relic, apparently of the class of head rings, in the collection of the
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, which was discovered in the year
1747, about seven feet below the surface, when digging for a well, at
the east end of the village of Stitchel, in the county of Roxburgh.
It bears a resemblance in some respects to relics of the same class
in the Christiansborg Palace, yet nothing exactly similar to it has
yet been found among Scandinavian relics; while some of its ornamental
details closely correspond to those which characterize the British
horse furniture and other native relics of this period. One of its most
remarkable peculiarities is, that it opens and shuts by means of a
hinge, being clasped when closed by a pin which passes through a double
catch at a line intersecting the ornament; and so perfect is it that
it can still be opened and secured with ease. It is probable that this
also should rank among the ornaments of the head, though it differs
in some important respects from any other object of the same class.
The oval which it forms is not only too small to encircle the head,
but it will be observed from the engraving that its greatest length is
from side to side, the internal measurements being five and nine-tenth
inches by five and one-tenth inches.
RELICS.
At the commencement of the seventeenth century there was a crucifix
belonging to the Augustine friars at Burgos in Spain, which produced a
revenue of nearly seven thousand crowns per annum. It was found upon
the sea, not far from the coast, with a scroll of parchment appended
to it, descriptive of the various virtues it possessed. The image
was provided with a false beard and a chesnut periwig, which its holy
guardians declared were natural, and they also assured all pious
visitors that on every Friday it sweated blood and water into a silver
basin. In the garden of this convent grew a species of wheat, the grain
of which was peculiarly large, and which its possessors averred was
brought by Adam out of Paradise. Of this wheat they made small cakes
called pancillos, kneaded with the aforesaid blood and water, and
sold them to the credulous multitude for a quartillo a piece. These
cakes were an infallible remedy for all disorders, and over those
who carried them the devil had no power. They sold also blue ribands
of the exact length of the crucifix, for about a shilling each, with
this inscription in silver letters, "La madi del santo crucifisco de
Burgos." These ribands were a sovereign cure for the headache.
LONG MEG AND HER DAUGHTERS.
As there is something remarkable or out of the way in this family of
heavy stone, we present it to the reader. This venerable Druidical
monument, which is by the country-people called Long Meg and her
Daughters, stands near Little Salkeld, in the county of Cumberland.
It consists of 67 massy stones, of different sorts and sizes, ranged
in a circle of nearly 120 paces diameter; some of these stones are
granite, some blue and grey limestone, and others flint; many of them
are ten feet high, and fifteen or sixteen feet in circumference:
these are called Long Meg's Daughters. On the southern side of this
circle, about seventeen or eighteen paces out of the line, stands the
stone called Long Meg, which is of that kind of red stone found about
Penrith. It is so placed, that each of its angles faces one of the
cardinal points of the compass; it measures upwards of eighteen feet
in height, and fifteen feet in girth; its figure is nearly that of a
square prism; it weighs about sixteen tons and a half. In the part
of the circle the most contiguous, four large stones are placed in a
square form, as if they had been intended to support an altar; and
towards the east, west, and north, two large stones stand a greater
distance from each other than any of the rest, seemingly to form the
entrances into a circle. It is remarkable that no stone-quarry is to
be found hereabouts. The appearance of this circle is much hurt by
a stone wall built across it, that cuts off a considerable segment,
which stands in the road. The same ridiculous story is told of these
stones, as of those at Stonehenge, _i. e._, that it is impossible to
count them, and that many persons who have made the trial, could never
find them amount twice to the same number. It is added, that this was
a holy place, and that Long Meg and her Daughters were a company of
witches transformed into stones, on the prayers of some saint, for
venturing to prophane it; but when, and by whom, the story does not
say. Thus has tradition obscurely, and clogged with fable, handed down
the destination of this spot, accompanied with some of that veneration
in which it was once undoubtedly held, though not sufficiently to
protect its remains from the depredations of avarice; the inclosure
and cultivation of the ground bidding fair to destroy them. These
stones are mentioned by Camden, who was either misinformed as to, or
mis-reckoned their number; unless, which seems improbable, some have
been taken away. "At Little Salkeld, (says he,) there is a circle of
stones seventy-seven in number, each ten feet high; and before these,
at the entrance, is a single one by itself, fifteen feet high. This the
common people call Long Meg, and the rest her Daughters; and within
the circle, are two heaps of stones, under which they say there are
dead bodies buried; and, indeed, it is probable enough that this has
been a monument erected in memory of some victory." The history of the
British Druidical Antiquities having been thoroughly investigated,
since Camden's time, these circles are now universally agreed to have
been temples and places of judgment, and not sepulchral monuments.
