Croydon," says: "Our historians take notice of two things in this parish
which may not be convenient to us to omit, viz: A great wood called
Norwood, belonging to the archbishops, wherein was anciently a tree
called the Vicar's Oak, where four parishes met, as it were, in a point.
It is said to have consisted wholly of oaks, and among them was one that
bore a mistletoe, which some persons were so hardy as to cut for the
gain of selling it to the apothecaries of London, leaving a branch of it
to sprout out; but they proved unfortunate after it, for one of them
fell lame and others lost an eye. At length, in the year 1678, a certain
man, notwithstanding that he was warned against it, upon the account of
what the others had suffered, ventured to cut the tree down, and he soon
after broke his leg.
"To fell oaks has long been counted fatal, and such as believe it
produce the instance of the Earl of Winchilsea, who, having felled a
curious grove of oaks, soon after found his countess dead in her bed
suddenly, and his eldest son, the Lord Maidstone, was killed at sea by a
cannon ball."
_Lord Bacon's Dream._
When Lord Bacon, as he himself records, dreamt in Paris that he saw "his
father's house in the country plastered all over with black mortar," his
feelings were highly wrought upon; the emotions under which he labored
were of a very apprehensive kind, and he had no doubt that the next
intelligence from England would apprise him of the death of his father.
The sequel proved that his apprehensions were well grounded, for his
father actually died the same night in which he had his remarkable
dream.
_Reckless Disregard of Omens._
P. Claudius, in the First Punic War, caused the sacred chickens, who
would not leave their cage, to be pitched into the sea, saying: "If they
will not eat, they must drink."
_Sailors' Whistling._
Zoraster imagined there was an evil spirit that could excite violent
storms of wind. The sailors are tinctured with a superstition of the
kind, which is the reason why they so seldom whistle on ship-board; when
becalmed, their whistling is an invocation.
_The Hinder Well-spout Unlucky._
A curious instance of popular superstition, in defiance of plain facts
to the contrary, is related in a letter written in the year 1808,
published in Dr. Aikin's "Athenæum." The writer says that in the year
1801, he visited Glasgow, and, passing one of the principal streets in
the neighborhood of the Iron Church, observed about thirty people,
chiefly women and girls, gathered round a large public pump, waiting
their turn to draw water. The pump had two spouts, behind and before;
but he noticed that the hinder one was carefully plugged up, no one
attempting to fill her vessel from that source, although she had to wait
so long till her turn came at the other spout.
On inquiry, the visitor was informed that, though the same handle
brought the same water from the same well through either and both of the
spouts, yet the populace, and even some better informed people, had for
a number of years conceived an idea, which had become hereditary and
fixed, that the water passing through the hindermost spout would be
_unlucky and poisonous_. This prejudice received from time to time a
certain sanction; for in the spout, through long disuse, a kind of dusty
fur collected, and this, if at any time the water was allowed to pass
through, made it at first run foul—thus confirming the superstitious
prejudice of the people, who told the traveler that it was certain death
to drink of the water drawn from the hindermost spout. The magistrates
had sought to dispel the ignorant terror of the populace, by cleaning
out the well repeatedly in their presence, and explaining to them the
internal mechanism of the pump, but all was in vain.
_Assuming the Form of a Bird._
That the soul quits the dead body in the form of a bird, is a
wide-spread belief, and has been the subject of superstitious fancies
from the earliest times. In the Egyptian hieroglyphics, a bird signifies
the soul of man.
In the legend of St. Polycarp, who was burned alive, his blood
extinguished the flames, and from his ashes arose a white dove which
flew towards heaven. It was said that a dove was seen to issue from the
funeral pyre of Joan of Arc.
In the Breton ballad of "Lord Nann and the Korrigan" there is an
allusion to spirit-bearing doves—
"It was a marvel to see, men say,
The night that followed the day,
The lady in earth by her lord lay,
To see two oak-trees themselves rear
From the new-made grave into the air;
"And on their branches two doves white,
Who were there hopping gay and light;
Which sang when rose the morning ray,
And then toward heaven sped away."
A wild song, sung by the boatmen of the Mole, in Venice, declares that
the spirit of Daniel Manin, the patriot, is flying about the lagoons to
this day in the shape of a beautiful dove.
