Ashton Fagot.-At Lidiard Lawrence, between Bishop's Lidiard and Stokegomer, Somersetshire, it has been a custom at Christmas to burn what is known as the Ashton Fagot, perhaps a designation or name derived from Long Ashton in the same county. A quart of cyder was originally provided for those-a limited company-who witnessed the ceremony, as the fagot, in reality a bundle of sticks hooped together, disappeared in the flames, the hoops successively bursting with the heat. The cyder seems to have developed into a carouse at the local inn, and as lately as 1902, one of the spectators was brought before the magistrates for disorderly conduct, and the Bench pronounced the custom a bad one. It has the aspect of being a form of the Yule-log. Ass. There is a superstition remaining among the vulgar concerning the ass, that the marks on the shoulders of that useful and much injured animal were given to it as memorials that our Saviour rode upon an ass. "The Asse," says Sir Thomas Browne, "having a peculiar mark of a Crosse made by a black list down his back, and another athwart, or at right angles down his shoulders, common opinion ascribes this figure unto a peculiar signation

Since that beast had the honour to bear our Saviour on his back." In the "Athenæum," about forty years ago, appeared the following:-The popular belief as to the origin of the mark across the back of the ass is mentioned by Sir Thomas Browne, in his Vulgar Errors,' and from whatever cause it may have arisen it is certain that the hairs taken from the part of the animal so marked are held in high estimation as a cure for the hooping-cough. In this metropolis, at least so lately as 1842, an elderly lady advised a friend who had a child dangerously ill with that complaint, to procure three such hairs, and hang them round the neck of the sufferer in a muslin bag. It was added that the animal from whom the hairs are taken for this purpose is never worth anything afterwards, and, consequently, great difficulty would be experienced in procuring them; and, further, that it was essential to the success of the charm that the sex of the animal, from whom the hairs were to be procured, should be the contrary to that of the party to be cured by them."

Assumption of the Virgin Mary (August 15). Naogeorgus describes the consecration of the herbs on this festival by the priests of Germany, and laments the nourishment of popular ignorance and prejudice by such means. as the herbs when blessed or sanctified were held to be efficacious in witchcraft and magic, and if cast into the fire, to afford protection from malignant influ

ences: 'far otherwise," as the writer says truly enough, "than nature of the Worde of God doth tell."-Pop. Kingdom, by Barnaby Googe, 1570, p. 55. Bishop Hall, in his Triumphs of Rome, p. 58, also tells us, "that upon this day it was customary to implore blessings upon herbs, plants, roots, and fruits.'

Aston, Birmingham.-A writer in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for Fe bruary, 1795, gave the following account of a custom which took place annually on the 24th of December, at the house of a gentleman residing at Aston juxta Birmingham: "As soon as supper is over, a table is set in the hall. On it is placed a brown loaf, with twenty silver threepences stuck on the top of it, a tankard of ale, with pipes and tobacco: and the two oldest servants have chairs behind it, to sit as judges if they please. The steward brings the servants, both men and women, by one at a time, covered with a winnow-sheet, and lays their right hand on the loaf, exposing no other part of the body. The oldest of the two judges guesses at the person, by naming a name, then the younger judge, and lastly the oldest again. If they hit upon the right name, the steward leads the person back again; but, if they do not, he takes off the winnow-sheet. and the person receives a threepence, makes a low obeisance to the judges, but speaks not a word. When the second servant was brought, the younger judge guessed first and third; and this they did alternately till all the money was given away. Whatever servant had not slept in the house the preceding night forfeited his right to the money. No account is given of the origin of this strange custom, but it has been practiced ever since the family lived there. When the money is gone, the servants have full liberty to drink, dance, sing, and go to bed when they please.' Can this be what Aubrey, in a passage elsewhere quoted from his "Natural History of Wiltshire," calls the sport of "Cob-loaf stealing?"

