at Smyrna, the bishop represents Christ, and the twelve apostles are
acted by as many priests. He who personates Judas must be paid for it,
and such is the feeling of the people, that whoever accepts this odious
part commonly retains the name of Judas for life.—_Hasselquiet_, p. 43.
Judas serves in Brazil for a Guy Faux to be carried about by the boys.
The Spanish sailors hang him at the yard-arm. The Armenians, who believe
hell and limbo to be the same place, say that Judas, after having
betrayed the Lord, resolved to hang himself, because he knew Christ was
to go to limbo and deliver all the souls which he found there, and
therefore he thought to get there in time. But the devil was more
cunning than he, and knowing his intention, held him over limbo till the
Lord had passed through, and then let him fall plum into
hell.—_Thevenot._
_Blue Beard._
Perrault, the author of "Blue Beard," founded the story, popular belief
assures us, on the history of a real person. The original was Giles de
Retz, Lord of Laval, who was made Marshal of France in 1429. He was born
in 1406, and fought under the command of Joan of Arc. He lived like a
king in his castle, with two hundred horsemen for his guard of honor,
besides fifty choristers, chaplains and musicians. He was wild and
profligate, lavish with his own money and of other people's, and lived
at the costliest rate.
When he had squandered his property, he took to the study of sorcery and
magic, having an especial fancy for murdering young children. From the
villages within a circuit of twenty miles, little boys and girls were
seduced into his castle and there immolated according to some wild Pagan
rites. Among his papers, history says, was found a list of two hundred
children whom he had thus sacrificed.
On the 26th of October, 1440, then being thirty-four years old, he was
burned in the city of Nantes, having been previously strangled in view
of a vast multitude. The records of his trial, which lasted a whole
month, are preserved among the manuscripts of the public library in
Paris. In one of his castles the bones of forty-six, and in another of
eighty children, were discovered. Marshal de Retz was certainly the type
of Perrault's story. It appears that in his lifetime he was known by the
_sobriquet_ of Barbe Bleu.
_African Rain-Doctors._
How a belief in _imaginary_ virtues of things may grow out of the
evidence of their _real_ virtues, is indicated by Dr. Livingstone, when
speaking of the belief in rain-making among the tribes in the heart of
South Africa. The African priest and the medicine-man is one and the
same, and his chief function is to make the clouds to give out rain. The
preparations for this purpose are various: charcoal made of burned bats;
lion's hearts, and hairy calculi from the bowels of old cows; serpent
skins and vertebræ, and every kind of tuber, bulb, root and plant to be
found in the country.
"Although you disbelieve their efficacy in charming the clouds to pour
out their refreshing treasures, yet, conscious that civility is useful
everywhere, you kindly state that you think they are mistaken as to
their power. The rain-doctor selects a particular bulbous root, pounds
it, and administers a cold infusion of it to a sheep, which in five
minutes afterwards expires in convulsions. Part of the same bulb is
converted into smoke and ascends towards the sky: rain follows in a day
or two. The inference is obvious."
_Whittington and his Cat._
This fable of the cat is borrowed from the East. Sir William Gore
Ousely, speaking of the origin of the name of an island in the Persian
Gulf, says that in the tenth century, one Keis, the son of a poor widow
in Siraf, embarked for India with his sole property, a cat. "He
fortunately arrived there at a time when the palace was so infested by
mice or rats that they invaded the king's food, and persons were
employed to drive them away from the royal banquet. Keis produced his
cat; the noxious animals disappeared; Keis was magnificently rewarded,
sent for his mother and brother, and settled on the island, which was
subsequently called after him."
_Head of James IV. of Scotland._
The king was slain in the battle at Flodden Field. At the close of the
bloody arbitrament his body was found among a heap of the fallen. The
discoverers made a prize of the corpse, wrapped it up in lead, and
transmitted it as a thanksgiving offering to the monastery of Sheen, in
Surrey. It was well taken care of by the honest people there as long as
the monastery stood; but when the dissolution of those religious
establishments took place, and the edifice was converted into a mansion
for the Duke of Suffolk, the king's body was put into a fresh wrapping
of lead and carried into an upper lumber-room. Some workmen engaged in
the house cut off the head out of sheer wantonness. Their master, a
glazier from Cheapside, carried the head with him to the city. There, on
his sideboard, the dried remnant of a crowned king, with its red hair
and beard, was long the admiration of the glazier's evening parties and
a subject of conversation for his guests. John Stow saw it there,
expostulated, purchased the anointed skull, and gave it quiet and decent
burial within the old church of St. Michael's.