In the Paris _Figaro_ (October, 1872), is an account of the death of a
gipsy belonging to a tribe encamped in the Rue Duhesme. Among other
ceremonies, a live bird was held close to the lips of the dying girl,
with the view of introducing her soul into the bird.
In certain districts of Russia bread-crumbs are placed in a piece of
white linen, outside of the window, for six weeks, under the belief that
the soul of the recent inmate will come, in the shape of a bird, to feed
upon the crumbs. When Deacon Theodore and his three schismatic brethren
were burnt in 1681, the souls of the martyrs, as the "Old Believers"
affirm, appeared in the air as pigeons.
_Talismanic Stones in Birds._
Among the curiosities of ancient credulity was the belief that certain
birds possessed stones of remarkable talismanic virtue. One of these was
supposed to be found in the brain of the vulture, which gave health to
the finder and successful results when soliciting favors. Dioscorides
gives an account of the use of an eagle-stone in detecting larceny. The
_Alectorius_, a stone worn by the wrestler Milo, was so called from
being taken out of the gizzard of a fowl. A stone like a crystal, as
large as a bean, extracted from a cock, was considered by the Romans to
make the wearer invisible. _Corvia_ was the name of a stone obtained
from the nest of a crow. The swallow-stone was a Norman superstition,
according to which the bird knows how to find on the seashore a stone
that restores sight to the blind. Longfellow, in "Evangeline," says—
"Seeking with eager eyes that wondrous stone which the swallow
Brings from the shore of the sea, to restore the sight of her fledglings."
_Birds Prognosticating Death._
In old times it was believed that certain birds prognosticated death. In
Lloyd's "Stratagems of Jerusalem" (1602), he says: "By swallows lighting
upon Pirrhus' tents, and lighting upon the mast of Mar. Antonius' ship,
sayling after Cleopatra to Egypt, the soothsayers did prognosticate that
Pirrhus should be slaine at Argos, in Greece, and Mar. Antonius in
Egypt." He alludes to swallows following Cyrus from Persia to Scythia,
from which the magi foretold his death. Ravens followed Alexander the
Great in returning from India, and going to Babylon, which was a sure
presage of his end.
Among the Danish peasantry the appearance of a raven in the village is
considered an indication that the parish priest is to die. "There is a
common feeling in Cornwall," observes Mr. Hunt, "that the croaking of a
raven over the house bodes evil to some of the family." Marlowe, in his
"Rich Jew of Malta," described the "sad-presaging raven"—
"That tolls
The sick man's passport in her hollow beak,
And in the shadow of the silent night
Doth shake contagion from her sable wings."
Gay, in "The Dirge," notices the presage—
"The boding raven on her cottage sat
And with hoarse croakings warn'd us of our fate."
A number of crows are said to have fluttered about Cicero's head on the
very day he was murdered.
An evil prognostic attends the bittern in its flight. Bishop Hall,
alluding to a superstitious man, says: "If a bittern flies over his head
by night, he makes his will."
Homer has immortalized the crane as foreboding disaster—
"That when inclement winters vex the plain
With piercing frosts, or thick descending rain,
To warmer seas the cranes embodied fly,
With noise and order, through the midway sky;
To pigmy nations wounds and death they bring,
And all the war descends upon the wing."
Here is a saying that includes the magpie as a presager of death—
"One's joy, two's a greet [crying],
Three's a wedding, four's a sheet [winding sheet]."
The _burree churree_, an Indian night bird, preys upon dead bodies. The
Mohammedans say that should a drop of the blood of a corpse, or any part
of it, fall from this bird's beak on a human being, he will die at the
end of forty days.
_The Crossbill._
There is an odd superstition connected with the crossbill, in Thuringia,
which makes the wood-cutters very careful of the nests. This bird in
captivity is subject to many diseases, such as weak eyes, swelled and
ulcerated feet, etc., arising probably from the heat and accumulated
vapors of the stove-heated rooms where they are kept. The Thuringian
mountaineer believes that these wretched birds can take upon themselves
any diseases to which he is subject, and always keeps some near him. He
is satisfied that a bird whose upper mandible bends to the right, has
the power of transferring colds and rheumatisms from man to itself; and
if the mandible turns to the left, he is equally certain that the bird
can render the same service to the women. The crossbill is often
attacked with epilepsy, and the Thuringians drink every day the water
left by the bird, as a specific against that disease.
_The Ostrich._
The ancient myth about the ostrich was that she did not hatch her eggs
by setting upon them, but by the rays of light and warmth from her eyes.
