that make children afrayde. Lamiæ are also called _Striges_. _Striges_ (as they saye) are unluckie-birds, whiche sucke out the blood of infants lying in their cradles. And hereof some men will have witches take their name, who also are called [393:B]_Volaticæ_." This credulity relative to the Strix or screech-owl may be traced to Ovid[394:A], and is alluded to by Shakspeare in the following lines:—

"We talk of goblins, _owls_, and elvish sprites; If we obey them not, this will ensue, They'll _suck out breath_, and pinch us black and blue."[394:B]

Another strange legend in the history of the owl is put into the mouth of the hapless Ophelia:—

"Well, God 'ield you! They say the owl was a baker's daughter;"[394:C]

a metamorphosis of which Mr. Douce has given us the origin; he tells us that it is yet a common story among the vulgar in Gloucestershire, and is thus related:—"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 afterwards began to swell, and presently became of a most enormous size. Whereupon the baker's daughter cried out 'Heugh, heugh, heugh,' which owl-like noise, probably induced our Saviour for her wickedness to transform her into that bird." He adds that this story was often related to children, in order to deter them from such illiberal behaviour to poor people.[394:D]

The partiality shown to the _ruddock_ or _red-breast_ seems to have been founded on the popular ballad of _The Children in the Wood_, and the play of _Cymbeline_. The charitable office, however, which these productions have ascribed to _Robin_, has an earlier origin than their date; for in Thomas Johnson's _Cornucopia_, 4to. 1596, it is related that "the robin redbrest if he find a man or woman dead, will cover all his face with mosse, and some thinke that if the body should remaine unburied that he would cover the whole body also."[395:A] It is highly probable that this anecdote might give birth to the burial of the babes, whom no one heeded,

"Till _Robin-red-breast_ painfully Did _cover them with leaves_;"

for, according to Dr. Percy[395:B], this pathetic narrative was built upon a play published by Rob. Yarrington in 1601. It is likewise possible that the same passage occasioned the beautiful lines in the play of _Cymbeline_, performed about 1606, where Arviragus, mourning over Imogen, exclaims—

—————— "With fairest flowers, Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, I'll sweeten thy sad grave: Thou shalt not lack The flower, that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor The azur'd hare-bell, like thy veins; no, nor The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, Out-sweeten'd not thy breath: the _ruddock_ would, With charitable bill—bring thee _all this_; Yea, and furr'd _moss_ besides, when flowers are none, To winter-ground thy corse."[395:C]

These interesting pictures of the red-breast would alone be sufficient to create an affectionate feeling for him; the attachment however has been ever since kept alive by delineations of a similar kind. In our author's time Drayton, Webster, and Dekker, have all alluded to this pleasing tradition: the first in his _Owl_ 1604—

"Cov'ring with moss the deads unclosed eye, The little _red-breast_ teacheth charitie;"[395:D]

the second in his Tragedy, called _The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona_, 1612—

"Call for the _robin red-breast_ and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men;"[396:A]

and the third in one of his pamphlets printed in 1616—"They that cheere up a prisoner but with their sight, are _Robin red-breasts_ that bring strawes in their bils to cover a dead man in extremitie."[396:B]

Some wonderful properties relative to an imaginary gem, called a _carbuncle_, formed likewise a part of the popular creed. It was supposed to be the most transparent of all the precious stones, and to possess a native intrinsic lustre so powerful as to illuminate the atmosphere to a considerable distance around it. It was, therefore, very appositely adopted by the writers of romance, as an ornament and source of light for their subterranean palaces, and almost all our elder poets have gifted it with a similar brilliancy; thus Chaucer, in his _Romaunt of the Rose_[396:C]; Gower, in his _Confessio Amantis_[396:D]; Lydgate, in his _Description of King Priam's Palace_[396:E]; and Stephen Hawes, in his _Pastime of Pleasure_[396:F], have all celebrated it as a kind of second sun, and the most valuable of earthly products. Chaucer, more particularly, mentions it as so clear and bright,—

"That al so sone as it was night, Men mightin sene to go for nede A mile, or two in length and brede, Such light ysprange out of that stone."