Indeed his editor has, in some measure, rectified his mistake, by the
following addition: "But, as to the heaps in the middle, they are no
part of the monument, but have been gathered off the ploughed lands
adjoining; and (as in many other parts of the county) thrown up here in
a waste corner of the field; and as to the occasion of it, both this,
and the Rolrick stones in Oxfordshire, are supposed by many, to have
been monuments erected at the solemn investiture of some Danish Kings,
and of the same kind as the Kingstolen in Denmark, and Moresteen in
Sweden; concerning which, several large discourses have been written."
CURIOUS PARTICULARS RELATIVE TO DRESS AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE
FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
Cloth of gold, satin, and velvet, enriched by the florid decorations
of the needle, were insufficient to satisfy the pride of nobles; robes
formed of these costly materials were frequently ornamented with
embroidery of goldsmiths' work, thickly set with precious stones;
and the most absurd and fantastic habits were continually adopted,
in the restless desire to appear in new inventions. John of Ghent is
represented in a habit divided straight down the middle, one side
white, the other half dark blue; and his son, Henry IV., on his
return from exile, rode in procession through London in a jacket of
cloth-of-gold, "after the German fashion." The dukes and earls who
attended his coronation wore three bars of ermine on the left arm, a
quarter of a yard long, "or thereabouts;" the barons had but two: and
over the monarch's head was borne a canopy of blue silk, supported by
silver staves, with four gold bells, "that rang at the corners." "Early
in the reign of Richard II. began," says Stowe, "the detestable use of
piked shoes, tied to the knees with chains of silver gilt; also women
used high attire on their heads with piked horns and long training
gowns. The commons also were besotted in excesse of apparel; in wide
surcoates reaching to their loines; some in a garment reaching to their
heels, close before and sprowting out at the sides, so that on the
backe they make men seeme women, and this they call by a ridiculous
name--_gowne_. Their hoodes are little, and tied under the chin."
ECCENTRIC FUNERAL.
Mr. John Oliver, an eccentric miller of Highdown Hill, in Sussex, died,
aged eighty-three, the 27th of May, 1793. His remains were interred
near his mill, in a tomb he had caused to be erected there for that
purpose, near thirty years ago; the ground having been previously
consecrated. His coffin, which he had for many years kept under his
bed, was painted white; and the body was borne by eight men clothed in
the same colour. A girl about twelve years old read the burial service,
and afterwards, on the tomb, delivered a sermon on the occasion, from
Micah 7, 8, 9, before at least two thousand auditors, whom curiosity
had led to see this extraordinary funeral.
EGYPTIAN STANDARDS.
The engraving which we here lay before our friends, represents a group
of Egyptian standards, as they were used in the army in the time of
Pharaoh.
[Illustration [++] Egyptian Standards.]
Each regiment and company had its own peculiar banner or standard,
which were therefore very numerous, and various in their devices. A
beast, bird, or reptile, a sacred boat, a royal name in a cartouche,
or a symbolic combination of emblems, were the most common forms. As
they appear to have been objects of superstitious veneration that were
selected for this purpose, they must have contributed greatly to the
enthusiasm so highly valued in battle; and instances are common in
all history of desponding courage revived, and prodigies of valour
performed, on behalf of those objects which were so identified with
national and personal honour.
