Traditions, Superstitions and Folk-lore

orb! thou wert

f thy making

minister of

on their mountain

n shepherds, t

orisons! Tho

ntative of

thee for h

ro

the adorable light

n); may it guide

ic

image the C

unbeam quicken

g dial! Since

ur was ever ma

vage

and Ireland. Indeed, I am inclined to think certain English customs of the peasantry, at the present day, may, with perfect truthfulness, be referred to this source, although

ssing the bottle in convivial assemblies; and in several other matters of ordinary every-day life. The fact that Brand, and most of the earlier writers after the Reformation, speak of these superstitions as "Popish," in no way invalidates the assignment to them of an Aryan origin. As early as the eleventh century, in the reign of Canute the Great, we fin

ail, then let him pay for his breach of law, twelve half-marcs: if a landowner (or lesser thane) deny the charge, let as many of his equals and as many strangers be taken as for a royal thane; and if h

ew. He says: "When man, either by natural progress, or the influence of a more advanced race, rises to the conception of a higher religion, he still retains his old beliefs, which long linger on, side by side with, and yet in utter opposition to, the higher creed. The new and more powerful spirit is an addition to the old Pantheon, and diminishes the importance of the older deities; gradually, the

l is termed Allhalloween, or Nutcrack night. Those festivals had all reference to the seasons, and their influence on the fruitfulness of the earth. Brand says "it is customary on this night with young people in the north of England to dive for apples, or catch at them, when stuck upon one end of a kind of hanging beam, at the other extremity of which is fixed a lighted candle, and that with their mouths only, their hands being tied behind their backs." Robert Burns tells us that Halloween is

ts I threw i

t I gave a swe

loudest bounce

e of brightest

nut so may thy

nut that did s

e is consumed, the ashes are carefully collected into the form of a circle. There is a stone put in near the circumference, for every person of the several families interested in the bonfire; and whatever stone is removed out of its place or injured before the next morning, the person represented by that stone is devoted, or fey, and

In some localities the ceremony is called a Tinley. Sir William Dugdale says, "On All-Hallow Even

and

n my te

tice of divination by the roasting of nuts is yet common in Lancashire. The hollow cinder, too, which leaps from a coal fire, is supp

are still lighted in Lancashire, on Hallowe'en, under the names of Beltains or Teanleas; and even the cakes which the Jews are said to have made in honour of the Queen of Heaven, are yet to be found at this season amongst the inhabitants of the banks of the Ribble.... Both the fires and cakes, however, are now connected with superstitious notions respecting

Bel-where his rites have been performed on the borders of the Ribble age after age. Nor at this day are these mysteries silenced; with a burning whisp of straw at the point of a fork on Sama's festival at the eve of All-hallows, the farmer in some districts of the Fylde encircles his field to protect the coming crop from noxious weeds, the tare and darnel; the old wife refuses to sit the eggs under her crackling hen after sunset; the ignorant boy sits

e corpse the

de on whom th

ed to be amused by their ideas about the heavenly bodies. Like all other remarkable natural objects, they are the subject of whimsical myths amongst them. According to them, the sun and moon are of the same age, but the sun brings daylight and gladness and the moon brings darkness, witchcraft, and death-for death comes from sleep, and sleep commences in darkness. The sun and moon, they say, once got angry with each other, each one claiming to be the eldest. The moon said, 'Who are you, to dare to speak to me? You are alone; you have no people. Wha

sun as a female and the moon as a male deity. Palgrave, in his "History of the Anglo-Saxons," says:-"Th

people. I remember, in my youth, "assisting" at the celebration of several "bonfire days" in Preston and its neighbourhood, sometimes as amateur pyrotechnic artist, when we enjoyed our "fun" without any reference to Protestant or Catholic proclivities. Few, except the better educated, knew what the "Gunpowder Plot" really meant. Some associated it mainly with our own pyrotechnic efforts and other attendant consumption of the explosive compound, on the then special occasion. I rather fancy the ancient November "Allhallow fires" have in their decadence, merged into the modern "Gunpowder Plot" bonfires; and hence the reason

Some of the details sufficiently resemble those of our northern "gunpowder plot" demonstrations to prove that a Guy Fawkes and an Act of

cking their father's employments, bore rows of holes in the rocks, load them with gunpowder, and explode them in rapid succession by trains of the same substance. As the holes are not deep enough to split the rocks, the same little batteries serve for many years.... In the early part of the evening, children may be seen wreathing wreaths of flowers,-a custom in all probability originating from the ancient use of these ornaments when they danced around the fires. At the close of the fireworks in Penzance, a great number of persons of both sexes, chiefly from the neighbourhood of the quay, used always, until within t

days of the late Mr. Henry Hunt. It is not improbable that a remnant of the old superstition hovered about them;

nlea cairn. Some of the stones bore marks of fire. The mound must, however, have been neglected for a length of time, inasmuch as the shrewd old farmer who had destroyed it had no recollection or traditionary knowledge respecting th

