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never knew any who used to carry off this marvellous Cole about them, who ever were (to his knowledge) sick of the plague, or indeed complained of any other maladie."

The writer here alluded to is, I suppose, Mizaldus,* an especial trafficker in ware of this kind, and he is farther corroborated by Lupton, who affirms with as much solemnity as if he had been upon his oath, "I know it to be of truth, for I have found them the same day under the root of plantane." But in spite of these authorities, Dr. Decker in his notes upon Barbette does not scruple to assert that the Cole is no coal, but simply the rotten roots of old mugwort, which are generally found under the fresh plant; this he pronounces to be an antepileptic in doses of a dram given in water, the real sanative virtues of the plant having no doubt been, as in so many other instances, the origin of the superstition.

In addition to these antepileptic virtues, mugwort was also potent against storms and the devil himself, if branches of it were hung up against the house-doors on St John's Eve.‡ This however was far from being a

* "Quidam multa perhibent de carbonibus pridie D. Joannis Baptistæ sub radicibus artemisia evulsis; sed hallucinantur autores; non enim sunt carbones, sed radices artemisiæ antiquæ annosæ emortuæ, multo sale volatili constantes; et semper ferè sub artemisiâ reperiuntur, adeo ut tantum superstitio quædam sit quòd radices illæ annosa emortuæ pridie D. Joannis Baptistæ circa duodecimam nocturnam evelli debeant. Dosis illarum est ad drachm 1 cum aquâ appropriatâ exhibita." Praxis Barbettisna, p. 7. cap. 1. De Epilepsiâ. 12mo. Lug. Bat. 1669.

+ Lupton's THOUSAND NOTABLE THINGS, Sect. 59. book 1. 4to. London, 1675.

"Inolevit longa annorum serie persuasio, artemisiam in festis Divo Joanni Baptista sacris, ante domus suspēsam, item alios frutices et plantas, atque etiam candelas facesque designatis quibusdam diebus celebrioribus aqua lustrali rigatas, vel nescio quomodo expiatas, et quando usus postulat incensas, contra tempestates, fulmina, tonitrua,

quality peculiar to the mugwort; many other herbs, plants, and minerals, appear to have been equally efficacious.

The fern was a yet more important object of popular superstition at this season. It was supposed at one time to have neither flower nor seed,* the seed which lay on the back of the leaf being so small as to escape the sight of the hasty observer. Hence, probably, proceeding on the fantastic doctrine of signatures,† our ancestors derived the notion that those who could obtain and wear this invisible seed would be themselves invisible, a belief of which innumerable instances may be found in our old dramatists. It was also, as we are informed by Lemnius, gathered at the summer solstice on tempestuous

et adversus diaboli potestatem, opera, et quæcunque maleficia, velut prærogativa quadam valere." PAPATUS, per T. Moresinum, p. 28. 12mo. Edinburghi. 1594.

* This belief was as old as the time of the Romans. Pliny roundly asserts, "filicis duo genera, nec florem habent, nec semen"--there are two kinds of fern, and they have neither flower nor seed. Nat. Hist. lib. xxvii. cap. 55.

+ Signature is the supposed resemblance borne by a mineral or vegetable to some part of the human body. These resemblances were superstitiously held to afford an indication of the use and virtues of the plant or mineral.

To give a few instances only

"Why did you think that you had Gyge's ring

Or the herb that gives invisibility ?"—

Beaumont and Fletcher's FAIR MAID OF THE INN, Act I. Scene I.

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Ben Jonson's New Inn, Act I. Scene VI.

"We have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible."—

Shakspeare's K. Henry IV. Act II. Scene I.

nights* for the purpose of being used in magic impostures, though of what kind he does not state; by his coupling it with vervain one would suppose he alluded to its power of "hindering witches of their will;" but upon this important subject even Bovet is not more explicit; he contents himself with saying, "much discourse hath been about gathering of fern-seed (which is looked upon as a magical herb) on the night of Midsummer Eve; and I remember I was told of one that went to gather it, and the spirits whisked by his ears like bullets, and sometimes struck his hat and other parts of his body; in fine, though he apprehended that he had gotten a quantity of it and secured it in, papers, and a box besides, he found all empty. But most probable this appointing of times and hours, is of the devil's own institution, as well as the fast, that having once ensnared people to an obedience to his rules, he may with more facility oblige them to a stricter vassalage."+

This eve was particularly favourable to the charms by which women were to discover their future lovers, the modes of divination being rather various. In addition to those already mentioned, there was the Dumb Cake

Two make it,

Two bake it,

Two break it;

and the third must put it under each of their pillows, but not a word must be spoken all the time. This being done the diviners are sure to dream of the man they

*"Sic filicem solstitio æstivo intempesta nocte erutam, rutam, trifolium verbena magicis imposturis accommodant." Exhortatio Ad Vit. Opt. Inst. DE MIRACULIS OCCULT. NAT.-Levini Lemnii. 12mo. 658, p. 575.

PANDEMONIUM, by R. Bovet, 9th Relat. p. 207.
Connoisseur, No. 56.

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 appear

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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 Anguinæ (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

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