Born: Anthony Ashley
Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury, celebrated
politician in the reign of Charles II, 1621, Winborne,
Dorsetshire.
Died: Sir John Graham,
Scottish patriot, killed at the battle of Falkirk,
1298; Sir Henry Percy (Hotspur), killed at the battle
of Shrewsbury, 1403; Charles VII, king of France,
1461, Mean, in Berri; Henry III, king of France,
assassinated at Paris, 1589;
Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon,
1596, London; Gerbrant Vander Eeckhout, Dutch painter,
1674; Pope Clement X, 1676; Francis Lord Gardenstone,
Scottish judge, miscellaneous writer, 1793; Marie
Francois Xavier Bichat, eminent French anatomist,
1802, Paris; Dr. George Shaw, naturalist, 1.813,
London; Joseph Piazzi, eminent astronomer, 1826,
Palermo.
Feast Day: St. Mary
Magdalen. St. Joseph of Palestine (Count Joseph),
about 356. St. Vandrille or Wandregisilus, abbot of
Fontenelles, 666. St. Meneve, abbot of Menat, 720. St.
Dabius or Davies, of Ireland, confessor.
MARY MAGDALEN
The
beautiful story of Mary Magdalen�for such it is,
though so obscurely related in Scripture�has always
made her a popular saint among the Roman Catholics,
and Italian painters and sculptors have found an
inspiration in her display of' the profound moral
beauty of repentance. A medieval legend connected with
her name represents her as ending her days in France.
It is said that, after the crucifixion of Jesus, she,
in company with the Virgin and Mary Salome, being much
persecuted by the Jews, set sail on the Mediterranean
in a leaky boat, and after a miraculous deliverance,
landed in the south of Gaul. There, the party
separated, the Magdalen retired to St. Baume, to spend
the remainder of her days in penitence and prayer; and
in that retreat, in the odour of sanctity, she closed
her earthly pilgrimage.
The rise of saintly histories
forms a curious chapter in that of human belief. There
has always been much less of positive deliberate
deception in them than most persons would now be
disposed to admit. Some appearances were presented�a
sup-position was hazarded about them�this, instantly
translated by well-meaning credulity into a fact, set
the story agoing. In an age when no one thought of
sifting evidence, the tale took wing unchecked, and
erelong it became invested with such sanctity, that
challenge or doubt was out of the question. In some
such way it probably was, that the remains of a dead
body found by the monks of Vezelai under their
high-altar, were accepted as those of Mary Magdalen.
The news soon spread through France; the monks were
delighted at the opportunity it afforded them of
enriching their monastery, as the celebrity of the
saint would certainly draw a great multitude of
people; and they determined to encase these relics
with a pomp which should dazzle the simple. The king
of France, St. Louis, who was always interested in
anything relating to religion, determined to be
present at the festival, and went to Vezelai
accompanied by his whole court. The body was drawn
from its coffin, and placed in a silver shrine; the
legate took a part; and the king several hones, which
he had enshrined, some with two of the thorns of
Christ's crown, and a morsel of the cross in an arm of
gold enriched. with pearls and ninety precious stones;
others in a reliquary, silver gilt, supported by an
angel, and richly ornamented.
But Vezelai was not long in
possession of this sacred deposit without Provence
disputing it; their tradition was, that St. Maximin,
bishop of Aix, had buried it at La Baume in an
alabaster tomb; and Charles, Prince of Salerno, the
eldest son of the king of Sicily, commenced a search
for the body, and had the happiness to find it. The
legend relates that a delicious odour spread through
the chapel, and that from the tongue there sprang a
branch of fennel, which, divided into several bits,
became as many relics. Near the body were two
writings; one on a board covered with wax containing
these words: 'Here rests Mary Magdalen:' the other
on incorruptible wood, with these words: 'The seven
hundredth year of the nativity of our Lord, on the
sixteenth day of December, Odoin being the reigning
king of France, at the time of the invasion of the
Saracens, the body of Saint Mary Magdalen was
transferred secretly in the night from her alabaster
sepulchre into this of marble for fear of the
infidels.' The young prince immediately assembled the
nobility and clergy of Provence, raised the body in
their presence, enshrined it, and placed the head in a
reliquary of pure gold.
Then Vezelai lost much of its
credit, in spite of the pope, who declared himself on
its side. La Baume carried the day, and the preaching
friars who held the deposit, triumphed loudly over the
monks who kept possession of the other. It gave birth
to a long and acrimonious discussion: the latter party
objected that dates were never used in France before
the middle of the eighth century, under Pepin and
Charlemagne. No trace could be found in history of
this incursion of the Saracens; and who was Odoin? No
king of that name ever reigned in France. So many
absurdities discredited the Provencal tradition, yet
La Sainte Baume was still frequented by a great
concourse of people: now, nothing remains but a grotto
celebrated for the fables to which it has given rise.