_Discovery of the Body of Canute the Great._
In June, 1776, some workmen who were repairing Winchester Cathedral
discovered a monument which contained the body of King Canute. It was
remarkably fresh, had a wreath round the head and several ornaments of
gold and silver bands. On his finger was a ring, in which was set a
large and remarkably fine stone, and in one of his hands a silver coin.
The coin found in the hand is a singular instance of a continuance of
the Pagan custom of always providing the dead with money to pay Charon.
_Martyrdom of Isaiah._
There is a tradition that the prophet Isaiah suffered martyrdom by a
saw. The ancient book entitled, "The Ascension of Isaiah the Prophet,"
accords with the tradition. It says: "Then they seized Isaiah the son of
Amos and sawed him with a wooden saw. And Manasseh, Melakira, the false
prophets, the princess and the people, all stood looking on. But he
said to the prophets who were with him before he was sawn, 'Go ye to the
country of Tyre and Sidon, for the Lord hath mixed the cup for me
alone.' Neither while they were sawing him did he cry out nor weep, but
he continued addressing himself to the Holy Spirit until he was sawn
asunder."
_Courtship of William the Conqueror._
The following extract from the life of the wife of the Conqueror is
exceedingly curious as characteristic of the manners of a semi-civilized
age and nation:—
"After some years of delay, William appears to have become desperate,
and, if we may trust to the evidence of the 'Chronicle of Ingerbe,' he
waylaid Matilda in the streets of Bruges as she was returning from mass,
seized her, rolled her in the dirt, spoiled her rich array; and, not
content with these outrages, struck her repeatedly, then rode off at
full speed. This Teutonic method of courtship, according to our author,
brought the affair to a crisis: for Matilda, either convinced of the
strength of William's passion by the violence of his behaviour, or
afraid of encountering a second beating, consented to become his wife.
How he ever presumed to enter her presence again after such enormities
the chronicler sayeth not, and we are at a loss to imagine."
_Court Fools._
From very ancient times there existed a class of persons whose business
it was to amuse the rich and noble, particularly at table, by jests and
witty sayings. It was, however, during the Middle Ages that this
singular vocation became fully developed. The symbols of the court fool
were: the shaven crown, the fool's cap of gay colors with asses' ears
and cock's comb and bells, the fool's sceptre, and a wide collar. Some
of these professional fools obtained an historical reputation, as
Triboulet, jester to Francis I. of France; Klaus Narr, at the Court of
the Elector Frederic, the Wise of Prussia, and Scogan, court fool to
Edward IV. of England. Besides the regular fools, dressed and recognized
as such, there was a higher class called merry counsellors, generally
men of talent, who availed themselves of the privilege of free speech to
ridicule in the most merciless manner the follies and vices of their
contemporaries. At a later period, imbecile or weak-minded persons were
kept for the entertainment of company. Even ordinary noblemen considered
such an attendant indispensable, and thus the system reached its last
stage, and toward the end of the seventeenth century it was abolished.
It survived longest in Russia, where Peter the Great had so many fools
that he divided them into distinct classes.
_A Cunning Astrologer._
An astrologer in the reign of Louis XI. of France, having foretold
something disagreeable to the king, his majesty, in revenge, resolved to
have him killed. The next day he sent for the astrologer and ordered the
people about him, at a given signal, to throw him out of the window. The
king said to him: "You pretend to be such a wise man, and know so
perfectly the fate of others, inform me a little what will be your own,
and how long you have to live." The astrologer, who now began to
apprehend some danger, promptly answered, with great presence of mind,
"I know my destiny, and am sure I shall die three days before your
majesty." The king, on this, was so far from having him thrown out of
the window, that, on the contrary, he took particular care not to have
him want for anything, and did all that was possible to retard the death
of one whom he was likely soon to follow.