That this fiction was credited in the days of Elizabeth and James, may be conceded, not only from the familiar allusions of the poets, but from the philosophic writers on the superstitions of the age. To the _unborrowed_ light of the carbuncle, Shakspeare has referred in _King Henry the Eighth_, where the Princess Elizabeth is prophetically termed,

—————— "a gem To lighten all this isle;"[397:A]

and in Titus Andronicus, (if that play can be deemed his,) upon the discovery of Bassianus slaughtered in a pit;

"_Martius._ Upon his bloody finger he doth wear A precious ring, that lightens all the hole, ——like a taper in some monument;"[397:B]

He also mentions this "rich jewel" by way of comparison in Coriolanus[397:C]; appropriates it as an ornament to the wheels of Phœbus's chariot in Cymbeline[397:D]; and in the Player's speech in Hamlet, the eyes of Pyrrhus are said to be "like carbuncles."[397:E]

Drayton describes this fabled stone with nearly as much precision as Chaucer; he calls it

"——— that admired, mighty stone, The _carbuncle_ that's named; Which from it such a flaming light And radiancy ejecteth, That in the very darkest night The eye to it directeth."[397:F]

A modern poet, remarkable for his powers of imagination, has beautifully, and very happily availed himself of these marvellous attributes, in describing the magnificent palace of Shedad, a passage which we shall transcribe, as it leads to an illustrative extract from a writer of Shakspeare's age:

"Here self-suspended hangs in air, As its pure substance loathed material touch, The living carbuncle; Sun of the lofty dome, Darkness has no dominion o'er its beams; Intense it glows, an ever-flowing tide Of glory, like the day-flood in its source."

"I have no where seen," says Mr. Southey in a note on these lines, "so circumstantial an account of its (the carbuncle's) wonderful properties as in a passage of Thuanus, quoted by Stephanius in his notes to Saxo-Grammaticus.

"Whilst the King was at Bologna, a stone, wonderful in its species and nature, was brought to him from the East Indies, by a man unknown, who appeared by his manners to be a Barbarian. It sparkled as though all burning, with an incredible splendour; flashing radiance, and shooting on every side its beams, it filled the surrounding air to a great distance with a light scarcely by any eyes endurable. In this also it was wonderful, that being most impatient of the earth, if it was confined, it would force its way, and immediately fly aloft; neither could it be contained by any art of man in a narrow place, but appeared only to love those of ample extent. It was of the utmost purity, stained by no soil nor spot. Certain shape it had none, for its figure was inconstant, and momentarily changing, and though at a distance it was beautiful to the eye, it would not suffer itself to be handled with impunity, but hurt those who obstinately struggled with it, as many persons before many spectators experienced. If by chance any part of it was broken off, for it was not very hard, it became nothing less."[398:A]

An account equally minute, and in terms nearly similar, occurs in Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584, and both were probably taken from the same source, the writings of Fernel or Fernelius. This physician died in 1558; and his description, as copied by Scot, contributed, no doubt, to prolong the public credulity in this kingdom; though the English philosopher attempts to explain the phenomenon by supposing that actual flame was concentrated and burning in the centre of the gem.

"Johannes Fernelius writeth of a strange stone latelie brought out of India, which hath in it such a marvellous brightnes, puritie and shining, that therewith the aire round about is so lightned and cleared, that one may see to read thereby in the darknes of night. It will not be conteined in a close roome, but requireth an open and free place. It would not willingly rest or staie here belowe on the earth, but alwaies laboureth to ascend up into the aire. If one presse it downe with his hand, it resisteth, and striveth verie sharplie. It is beautifull to behold, without either spot or blemish, and yet verie unpleasant to taste or feele. If any part thereof be taken awaie, it is never a whit diminished, the forme thereof being inconstant, and at everie moment mutable."[399:A]

The carbuncle was believed to be an animal substance generated in the body of a serpent, to possess a sexual distinction, the males having a star-formed burning nucleus, while the females dispersed their brilliancy on all sides in a formless blaze; and, like other transparent gems, to have the power of expelling evil spirits.