THE PERCY INSURRECTION�BATTLE OF SHREWSBURY�DEATH OF
HOTSPUR
Happy are the heroes who are
immortalised by the poets of their country. The brave,
headstrong, irascible Hotspur; the rousing of Prince
Henry to noble deeds from the wild roystering
companion-ship of Falstaff and his friends; the
imaginative, superstitious
Glendower�all stand as
lifelike characters before the eye of hundreds of
Englishmen, who would never have heard their names had
it not been for the bard of Avon. The powerful Percies,
who had been Henry IV's greatest friends in the day of
distress, became discontented subjects after he
ascended the throne.
The Hotspur, of whom Henry had
said:
'0 that it could be proved
That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged
In cradle-clothes our children where they lay,
And called mine Percy, his Plantagenet!
Then would I have his Harry and he mine,'
took dire offence at the
refusal of the king to permit him to pay the ransom of
his brother-in-law, Sir Edmund Mortimer, who had been
taken captive by
Owen Glendower.
Joining himself to
his uncle, the Earl of Worcester, Scroop, the
archbishop of York, the Scottish Earl of Douglas, and
the Welsh cheftain, he entered on the fatal
insurrection which cost his life, and that of many
thousands of brave men. The earl, his father, being
dangerously ill, could not join the rendezvous; but
Douglas crossed the border with a goodly array, and
the Earl of Worcester collected a picked body of
Cheshire archers, all making their way to the borders
of Wales, where Glendower's army was to meet them.
Henry IV's skilful generalship probably saved his
crown; for hastening his army with all speed from
Burton-upon-Trent, he contrived to get between the two
rebel forces, and prevent their junction. Having
reached Shrewsbury, and finding Hotspur's army close
at hand, he determined to give battle on the following
day. During the night, the insurgents sent in a long
list of their grievances, in the shape of a defiance:
'For which causes,' said they, 'we do mortally defy
thee, thy fautors, and accomplices, as common traitors
and destroyers of the realm, and invaders, oppressors,
and confounders of the very true and right heir to the
crown of England and France; and we intend to prove it
this day by force of arms, Almighty God blessing us.'
Early in the morning (July 22,
1403), the eager combatants drew up in battle-array;
about 14,000 on each side, brothers in language and
country, thus sadly opposed. The martial strains of
the trumpets were sounded, the war-cry of 'St. George
for us!' which had led to many a victory, was answered
by, 'Esperance, Percy!' and the bravest knights in
Christendom, Hotspur and Douglas, led the charge. Had
they been well supported, nothing could have resisted
the shock. As it was, many noble knights were slain;
the two leaders seeking the king everywhere in vain,
he having put on plain clothes, and forcing Hotspur to
say: 'The king hath many marching in his coats;' and
Douglas to reply:
'Another king! they grow
like Hydra's heads;
I am the Douglas, fatal to all those
That wear those colours on them.'
The Prince of Wales, though
wounded in the face, fought with desperate courage,
and for three hours the battle raged fearfully; but
Hotspur, being shot through the head, fell mortally
wounded, and the king's cry of 'Victory and St.
George!' put the assailants to flight. Douglas,
falling from a hill, was so bruised that his pursuers
took him; but he was soon after set at liberty. The
Earl of Worcester, Sir Richard Vernon, and some
others, were executed on the field, and the great but
dearly-bought victory of Shrewsbury settled the
usurper Henry firmly on the throne.
The body of
Hotspur, found among the dead, was by Henry's command
taken from the grave, where Lord Furnival had laid it,
and placed between two millstones in the market-place
of Shrewsbury, quartered, and hung upon the gates,
after the barbarous fashion of the times. Otterbourne
tells us that the courage of the brave Percy was much
damped before the battle by an incident which marks
the superstitious feeling of the times. When preparing
for the field, he called for his favourite sword, and
was informed that he had left it at the village of
Berwick, where he had rested the previous night.
Startled at the name of the place, he heaved a deep
sigh, and exclaimed:
'Alas! then my death is near at
hand, for a wizard once told me that I should not live
long after I had seen Berwick, which I thought was the
town in the north.�Yet will I not he cheaply won.'
