of December, to the effect that on this day prognostications of the months were drawn for the whole year; also that on the Day of St Barnabas, and on that of St Simon and St Jude, a tempest often arises.

Many superstitious observations on days may be found in a curious old book called Practica Rusticorum (apparently an earlier edition of The Husbandman's Practice 1658), at the end of the Book of Knowledge of the same date.

In Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland (1793), the minister of Logierait, in Perthshire, says: "In this parish, and in the neighbourhood, a variety of superstitious practices still prevail among the vulgar, which may be in part the remains of ancient idolatry, or of the corrupted Christianity of the Romish Church, and partly, perhaps, the result of the natural hopes and fears of the human mind in a state of simplicity and ignorance. Lucky and unlucky Days are by many anxiously observed. That Day of the week upon which the 14th of May happens to fall, for instance, is esteemed unlucky through all the remainder of the year; none marry or begin any business upon it. None chuse to marry in January or May; or to have their banns proclaimed in the end of one quarter of the year, and to marry in the beginning of the next. Some things are to be done before the full moon ; others after. In fevers, the illness is expected to be more severe on Sunday than on the other days of the week; if easier on Sunday, a relapse is feared."

Of the parishes of Kirkwall and St Ola, in Orkney, we learn: "In many days of the year they will neither go to sea in search of fish, nor perform any sort of work at home."

Few superstitious usages, according to the same authority, prevail in Canisbay, in Caithness. "No gentleman, however, of the name of Sinclair, either in Canisbay, or throughout Caithness, will put on green apparel, or think of crossing the Ord upon a Monday. They were dressed in green, and they crossed the Ord upon a Monday, in their way to the Battle of Flowden, where they fought and fell in the service of their Country, almost without leaving a representative of their name behind them. The Day and the Dress are accordingly regarded as inauspicious. If the Ord must be got beyond on Monday, the Journey is performed by sea."

The Spaniards hold Friday to be a very unlucky Day, and never enter upon anything of consequence upon it; and among the Finns those who undertake any business on à Monday or Friday have promise of very little success.

From the following extract from Eradut Khan's Memoirs of the

* So of the parish of Forglen, Banffshire: "There are happy and unhappy days for beginning any undertaking. Thus few would choose to be married here on Friday, though it is the ordinary day in other quarters of the Church;" and of the Parish of Monzie, in Perth: "Lucky and unlucky Days, and Feet, are still attended to, especially about the end and beginning of the year. No person will be proclaimed for marriage in the end of one year, or even quarter of the year, and be married in the beginning of the next.'

Mogul Empire, it would seem, however, that Friday is there regarded in a different light

"On Friday the 28th of Zekand, his Majesty (Aurengzebe) performed his morning devotions in company with his attendants; after which, as was frequently his custom, he exclaimed, 'O that my death may happen on a Friday, for blessed is he who dieth on that day!""

Bo

COCK-CROW;

TIME OF THE MORNING SO CALLED.

OURNE tells us of a tradition among the common people that at the time of cock-crowing the midnight spirits forsake these lower regions, and go to their proper places. Hence it is that in country villages, where the way of life requires more early labour, the inhabitants always go cheerfully to work at that time; whereas, if they are called abroad sooner, they are apt to imagine everything they see or hear to be a wandering ghost. Shakespeare has given us an excellent account of this vulgar notion in his Hamlet

"Ber. It was about to speak, when the Cock crew.
Hor. And then it started like a guilty thing

Upon a dreadful summons. I have heard,
The Cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the God of Day: and at his warning,
Whether in Sea or Fire, in Earth or Air,
The extravagant and erring Spirit hies
To his confine, and of the truth herein,
This present object made probation.

Mar. It faded at the crowing of the Cock."*

Bourne applies himself most seriously to investigating whether spirits roam about in the night, or are obliged to go away at cockcrow; first citing from the sacred writings that good and evil angels attend upon men: and proving thence also that there have been apparitions of good and evil spirits. He is of opinion that these can ordinarily have been nothing but the appearances of some of those angels of light or darkness; "for," he adds, "I am far from thinking that either the Ghosts of the damned or the happy, either the Soul of a Dives or a Lazarus, returns here any more.' Their appearance in the night, he goes on to say, is linked to our idea of apparitions. Night, indeed, by its awfulness and horror, naturally inclines the mind

* What follows, in this passage, is an exception from the general time of cock-crowing

"Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes,
Wherein our Saviour's birth is ce ebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth all night long.
And then, they say, no Spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No Fairy takes, nor Witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time."

of man to these reflections, which are much heightened by the legendary stories of nurses and old women.

The traditions of all ages attribute the advent of spirits to the night. The Jews believed that hurtful spirits walked about in the night; and the same opinion obtained among the ancient Christians, who divided the night into four watches, called the evening, midnight, cock-crowing, and the morning.

The notion that spirits fly away at cock-crow is certainly very ancient, for we find it mentioned by the Christian poet Prudentius, who flourished in the beginning of the fourth century, as a tradition of common belief.

Cassian, also, who lived in the same century, mentioning a host of devils who had been abroad in the night, says that as soon as the morn approached, they all vanished and fled away; which farther evinces that this was the current opinion of the time.

Thus the Ghost in Hamlet

And again

"But soft, methinks I scent the morning air-
Brief let me be."

“The Glow-worm shews the Matin to be near.”

Philostratus, giving an account of the apparition of Achilles' shade to Apollonius Tyaneus, says that it vanished with a little glimmer as soon as the cock crowed.

Spenser has

"The morning Cock crew loud; And at the sound it shrunk in haste away, And vanish'd from our sight."