_Stone Barometer._
A Finland newspaper mentions a stone in the northern part of Finland
which serves the inhabitants instead of a barometer. This stone, which
they call Tlmakiur, turns black, or blackish gray, when it is going to
rain; but on the approach of fine weather it is covered with white
spots. Probably it is a fossil mixed with clay, and containing
rock-salt, nitre or ammonia, which, according to the degree of dampness
in the atmosphere, attracts it, or otherwise. In the latter case the
salt appears, forming the white spots.
_Crinoline in 1744._
Addison, who wrote a good deal about female fashions in the "Spectator,"
very much ridiculed the hoop-petticoat, which was so large, about the
year 1744, that a woman wearing one occupied the space of six men.
_Pagoda-shaped Head-dresses._
The head-dresses of the ladies in 1776 were remarkable for their
enormous height. Fashion ruled its votaries then as arbitrarily as in
our day. The _coiffure_ of a belle of fashion was described as "a
mountain of wool, hair, powder, lawn, muslin, net, lace, gauze, ribbon,
flowers, feathers and wire." Sometimes these varied materials were built
up tier upon tier, like the stages of a pagoda!
_Preserved in Salt._
We are told that Pharnaces caused the body of his father, Mithridates,
to be deposited in salt brine, in order that he might transmit it to
Pompey. Sigebert, who died in 1113, informs us that a like process was
employed upon the body of St. Guibert, that it might be kept during a
journey in summer. The priests preserved in salt the sow which afforded
a happy omen to Æneas by having brought forth a litter of thirty pigs,
as we are told by Varro, in whose time the animal was still shown at
Lavinium. The hippopotamus described by Columna was sent to him from
Egypt preserved in salt.
_Luxury in 1562._
The luxury of the present time does not equal, in one article at least,
that of the sixteenth century. Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, the queen's
ambassador at Paris, in a letter to Sir Thomas Chaloner, the ambassador
at Madrid, in June 1562, says—
"I pray you good my Lord Ambassador sende me two paire of perfumed
gloves, perfumed with orrange flowers and jacemin, th' one for my wives
hand, the other for mine owne; and wherin soever I can pleasure you with
anything in this countrey, you shall have it in recompence thereof, or
els so moche money as they shall coste you, provided alwaies that they
be of the best choise, wherin your judgment is inferior to none."
_Trains in the Fourteenth Century._
In Mr. Wright's collection of Latin stories, there is one of the
fourteenth century—a monkish satire upon dresses with long trains—
_Of a Proud Woman._—I have heard of a proud woman who wore a white
dress with a long train, which, trailing behind her, raised a dust as
far as the altar and the crucifix. But, as she left the church, and
lifted up her train on account of the dirt, a certain holy man saw a
devil laughing; and having adjured him to tell why he laughed, the
devil said: "A companion of mine was just now sitting on the train of
that woman, using it as if it were his chariot, but when she lifted her
train up, my companion was shaken off into the dirt, and that is why I
was laughing."
_Foppery in Eminent Men._
Peculiarities of dress, even amounting to foppery, so common among
eminent men, are carried off from ridicule by ease in some or
stateliness in others. We may smile at Chatham, scrupulously crowned in
his best wig, if intending to speak; at Erskine, drawing on his bright
yellow gloves before he rose to plead; at Horace Walpole, in a cravat of
Gibbon's carvings; at Raleigh, loading his shoes with jewels so heavy
that he could scarcely walk; at Petrarch, pinching his feet till he
crippled them; at the rings which covered the philosophical fingers of
Aristotle; at the bare throat of Byron; the American dress of Rousseau;
the scarlet and gold coat of Voltaire; or the prudent carefulness with
which Cæsar scratched his head so as not to disturb the locks arranged
over the bald place. But most of these men, we apprehend, found it easy
to enforce respect and curb impertinence.—_Edinburgh Review._
_The Turban in Arabia._
A fashionable Arab will wear fifteen caps one above the other, some of
which are linen, but the greater part of which are thick cloth or
cotton. That which covers the whole is richly embroidered with gold, and
inwrought with texts or passages from the Koran. Over all there is
wrapped a sash or large piece of muslin, with the ends hanging down, and
ornamented with silk or gold fringe. This useless encumbrance is
considered a mark of respect towards superiors. It is also used, as the
beard was formerly in Europe, to indicate literary merit; and those who
affect to be thought men of learning, discover their pretensions by the
size of their turbans. No part of oriental costume is so variable as
this covering for the head. Niebuhr has given illustrations of
forty-eight different ways of wearing it.—_King._
_Queen Elizabeth's Dresses._
The list of the queen's wardrobe, in 1600, shows us that she had then
_only_ 99 robes, 126 kirtles, 269 gowns (round, loose and French), 136
fore parts, 125 petticoats, 27 fans, 96 cloaks, 83 safe guards, 85
doublets, 18 lap mantles.