Astrologer. Fuller has this passage: "Lord, hereafter I will admire thee more and fear astrologers lesse: not affrighted with their doleful predictions of dearth and drought, collected from the Collections of the planets. Must the earth, of necessity be sad, because some illnatured starr is sullen? As if the grass could not grow without asking it leave. Whereas thy power, which made herbs before the stars, can preserve them without their propitious, yea, against their malignant aspects. Good thoughts in Bad Times, ed. 1669, p. 37. A prose writer of the same period observes: "Surely all astrolgers are Erra Pater's disciples, and the Divil's professors, telling their opinions in spurious ænigmatical doubtful

tearmes, like the Oracle at Delphos. What a blind dotage and shamelesse impudence is in these men, who pretend to know more than saints and angels? Can they read other men's fates by those glorious characters the starres, being ignorant of their owne? Qui sibi nescius, cui præscius? Thracias the sooth-sayer, in the nine years drought of Egypt, came to Busiris the Tyrant and told him that Jupiter's wrath might bee expiated by sacrificing the blood of a stranger: the Tyrant asked him whether he was a stranger: he told him he was,

Thou, quoth Busiris, shalt that
stranger bee,

Whose blood shall wet our soyle by
Destinie."

If all were served so, we should have none that would relye so confidently on the falshood of their Ephemerides, and in some manner shake off all divine providence, making themselves equal to God, between whom and man the greatest difference is taken away, if man should foreknow future events. Browne's Map of the Microcosme, 1646, sign. D 8 verso. Sir Aston Cokain, in his Poems, 1658, has a quip for the astrologers:

To Astrologers. Your Industry to you the Art hath given To have great knowledge in th' outside of Heaven:

Beware lest you abuse that Art, and sin, And therfore never visit it within." The quack astrologer has been thus portrayed: "First, he gravely inquires the business, and by subtle questions pumps out certain particulars which he treasures up in his memory; next, he consults his old rusty clock, which has got a trick of lying as fast as its master, and amuses you for a quarter of an hour with scrawling out the all-revealing figure, and placing the planets in their respective pues; all which being dispatch'd you must lay down your money on his book, as you do the wedding fees to the parson at the delivery of the ring: for 'tis a fundamental axiome in his art, that, without crossing his hand with silver no scheme can be radical: then he begins to tell you back your own tale in other language, and you take that for divination which is but repetition.. His groundless guesses he calls resolves, and compels the stars (like Knights o' th' Post) to depose things they know no more than the man i' the moon: as if Hell were accessory to all the cheating tricks Hell inspires him with.... He impairs God's universal monarchy, by making the stars sole keepers of the liberties of the sublunary world, and, not content they should domineer over naturals, will needs promote their tyranny in things artificial, too, asserting that all manufactures re

ceive good or ill fortunes and qualities from some particular radix, and therefore elects a time for stuing of pruins, and chuses a pisspot by its horoscope. Nothing pusles him more than fatal necessity: he is loth to deny it, yet dares not justify it, and therefore prudently banishes it from his theory, but hugs it in his practice, yet knows not how to avoid the horns of that excellent dilemma, propounded by a most ingenious modern Poet:

"If fate be not, how shall we ought
fore-see,

Or how shall we avoid it, if it be?
If by free-will in our own paths we move,
How are we bounded by decrees
above?'"

He, we are told, offers, for five pieces, to Character of a Quack Astrologer. 1675. give you home with you a talisman against flies; a sigil to make you fortunate at gaming; and a spell that shall as certainly preserve you from being rob'd for the future; a sympathetical powder for the violent pains of the toothache." Ibid. sign. C. verso. Some years ago, a periodical entitled The Astrologer was set up in London, for the purpose of casting the horoscopes of correspondents, and furnishing intelligence connected with astrology. Its success was great; but in fact that very success it was, which killed it. The pressure of applicants was so enormous, it is said, that the post brought the letters for the editor in sacks, and the undertakwhen the belief in divination by the stars ing had to be given up. It is diffiuclt to say will be extinguished or expire: at present that belief is entertained by a numerous body of people, educated and uneducated, whose enthusiasm and credulity remain unabated. Henry, speaking of astrology, tells us,

Nor did this passion for penetrating into futurity, prevail only among the common people, but also among persons of the highest rank and greatest learning. All our kings, and many of our their astrologers, who resided in their earls and great barons had families, and were consulted by them in all undertakings of great importance. Of this," he says, we meet with a very curiMatthew Paris of the marriage of Fredeous example in the account given by rick Emperor of Germany and Isabella sister of Henry III. A.D. 1235. The great man kept these to cast the horoscopes of his children, discover the success of his designs, and the public events that were to happen." "Their predictions," he adds,

66

were couched in very general and artful terms."-History of Great Britain, iii., 515, and iv., 577. "Nocte vero prima qua concubit Imperator cum ea, noluit eam carnaliter cognoscere, donec competens hora ab astrologis ei nunciaretur." M.