Southey alludes to this in "Thalaba"—
With such a look as fables say
The mother ostrich fixes on her eggs,
Till that intense affection
Kindle its light of life.
_Honoring the Lark._
In Russia, on the 9th of March, the day on which the larks are supposed
to arrive, the rustics make clay images of those birds, smear them with
honey, tip their heads with tinsel, and then carry them about, singing
songs to spring, or to Lada, their vernal goddess.
_The Nightingale._
Milton's exquisite sonnet to the nightingale makes pointed reference to
the fancy that her song portended success in love. Faber, in the
"Cherwell Water Lily," gives an angelic character to the strains of the
nightingale. The classical fable of the unhappy Philomela may have given
origin to the conception that the nightingale sings with its breast
impaled upon a thorn. The earliest notice of this myth by an English
poet is, probably, that in the "Passionate Pilgrim" of Shakespeare—
"Everything doth banish moan,
Save the nightingale alone.
She, poor bird, as all forlorn,
_Lean'd her breast up till a thorn_,
And there sung the dolefull'st ditty,
That to hear it was great pity."
_The Blackbird originally White._
There is a curious story of the blackbird that its original color was
white, but it became black because one year three of the days were so
cold that it had to take refuge in a chimney. Mr. Swainson says that
"these three days (January 30th, 31st and February 1st) are called in
the neighborhood of Brescia, 'I giorni della merla,' the blackbird's
days."
_The Dove._
The dove amongst birds, from its gentle and loving nature in the first
place, and in the second from the purity of its plumage, has been
preferably selected as the image of the Holy Ghost.
According to an apocryphal gospel, the Holy Ghost, under the form of a
dove, designated Joseph as the spouse of the Virgin Mary by alighting on
his head; and in the same manner, says Eusebius, was Fabian indicated as
the divinely-appointed Bishop of Rome. According to a singular legend,
the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, was present at the Council of
Nice, and _signed the creed_ that was there framed! There are many
legends of a similar character.
At the consecration of Clovis the divine dove is said actually to have
presided over the Christian destinies of France. Clovis and the Bishop
of Rheims, St. Remi, proceeded in procession to the baptistry, where the
chief of the Franks was to be consecrated king and made a Christian.
When they arrived there, the priest, bearing the holy chrism, was
stopped by the crowd, and could not reach the font. But a dove, whiter
than snow, brought thither in her beak the "ampoule" (a phial of white
glass) filled with chrism sent from heaven. St. Remi took the vessel and
perfumed with chrism the baptismal water.
In a painted window at Lincoln College, Oxford, Elisha the prophet is
represented with a double-headed dove seated on his shoulder. This
becomes intelligent on referring to his petition to Elijah, when he
entreated that "a double portion" of his spirit might rest upon him.
The dove, as a harbinger of good news, is alluded to in one of Martial's
epigrams—
"A dove soft glided through the air
On Aretulla's bosom bare.
This might seem chance, did she not stay,
Nor would, permissive, wing her way.
But, if a pious sister's vows
The Master of mankind allows,
This envoy of Sardoan skies
From the returning exile flies."
_Killing a Robin._
In old times ill-luck attended the killing of a robin. If one died in
the hand, it was believed that the hand would always tremble. In "Six
Pastorals," by George Smith, 1770, the following occurs:—
"I found a robin's nest within our shed
And in the barn a wren has young one's bred;
I never take away their nest, nor try
To catch the old ones, lest a friend should die.
Dick took a robin's nest from the cottage side,
And ere a twelvemonth pass'd his mother died."
In Derbyshire, among many other places, it is believed that the catching
and killing of a robin, or taking the eggs from the nest, is sure to be
followed by misfortune, such as the death of cattle, blight of corn,
etc. The folks say—
"Robins and wrens
Are God's best cocks and hens.
Martins and swallows
Are God's best scholars."
In Yorkshire, if a robin is killed, it is believed that the family cow
will give bloody milk.
_The Cuckoo._
A superstition prevails in Ireland, and in some parts of England, that
any young person, on first hearing the cuckoo, will find a hair of the
color of their sweetheart's adhering to their stocking, if they will at
once take off their left shoe and examine it carefully. Gay, in his
"Shepherd's Week," says—
"Upon a rising bank I sat adown,
Then doff'd my shoe, and, by my troth, I swear
Therein I spied this yellow frizzled hair,
As like to Lubberkin's in curl and hue
As if upon his comely pate it grew."