So Butler in his Hudibras

"The Cock crows and the morn grows on,
When 'tis decreed I must be gone."

Bourne alleges that he knows of no reasons assigned for the departure of spirits at cock-crow; "but," he adds, "there have been produced at that time of night things of very memorable worth, which might perhaps raise the pious credulity of some men to imagine that there was something more in it than in other times. It was about the time of Cock-crowing when our Saviour was born, and the Angels sung the first Christmas Carol to the poor Shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem. Now it may be presumed, as the Saviour of the World was then born, and the heavenly Host had then descended to proclaim the news, that the Angels of Darkness would be terrified and confounded, and immediately fly away; and perhaps this consideration has partly been the foundation of this opinion." It was also about this time when our Saviour rose from the dead. "A third reason is the Passage in the thirty-third chapter of Genesis, in which Jacob wrestled with the Angel for a blessing; where the Angel says unto him 'Let me go, for the day breaketh.""

Bourne, however, takes the tradition to have arisen from some par

ticular circumstances attending the time of cock-crowing; and which, as Prudentius seems to say, are an emblem of the approach of the day of resurrection.

"The circumstances, therefore, of the time of Cock-crowing," he adds, "being so natural a figure and representation of the Morning of the Resurrection; the Night so shadowing out the Night of the Grave; the third Watch being, as some suppose, the time our Saviour will come to Judgment at; the noise of the Cock awakening sleepy man, and telling him as it were, the Night is far spent, the Day is at hand; representing so naturally the voice of the Arch-angel awakening the Dead, and calling up the righteous to everlasting Day; so naturally does the time of Cock-crowing shadow out these things that probably some good well-meaning men might have been brought to believe that the very Devils themselves, when the Cock crew and reminded them of them, did fear and tremble, and shun the Light." Because the cock gives notice of the approach and break of day, the ancients, with a propriety equal to anything in their mythology, dedicated this bird to Apollo. They also made him the emblem of watchfulness, from the circumstance of his summoning men to their business by his crowing, and therefore dedicated him to Mercury also. With the lark he may be poetically styled "the herald of the morn." In Drayton's Endimion and Phoebe (1593) are the following lines"And now the Cocke, the morning's trumpeter, Play'd Hunt's up for the Day-Star to appear;"

which Gray has imitated

"The Cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing Horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed."

In Chaucer's Assemblie of Foules we have

"The tame Ruddocke and the coward Kite,
The Cocke, that horologe is of Thrope's lite."

And in the Merry Devil of Edmonton (1631)—

"More watchfull than the day-proclayming Cocke."

The day, civil and political, has been divided into thirteen parts:1. After-midnight; 2. Cock-crow; 3. The space between the first cock-crow and break of day; 4. The dawn of the morning; 5. Morning; 6. Noon; 7. Afternoon; 8. Sunset; 9. Twilight; 10. Evening; 11. Candle-time; 12. Bedtime; 13. The dead of the night. The after-midnight and the dead of the night being the most solemn of them all, have therefore, it should seem, been appropriated by ancient superstition to the walking of spirits.

From the passage in Macbeth, "We were carousing till the second Cock," it seems as though there were two separate times of cock-crowing. The commentators, however, who do not advert to it, explain the passage as follows: "Till the second Cock :]-Cock-crowing. So in

· i.e., The clock of the villages.

King Lear-'He begins at Curfew, and walks till the first Cock Again, in The Twelve Mery Jestes of the Widow Edith (1573)—

'The time they pas merely til ten of the clok,

Yea, and I shall not lye, till after the first Cok.'

"It appears from a passage in Romeo and Juliet that Shakespeare means that they were carousing till three o'clock

'The second Cock has crow'd,

The Curfew-bell has toll'd; 'tis three o'clock." "

Perhaps Tusser makes this point clear in his Husbandrie

"Cocke croweth at midnight, times few above six,
With pause to his neighbour, to answer betwix :
At three aclocke thicker, and then as ye knowe,
Like all in to mattens neere day they doo crowe,
At midnight, at three, and an hour yer day,

They utter their language as well as they may."

The following very curious Old Wives' Prayer is found in Herrick's Hesperides—

"Holy-rood, come forth and shield

Us ith' citie, and the field:
Safely guard us, now and aye,
From the blast that burns by day;
And those sounds that us affright
In the dead of dampish night.
Drive all hurtful Feinds us fro,

By the time the Cocks first crow."

Vanes on the tops of steeples were anciently made in the form of a cock (called thence weather-cocks), and put up, in Catholic times, to remind the clergy of watchfulness.

In A Helpe to Discourse (1633) we have

Q. Wherefore on the top of Church Steeples is the Cocke set upon the Crosse, of a long continuance ?

"A. The flocks of Jesuits will answer you. For instruction: that whilst aloft we behold the Crosse and the Cocke standing thereon, we may remember our sinnes, and with Peter seeke and obtaine mercy : as though without this dumbe Cocke, which many will not hearken to, untill he crow, the Scriptures were not a sufficient larum."

A writer in the St James's Chronicle, June 10th 1777, derives the origin of the cock-vane from the cock's crowing when St Peter had denied his Lord; meaning by this device to forbid all schism in the Church, which might arise amongst her members by their departing from her communion, and denying the established principles of her faith. But though this invention was, in all probability, of Popish original, and a man who often changes his opinion is known by the appellation of a weather-cock, I would hint to the advocates for that unreformed Church that neither this intention, nor the antiquity of this little device, can afford any matter for religious argument.