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THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.
QUARTERLY

JULY, 1814.

ART. I. Observations on Popular Antiquities, chiefly illustrating the Origin of our Vulgar Customs, Ceremonies, and Superstitions. By John Brand, M. A. Fellow and Sec. of the Society of Antiquarians of London. Arranged and revised, with Additions, by Henry Ellis, F. R. S. Sec. S. A. London. 1813.

HE word 'vulgar' ought to be obliterated from the title of this work. What should we say if a traveller, viewing only the present degradation of the Royal Abbey of St. Medard, or the episcopal hall of Eltham, were to describe the one as a laystall, and the other as a ruinous barn? The devotional opinions and customs now living only in the recollection of the inhabitants of unpolished or secluded districts, were o incorporated in the splendid ritual of the Romish church. The mechanic and the schoolboy are amused by sports and holydays, which formed the recreation of the throne. itself; and those who are amongst the wisest in their generation, gave credit to errors and superstitions, which even the most illiterate are now half ashamed to acknowledge. It is equally unnecessary to apologize, as Mr. Brand and other writers have done, for the seeming unimportance of the subject.' There are few departments of literature which have a better claim upon our attention. Customs, arbitrary and unmeaning in the judgment of the careless observer, guide us as surely as the pages of the historian. Nor are the wildest superstitions to be rejected. They also supply the want of historical evidence, and, as Mr. Scott has well observed, connect the religion, and we shall add, the philosophy of one age, with the follies of the next. If they are picturesque, let the poet weave them in 'his wild and wondrous lay.' If they are too obscure to assist the antiquary, or two inelegant to claim a place in verse, they will not be lost upon the investigator of the human intellect: to him they will answer the same end as the morbid specimens which the anatomist treasures in his museum, and in which he finds the elucidation of the structure and functions of the healthy subject.

These inquiries may be more legitimately considered as forming a chapter in the history of the moral and physical habits of the middle ages, which retained their influence to a later period than is usually supposed. Even in the days of Queen Ann, authority was

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loth to cast off the scarlet hood and robe of ermine, with which she had been arrayed by the gorgeous genius of chivalry: and notwithstanding the circulation of the polished philosophy of the Spectator, and the business-like columns of the London Gazette, the world continued to think in black letter and illuminated capitals. For one who repeated the experiments of Boyle there were hundreds who puffed away their gold in the athanor of Basil Valentine and Isaac the Dutchman. Blagrave and Gadbury were found in many a study, where Halley or Newton would have been sought in vain and Garth was forced to divide the empire of the medical art with the regular or irregular disciples of Culpepper. When the heir attained his majority, the learned sergeant counted as audibly as though Taltarum's case had been fresh in their recollection; they quoted Bracton and the year books, to prove their learning; and danced before the judges in the Inner Temple Hall at Christmas, to display their agility. The cope and amice were retained in the cathedrals; and the choir resounded with matins at the true old canonical hour. The concluding scene of human life was also conducted according to ancient form and fashion. Garter and Norroy were called upon to arrange the procession; banners and pencils went before the coffin of the esquire; and the recumbent effigy of monumental alabaster was the only authorized model for the sculptor, who seldom ventured to heathenize the tomb, except by substituting the thorax for the plate armour, or by introducing a mournful Mars, or a pair of melancholy Cupids.

Of these archæisms of every description we yet retain a tolerable store; some in the ceremonies and regulations annexed to the pageantry or duties of public life; and more in the pastimes or errors of the common man, or in the traditionary accompaniments to the events of joy or sorrow, which form the distinguishing epochs in the little chronicle of life. On account of their ordinary occurrence they fail to excite our curiosity. We are not generally aware that bride-favours are derived from the Danes; and that bride-cake was probably borrowed from the Romans; that the cheesemonger who counts at the rate of six score to the hundred is following a Runic custom; and that precedents 'hoar with eld' may be adduced in support of hot cross-buns, and Christmas boxes.

To trace the history of what may be called the secular division of popular, or rather national, customs, would require a complete dissertation on the manners of the times when kings played at cross and pile, and when their subjects loaded themselves with furs and three-piled velvet in the dog-days; saturated every thing they ate or drank with honey or sugar; and slept stark naked, to make amends for the sweltering burthen of their day dress.

Customs more or less connected with religion, and superstitions, whether practical or doctrinal, form the other general division of the subject now under consideration. Many of them are the vestiges of paganism, which the christian teachers were unable to eradicate. Not that the northern nations were lukewarm and unwilling converts, like the nations of Peru and Mexico. Practising a simple mode of worship, in which the idol was less liable to be identified with the divinity of which it was the symbol; and accustomed to doctrines which familiarized them with the existence of abstract spirit; their minds were prepared for the reception of purer tenets, and the glad tidings of salvation were embraced with eagerness and sincerity. They nevertheless adhered, and with some degree of pertinacity, to certain of their old religious rites, not very material in themselves, but which were nevertheless anathematized by the clergy, who, like the fanatics of a succeeding age, were perhaps too much alarmed at the danger of allowing a proselyte to retain any fondness for the exuviæ of an abrogated faith. It was this apprehension which sent forth the Gallic saints with bell, book, and candle, to rout the May Queen and her rustic attendants; and which made minced pies and plumpudding an abomination in the mouth of Prynne and Harvey. But neither the thunders of the councils, nor the more tangible terrors of the parliamentary ordinances, were able to wean the bulk of the people from the observance of times and seasons, which afforded to the young a prescriptive right to merriment, and to the old, the equally valuable privilege of claiming the enjoyment of an extraordinary cup, and the grant of some savoury dish from the frugal housewife. Sometimes the reigning philosophy was resorted to as a justification. As the bonfires continued to burn at the summer solstice, notwithstanding the canons against them, the churchinen thought it as well to prevent their authority being compromised, by asserting that these festal flames were not without their use. The blaze, they said, scared away the dragons who flew about at that season, and caused plague and pestilence by poisoning the waters and polluting the air.