Allusions to standards, banners, and ensigns are frequent in the Holy
Scriptures. The four divisions in which the tribes of Israel marched
through the wilderness had each its governing standard, and tradition
has assigned to these ensigns the respective forms of the symbolic
cherubim seen in the vision of Ezekiel and John--that of Judah being
a lion, that of Reuben a man, that of Ephraim an ox, and that of Dan
an eagle. The post of standard-bearer was at all times of the greatest
importance, and none but officers of approved valour were ever chosen
for such a service; hence Jehovah, describing the ruin and discomfiture
which he was about to bring on the haughty King of Assyria, says, "And
they shall be as when a standard-bearer fainteth."
THE SHREW ASH.
[Illustration [++] Shrew Ash.]
At that end of Richmond Park where a gate leads to Mortlake, and near
a cottage in which resides one of the most estimable gentlemen of the
age--Professor Owen--there still lives and flourishes a tree that has
been famous for many ages: it is the Shrew Ash, and the above is a
correct engraving of it. It stands on rising ground, only a few yards
beyond the pond which almost skirts the Professor's lawn. White, in
his Natural History of Selborne, describes a shrew-ash as an ash whose
twigs or branches, when gently applied to the limbs of cattle, will
immediately relieve the pains which a beast suffers from the running
of a shrew-mouse over the part affected; for it is supposed that a
shrew-mouse is of so baleful and deleterious a nature, that wherever it
creeps over a beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, the suffering animal
is afflicted with cruel anguish, and threatened with the loss of the
use of the limb. Against this evil, to which they were continually
liable, our provident forefathers always kept a shrew-ash at hand,
which, when once medicated, would maintain its virtue for ever. A
shrew-ash was made potent thus:--Into the body of a tree a deep hole
was bored with an auger, and a poor devoted shrew-mouse was thrust in
alive, and plugged in, no doubt with several quaint incantations, long
since forgotten. The shrew-ash in Richmond Park is, therefore, amongst
the few legacies of the kind bequeathed to their country by the wisdom
of our ancestors.
Our readers will perceive that across the hollow of the tree near the
top there is a little bar of wood. The legend runs that were this
bar removed every night, it would be replaced in the same spot every
morning. The superstition is, that if a child afflicted with what the
people in the neighbourhood call "decline," or whooping-cough, or any
infantine disease, is passed nine times up the hollow of that tree, and
over the bar, while the sun is rising, it will recover. If the charm
fails to produce the desired effect, the old women believe that the sun
was too far up, or not up enough. If the child recovers, of course, the
fame of the tree is whispered about. There is a sort of shrew-mother to
every shrew-ash, who acts as guide and teacher to any young mother who
has an afflicted child and believes in the charm. The ash in Richmond
Park is still used, and still firmly believed in.
A DRUM MADE OF HUMAN SKIN.
John Zisca, general of the insurgents who took up arms in the year 1419
against the Emperor Sigismund, to revenge the deaths of John Huss,
and Jerome of Prague, who had been cruelly burnt to death for their
religious tenets, defeated the Emperor in several pitched battles. He
gave orders that, after his death, they should _make a drum of his
skin_; which was most religiously obeyed, and those very remains of
the enthusiastic Zisca proved, for many years, fatal to the Emperor,
who, with difficulty, in the space of sixteen years, recovered Bohemia,
though assisted by the forces of Germany, and the terror of Crusades.
The insurgents were 40,000 in number, and well disciplined.
EARTHQUAKE IN JAMAICA.