Their present peculiar forms are not now attributed by the learned to human agency, in any marked degree at least, but to the denuding action of water, frost, and other geological conditions or phenomena. Nevertheless, from the wild and even weird aspect of the group and its elevated site, it is by no means improbable that it has been used in early times as a place of worship, or as the locality for the

a hole drilled in its centre, into which a rod of hard wood, ash, or oak, was placed, and caused to revolve with rapidity by a cord, passed round it, being pulled and slackened at each end alternately. A wheel and its axle have hence become types of the sun and the thunderbolt. Fire produced in this original way was considered sacred. Even the Greeks and Romans, as well as the Kelts, and some Christian populations until recent times, adopted the same or a similar process in the lighting of fires connected with religious ceremonies. Mr. Kelly says "the Church has not quite yet succeeded in effacing the vestiges of their heathen origin. This is especially evident in the usages of many districts, where the purity of the Easter fire (an idea borrowed from Pagan tradition) is secured by deriving the kindling flame either from the consecrated Easter candles, or from the new-born and perfectly pure element produced by the priest from flint and steel." The Vedic chark was made from the wood of two sacred trees; "the sami sprang from heavenly fire sent down to earth, and the asvattha from the vessel which contained it." Kelly adds:-"The idea of marriage, suggested by such a union of the two trees, is also developed in the Veda with great amplitude and minuteness of detail, and is a very prominent element in the whole cycle of myths connected with the chark." Doubtless, we have here exposed the root of the entire system of phallic worship, stripped of much, if not all, of the grossness afterwards attendant upon it. It appears

re from wood by friction, and the setting up of what he styles a "simulacrum Priapi," with a view to protect their cattle from disease. This image of Priapus is supposed to refer to the sun-god Fro or Fricco, who, according to Wolf, was worshipped until a very recent period in Belgium, under the form of Priapus. Priapus, the god of gardens or fertility, was the son of Bacchus and Venus. In the more mountainous portions of Wales a remnant of evidently heath

bribing his servants, they contrived to have them extinguished, and on that morning raised their fire. They then sacrificed a heifer, cutting in pieces and burning, while yet alive, the diseased part. They then lighted their own hearths from the pile, and ended by feasting on the remains. Words of incantation were repeated by an old man from Morven, who came as the master of the ceremonies, and who continued speaking all the time the fire was being raised. This man was living a beggar at Bellochroy. Asked to repeat the spell, he said the sin of repeating it once had brought him to beggary, and that he dared not say those words again." Many other instances might be cited in Scotland and Ireland: but the one most to

ared in the Pall Mall Gazett

, lighted annually on the hills, are simply relics of the worship of Bel. Beltane-day, or Belteine, is still a May-day as well as a Midsummer festival in the more ignorant districts of Scotland as well as of Ireland, and similar superstitious practices are connected with the lighting of the fires; and, what is still more remarkable, the word is still used in som

1678, the Presbytery took action against some of the Mackenzie family, "for sacrificing a bull in a heathenish manner, in the island of St. Rufus, for the recovery of the health of Cirstane Mackenzie, who was formerly sick and valetudinarie." Mr. Henderson, i

ct where churches, chapels, and schools abound." He afterwards adds:-"While correcting these sheets I am informed of two recent instances of this superstition. One of them was the sacrifice of a calf by a farmer near P

t the winter solstice at Yule-tide." The wheel, the type of the sun, was common to both festivities. Darand describes the practice, at the feast of St. John, of rolling about a wheel, "to signify that the sun, then occupying the highest place in the zodiac, was beginning t

rst fyre, as a great clerke, Johan Belleth, telleth he saw in a certayne countrey, so in the countrey there was soo greate hete the which causid that dragons to go together in tokenynge that Johan dyed in brennynge love and charyté of God and man.... Then as these dragons flewe in th' ayre, they shed down to the water froth of ther Kynde, and so envenymed the wa

to, as attendant on the St. John's fires, have been demonstrated by Dr. Kuhn to be "in striking accordance with the Vedic legend of Indra's fight with the midsummer demons. The passage quoted by Kemble, besides stating expressly that the course of the blazing wheel was meant to represent the descent of the sun from its solstitial height, brings the St. John's fires in immediate connection with the dragons that poison the waters, just as did the demon Vritra, otherwise called Ahi, the dragon. He possessed himself of the sun-wheel and the treasures of Heaven, seized the (white) women, kept them prisoners in his cavern, and laid a curse on the waters, until Indra released the captives and took off the curse. The same conception is repeated in countless legends of mountains that open on St. John's day, when the imprisoned white women come forth, and the hour approaches in which the spell laid upon them and upon the buried treasures will be broken.... Here

