at Hoghton Tower, Lancashire. Speech about "libertie to piping and honest recreation." Whitsun-ales and Morris dances. Washington Irving's first sight of a May-pole at Chester. Modern May-day ceremonies in Cheshire. Gathering hawthorn blossom. The Mimosa catechu, or sacred thorn of India, sprung from the lightning. The Glastonbury thorn. Singular superstition respecting it. Children's love of wild flowers. May-day dew good for ladies' complexions. May-day dew, the milk of the Aryan heavenly cows (clouds), believed to increase the milk of their earthly prototypes.
Page 83 |
| CHAPTER VI. |
| WITCHCRAFT. |
| The Lancashire witches—Dame Demdike, etc. Witch superstitions of Aryan origin. Dethroned retainers of the elder gods. The Fates or Destinies. Waxen and clay images. The doom of Meleager. Reginald Scot on witchcraft in 1584. Opinions of Wierus, a German physician, in 1563. Singular confessions of presumed witches. Numbers put to death. The belief in witchcraft countenanced by the church, the legislature, and the learned. Sir Kenelm Digby's opinion. Singular medical superstitions. King James I. and Agnes Simpson, the Scotch witch. The Lancashire witches and Charles I. Witchcraft in Hertfordshire in 1761. Ralph Gardiner's Malicious Invective. A Scotch witchfinder. Matthew Hopkins. Laws relating to witchcraft in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Draci, cloud-gods, or water-spirits, with hands perforated like colanders. Singular tradition of the dun cow at Grimsargh, near Preston. Witches' influence on the butter and milk of cows. Durham, Yorkshire, and Warwick dun cow traditions. Red cow milk. Ushas, the Vedic dawn-goddess. Red heifers set apart for sacrifice. Guy of Warwick and his porridge pot. Black, white, and grey witches. The Teutonic deæ matres, or mother goddesses. The three Fates. The weird sisters of Shakspere. The "theatrical properties" of witches of Aryan origin. The sieve, the cauldron, and the broom or besom. Witches spirits of the air. Hecate the Pandemonium Diana. Personifications of elemental strife. The brewing of storms. Aryan root of these superstitions. Hares disguised witches. Boadicea's hare. The goddess Freyja and her attendant hares. Singular hare superstition in Cornwall. "Mad as a March hare." Cats weatherwise animals. Sailors say a frisky cat has got "a gale of wind in her tail." Sailors' prejudice against commencing a voyage on a Friday. Singular charge against the Knights Templars. The broom or besom represents the implement with which the Aryan demi-gods swept the sky. A type of the winds. Curious Lancashire custom: hanging out a besom when the lady of the house is absent, to announce to bachelor friends that bachelor habits may be indulged in. The broom the oldest wine-bush. Dutch broom-girls. Eight classes of witches. Gipsies: their Eastern origin. Modern fortune tellers. The witch's familiar. Singular Somerset, Middlesex, and Lancashire superstitions at the present day. Witchcraft amongst the Maories, and in Equatorial Africa. Deathbed of a Burnley witch, and transference of her familiar spirit with her last breath. |
Page 96 |
| CHAPTER VII. |
| FAIRIES AND BOGGARTS. |
| Puck or Robin Goodfellow. Peris, Pixies, and Ginns. Queen Mab. Lancashire boggarts and fairies. The bargaist. The fairy of Mellor Moor, Lancashire. Lumb Farm boggart, near Blackburn. "Boggart Ho' Clough," near Manchester. George Cheetham's boggart. The devil made a monk. The headless dog or woman at Preston. Raising the devil. "Raw head and bloody bones." Edwin Waugh's account of the Grislehurst boggart. The laying of boggarts. Driving a stake through the body of a cock buried with the boggart. Sacred or lightning birds. Superstitions about cocks and hens. Killing a Lancashire wizard. Cruel sacrifice of chanticleer. Divining by means of a cock. Boggarts scared by a cock crowing. The cock an emblem of Æsculapius. The black cock crows in the Niflheim, or "land of gloom." The lion afraid of a white cock. Father Morolla's account of the revivification of a dead cock. The cockatrice. A cruelly slaughtered cock and red cow's milk a sovereign remedy for consumption. The Scandinavian golden coloured cock's crowing the signal for the dawn of the Ragnarock, "the great day of arousing." The Hindoos "cast out devils" by the aid of a cock slaughtered as a sacrifice. Modern Jewish custom. Game cock feathers in the bed cause a dying person to linger in pain. Hothersall Hall boggart, Lancashire, laid beneath a laurel tree, watered with milk. Rowan, ash, and red thread potential against boggarts, witches, and devils. Scandinavian and German boggarts. The Hindoo pitris or fathers. Zwergs, dwarfs, "ancients" or ancestors. Good fairies, elves, etc. Lord Duffin transported by fairies from Scotland to Paris. Classical ghost story. Singular superstition, of Eastern character, at Darwen, Lancashire. A somewhat similar one in Australia. Fairy rings, their imaginary and real origin. |
Page 124 |
| CHAPTER VIII. |
| FERN-SEED AND ST. JOHN'S-WORT SUPERSTITIONS. |
| Human invisibility. The helmet of Hades or Pluto, and the Teutonic "invisible cap." Modern references to this singular superstition. Ferns, luck-bringing plants. Said to have sprung from the lightning. St. John's-wort. German story of accidental invisibility. St John's eve. Fern seed, a love charm. Samuel Bamford's Lancashire story in "Boggart Ho' Clough," near Manchester. St. John superseded the Scandinavian Baldr. The Osmunda regalis. Osmunda, one of the appellations of Thor. The vervain, a plant of spells and enchantments. The Sanscrit parna and the modern fern. Origin of the name "Boggart Ho' Clough." |
Page 143 |
| CHAPTER IX. |
| THE SPECTRE HUNTSMAN AND THE FURIOUS HOST. |
| Hunting the white doe in the Vale of Todmorden, Lancashire. The "Gabriel Ratchets." The wish-hounds. The "Gabriel hounds" in Yorkshire. The classic Orion, "the mighty hunter." The classic white doe and its mediæval descendants. The fair maid of Kent. A fawn attendant on the Greek deities of the morning. Odin, the wild huntsman, and the furious host. The Yule host of Iceland. Personification of storm and tempest. Herod, the "Chasse Maccabei," and the Wandering Jew. The "seven whistlers" in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Restless birds believed to be the souls of the damned condemned to perpetual motion, on the Bosphorus. The wandering Odin and his two ravens, representing Thought and Memory. The Wandering Jew's last appearance in the flesh. Temporary death of the weather-gods typical of the seasons. Odin slain by the wild boar. Thammuz and the Greek Adonis. Odin lord of the gallows.
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