Did to the credulous world thee first derive :

And superstition nurs'd thee ever sence, And publisht in profounder arts pretence: That now, who pares his nailes, or libs his swine,

But he must first take counsell of the signe."

-Virgidemiarum, lib., ii., sat. 7. Astrology is ridiculed in a masterly manner in King Lear, 1608. Mason mentions in his list of the then prevailing superstitions: "erecting of a figure to tell of stolne goods. Philip Henslowe has a receiptTo know wher a thinge is that is stolne :-Take vergine waxe and write upon yt Jasper Melchisor Balthasar and put yt under his head to whome the good partayneth, and he shall knowe in his sleape wher the thinge is become." - Diary, ed., 1845. Johnson speaking of Hudibras, says: "Astrology, however, against which SO much of the satire is directed, was not more the folly of the Puritans than of others. It had at that time a very extensive dominion. Its predictions raised hopes and fears in minds which ought to have rejected it with contempt. In hazardous undertakings care was taken to begin under the influence of a propitious planet; and, when the King was prisoner in Carisbrook Castle an astrologer was consulted as to what hour would be found most favourable to an

escape." Astrology," says a person of honour," ""imagines to read in the constellations, as in a large book, every thing that shall come to pass here below, and figuring to itself admirable rencounters from the aspects and conjunctions of the planets, it draws from thence consequences as remote from truth as the stars themselves are from the earth. I confess I have ever esteemed this science vain and ridiculous for indeed it must be either true or false if true, that which it predicts is infallible and inevitable, and consequently unuseful to be foreknown. But. if it is false, as it may easily be evinced to be, would not a man of sense be blamed to apply his mind to and lose his time in, the study thereof? It ought to be the occupation of a shallow Braine, that feeds itself with chimerical fancies, or of an impostor who makes a mystery of every thing which he understands not, for to deceive women and credulous people. Courtier's Calling, 1675, p. 241. Agrippa exposes astrology as the mother of heresy,

and adds: “Besides this same fortunetelling astrology not only the best of moral philosophers explode, but also Moses, Isaias, Job, Jeremiah, and all the other prophets of the ancient law and among the Catholick writers, St. Austin condemns it to be utterly expelled and banish'd out of the territories of Christianity. St. Hierome argues the same to be a kind of idolatry. Basil and Cyprian laugh at it as most contemptible. Chrysostome, Eusebius, and Lactantius utterly condemn it. Gregory, Ambrose, and Severianus inveigh against it. The Council of Toledo utterly abandon and prohibit it. In the Synod of Martinus and by Gregory the younger and Alexander III. it was anathematized and punished by the civil laws of the Emperors. Among the ancient Romans it was prohibited by Tiberius, Vitellius, Diocletian, Constantine, Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodo sius, ejected also, and punish'd. By Justinian made a capital crime, as may appear in his Codex."-Vanity of Sciences, p 98. He pleasantly observes of astrologers, that "undertaking to tell all people most obscure and hidden secrets abroad, they at the same time know not what happens in their own houses and in their own chambers. Even such an astrologer as Henry More laught at them in his epi

pursue,

No wonder, Cuckold, they'll not tell thee true."

It appears that figures were often erected concerning the voyages of ships from London to Newcastle, &c.-Gadbury's Nauti cum Astrologicum, 1710, pp. 93, 123, &c. We are told in one place that the prediction was verified; the ship, though not lost, had been in great danger thereof, having unhappily run aground at Newcastle, sprung a shroud, and wholly lost her keel. In another, there is a figure given of a ship that set sail from London

Avenor. From Fr. aroine, the person who, in great towns, formerly had the superintendence of the horse-meat. See Halliwell in v.

