France furnishes still more amusing examples. The curate of Saint-André-des-Arts subjoins to the entry of a marriage on the 31st July 1589, the following amiable reflections: “On the first day of August 1589, Henry de Valoys, sometime king of France, was in arms at Saint Cloud with his heretics and the King of Navarre and his abetters, laying siege to Paris, of which he had given the pillage to the robbers of all sects who accompanied him, having sworn the death of every person of condition within its walls, except heretics and their adherents, so that he might overthrow the Church of our Lord, and establish heresy in the heart of France. But by the just judgment of God, who would not suffer such a perverse tyrant and hypocrite to reign any longer, he was slain by a religious of the order of the Jacobins, called Friar Jacques Clément, which religious (may his soul rest in peace!) was instantly murdered by the attendants of the said Henry." The same curate, on the 29th August 1574, records the baptism of two twin daughters, adding that " they were born of the same womb." "On the 30th of June 1644," writes the priest of La Villette, “I said mass for the repose of the soul of François Caignet, who was my good friend, and made several gifts to my church." Another curate of the same place expresses himself thus: "Buried on the 21st December 1675, Jean Tessier, labourer, a mild and peaceable man, who on all occasions showed great deference and respect to his pastors." The rector of Saint-Paul, in January 1629, gratefully records the new-year gifts of his parishioners. The list may make a Welsh curate lick his lips : "11 bottles of wine, two of them white; 4 boxes of conserves; 3 capons, one of them ready for the spit; 3 pounds of wax-candles; 2 very good cheeses; 2 large pots of butter; 1 bottle of hippocras; 1 fat rabbit; 1 smoked tongue; 1 cake; 1 cheese-cake; 1 dozen of towels; 1 Spanish pistole; 3 crowns of gold." The successor of this well-fed priest, in recording a burial, on the 29th October 1650, adds, "M. de Saint-Paul commanded me to dine with him, and I got an excellent dinner. God grant him a long life!" The meal seems to have proved rather hard of digestion: to the entry of a funeral the next day is added the note, "Je pris un lavement pour apaiser une colique."1 XXX. ERUDITION OF THE COLLECTIVE WISDOM. A POPULAR Compiler of statistics makes a remarkable apology for his minuteness. "I notice these events in order to induce the attention of the rising ג Mem. de. S. R. des Antiq. de France, t. ix. p. 270-290. generation to the geography of our possessions, which is so little known in the highest quarters, that Berbice is marked (printed) in an official document of the House of Commons as an island, and placed among the Bahamas!" It may be convenient to add, for the information of the people's representatives, that Berbice, one of the three divisions of British Guiana, is a portion of the South American Continent. XXXI. SUPERNATURAL FOOTPRINTS IN ROCKS THE similarity or the identity of the superstitions of nations has recently attracted considerable attention. Many books on the subject have appeared on the continent, and a few in our own land, among which the pleasing works of Mr Keightley deserve - prominent notice. He alludes to "the marks which natural causes have impressed on the solid and unyielding granite rock, but which, according to the popular creed, were produced by the contact of the hero, the saint, or the god."2 I have collected some instances of the almost universal diffusion of this superstition. 1 Montgomery Martin's Hist. of the British Colonies, vol. ii. p. ii. Lond. 1834. Keightley's Fairy Mythology, vol. i. p. 5, Lond. 1833. We meet it in every district of SCOTLAND, at Maidenkirk and beyond John o' Groat's. According to old Andrew Symson, "Kirkmaiden in Galloway is so called, because the kirk is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the print of whose knee is fabulously reported to be seen on a stone, where she prayed somewhere about a place in this parish called Mary Port, neer to which place there was a chapel long since, but now wholy ruined." In our Lady's 1 Though, perhaps, it may be permitted to doubt the legend of his many-sided table, John o' Groat is no mythological personage. He obtained a charter of certain lands in Dungsby or Duncansby from the Earl of Caithness in 1496; and he figures in a legal instrument of the year 1525 as an "honourable man, John Grot, in Dongasby, chamberlain and bailie in that part of a noble and potent lord John Earl of Caithness ;" and in that character gives seisin to a religious house of a perpetual annuity of ten merks, to be levied from the lands of Stroma, an islet in the Pentland Firth. I think it is Barry who says, that a dispute whether it belonged to Caithness or to Orkney, was determined by ascertaining that poisonous animals would live on it. As none will subsist in Orkney, it was assigned to the continent. Selden, in his learned notes to Drayton's Poly-Olbion (song ix.), remarks, that "there was long since a controversy, whether the Isle of Man belonged to Ireland or England, and this by reason of the equal distance from both. To decide it they tried if it would endure venomous beasts, which is certainly denied of Ireland; and finding that it did, adjudged it to our Britain. Topograph. Hibern. dict. 2, cap. 15." 2 Symson's Description of Galloway, p. 65. Edinb. 1823. Kirk in South Ronaldsha, in Orkney, Brand saw 66 a stone lying, about four feet long and two feet broad, but narrower and round at the two ends; upon the surface of which stone is the print of two feet, concerning which the superstitious people have a tradition that Saint Magnus, when he could not get a boat on a time to carry him over Pightland Firth, took this stone, and setting his feet thereupon, passed the firth safely, and left this stone in this church, which hath continued here ever since."1 Martin adds, that "others have this more reasonable opinion, that it has been used in time of popery for delinquents, who were obliged to stand bare-foot upon it by way of penance." The Reverend George Forbes, in the Statistical Account of the Parish of Leochel in Mar, informs us that "the castle of Corse, now in ruins, was built in 1581 by William 1 Brand's Description of Orkney, p. 60. Edinb. 1703. The good saint seems to have loved miraculous voyages. Three centuries after his death (which fell on Monday the 16th April 1104, according to Orkneyinga Saga, p. 505, Hafn. 1780), on the day of the battle of Bannockburn, he suddenly appeared in the streets of Aberdeen, clad in shining armour, and told the glad tidings of the Bruce's great victory he was seen riding northwards until he vanished from the sight of men, as he urged his steed across the Pentland Firth.-Boetii Scot. Hist. lib. xiv. fol. 304, edit. 1575. 2 Martin's Description of the Western Islands, p. 367. Lond. 1716. |