[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]supplies in their place other facts equally striking. Take a Swallow on the
Wednesday, he writes, and bind him with a silken thread by the foot, then cut
him in the midst, and thou shalt find three stones, a white, a red, and a green;
take the white and put it into thy mouth, and it shall make thee fair; put into thy
mouth the red, and thou shalt have favour from her thou lovest; put the green into
thy mouth, and thou shalt never be in peril. If none of these inducements prevail
or appeal to the reader, the author can supply another recipe of equal value.
Take a swallow in the moneth of August, look in her breast, and you shall find
there a stone of the bignesse of a pease: take it and put it under your tongue, and
you shall have such eloquence that no man shall have power to deny thy
request. Such a gift would often be invaluable, and it seems distinctly unfortunate
for the legal profession that it can only be utilised during the Long Vacation, unless,
indeed, this wondrous stone can be in some way preserved without losing its
efficacy; but of this the recipe gives no hint. In an old receipt book before us oil of
swallows is pronounced exceeding soveraign for broken bones, or any grief in
the sinews. It is procured by pounding the swallows in a mortar, and adding
thereto divers herbs.
For one that is, or will be, drunken, it is well to have at hand some preparation
that may be deterrent, and here is the very thing! Take swallowes and burne
them, and make a powder of them; and give the dronken man thereof to drinke, and
he shall never be dronken hereafter. There is a certain sense of incompleteness
here, as one does not quite realize how this powder becomes drinkable.
The ill-luck that attended those who hurt the robin or the wren was an article
of faith with our forefathers, and probably still remains so in rural districts. In the
Six Pastorals, written in the year 1770, we find the belief very clearly expressed
in the lines:
I found a robin s nest within our shed,
And in the barn a wren has young ones bred:
I never take away their nest, nor try
To catch the old ones, lest a friend should die.
Dick took a wren snest from the cottage side,
And ere a twelvemonth pass d his mother dy d.
The belief that they, with leaves and flowers, do cover the friendless bodies
of unburied men has no doubt had much to do with the kindly feeling extended
to them. As Drayton hath it :
Covering with moss the dead s unclosed eye
The little red-breast teacheth charity.
Its fearless confidence, too, in visiting the habitations of men has begotten a
kindly feeling for it, while one ancient legend tells us that when our Saviour hung
forsaken on the cross the robin strove to draw out the cruel nails, and thus
imbrued its breast in the Sacred Blood, an act of piety of which from thenceforth
it bore the token in its ruddy feathers.
Though there are divers quaint beliefs associated with the wren which we
need not here particularize, we may perhaps assume that the main reason for its
association with the robin lies in the love of alliteration, for though the actual
spelling of the words is against this theory, the sound to the ear favours it, and the
two R s of the Robin and the Ren are certainly not more far-fetched than the
three R s that were once held to cover the whole field of rustic scholarship,
Reading, Riting and Rithmetic.
The eyes and heart of a nightingale laid about men in bed, according to the
Magick of Kirani, serve to keep them awake, and to make one die for sleep. If
anyone dissolve them and give them secretly to anyone in drink, he will never
sleep, but will so die, and it admits of no cure. It was a belief in the Middle Ages,
and termed the doctrine of signatures, that every plant bore stamped upon itself,
though men s eyes were in some cases too blind to detect it, an indication of its
value to humanity, thus the spots in the inside of a foxglove flower were a sign
that this plant was of value for ulcerated sore-throat; the buds of the forget-me-not
bent round in a spiral somewhat suggestive possibly of the tail of a scorpion, gave
the plant its mediaeval name of scorpion-grass, and were held a clear indication
that anyone stung by a scorpion would find in this herb his remedy. In a like spirit
we see that the eyes and heart of the nightingale, a bird awake when most other
creatures are sleeping, were held to be, on application, a cause of wakefulness to
anyone coming within their subtle influence.
It was a very common and widespread belief that the nightingale when singing
pierced its breast with a thorn, but whether this was to keep it awake, or to give
its song the sad character t hat the poets will insist most wrongfully in attributing
to it, seems an open question. Sir Philip Sidney in one of his sonnets appears to
reflect the popular belief
The nightingale, as soon as April bringeth
Unto her rested sense a perfect waking,
While late bare earth, proud of her clothing springeth,
Sings out her woes, a thorn her song book making:
And mournfully bewailing
Her throat in times expresseth
While grief her heart oppresseth.
The author of the Speculum Mundi also refers to the nightingale sitting all
the night singing upon a bough, with the sharp end of a thorn against her breast,
assigning, as the reason, to keep her waking. The bird is a great favourite with
the poets, but in most cases their invocations are somewhat misplaced: it is not
the sweet songstress that so delights us, for though her notes are sweet, the
real flood of melody wells from the heart of her lord. Tis he, to quote the words
of Coleridge
That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates
With thick fast warble his delicious notes,
As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love-chant, and disburden his full soul
Of all its music.
The error as to sex, and the error as to the pensive character of the song, have
a common origin and date back from the ancient time when Ovid declared that
Philomela, the daughter of Pandion, King of Athens, mourning for her children,
was turned into a nightingale: hence Virgil uses the word Philomela when
speaking of the bird, and the mediaeval and modern poets have continued the
usage; and on this same account, the song of the nightingale has by poetic fiction
been deemed pensive and melancholy. Thus Shelley refers to the nightingale s
complaint, and Drayton writes of our mournful Philomela, while Milton calls
the bird most musical, most melancholy. Coleridge, Clare, and others refuse
however to follow this precedent.
When the peasant of mediaeval days heard the cuckoo for the first time in
each year, he rolled himself vigorously on the grass, and thus secured himself for
the rest of the year from pains in the back. Much of the virtue of this remedy, we
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