employed to crush them, recoiled upon their tormentors, the river refused either to drown or to freeze them, for it buoyed up their bodies and from being cold enough to destroy life changed into a comfortable warm bath; and when they were plunged into boiling lead, instead of injuring the intended victims a quantity of the hot metal spurted out into the Prefect's eye, and made him more furious than ever. At length upon the especial prayer of the saints, an angel came and pulled them both uninjured out of the lead, when Rictiovarius in a fit of rage, inspired of course by the devil, jumped in himself and perished miserably. Sharp steel, however, effected in the end what could not be done by any other means. By order of Maximian they were beheaded, and their bodies exposed to the birds and beasts of prey. But though now very sufficiently dead, their miraculous career on earth was not yet over. birds and beasts, forgetting their usual nature, refused to touch the holy corpses; an old man and his wife were warned by God to carry them off by night; that they might the more easily effect this, the bodies were rendered light by divine interposition; and finally when the aged pair reached the boat with their precious cargo, the bark was supernaturally impelled against wind and current, without the help either of oar or sails, till they reached their own home, where they buried the bodies as decently as they were able. But the reign of Constantine came, and with it also came the reign of the saints; the bodies were disinterred, and first conveyed to Soissons; but finally, being of Rome, they were buried in the church of St. Lawrence in that city.*

'The

ST. SIMON AND ST. JUDE; October 28th. These saints, like St. Swithin, were supposed to be great promoters of wet weather. Brand tells us that in the Runic Calendar

Those who wish to verify these important facts, should consult Ribadeneira as above.

St. Simon and St. Jude's Day was marked by a ship, on account of their having been fishermen,* though even this emblem may perhaps be connected with their pluvial propensities, of which we find so many scattered indications in our old writers. Thus, in Middleton and Dekkar's Roaring Girl,

"Dost thou know her then?

As well as I know 'twill rain upon

Simon and Jude's day next.'t

"Now a continual Simon and Jude's rain

Beat all your feathers as flat down as pancakes."

ALLHALLOW'S EVE; HALLOW EVEN;

HALLOWEEN ;

HOLY-EVE; NUTCRACK NIGHT. - October 31st. This Eve is so called from being the vigil of All Saint's Day, and is the season for a variety of superstitions and other customs. In the north of England many of these are still found to linger. One of the most common is that of diving for apples; or of catching at them with the mouth only, the hands being tied behind, and the apples suspended on one end of a long transverse beain, at the other extremity of which is fixed a lighted candle. The fruit and nuts form the most prominent parts of the evening feast, and from this circumstance the night has obtained one of its names, namely Nutcrack Night. Nuts also were employed as one, and perhaps the oldest of the many modes of divination practised at this season, for Hutchinson is quite correct when he says of this eve, that "it seems to retain the celebration of a festival to Pomona, when it is supposed the summer stores are opened on the approach of winter. Divinations and consulting of.omens attended all these ceremonies in the practice of the heathen. Hence in the rural sacrifice of nuts

• Popular Antiquities, vol. i. p. 209.

+ Act. I. Scene I., p. 19, edit. 1825, 8vo. London.

Id. p. 25.

propitious omens are sought touching matrimony; if the nuts lie still and burn together, it prognosticates a happy marriage or a hopeful love; if on the contrary they bounce and fly asunder, the sign is unpropitious."* Here again, as in so many instances, the custom may be traced back from an unmeaning frolic to a popish superstition, and from that to a classic rite. "Nuts have a religious import," says the Romish calendar;† and going yet farther back, we find that this is but an echo from the times of paganism. Amongst the Romans it was a custom for the bridegroom to throw nuts about the room that the boys might scramble for them, thereby as some will have it, intimating that the new husband meant henceforth to lay aside the sports of boyhood.‡ That the phrase in time came to signify the assumption of manhood I can easily believe; but the explanation of Pliny, though doubtful in itself, seems to point to a

* HUTCHINSON'S NORTHUMBERLAND, vol. ii.-Ancient Customs, P. 18. An appendix to the volume.

"Nuces in pretio et religiosa"-as quoted in Brand's Pop. Antiquities, vol. i. p. 212.