_Absurdities of the Toilet._
The ladies of Japan gild their teeth; those of the Indies paint them
red; while in Guzerat the test of beauty is to render them sable. In
Greenland the women used to color their faces blue and yellow. The
Chinese torture their feet into the smallest possible dimensions. The
ancient Peruvians used to flatten their heads; among other nations, the
mothers, in a similar way, maltreat the nose of their offspring.
_Gambling for Fingers._
Such is the passion among the Chinese for gambling, that when they have
lost all their money they will stake houses, lands, their wives, the
clothes on their backs. Those who have nothing more to lose will collect
around a table and actually play for _their fingers_, which they will
cut off reciprocally with frightful stoicism.—_Hue's Chinese Empire._
_Pigmies._
"Among vulgar errors is set down this, that there is a nation of
pigmies, not above two or three feet high, and that they solemnly set
themselves in battle to fight against the cranes."—_Strabo._
"Strabo thought this a fiction; and our age, which has fully discovered
all the wonders of the world, as fully declares it to be one."—_Brand._
This refers to accounts of the Pechinians of Ethiopia, who are
represented of small stature, and as being accustomed every year to
drive away the cranes which flocked to their country in the winter. They
are portrayed on ancient gems as mounted on cocks or partridges, to
fight the cranes; or carrying grasshoppers, and leaning on staves to
support the burden.
_The Letter "M" and the Napoleons._
The "Frankforter Journal," of September 21st, 1870, remarked, that among
other superstitions peculiar to the Napoleons, is that of regarding the
letter M as ominous, either of good or of evil, and it took the pains to
make the following catalogue of men, things and events, the names of
which begin with M, with the view of showing that the two emperors of
France had cause for considering the letter a red or a black one,
according to circumstances.
It says, "Marbœuf was the first to recognize the genius of Napoleon I.
at the military college. Marengo was the first great battle won by
General Bonaparte, and Melas made room for him in Italy. Mortier was one
of his best generals, Moreau betrayed him, and Marat was the first
martyr to his cause. Marie Louise shared his highest fortunes; Moscow
was the abyss of ruin into which he fell. Metternich vanquished him in
the field of diplomacy. Six marshals (Massena, Mortie, Marmont,
Macdonald, Murat, Moncey) and twenty-six generals of division under
Napoleon I. had the letter M for their initial. Marat, Duke of Bassano,
was his most trusted counsellor. His first battle was that of
Montenotte; his last, Mont St. Jean, as the French term Waterloo. He won
the battles of Millesimo, Mondovi, Montmirail and Montereau; then came
the storming of Montmartre. Milan was the first enemy's capital, and
Moscow the last, into which he entered victorious. He lost Egypt through
Menou, and employed Miellis to take Pius VIII. prisoner. Mallet
conspired against him; Murat was the first to desert him, then Marmont.
Three of his ministers were Maret, Montalivet and Mallieu; his first
charmberlaind was Montesquien. His last halting place in France was
Malmaison. He surrendered to Captain Maitland, and his companions at St.
Helena were Montholon and his valet Marchand."
If we turn to the career of his nephew, Napoleon III., we find the same
letter no less prominent, and it is said that he attached even greater
importance to its mystic influence than did his uncle.
_The Physician's Symbol._
De Paris tells us that the Physician of the present day continues to
prefix to his prescriptions the letter R, which is generally supposed to
mean _Recipe_, but which is, in truth, a relic of the astrological
symbol of Jupiter, formerly used as a species of superstitious
invocation.