When the king had put an end
to the pursuit and slaughter, he returned thanks for
his victory on the field of battle, and commanded the
erection of the collegiate church of Battlefield, of
which more than half is now in ruins.
RAT
LEGENDS
On the 22nd day of July, in the
year of our Lord 1376, according to old Verstegan, a
terrible calamity befell the town of Hamel, in
Brunswick:
'There came into the town of
Hamel an old kind of companion, who, for the
fantastical coat which he wore being wrought with
sundry colours, was called the Pied Piper. This
fellow, forsooth, offered the townsmen, for a
certain sum of money, to rid the town of all the
rats that were in it (for at that time the burghers
were with that vermin greatly annoyed). The accord,
in fine, being made, the Pied Piper, with a shrill
pipe, went thorow all the streets, and forthwith the
rats came all running out of the houses in great
numbers after him; all which he led into the river
of Weaser, and therein drowned them.
This done, and no one rat more perceived to be left
in the town, he afterward came to demand his reward
according to his bar-gain; but being told that the
bargain was not made with him in good earnest, to
wit, with an opinion that he could be able to do
such a feat, they cared not what they accorded unto,
when they imagined it could never be deserved, and
so never be demanded; but, nevertheless, seeing he
had done such an unlikely thing indeed, they were
content to give him a good reward; and so offered
him far less than lie looked for. He, therewith
discontented, said he would have his full recompense
according to his bargain; but they utterly denied to
give it him.
He threatened them with revenge; they bade him do
his worst, whereupon he betakes him again to his
pipe, and going thorow the streets as before, was
followed by a number of boys out of one of the gates
of the city, and coming to a little hill, there
opened in the side thereof a wide hole, into the
which himself and all the children did enter; and
being entered, the hill did close up again, and
became as before. A boy, that, being lame, came
somewhat lagging behind the rest, seeing this that
happened, returned presently back, and told what he
had seen; forthwith began great lamentation among
the parents for their children, and the men were
sent out with all diligence, both by land and by
water, to inquire if aught could be heard of them;
but with all the inquiry they could possibly use,
nothing more than is aforesaid could of thembe
understood. And this great wonder happened on the
22nd day of July, in the year of our Lord 1376.'
The rat seems altogether a
mystical sort of creature; at least, very mystical
things are current everywhere regarding it. It is one
of the simplest of these, that there are districts
where rats do not dwell and cannot be introduced.
Not
only are we told by the credulous Hector Boece, that
there are no rats in Buchan (Aberdeenshire), but a
later and more intelligent author, Sir Robert Gordon,
makes the same statement regarding Sutherlandshire:
'If,' says he, 'they come thither in ships from other
parts, they die presently, how soon they do smell the
air of that country.' Sir Robert at the same time
asserts, that the species abounds in the neighbouring
province of Caithness. But this is not all. The
reverend gentlemen who contributed to Sir John
Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, about
1794, the articles on Morven and Roseneath, the one in
the north, the other in the south of Argyle-shire,
avouch that rats have been introduced into those
parishes in vain. The author of the article on
Roseneath seems to have been something of a wag,
though quite in earnest on the point of fact. 'From a
prevailing opinion,' says he, 'that the soil of this
parish is hostile to that animal, some years ago, a
West India planter actually carried out to Jamaica
several casks of Roseneath earth, with a view to kill
the rats that were destroying his sugar-canes. It is
said this had not the desired effect; so we lost a
valuable export. Had the experiment succeeded, this
would have been a new and profit-able trade for the
proprietors; but perhaps by this time, the parish of
Roseneath might have been no more!'
It was a prevalent notion in
past ages, that you might extirpate rats by a
persevering course of anathematising in rhyme.
Reginald Scot says that the Irish thought they could
rhyme any beast to death; but the notion was, in
general, restricted to the rat. It is with reference
to this belief; or practice, that Rosalind, in As You
Like It, says: 'I never was so berhymed since
Pythagoras's time, that I was an Irish rat, which I
can hardly remember.'
Another prevalent notion
regarding rats was, that they had a presentiment of
coming evil, and always deserted in time a ship about
to be wrecked, or a house about to be flooded or
burned. So lately as 1854, it was seriously reported
in a Scotch provincial newspaper that, the night
before a town mill was burned, the rats belonging to
the establishment were met migrating in a body to a
neighbouring pease-field. The notion acquires
importance as the basis of a new verb in the English
language�to rat�much used in political party janglings.
Mr.
Bewick, the ingenious
wood-engraver, has put on record a fact regarding rats
nearly as mystical as any of the above. He alleges
that 'the skins of such of them as have been devoured
in their holes [for they are cannibals to a sad
extent] have frequently been found curiously turned
inside out, every part of them being completely
inverted, even to the ends of the toes.'