Babies in the Eyes.. See Nares, Glossary, 1859, in v. In Braithwaite's "Two Lancashire Lovers," 1640, p. 19, in Camillus speech to Doriclea, in the Lancashire dialect, he tells her, in order to gain her affections, "We han store of goodly cattell; my mother, though shee bee a vixon, shee will blenke blithly on you for my cause; and we will ga to the dawnes and slubber up a sillibub: and I will looke babbies in your eyes, and picke silly-cornes out of your toes: and we will han a whiskin at every rush-bearing, a wassel cup at Yule, a seed-cake at Fastens, and a lusty cheese-cake at our sheepewash; and will not aw this done bravely, Jantlewoman?" In her answer to this clown's addresses, she observes, among other passages, "What know you but may prove untoward, and that will bring your mother to her grave; make you, pretty babe, put finger ith' eye, and turne the door quite off the hinges." The above romance is said to have been founded on a true history; the costume appears to be very accurate and appropriate.

Bachelor's Buttons.—There is a rustic species of divination by bachelor's buttons, a plant so called. There was an ancient custom, says Grey, amongst the country fellows, of trying whether they should succeed with their mistresses by carrying the bachelor's buttons, a plant of the lychnis kind, whose flowers resemble also a button in form, in their pockets: and they judged of their good or bad success by their growing or not growing there. Notes on Shakespear, i., 108. Bachelor's buttons are described as having been worn also by the young women, and that too under their aprons. "Thereby I saw the batchelors butons, whose vertue is to make wanton maidens weepe, when they have worne it forty weekes under their aporns for a favour."-Greene's Quip, 1592, reprint Collier, p. 10.

Backgammon.-See Tables. Badger-in-the-Bag. In the tale of Pwyll Prince of Dyved, in the Mabinogion, an account is furnished of the alleged circumstances under which this game was first played, where Rhiannon persuades Gnawl, the son of Clud, to put his feet into the bag to tread down the food within, and he finds himself overhead in it, whereupon all present kicked the bag with their foot, or struck it with a staff. Every one as he came in asked, "What game are you playing at thus?" "The game of Badger-in-the Bag." said they. And then was the game of Badgerin-the-Bag first played .' Ed. 1877, p.

350.

Badger-the-Bear.A rough game played by boys, and described by Halliwell in v.

Bagatelle. — A well-known game played with one black and eight coloured or white balls, and a cue and mallet, and somewhat following the lines of billiards, but without pockets in the table. It is said to have been well established in 1827. Its origin is uncertain, but it is said not to be French, although the name is so. It is played with variations.

Baker's Clem..-At Cambridge the bakers have an annual supper, which is called "The Bakers' Clem." A correspondent of "Notes and Queries" (Cuthbert Bede) testifies to its celebration in 1863.

Baker's Dozen. — Originally a Devil's Dozen. Comp. Nares, Glossary, 1859, in v., and see Numbers.

Ballad - Monger. Braithwaite, describing a ballad-monger, in his Whim zies, 1631, writes: By this time they (his ballads) are cashiered the City, and must now ride poast for the countrey: where they are no lesse admir'd than a gyant in a pageant: till at last they grow so common there too, as every poore milkmaid can chant and chirpe it under her cow, which she useth as an harmlesse charme to make her let downe her milke.” Ball-Money. See Nuptial Usages.

Ball. — In the Odyssey, Nausicaa, daughter of the King of Phoacia, is represented playing at this game with her handmaidens; and there are Greek coins where a girl is seen engaged in the same sport. At a period posterior to Homer, it was known as Phoeninda. Sophocles the tragedian, in his play of Nausicaa, distinguished himself in the performance by his skill at the game. Playing at ball, as early as the fourteenth century, is denounced by a bishop of London as one of the ways in which the precincts of St. Paul's Church, London, were then desecrated (1385); and this disorderly and licentious condition of affairs continued during centuries. There used to be a practice of rolling a ball down the table after dinner; it is thought that this was, when a match had been recently played, where the ball was used, and the victorious party, to whom it belonged, thus exhibited it as a trophy.

Balloon. This was played with an inflated ball of leather, which was struck by the arm, the latter being protected by a bracer of wood. In "Eastward Hoe," 1605, Sir Pretonel Flash is represented as having a match at balloon with my lord Whackham for four crowns. Donne also mentions it:

""Tis ten a clock and past; all whom the

mues,

Baloun, tennis, diet, or the stewes