The machinery of the popular mythology, and the endless variety of superstitious practices which, according to Le Brun's definition, delude the vulgar and puzzle the learned, owe their primary establishment to the same source; although the flood has been enlarged by many tributary streams. The clergy attacked them as formidable enemies, instead of treating them as shadows and nonentities, and this unremitting warfare strengthened the belief, both in the existence of supernatural beings of every class, and in the magic virtues of vervain and four-leaved trefoil. Yet in spite of the learned labours of the theologians, by whom the whole unearthly synod were consigned to the bottomless pit, the esoteric doctrine,

as well of the priesthood as of the laity, with respect to the more beneficent classes of those fanciful creations, was more calculated to inspire veneration than abhorrence; and many a square-cap, who diligently proved the infernal nature of these visitors to the great edification of his readers, thought in his heart, that if the halfbrothers of Beelzebub really performed all that was ascribed to them, the family was painted in much darker colours than it ought to be.

The details of these articles of the unorthodox creed vary in every district, although there are some broad and general features which are discernible almost all over the world. The voluntary transformation of men into beasts of prey is one of them.The wizard-tigers of Mexico are the counterparts of the warwolves of Armorica. Besides the diversity of the religious systems from which they emanated, they have received a peculiar tinge and colouring from all the circumstances which stamp the character of a nation, and distinguish it from its neighbours. Vampires and Vroukolakas originated with the once ferocious Slavonian. Italy united the useful professions of witch and procuress. The solitary instance of Mistress Turner will not justify our affixing such a stigma on our tramontane witches, none of whom could ever boast of the blended inventory of Monna Alvigia's cupboard, where conserve of roses and bean-flower water stood on the same shelf with the skin of birth-strangled infants and the blood of snakes and flitter-mice.-In France the fairies are elegant females in white, as attractive, as yielding, and, alas, as capricious as their sisters of mortal mould;-the very ghosts there have a penchant for coquetry. They haunt ruined towers and caverns, and the solitary sea-beach. On one fated day in every year they are transformed into toads and vipers, but on the following they recover their pristine beauty.-English fairies have less frailty in their composition, and more permanence in their beauty. With us, the favour of the airy people of small stature clothed in green,' is only to be gained by neatness of apparel, purity of body and of mind, and especially by fervent prayer and fasting. But neither love nor devotion has any charms for the malicious elves, whom we encounter within a few days journey to the north; who harass the farmers by shooting the cattle out of spite, and riding their horses to death for their diversion; and who are so well acquainted with the value of the circulating medium that they never give up possession of a field until they have received a compensation in sterling money.

The laborious German peopled the gloomy recesses of his metallic caverns with malignant, or at best capricious beings; and every blast of hydrogen was converted into an offended gnome. Scheele

or Klaproth would have analyzed the demon Anneberg who suffocated a dozen workmen in the 'mine called the Rose-garland.' Through Van Helmont and Paracelsus, the legends of the mines are transplanted into the scientific nomenclature of modern chymistry. The 'Gas,' who in the days of yore drove the sturdy labourer from the adit, now calmly submits to the confinement of the stopcock. And the Cobold' is divested of his perversity in the purgatory of the crucible.

The search after hidden treasures infatuated the Germans in no ordinary degree. Like Sancho's pilgrims, their constant cry was 'ghelt, ghelt, ghelt;' and they had no objection to take the devil as a partner in a mining adventure. If the pick-axe and the borer failed to discover the vein, the land-owner had recourse to the divining rod; or to the tremendous 'berg-spiegel' dug out of the newmade grave, or from under the wheel which bore the mangled carcass of the robber. Instant death was the lot of the first living being that looked into this mirror; but the intelligencies might be appeased by the destruction of a dog, or any other inferior animal, which procured the vision of every treasure that the earth conceals.The dreamy enthusiasm of their national character is also strongly marked by the marvellous embellishments which accompany their traditions of secret and mysterious stores of wealth. Such are the stories of the tailor of Basil;-the more fortunate shepherd of Falckenstein, who detached as much of the precious metal as he could carry from the golden statue of Tidian, until his superiors charged him to discover the iron door leading to the cavern, after which he never could discern it amongst the rocks, the treasure being destined for him alone;-and the fountain which gushed forth in planetary hours rolling pearls beneath its waves. There are some traces of druidism lurking in Germany in the shape of popular superstitions, which are obliterated elsewhere. The pentalpha is considered as a powerful phylactery by the peasants, who know it by the name of the trotten-fuss, or Druid's foot. And a white adder is believed to nestle under the roots of the trees upon which the misletoe grows, possessing many properties analogous to the adder's egg of Pliny.

The original inhabitants of Spain are thought to have crossed over from Africa. Their language fully proves them to have been an insulated stock. Their mode of numeration is one of the most striking of its singularities, for they reckon on from one to twenty. A Vascongado writer appeals to it as a mark of the superior antiquity of his nation. He says that other nations learnt to reckon after they had degenerated from the simplicity of nature by wearing shoes and stockings, and therefore they left off when they had given names to all their fingers. But the Vascongados began to

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