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Then swiftly went the mead-cup round,
And tales of former times were told ;-
Now lonely, wounded, weak, and bound,
I pine within the giant's hold."

"And thus," says the Saga, “died Asbjorn, manifesting to the last his invincible fortitude and the greatness of his noble heart."1

XLVII.

RICH PASTURES.

MR BUCKINGHAM tells us that "on the summit of Jebel-el-Belkah, or Bilgah, as it is equally often pronounced, from which Moses saw the promised land, there grew, according to the testimony of all present, a species of grass which changed the teeth of every animal that ate of it to silver! And in a party of twenty persons then assembled there were not less than five witnesses who declared most solemnly that they had seen this transmutation take place with their own eyes!"2

We had a hill in Scotland which possessed the same singular virtue. "There is in the Garioch,"

1 Scripta Historica Islandorum, vol. iii. p. 213-216. Hafniae, 1829.

2 Travels among the Arab Tribes, p. 38. Lond. 1825.

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says old Boece, "a certain mountain called by the people Doun dor or the Golden Hill, because the sheep who feed on it are yellow, and their teeth are plainly of the colour of gold." Bishop Leslie confirms the story: "In the Garioch is a hill which is called the Golden Hill, or vulgarly Dundore, and is said to abound in gold, as is manifested by the sheep which feed on it having their teeth and flesh of a yellow hue as if dyed with gold." And a gentleman who wrote in the last century informs us, that "the common people have still a tradition current among them that persons skilled in magic, by performing cer

1 Scotor. Hist. fol. 7, Regni Descript. Paris, 1575. Andrew Symson tells us that "near Kirkmaiden in Galloway, at a peece of ground called Cruchen, the sheep have all their teeth very yellow; yea, and their very skin and wool are yellower than any other sheep in the country, and will easily be known, though they were mingled with any other flocks of sheep in the whole countrey."-Description of Galloway, p. 65. Another is to be found in Fife :-" It is supposed by the people who live in the neighbourhood of Largo Law, that there is a very rich mine of gold under and near the mountain, which has never yet been properly searched for. So convinced are they of the verity of this, that whenever they see the wool of a sheep's hide tinged with yellow, they think it has acquired that colour from having lain above the gold of the mine."-Chambers' Rhymes of Scotland, p. 61.

2 De Rebus Gest. Scot. p. 31. Romæ, 1578.

tain ceremonics at sunrise, will see the shrubs assume the appearance of gold on those parts of the hill that most abound with it. From whence these fables," he says, "derived their origin, must be uncertain: but as to the last, one could easily conceive how the whole summit of the mount would have a golden hue when receiving the warm glow of the morning before the sunbeams reached the plain.”1

XLVIII.

PUNISHMENT OF PERJURY.

THE geographer Malte-Brun says, that in Manipa, one of the Molucca Islands, "there is a fountain called Ayer-Sampoo, the Well of Oaths, which is believed to give the itch to any perjured person who drinks of it."2 Fifty years ago our neighbours of England would have said that such a superstition could have no terrors for the Scots. One of our poets who lived in the earlier years of the seventeenth century seems to have thought the disease so

'Cordiner's Antiquities and Scenery of the North of Scotland, p. 32. Lond. 1780.

2 Malte-Brun's Geography, English Transl., vol. iii. p. 519. Instances of a somewhat similar superstition, during ancient times, in many places of Greece and Italy, are collected by Alexander ab Alexandro in his Geniales Dies, lib. v. cap. x. pp. 656, 657, edit. Francof. 1594.

little odious that he indited three copies of verses "To a young lady afflicted with the itch. (De Abrenethaea virgine, cum SCABIE laboraret)." It must not be supposed, however, that Scotland was the only country liable to the reproach of this lively malady. Among the amusing letters of Lady Suffolk we read one from Mrs Bradshaw in 1722, stating that "all the best families in the parish are laid up with the itch. We had a noble captain who dined in a brave pair of white gloves."2

This indeed, it may be said, was after the Union.

XLIX.

KING PHILIBERT OF ENGLAND.

FRENCH biographers gravely relate an incident which seems to have escaped our gossips in English history. Philibert de la Baume, Comte de Saint-Amour, they tell us, was sent to England on an embassy from Charles V. He so insinuated himself into the favour of Henry the Eighth, that the king conferred on him for four and twenty hours all the authority and ensigns of the royal office, which the count fully and openly exercised at London. An historian of Burgundy is cited to prove that the frolic was much

1 Arturi Jonstoni, Scoti, Medici Regii, Poemata Omnia, pp. 378, 379. Middelb. 1642.

2 Suffolk Correspondence, vol. i. p. 94.

applauded by the English ; and on the authority of M. Abry d'Arcien, member of a patriotic society at Jura, we are assured that so recently as the year 1762 there were preserved in the archives of the Chateau de Chantonay, a seat of the Saint-Amours, several edicts by King Philibert, dated at London.2

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LATIN-ENGLISH.

SOME are disposed to lament, that so much of the Latin idiom and so many Latin words have been incorporated with the Saxon elements of our mothertongue. One of the great champions of English Latinity seems to have had hopes of altogether rooting out the Gothic structure and vocables of our speech. "Indeed," writes Sir Thomas Browne in 1646, "if elegancie still proceedeth, and English pennes maintaine that stream wee have of late observed to flow from many, wee shall within few yeares bee faine to learne Latine to understand English, and a work will prove of equall facility in either." If the current had long set in, more languages than the Latin would have been needed for the interpretation

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"Hist. abrég. du Comté de Bourgogne, par M. Grappin, p. 217."

2 Biographie Universelle, t. xxix. p. 38. 3 Preface to Vulgar Errors.

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