Erasmus, when speaking of the phrase nuces relinquere, says "translata metaphora, vel a venusta nuptiarum ceremonia in quibus sponsus uxorem ducens nuces spargebat utpote jam pueritiæ renuncians. Ita Catullus in carmine nuptiali:

"Da, puer, propere nuces,

Concubine, nuces da.

Virgilius in Bucol. Eclog. 8.

Sparge, marite nuces."

ADAGIA, Erasmi et Aliorum, p. 528, folio. 1643. § "The next place to these for bignes the walnuts doe challenge, which they can not claime for their credit and authoritie: and yet they are in some request among other licentious and wanton Fescennine ceremonies at weddings; for lesse they be than pine nuts, if a man consider the grossnesse of the body outwardly; but in proportion thereto they have a much bigger kernel within. Moreover nature hath much graced and honoured these nuts with a peculiar gift she

deeper religious meaning, which even in his day had ceased to be rightly understood. Be this as it may, it is certain that it had a religious import of some kind; and it is no less plain that the Roman Catholics had a similar idea of the nut; hence, as popery faded from the land, the custom which could not be wholly rooted out, changed in part its character and became a mere rustic superstition.

In some instances we find observances peculiar to certain districts, or even limited to a particular county. Thus at Rippon in Yorkshire, the good women make a cake for every one in the family, whence this eve is by them often called Cake-Night ;* and a similar custom prevails in Warwickshire; † but it does not seem to have existed in many parts of England, though we find it in St. Kilda, where the inhabitants used to make “a large cake in form of a triangle furrowed round, and it must be all eaten that night."‡ From the same authority we learn that the inhabitants of Lewis, one of the western islands of Scotland, "had an antient custom to sacrifice to a sea-god, called Shony, at Hallow-tide, in the manner following the inhabitants round the island came to the church of St. Mulvay, having each man his provision along with him; every family furnished a peck of malt, and this was brewed into ale; one of their number was

:

hath endued them with, namely a double robe wherewith they are clad; the first is a tender and soft husk; the next, a hard and wooddy shell, which is the cause that at mariages they serve for religious ceremonies, resembling the manifold tunicles and membranes wherein the infant is lapped and enfolded within the womb." PLINIE'S NATURAL HISTORY, by Philemon Holland, vol. i. chap. 22, p. 445.

See GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE for August 1790, vol. lx. p. 719. + BRAND, vol i. p. 217.

MARTIN'S Western Islands of Scotland, p. 287, 8vo. London,

VOL. II,

L

picked out to wade into the sea up to the middle, and carrying a cup of ale in his hand, standing still in that posture, cried out with a loud voice, saying, Shony, I give you this cup of ale, hoping that you'll be so kind as to send us plenty of sea-ware, for inriching our ground the ensuing year; and so threw the cup of ale into the sea. This was per

formed in the night-time. At his return to land, they all went to church, where there was a candle burning upon the altar; and then standing silent for a little time, one of them gave a signal, at which the candle was put out, and immediately all of them went to the fields, where they fell a drinking their ale, and spent the remainder of the night in dancing and singing."

In olden times, however, seed-cakes were in general use, but with a different object, the purpose seeming to be a sacrifice to the rural deities. Thus Tusser says,

"Wife, sometime this weeke, if the wether hold cleere,

An end of wheat-sowing we make for this yeare;

Remember you therefore, though I do it not,

The Seed-Cake, the pasties, and furmetie-pot."

And again Bishop Kennet tells us, "it was an old English custom to provide seed-cakes to entertain the ploughmen after the season of sowing wheat, which was commonly on All Saints' Night,"-a curious passage as showing that the wheat at one time was sown at a much earlier part of the year than it is now a-days.

In Ireland the Druids, who held this season as one of their great festivals, used to light up sacrificial fires, though in more modern times the Irish have dropt the fires and substituted candles. Upon the subject of this eve Vallancy has given us much curious information.

* MARTIN'S WESTERN ISLANDS, p. 28.

Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie, fol. 75, b. quarto, London, 1580.

MS.-Lansdowne Cat., Brit. Mus., p. 12, 1039. Plut. 79, f.