The Earthquake of Jamaica, in 1692, is one of the most dreadful that
history has to record. It was attended with a hollow rumbling noise
like that of thunder, and in less than a minute all the houses on one
side of the principal street in the town of Port Royal sank into a
fearful gulf forty fathoms deep, and water came roaring up where the
houses had been. On the other side of the street the ground rose up
and down like the waves of the sea, raising the houses and throwing
them into heaps as it subsided. In another part of the town the street
cracked along all its length, and the houses appeared suddenly twice
as far apart as they were before. In many places the earth opened
and closed again, so that several hundred of these openings were to
be seen at the same time; and as the wretched inhabitants ran out of
their tottering dwellings, the earth opened under their feet, and in
some cases swallowed them up entirely; while in others, the earth
suddenly closing, caught them by the middle, and thus crushed them
to death. In some cases these fearful openings spouted up cataracts
of water, which were attended by a most noisome stench. It is not
possible for any place to exhibit a scene of greater desolation than
the whole island presented at this period. The thundering bellowing
of the distant mountains, the dusky gloom of the sky, and the crash
of the falling buildings gave unspeakable horror to the scene. Such
of the inhabitants as were saved sought shelter on board the ships in
the harbour, and remained there for more than two months, the shocks
continuing with more or less violence every day. When, at length, the
inhabitants were enabled to return, they found the whole face of the
country changed. Very few of the houses which had not been swallowed
up were left standing, and what had been cultivated plantations were
converted into large pools of water. The greater part of the rivers had
been choked up by the falling in of detached masses of the mountains,
and spreading over the valleys, they had changed what was once fertile
soil into morasses, which could only be drained by cutting new channels
for the rivers; while the mountains themselves had changed their shapes
so completely, that it was conjectured that they had formed the chief
seat of the earthquake.
CURIOUS EXTRACTS FROM THE HOUSEHOLD BOOK OF LADY MARY, DAUGHTER OF THE
KING, IN VARIOUS YEARS, FROM THE 28TH TO THE 36TH OF HENRY VIII. ROYAL
MSS. BRIT. MUS.
"Item, geven to George Mountejoye drawing my Layde's Grace to his
Valentine, xl{s}.
"Item, geven amongs the yeomen of the King's guard bringing a Leke to
my Lady's Grace on Saynt David's Day, xv{s}.
"Item, geven to Heywood playeng an enterlude with his children before
my Lady's Grace, xl{s}.
"Item, payed for a yerde and a halfe of damaske for Jane the fole,
vij{s}.
"Item, for shaving of Jane fooles hedde, iiij{d}.
"Payed for a frountlet lost in a wager to my Lady Margaret, iiij{li}.
"Item, payed for a brekefast lost at bolling by my Lady Mary's Grace,
x{s}."
GIVING DOLES.
A bishop of Durham, in the reign of Edward III, had every week
eight quarters of wheat made into bread for the poor, besides his
alms-dishes, fragments from his table, and money given away by him
in journeys. The bishop of Ely, in 1532, fed daily at his gates two
hundred poor persons, and the Lord Cromwell fed the same number.
Edward, earl of Derby, fed upwards of sixty aged poor, besides all
comers, thrice a week, and furnished, on Good Friday, two thousand
seven hundred people with meat, drink, and money. Robert Winchelsey,
archbishop of Canterbury, gave, besides the daily fragments of his
house, on Fridays and Sundays, to every beggar that came to his door,
a loaf of bread of a farthing value; in time of dearth he thus gave
away five thousand loaves, and this charity is said to have cost his
lordship five hundred pounds a year. Over and above this he gave on
every festival day one hundred and fifty pence to as many poor persons,
and he used to send daily meat, drink, and bread unto such as by age
and sickness were not able to fetch alms from his gate; he also sent
money, meat, apparel, &c., to such as he thought wanted the same, and
were ashamed to beg; and, above all, this princely prelate was wont to
take compassion upon such as were by misfortune decayed, and had fallen
from wealth to poor estate. Such acts deserve to be written in letters
of gold.
FEMALE ORNAMENT OF THE IRON PERIOD.
