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love. Then there is the divination by hempseed; that is you sow hemp, saying to yourself,

"Hempseed I sow,

Hempseed I hoe,

And he, that is my true love,

Come after me and mow."

Upon looking behind you, the lover makes his appearance.*

*

If you wet a clean shift, and turn it wrong side out, and hang it on the back of a chair before the fire, the result will be the same.†

It is also a good plan to tie your garter nine times round the bed-post and tie nine knots in it, saying to yourself,

"This knot I knit, this knot I tie,

To see my love as he goes by

In his apparel and array,

As he walks in every day."‡

The narrator of this spell says that her lover came, tucked up her bed-clothes at the feet, and drew the curtains.

Even the snakes in Wales, Cornwall, and throughout all Scotland, celebrate this particular season by meeting together and perform a sort of magical rite after their own fashion, if it should not rather be called a species of glass-blowing. "It is usual," says Camden, " for snakes to meet in companies, and that by joyning heads together and hissing, a kind of bubble is formed, which the rest, by continual. hissing, blow on till it passes quite through the body, and then it immediately hardens and resembles a glass ring, which whoever finds (as some old women and children are persuaded) shall prosper in all his undertakings. The rings, thus generated, are called GLeineu NADROEDH, i.e. Gemma Anguina (Anglice, Snake-Stones),

*

Connoisseur, No. 56.

+ Idem.

Idem.

whereof I have seen at several places twenty or thirty. They are small glass annulets, commonly about half as wide as our finger-rings, but much thicker, of a green colour usually, though some of them are blue, and others curiously waved with blue, red, and white. I have also seen two or three earthen rings of this kind, but glazed with blue and adorned with transverse streaks or furrows on the outside. The smallest of them might be supposed to have been glass beads worn for ornament by the Romans, because some quantity of them, together with several amber beads have been lately discovered at a stone-pit near Garvord in Berkshire, where they also find some pieces of Roman coin, and sometimes dig up skeletons of men and pieces of arms and armour. But it may be objected that a battle being fought there between the Romans and Britons, as appears by the bones and arms they discover, these glass beads might as probably belong to the latter. And indeed it seems to me very likely that these snake-stones (as we call them,) were used as charms or amulets amongst our Druids of Britain, on the same occasions as the snake-eggs amongst the Gaulish Druids; for Pliny,* who lived when those priests were in

'The passage, alluded to by Camden, is in the twelfth chapter of the twenty-ninth book of Pliny, though in Gibson's edition of Camden the reference is to the third chapter. Old Philemon Holland gives a free but very pleasant version of the passage, filling up all the allusions of Pliny and smoothing down all the abruptness of his concise and sometimes unintelligible style, 'till it almost reads like an original :— "Over and besides, I will not overpasse one kind of eggs besides which is in great name and request in Fraunce, and whereof the Greeke authors have not written a word; and this is the serpent's egg, which the Latins call anguinum. For in summer-time verely, you shall see an infinit number of snakes gather round together into an heape, entangled and enwrapped one within another so artificially, as I am not able to expresse the manner thereof; by the means therefore of the froth or salivation which they yeeld from their mouths and the humour that commeth from their bodies, there is engendered the egg

request, and saw one of their snake-eggs, gives us the like account of the origin of them, as our common people do of their Glain Neidr."*

Sometimes it would appear that these glass annulets were struck through a larger ring of iron, and that again through a much larger of copper. One of this kind was found in the river Cherwell, near Hampton Gay, in Oxfordshire, as we find it figured and described in Dr. Plott's Natural History of that county. He maintains however that they were not British, but either Saxon or Danish, the British rings being of iron, as the Roman were of gold or silver.t

The only remaining feast of this month of any note in the calendar, is the Eve of St. Peter and St. Paul, i.e. the 28th, on which occasion many of the rites peculiar to St. John the Baptist are repeated.

aforesaid. The priests of France, called Druidæ, are of opinion, and so they deliver it, that these serpents when they have thus engendered this egg, doe cast it up on high into the aire, by the force of their hissing, which being observed there must be one ready to catch and receive it in the fall againe (before it touch the ground) within the lappet of a coat of arms or soldiour's cassocke. They affirme also that the partie, who carrieth this egg away, had need to be well mounted on a good horse and to ride away upon the spur, for that the foresaid serpents will pursue him still, and never give over untill they meet with some great river between him and them that may cut off and intercept their chase. They add moreover and say that the onely marke to knowe this egg, whether it be right or no, is this, that it will swim aloft above the water even against the streame, yea though it were bound and enchased with a plate of gold.”—Holland's Pliny, p. 353, b. 29, chap. iii.

Camden affirms that this ovum anguinum is nothing more than a shell, either marine or fossil, of the kind called Echinus Marinus, "whereof one sort, though not the same that he, (Pliny) describes, is called at this day in most parts of Wales, where they are found, WYEUR MOR, i.e. Sea Eggs."-See his account of the Ordovices, p. 64. * CAMDEN'S BRITANNIA.-Ordovices-vol. ii. p. 64. fol. 1772. + Plott's History of Oxfordshire, chap. x. pars 107 and 108, p. 353, folio. Oxford, 1705.

335

ROSICRUCIANISM AND FREE

MASONRY.

BELIEF upon any topic, no matter what it may be, appears to have such charms for the mass of mankind, and to be altogether such a pleasant kind of indulgence, that a writer seldom gets thanks for attempting to disturb an established creed. The reluctance of the old monks to exchange their blundering mumpsimus for the correcter sumpsimus has often been quoted in illustration of this disposition; abuse was the only coin in which they paid their monitors, and better than this I can hardly expect from the Freemasons for showing that they are either deceived or deceivers, and that in fact their society sprang out of decayed Rosicrucianism just as the beetle is engendered from a muck-heap. The doctrine, however, is not new; it has been broached before both here and upon the continent, but always as if the writers were half afraid lest in pulling down the masonic temple the rubbish might fall about their ears, and do them a mischief. In consequence, there is not, as far as I know, any thing like a full and clear exposition of this wide-spread juggle, and if a patient investigation of the subject may entitle

me to say so much, my object is to supply that deficiency. To the best of my own judgment and conviction I have adopted a correct theory on a subject not generally understood, and when there are so many apparent motives for giving it utterance it will be hard indeed if the reader can not hit upon one suited to his own peculiar tastes and habits. If he be sour and bigotted, he will attribute this attempt to vanity; if of a better nature, he may perhaps, set it down to a scholarly ambition; if he be really wise, he will see that something more is intended than lies upon the surface, and that one great object is to stimulate the credulous to think for themselves, instead of believing blindly upon any topic..

The world having arrived at the mature age of 1847, it might fairly enough be expected to have come to years of discretion. In the above space it has played many wild pranks--such as roasting men and oxen whole at Smithfield, stretching limbs upon the rack, and putting to death any one, who would fain have taught it to be better. No doubt, times have much mended of late, but still not a few of the old nursery tales maintain their ground amongst us; and of these Freemasonry is the most widely disseminated and the most ridiculous. Of course such an opinion will shock many gentlemen, who wear aprons, leather or silk as the case may be, and who amuse themselves with talking of “ light from the east and the building of Solomon's Temple, and with many other childish pranks, which if played off in the broad daylight would be ridiculous.

To persuade men to use their reason is always a difficult task, and the time has been when the effort to do so was rewarded with a stake or a dungeon. Indeed if we listen to the outcry, which is raised even now against the exercise of that faculty, one might suppose that reason was given to us for no other purpose than not to

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