In Norfolk there is a belief that an unmarried person will remain single
as many years as the cuckoo utters its call, when first heard in the
spring. Subjoined is an old English invocation—
"Cuckoo, cherry-tree,
Good bird, tell me,
How many years I have to live?"
At the first call of the cuckoo the German peasant does the same thing
as when he hears thunder for the first time in the year. He rolls
himself two or three times on the grass, thinking himself thereby
insured against pains in the back throughout the rest of the year, and
all the more so if the bird continues its cry whilst he is on the
ground.
If the first note of the cuckoo comes upon you when you have no money in
your pocket, it is held, both in Germany and England, to portend want of
money throughout the year.
A valuable virtue is attributed to cuckoos in keeping off fleas. In
Hill's "Naturall and Artificiall Conclusions," (1650), we find: "A very
easie and merry conceit to keep off fleas from your beds or chambers.
Pliny reporteth that if, when you first hear the cuckow, you mark well
where your first foot standeth, and take up that earth, the fleas will
by no means breed where any of the same earth is thrown or scattered."
This belief still exists in some parts of France.
_Why the Cuckoo Builds no Nest._
"If you wish to know," says Horace Marryat, in his "Jutland and the
Danish Isles," "why the cuckoo builds no nest of its own, I can easily
explain it, according to the belief in Denmark. When in early
spring-time the voice of the cuckoo is first heard in the woods, every
village girl kisses her hand, and asks the question: 'Cuckoo! cuckoo!
when shall I be married?' And the old folks, borne down with age and
rheumatism, inquire: 'Cuckoo! when shall I be relieved from this world's
cares?' The bird, in answer, continues singing 'Cuckoo!' as many times
as years will elapse before the object of their desires will come to
pass. But as many old people live to an advanced age, and many girls die
old maids, the poor bird has so much to do in answering the questions
put to her, that the building season goes by; she has no time to make
her nest, but lays her eggs in the nest of the hedge-sparrow."
_The Magpie._
The magpie has always had many superstitions connected with it. _One_
magpie foretells misfortune, which can be obviated, however, by pulling
off the hat and making a polite bow to the bird. In Lancashire the
saying is—
"One for anger, two for mirth,
Three for a wedding, four for a birth,
Five for rich, six for poor,
Seven for a witch, I can tell you no more."
To meet a magpie portends misfortune in a journey, and it is thought
best to return. It is the usual habit of the peasants to cross
themselves when they meet a single chattering magpie. In the north of
England the bird is thus addressed—
"Magpie, magpie, chatter and flee,
Turn up thy tail, and good luck fall me."
Of all living creatures in Russia, magpies are those whose shapes
witches like best to take. The wife of the false Demetrius, according to
popular poetry, escaped from Moscow in the guise of a magpie.
_Why the Magpie Builds but Half a Nest._
The half-nest of the magpie is accounted for by a rural ornithological
legend. Once on a time, when the world was very young, the magpie, by
some accident or other, although she was quite as cunning as she is at
present, was the only bird that was unable to build a nest. In this
perplexity she applied to the other members of the feathered race, who
kindly undertook to instruct her. So, on a day appointed, they
assembled for the purpose, and, the materials having been collected, the
blackbird said, "Place that stick there," suiting the action to the
word, as she commenced the work. "Ah!" said the magpie, "I knew that
before." The other birds followed with their suggestions, but to every
piece of advice the magpie kept saying, "Ah! I knew that before." At
length, when the nest was half finished, the patience of the company was
fairly exhausted by the pertinacious conceit of the magpie; so all left
her, with the united exclamation, "Well, Mistress Mag, as you seem to
know all about it, you may finish the nest yourself." Their resolution
was obdurate and final, and to this day the magpie exhibits the effects
of partial instruction by her incomplete abode.
_A Swallow Drinks the King's Health._
Aubrey, in his "Miscellanies," relates that "At Stretton, in
Hertfordshire, 1648, when Charles I. was prisoner, the tenant of the
manor-house there sold excellent cyder to gentlemen of the neighborhood.