While on the subject of superstitious notions relative to luminous bodies, we may remark, that in the age of Shakspeare, the wandering lights, termed _Will-o-wisp_ and _Jack-o-Lantern_, were supposed by the common people to be occasioned by demons and malignant fairies, with the view of leading the benighted traveller to his destruction. "Many tymes," says Lavaterus, "candles and small fiers appeare in the night, and seeme to run up and downe;—those fiers some time seeme to come togither, and by and by to be severed and run abroade, and at the last to vanish clean away. Somtime these fiers go alone in the night season, and put such as see them, as they travel by night, in great fear. But these things, and many suche lyke, have their natural causes: _and yet I will not denye, but that many tymes Dyvels delude men in this manner_."[400:A]

Stephano, in the _Tempest_, attributes this phenomenon to the agency of a mischievous fairy: "Monster, your fairy, which, you say, is a harmless fairy, has done little better than _played the Jack with us_."[400:B]

Various causes have been assigned for the appearance of the _ignis fatuus_; modern chemistry asserts it to be occasioned by hydrogen gas, evolving from decaying vegetables, and the decomposition of pyritic coal; and when seen hovering on the surface of burial grounds, to originate from the same gas in a higher state of volatility, through the agency of phosphoric impregnation.

The _partial_ view which we have now taken of the superstitions of the country, as they existed in the age of Shakspeare, will, in part, demonstrate how great was the credulity subsisting at this period; how well calculated were many of these popular delusions for the purposes of the dramatic writer, and how copiously and skilfully have these been moulded and employed by the great poet of our stage. A considerable portion also of the manners, customs, and diversions of the country, which had been necessarily omitted in the preceding chapters, will be found included in this sketch of a part of the popular creed, and will contribute to heighten the effect of a picture, which can only receive its completion through the mutual aid of various subsequent departments of the present work.

FOOTNOTES:

[315:A] Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii. p. 496.

[316:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 255, 256. Winter's Tale, act ii. sc. 1.

[317:A] "Of Ghostes and spirites walking by nyght, and of strange noyses, crackes, and sundry forewarnynges, whiche commonly happen before the death of menne, great slaughters, and alterations of kyngdomes. One Booke, Written by Lewes Lavaterus of Tigurine. And translated into Englyshe by R. H." Printed at London by Henry Benneyman, for Richard Watkyns, 1572. Vide p. 14. and 49.

[317:B] Lavaterus, p. 21.

[318:A] Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1580, p. 152, 153.

[318:B] Vide Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 172.

[318:C] Spectator, No. 419., vol. vi. p. 118. of Sharpe's edition. See also Nos. 12. 110. and 117.

[319:A] Grose's Provincial Glossary, p. 242, 243.

[321:A] Bourne's Antiquities of the Common People apud Brand, p. 113, 118, 119, 120, 122, 123.

[321:B] Seasons, Winter, line 617.

[322:A] Pleasures of Imagination, book i.

[322:B] The Remains of Henry Kirke White, vol. i. p. 311.

[323:A] Gay, in his Trivia, notices, at some length, the prognostications attendant on these days, and which equally apply to ancient and to modern times:—

"All superstition from thy breast repel; Let cred'lous boys and prattling nurses tell How if the _Festival of Paul_ be _clear_, _Plenty_ from lib'ral horn shall strow the _year_: When the dark skies dissolve in _snow_ and _rain_, The lab'ring _kind_ shall _yoke_ the _steer_ in _vain_; But if the threat'ning _winds_ in tempest roar, Then _war_ shall bathe her wasteful sword in gore. How if, on _Swithen_'s feast the welkin lours, And ev'ry penthouse streams with hasty show'rs, _Twice twenty days_ shall clouds their fleeces drain, And wash the pavements with _incessant rain_: Let no such vulgar tales debase thy mind, Nor _Paul_, nor _Swithin_, rule the _clouds_ and _wind_."

[324:A] Reed's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 453. Midsummer-Night's Dream,