You are here
قراءة كتاب Curiosities of Olden Times
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
The Project Gutenberg eBook, Curiosities of Olden Times, by S. Baring-Gould
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Curiosities of Olden Times
Author: S. Baring-Gould
Release Date: December 3, 2012 [eBook #41546]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CURIOSITIES OF OLDEN TIMES***
E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(http://archive.org)
| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See http://archive.org/details/curiositiesofold00inbari |
CURIOSITIES OF OLDEN TIMES
CURIOSITIES
OF
OLDEN TIMES
BY
S. BARING-GOULD, M.A.
AUTHOR OF ‘ICELAND, ITS SCENES AND ITS SAGAS,’ ‘MEHALAH,’ ETC.
REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION
Edinburgh
JOHN GRANT
31 GEORGE IV. BRIDGE
1896
PREFACE
An antiquary lights on many a curiosity whilst overhauling the dusty tomes of ancient writers. This little book is a small museum in which I have preserved some of the quaintest relics which have attracted my notice during my labours. The majority of the articles were published in 1869. I have now added some others.
Lew Trenchard,
September 1895.
CONTENTS
| PAGE | ||
| The Meaning of Mourning | 1 | |
| Curiosities of Cypher | 17 | |
| Strange Wills | 39 | |
| Queer Culprits | 57 | |
| Ghosts in Court | 74 | |
| Strange Pains and Penalties | 89 | |
| What are Women made of? | 102 | |
| “Flagellum Salutis” | 119 | |
| “Hermippus Redivivus” | 135 | |
| The Baroness de Beausoleil | 153 | |
| Some Crazy Saints | 167 | |
| The Jackass of Vanvres | 207 | |
| A Mysterious Vale | 217 | |
| King Robert of Sicily | 237 | |
| Sortes Sacræ | 256 | |
| Chiapa Chocolate | 268 | |
| The Philosopher’s Stone | 280 |
CURIOSITIES OF OLDEN TIMES
THE MEANING OF MOURNING
A strip of black cloth an inch and a half in width stitched round the sleeve—that is the final, or perhaps penultimate expression (for it may dwindle further to a black thread) of the usage of wearing mourning on the decease of a relative.
The usage is one that commends itself to us as an outward and visible sign of the inward sentiment of bereavement, and not one in ten thousand who adopt mourning has any idea that it ever possessed a signification of another sort. And yet the correlations of general custom—of mourning fashions, lead us to the inexorable conclusion that in its inception the practice had quite a different signification from that now attributed to it, nay more, that it is solely because its primitive meaning has been absolutely forgotten, and an entirely novel significance given to it, that mourning is still employed after a death.