[Illustration [++] Beaded Torc.]
One of the most beautiful neck ornaments of the Teutonic or Iron Period
ever found in Scotland is a beaded torc, discovered by a labourer
while cutting turf in Lochar Moss, Dumfriesshire, about two miles to
the north of Cumlongan Castle; and exhibited by Mr. Thomas Gray, of
Liverpool, at the York meeting of the Archaeological Institute. We here
annex an engraving of it. The beads, which measure rather more than
an inch in diameter, are boldly ribbed and grooved longitudinally.
Between every two ribbed beads there is a small flat one formed like
the wheel of a pulley, or the vertebral bone of a fish. The portion
which must have passed round the nape of the neck is flat and smooth
on the inner edge, but chased on the upper side in an elegant incised
pattern corresponding to the ornamentation already described as
characteristic of this period, and bearing some resemblance to that on
the beautiful bronze diadem found at Stitchel in Roxburghshire, figured
on a subsequent page. The beads are disconnected, having apparently
been strung upon a metal wire, as was the case in another example
found in the neighbourhood of Worcester. A waved ornament, chased
along the outer edge of the solid piece, seems to have been designed
in imitation of a cord; the last tradition, as it were, of the string
with which the older necklace of shale or jet was secured. Altogether
this example of the class of neck ornaments, to which Mr. Birch has
assigned the appropriate name of beaded torcs, furnishes an exceedingly
interesting illustration of the development of imitative design, in
contradistinction to the more simple and archaic funicular torc, which,
though continued in use down to a later period, pertains to the epoch
of primitive art.
CURIOUS LANTERN.
In 1602, it is related that Sir John Harrington, of Bath, sent to James
VI King of Scotland, at Christmas, for a new year's gift, a dark
lantern. The top was a crown of pure gold, serving also to cover a
perfume pan; within it was a shield of silver, embossed, to reflect
the light; on one side of which were the sun, moon, and planets, and
on the other side, the story of the birth and passion of Christ, as
it was engraved by David II King of Scotland, who was a prisoner at
Nottingham. On this present, the following passage was inscribed in
Latin--"Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom."
ANCIENT SCANDINAVIAN BROOCH.
[Illustration [++] Shell-Shaped Brooch.]
The characteristic and beautiful ornament, usually designated the
shell-shaped brooch, and equally familiar to Danish and British
antiquaries, belongs to the Scoto-Scandinavian Period. In Scotland many
beautiful examples have been found, several of which are preserved
in the Museum of Scottish Antiquaries. From these we select the one
represented in the annexed engraving, as surpassing in beauty of design
and intricacy of ornament any other example of which we are aware. It
consists, as usual, of a convex plate of metal, with an ornamental
border, surmounted by another convex plate of greater depth, highly
ornamented with embossed and perforated designs, the effect of which
appears to have been further heightened by the lower plate being gilded
so as to show through the open work. In this example the gilding
still remains tolerably perfect. On the under side are the projecting
plates, still retaining a fragment of the corroded iron pin, where it
has turned on a hinge, and at the opposite end the bronze catch into
which it clasped. The under side of the brooch appears to have been
lined with coarse linen, the texture of which is still clearly defined
of the coating of verd antique with which it is now covered. But its
peculiar features consist of an elevated central ornament resembling a
crown, and four intricately-chased projections terminating in horses'
heads. It was found in September, 1786, along with another brooch of
the same kind, lying beside a skeleton, under a flat stone, very near
the surface, above the ruins of a Pictish house or burgh, in Caithness.
It measures nearly four and a half inches in length, by three inches
in breadth, and two and two-fifth inches in height to the top of the
crown. Like many others of the same type, it appears to have been
jewelled. In several examples of these brooches which we have compared,
the lower convex plates so nearly resemble each other, as to suggest
the probability of their having been cast in the same mould, while the
upper plates entirely differ.
STREET CRIES OF MODERN EGYPT.