s cradle. Another child of the same horrid parents is the Lernaian Hydra, its very name denoting a monster who, like the Sphinx or the Panis, shuts up the waters and causes drought. It has many heads, one being immortal, as the storm must constantly supply new clouds, whi

afterwards cereal grasses, and that its root gave birth to the name of the grain from which the oldest bread-stuff known was made. He says-"But I go still further, and I believe that Kuyava was also regarded as the spoiler of vegetation in general, who parched up the plants used in making the fermented liquor, soma, and amongst these plants the Hindus included yava, which, in this case, m

e scientific view respecting rain and lightning which obtained about his time. It is singular

all things the collision creates fire. Some say that while air draws water in vapour from the depths, it draws also fire heat-wise, and by their contact the horrid crash of thunder is produced; and if the f

lied to this passage, with due reverence towards the ancient superstitions, and t

hen that heat is mitigated, and the scorched earth is again rendered fruitful by copious showers, the product of the thunderstorm. And to this source, Mr. Kelly justly contends, may be referred all t

he dragon

Mithras, the sun. He says, "From the Pagans the use of these charms passed to the Basilidians, and in their Abraxas, the traces of the antient Mithras and the more modern St. George, are equally visible. In t

amples pertaining to what is termed, in

work of the later Iron period, imitative forms at length appear, they are chiefly the snake and dragon shapes and patterns, borrowed

vent one luminary from devouring the other, as the Chinese, to frighten away the dragon, a superstition that has its source in the

Royal arms borne by all our Tudor monarchs, with the exception of Queen Mary, who substituted the eagle. Several of the Plantagenet kings

chewed forth his schild

a certain red silk embroidered with gold; its tongue like a flaming fire must always seem to b

ured in sufficient quantity. The famous Lambton worm, when coiled round a hill, was pacified with copious draughts of milk, and his blood flowed freely when he was pierced by the spear heads attached to the armour of the returned crusader.[15] The Linton worm coiled itself round a hill, and by its poisonous breath, destroyed the neighbouring animal and vegetable life. The knight who destroyed it used burning pitch in the operation. The contractions of this huge worm in dying, are said to have left indented spiral lines on the sides of Warmington hill. The Pollard worm is described as "a venomous serpent which did much harm to man and beast," while that of Stockburn is designated as the "worm, dragon, or fiery flying serpent which destroyed man, woman, and child." These worms were said to have been slain by the spears or

[16] The giant and sprite Grendel, the "Ghost-slayer," and his equally sanguinary mother, are evidently personifications of evil influences. After Beowulf had despatched the male monster, he proceeded to the pool, in the depths of which he successfully contended with the female. As he and his followers sat in the deep shado

he cave, until some man, finding by chance a rich cup, took it to his lord. Then the den was searched while the worm slept; again and again when the dragon awoke there had been theft. He found not the man, but wasted the whole land with fire; nightly, the fiendish air-flyer made fire grow hateful to the sight of men. Then it was told to Beowulf.... He sought out the dra

arded as the name of a god, one of the ancestors of Woden, and who appears in the poem "as a defender, a protecting and redeeming being." The hero belonged to the tribe of Geáts or Goths. This word etymologists trace to the Anglo-Saxon g

brought forth in darkness misshapen giants, elves, and orkens, such giants as long warred with God, and he was one of these." The

t the land north of the Humber was invaded in great force by a king of the Moreni (near Boulogne). He was defeated by Morvidus, who abused his victory by the most monstrous acts of cruelty. Whilst thus engaged, Geoffrey informs us that "there came from the coasts of the Irish Sea a

esides Ahi, the throttling snake, and Vritra, the dragon, there is Pani, the thief and seducer, who stole the cows of Indra from their heavenly pastures, hid them in his dark cloud cave, and attempted to corrupt Sarama (the dawn), when, at the bidding of the lightning-god, she demanded the restoration of the plundered

appeared to his mother in the form of a great dragon of the air. At his birth "the earth shook, the sea became green, the sun ceased to shine, the moon appeared and became black, the thunder crashed." The original is said to have been written by Simeon Seth, keeper of the

fire with their breath." The red dragon, in one instance, the prophet says, "shall return to his proper manners, and turn his rage upon himself. Therefore shall the re

yer, is very apparent. Merlin says:-"To him shall succeed a husbandman of Albania, at whose back shall be a serpent. He shall be employed in ploughing the ground, that the country may become white with corn. The serpent shall endeavour to diffuse his poison, in order to blast the harvest." Again he says:-"There shall be a miserable desolation of the kingdom, and the floors of the harvests shall return to the fruitful forests. The white dragon shall rise again, and invite ov