Among others that met there was old Mr. Hill, B. D., parson of the
parish, _quondam_ Fellow of Brazennose College at Oxford. This venerable
good old man one day (after his accustomed fashion), standing up, with
his head uncovered, to drink his Majesty's health, saying, 'God bless
our gracious sovereign,' as he was going to put the cup to his lips, a
swallow flew in at the window, and pitched on the brim of the little
earthen cup (not half a pint) and sipt, and so flew out again. This was
in the presence of the aforesaid Parson Hill, Major Gwillim, and two or
three more that I knew very well then, my neighbors, and whose joint
testimony of it I have more than once had in that very room. It was in
the bay-window of the parlor, and Mr. Hill's back was next to the
window. The cup is preserved there still as a rarity."
_Birds of Paradise._
These birds have been the subject of many a fable. Old naturalists
describe them as being destitute of feet, dwelling in the air, without
an abiding place, nourished by dews and the odor of flowers. Tavernier
relates, "that they come in flocks during the nutmeg season to the south
cities of India. The strength of the nutmeg intoxicates them, and while
they lie in this state on the earth, the ants eat off their legs!" Moore
says, in his "Lalla Rookh—"
"Those golden birds that in the spice-time drop
About the gardens, drunk with that sweet fruit
Whose scent hath lur'd them o'er the summer flood."
The natives of New Guinea and the neighboring islands looked upon the
skins of these birds as sacred, and as charms against the dangers of
war. In preparing them, the legs of the bird were cut off in a manner
that gave rise to the idea, when the skins were exported from the
islands, that the birds were legless.
"But thou art still that Bird of Paradise,
Which hath no feet, and ever nobly flies."
_The Owl._
The owl, "the fatal bellman which gives the sternest good night," was
the dread of the superstitious from the earliest times. Virgil
introduces the owl among the prodigies and horrors that foreran the
suicide of Dido. It was said that two large owls would perch upon the
battlements of Wardour Castle whenever an Arundel's last hour had come.
The cry of the owl is heard by Lady Macbeth, during the murder. Hogarth
introduces the owl in the murder scene of his "Four Stages of Cruelty."
The Ethiopians, when they wished to pronounce sentence of death upon any
person, carried to him a table upon which an owl was painted. When the
guilty man saw it, he was expected to destroy himself with his own hand.
To the peasants, the cry of the owl foretells hail and rain, accompanied
by lightning. The practice of nailing the bird to a barn-door, to avert
evil consequences, is common throughout Europe, and is mentioned by
Palladius in his "Treatise on Agriculture." Pliny wrote: "If an owl be
seen either within cities or otherwise abroad in any place, it is not
for good, but prognosticates some fearful misfortune."
_The Phœnix._
The Rabbins tell us "that all the birds having complied with the first
woman, and, with her, having eaten of the forbidden fruit, except the
phœnix, as a reward it obtained a sort of immortality. It lived five
hundred years in the wilderness; then making a nest of spices, it
lighted it by the wafting of its wings, and the body was consumed. From
the ashes arose a worm which grew up to be a phœnix." Moore, in
"Paradise and the Peri," alludes to
The enchanted pile of that lonely bird
Who sings at the last his own death-lay,
And in music and perfumes dies away.
"The myth of the phœnix," says George Stephens, in Archæologia, "is one
of the most ancient in the world. Originally a temple type of the
immortality of the soul, its birthplace appears to have been the sunny
clime of the fanciful and gorgeous East. Even in the days of Job and
David it was already a popular tradition in Palestine and Arabia."
Herodotus describes the phœnix in the following words: "The plumage is
partly red, partly golden, while the general make and size are almost
exactly that of the eagle. They tell a story in Egypt of what this bird
does, which appears incredible,—that he comes all the way from Arabia,
and brings the parent bird, all plastered over with myrrh, to the Temple
of the Sun, and there buries the body. In order to bring him, they say,
he first forms a ball of myrrh as big as he finds that he can carry;
then he hollows out the ball and puts his parent inside, after which he
covers over the opening with fresh myrrh, and the ball is then exactly
of the same weight as at first. So he brings it to Egypt, as I have
said, and deposits it in the Temple of the Sun." Ariosto alludes to this
fable in the voyage of Astolfo—
"Arabia, named the Happy, now he gains;
Incense and myrrh perfume her grateful plains;
The virgin phœnix there, in need of rest,
Selects from all the world her balmy nest."
The phœnix, as a sign over chemists' shops, was adopted from the
association of this fabulous bird with alchemy.
_The Wren._