It may be added as a more
pleasing trait of these too much despised animals,
that they are, nevertheless, of a social turn, and
have their sports and pastimes by themselves. 'They
play at hide-and-seek with each other, and have been
known to hide themselves in the folds of linen, where
they have remained quite still until their playmates
have discovered them, in the same manner as kittens.
Most readers will recollect the fable, where a young
mouse suggests that the cat should have a bell
fastened to his neck, so
that
his companions might be aware of her approach. This
idea was scouted by one of their wise-heads, who
asked, who was to tie the bell round the cat's neck?
This experiment has actually been tried upon a rat. A
bell was fastened round his neck, and he was replaced
in his hole, with full expectation of his frightening
the rest away; but it turned out that, instead of
their continuing to be alarmed at his approach, he was
heard for the space of a year to frolic and scamper
with them.'
The profession of the
rat-catcher is an old and a universal one. In Italy,
in the seventeenth century, as we learn from Annibal.
Caracci's illustrations of the Cries of Bologna, this
kind of professional went about with a pole bearing a
square flag, on which were representations of rats
and. mice. The Chinese rat-catcher carries, as the
outward ensign of his craft, a cat in a bag. One of
the many exquisite engravings of Cornelius Vischer
(born at Haarlem, 1610), gives us the Dutch
rat-catcher of that day with all his paraphernalia�a
sketch so lifelike and so characteristic that its
fidelity cannot be doubted. Our artist here gives what
we are happy to consider a tolerable transcript of
this humorous print. In the original, the following
inscription is given in prose form:
Fele fugas mures: magnis
si furibus arces
Exiguos fures, furor est; me respite, vilis
Si modo munmus adest, mures felesque fugabo.
[i. e. ' By the cat you
put rats to flight.
If you drive away little thieves by great ones, it
is utter folly.
Look at me; provided only a little coin is
forth-coming,
I will put both rats and cats to flight]
HOUSEHOLD
SUPERSTITIONS
If a fire does not burn well,
and you want to 'draw it up,' you should set the poker
across the hearth, with the fore part leaning across
the top bar of the grate, and you will have a good
fire�if you wait long enough; but you must not be
unreasonable, and refuse to give time for the charm to
work. For a charm it is, the poker and top bar
combined, forming a cross, and so defeating the malice
of the gnomes, who are jealous of our possession of
their subterranean treasures; or else of the witches
and demons, who preside over smoky chimneys. I had
seen the thing done scores of times; and understanding
that it was sup-posed to create a draught, like a poor
weak rationalist as I was, I once thought to improve
the matter by setting up the shovel instead of the
poker; but I might as well have left it alone�the fire
wasn't to be taken in, or the witches balked, by such
a shallow contrivance, and I was left in the cold.
This poker-superstition is at
least harmless, and we may admit that among those
belonging to the household there are some which are
positively beneficial�for example, those referring to
the breakage of glass and crockery.
You have a valuable mirror, we
will say. Do you know what is its greatest safeguard
from the handles of housemaids' brooms, &c.? It is the
belief, that if a looking-glass is broken, there will
be a death in the family within the year. This fear
is, of course, most operative in small households,
where there are but few persons to divide the risk
with the delinquent.
I once had a servant who was
very much given to breaking glass and crockery. Plates
and wine-glasses used to slip out of her hands, as if
they had been soaped; even spoons (which it was hardly
worth while to drop, for they would not break) came
jingling to the ground in rapid succession.
'Let her buy something,' said
the cook, 'and that will change the luck.' 'Decidedly,' said the mistress, 'it
will be as well
that she feel the inconvenience herself.' 'Oh, I
didn't mean that, ma'am,' was the reply; 'I meant
that it would change the luck.'
'Well, have you broken
anything more?' I asked, a few days after this
conversation. 'No, sir,' the girl answered, 'I hav'nt
broken nothing since I bout the 'tater dish.'
Unluckily, however, this was too good to last; the
breaking recommenced, and we were obliged to part.
If you break two things, you
will break a third.
A neighbour saw one of her
servants take up a coarse earthenware basin, and
deliberately throw it down upon the brick floor.
'What did you do that for?'
asked the mistress. 'Because, ma'am, I'd broke tew
things,' answered the servant, 'so I thout the third
'd better be this here,' pointing to the remains of
the least valuable piece of pottery in the
establishment, which had been sacrificed to glut the
vengeance of the offended Ceramic deities.