pplies sufficient evidence to connect its interpretation with the Aryan myth under consideration. We read: "A. 793. This year dire forewarnings came over the land of the North-humb

ragon's jaws and eyes. The earth shuddered, the stones rattled down the mountain sides into the glens; right and left, left and right, did the dragon lash his tail, overthrowing pines and bushes, and snapping them as reeds. He evacuated such floods of water

a Englishman last year (1871), demonstrates that

sible in the sky. 'It will dazzle the eyes of the people of particular places with lustre, and, after remaining for a ghari (i.e., 24 minutes), will vanish. The direction in which it will make its appearance will be the North Pole, and accordingly the people of northern countries will see it distinctly. Proba

rding to Geoffrey of Monmouth, "there appeared a star of wonderful magnitude and brightness, darting forth a ray, at the end of which was a globe of fire, in form of a drag

head; the occasion of this appellation being Merlin's prediction, from the appearance of the dragon, that he should be king." The same "historical" romancer likewise informs us that the redoubtable Arthur himself, after he had embarked at Southampton, on his expedition against Rome, about midnight, during a brisk gale, in a dream, "saw a bear flying in the air, at the noise of which all the shores trembled; also a terrible dragon flying from the west, which enlightened the country with the brightness of its eyes. When these two met they began a dreadful fight; but the dragon, with its fiery

is a dragon lives in the forest who has no want of poison; when he sees the sun or fire he spits venom, which flies about fearfully. No living animal can be cured of it; even the basilisk does not equal him. He who can properly kill this serpent has overcome all his danger. Hi

earth. The conqueror of the said dragon takes the place of Indra, who, by discharging his lightning spear into the rain cloud, sub

t neighbourhood. It frequented the temple, was large in size, but harmless and easily tamed. The Rev. G. W. Cox, says, "throughout Hellas, Asklêpios remained the healer and restorer of life, and accordingly the serpent is everywhere his special emblem, as the mythology of the Linga would lead us to expect." Again

nately overthrown each other, the "fiery snake" would consume "universal nature with all-destroying flames." The

John S. Phené, F.G.S., described a mound of this character, which he had discovered in Argyleshire. A large cairn forms the head of the monster, which is 300 feet in length. The spinal column, with its sinuous windings, is distinctly marked out by carefully adjusted stones, now covered with peat. To detect the exact form of the entire reptile, it is necessar

ime is taken into consideration. The earliest remains of man, including the flint implements in the higher river gravels, pertain to what Lyell terms the post-pliocene period. The huge lizards or saurians of the oolitic period had become extinct countless ages previously. The same may be said, though in a relatively lesser degree, of the huge Dinotherium found in the Upper Miocene formation. Some writers, indeed, who advocate the hypothesis of man's descent by "natural selection" or "evolution," from the lower animals, contend that some antitype of h

TNO

a light with a lucifer match, to the astonishment of the benighted Africans, who regarded the

er, Nov. 1869, contained

-bearers numbering nearly one hundred. Along with those bearing the torches were a great many people belonging to the neighbourhood. Dancing was commenced by the torch-bearers dancing a "Huachan" in fine style, to the lilting strains of Mr. Ross, the Queen's piper. The effect was greatly heightened by the display of bright lights of various colours from the top of the staircase of the Tower. After dancing for some time, the torch-bearers proceeded round the Castle in martial order, and as they were proceeding down the granite staircase at the northwest corner of the Castle, the procession presented a si

n fire is worth consideration, as the ceremonies and sacrifices were performed in order to extract a boon, a gift, or favour from the god Bel. Free service rendered by a tenant to his lord, as part

ten the following paragraph h

lebrating a red-letter day as old as nineteen centuries before the birth of Christ, first instituted by Djemchid, of the dynasty of Pischdadiens, who originated the solar computation of years. His excellency proceeded to recall the fire-worship of his country, which sprang from the prim?val idolatry having for object that great luminary. It was still to fire that he fondly looked for the regeneration

d, namely that the knight should follow up the achievement by slaying as a kind of sacrifice the first living thing he met. If he failed in this, "for nine generations the lords of Lambton would never die in their beds." It was intended that a dog should be placed so as to immediately attract the

swald, consecrated his daughter Elfleda to the service of God as a nun, as an act of thanksgiving for his victory over the pagan Mercian King Penda, at Winwidfield, near Leeds

traditionary worms, serpents, and dragons is not quite so absurd as modern non-scientific persons generally imagine. The Rev. G. W. Cox, referring to the Greek aspect of these mythic monst