_Chinese Giants._
The Chinese pretend to have men among them so prodigious as fifteen feet
high. Melchior Nunnez, in his letters from India, speaks of porters who
guarded the gates of Pekin, who were of that immense height; and in a
letter dated in 1555, he avers that the emperor of that country
entertained and fed five hundred of such men for archers of his guard.
Hakewill, in his "Apologie," 1627, repeats this story. Purchas, in his
"Pilgrimes," 1625, refers to a man in China who "was cloathed with a
tyger's skin, the hayre outward, his arms, head and legges bare, with a
rude pole in his hand; well-shaped, seeming ten palmes or spans long;
his hayre hanging on his shoulders."
_Trying Land Titles in Hindostan._
According to the "Asiatic Researches," a very curious mode of trying the
titles of land is practised in Hindostan: Two holes are dug in the
disputed spot, in each of which the lawyer for the plaintiff and the
lawyer for the defendant put one of their legs, and remain there until
one of them is tired or complains of being stung by the insects, in
which case his client is defeated. In this country it is the _client_,
and not the lawyer, who _puts his foot into it_.
_An Asylum for Destitute Cats._
Of all the curious charitable institutions in the world, the most
curious, probably, is the Cat Asylum at Aleppo, which is attached to one
of the mosques there, and was founded by a misanthropic old Turk, who,
being possessed of large granaries, was much annoyed by rats and mice,
to rid himself of which he employed a legion of cats, who so effectually
rendered him service, that in return he left them a sum in the Turkish
funds, with strict injunctions that all destitute and sickly cats should
be provided for till such time as they took themselves off again. In
1845, when a famine was raging in all North Syria, when scores of poor
people were dropping down in the streets and dying there, from sheer
exhaustion and want, men might daily be encountered carrying away sack
loads of cats to be well fed on the proceeds of the last will and
testament of that vagabond old Turk.
_Treasure Digging._
A patent passed the great seal in the fifteenth year of James I. "to
allow to Mary Middlemore, one of the maydes of honor to our dearest
consort Queen Anne (of Denmark), and her deputies, power and authority
to enter into the abbies of St. Albans, St. Edmunsbury, Glassenbury and
Ramsay, and into all lands, houses and places, within a mile belonging
to said abbies, there to dig and search after treasure supposed to be
hidden in such places."
_House of Hen's Feathers._
There exists at Pekin a phalanstery which surpasses in eccentrictity all
that the fertile imagination of Fourier could have conceived. It is
called Ki-mao-fan; that is, "House of Hen's Feathers." This marvellous
establishment is simply composed of one great hall, the floor of which
is covered over its whole extent with one vast, thick layer of feathers.
Mendicants and vagabonds who have no other domicile come to pass the
night in this immense dormitory. Men, women and children, old and young,
are admitted without exception. Every one settles himself, and makes his
nest as well as he can for the night in this ocean of feathers. When day
dawns he must quit the premises, and an officer of the company stands at
the door to receive the rent of one sapeck (one-fifth of a farthing)
each for the night's lodging. In deference, no doubt, to the principle
of equality, half places are not allowed, and a child must pay the same
as a grown person.
On the first establishment of this eminently philanthropic institution,
the managers of it furnished each of the guests with a covering; but it
was found necessary to modify this regulation, for the communist company
got into the habit of carrying off their coverlets to sell them, or to
supply an additional garment during the cold weather. It was necessary,
therefore, to devise some method of reconciling the interests of the
establishment with the comfort of the guests, and the way in which the
problem was solved was this—
An immense coverlet, of such gigantic dimensions as to cover the whole
dormitory, was made, and in the day-time suspended from the ceiling like
a great canopy. When everybody had gone to bed—that is to say, had lain
down upon the feathers—the counterpane was let down by pulleys, the
precaution having been previously taken to make a number of holes in it
for the sleepers to put their heads through in order to escape the
danger of suffocation. As soon as it is daylight the phalansterian
coverlet is hoisted up again, after a signal has been made on the
tam-tam to awaken those who are asleep, and invite them to draw their
heads back into the feathers in order not to be caught by the neck.
_St. George's Cavern._