TH Divination by a Daffadil!. "When a Daffadill I see, Hanging down her head t'wards me ; Secondly, I shall be dead; VULGAR ERRORS. THE WANDERING JEW. HIS is a vulgar error of considerable antiquity. Indeed, Dr Percy tells us, on the authority of Matthew Paris, that it obtained full credit in this part of the world anterior to 1228; in which year an Armenian Archbishop visited England for the purpose of inspecting the shrines and the relics preserved in our churches, who, during his sojourn and entertainment at the monastery of St Albans, was asked several questions respecting his country and other matters. Among these it was inquired of him “if he had ever seen or heard of the famous personage named Joseph, who was present at our Lord's crucifixion and conversed with him, and who was still alive in confirmation of the Christian Faith." The Archbishop answered, through one of his train who spoke French, that he knew him who was the subject of their inquiry very well; in fact, that the wanderer had dined at his table shortly before his departure from the East. As a porter in the service of Pilate (according to some accounts, let us add, he was a crier of the Court), he was originally known by the name of Cartophilus. When Jesus was being dragged out by the door of the Judgment Hall, he struck Him a violent blow on the back, and, pushing Him towards the infuriate crowd, exclaimed, “On with thee, Jesus! Wherefore dost thou tarry?" Upon this, Jesus turned round, and, regarding him steadily, said, "I indeed am going; but thou shalt tarry until I come." Soon after this event he was converted, and baptized by the name of Joseph: but no sooner was his doom pronounced than he found himself hurried from family and friends; compelled to be a restless vagabond on the face of the earth. At the end of every hundred years he is seized with a strange malady that terminates in a trance of several days' duration; on emerging from which, he reverts to the same physical condition as that in which he was when Jesus suffered, at which period he was thirty years of age. He remembers all the circumstances attending the death and resurrection of Christ, the saints who arose with Him, the composition of the Apostles' Creed, their preaching and dispersion; and is himself a most grave and holy person. Such is the substance of the account given by Matthew Paris, who, it should be added for the sake of historic completeness, was himself a monk of St Albans, and was living at the time of the Armenian prelate's narration. The fourteenth century chroniclers changed the name of Joseph into that of Isaac Lackedion, and omitted the fine incident of his periodic renovation. According to the Brabantine Chronicle, he visited that country in 1575. Göethe's travestie refers to an earlier appearance in Europe. On Easter Sunday of 1542, two German students met him in a church in Hamburgh, listening to the sermon with marked attention. He was very tall; with white hair reaching below the middle of his back, a beard below his girdle, and naked feet, though the weather was cold. Conversing with the students, he gave his name as Ahasuerus, and represented that he was a thriving shoemaker at the time of the crucifixion. When Jesus fell beneath the weight of the cross against the wall of his house, he rudely repulsed him and, pointing to Calvary, said, "Get on, blasphemer, to thy doom;" Jesus replying, "I will stop and rest; but thou shalt march onward until I return!" Twenty years after he reappeared in Strasburgh, and reminded the magistrates that he had passed through the place two centuries before; his statement being verified by reference to the police-register of the city. He inquired after the students, and declared that, since his conversation with them, he had visited the remotest part of the East Indies. In 1604 he visited France. The "True History of his life as taken from his own lips" was printed at Bordeaux in 1608, and his Complaint, set to a popular air, was a favourite ballad. The learned Louvet saw him returning from mass on a Sunday at Beauvais, when, surrounded by a crowd of women and children, he recounted anecdotes of the Passion in an affecting manner. There are also vague accounts of his having been seen at Salamanca, Venice, and Naples, where he was a successful gambler. On 22d April 1771, he visited Brussels, where he sat for his portrait to illustrate the ballad composed on his interview with certain burgesses some centuries before. Southey based the Curse of Kehama on this legend, and Croly made it the subject of his romance of Salathiel. BARNACLES. It seems hardly credible in this enlightened age that so gross an error in Natural History could so long have prevailed as that the barnacle, a well known kind of shellfish which is found sticking to the bottom of ships, should when broken off become a species of goose. Old writers, of the first credit in other respects, have fallen into this mistaken and ridiculous notion; and we find even Holinshed gravely declaring that with his own eyes he saw the feathers of these barnacles "hang out of the shell, at least two inches." In Hall's Virgidemiarum we have "The Scottish Barnacle, if I might choose, That of a Worme doth waxe a wingèd Goose;" and in Marston's Malecontent "Like your Scotch Barnacle, now a block, Instantly a Worm, and presently a great Goose." So also writes Gerard in his Herbal : "There are in the North parts of Scotland certaine Trees, whereon do grow Shell-fishes, &c., &c., which falling into the Water, do become Fowls, whom we call Barnakles; in the North of England Brant Geese; and in Lanca shire Tree Geese, &c." HADDOCK. "On each side beyond the Gills of a Haddock is a large black spot," writes Pennant. "Superstition assigns this mark to the impression St Peter left with his Finger and Thumb when he took the Tribute out of the Mouth of a Fish of this Species, which has been continued to the whole Race of Haddocks ever since that miracle." In Metellus his Dialogues (1693) we read— "But superstitious Haddock, which appear With Marks of Rome, St Peter's Finger here. Haddock has spots on either side, which are said to be marks of St Peter's Fingers, when he catched that Fish for the Tribute ;" and— "O superstitious Dainty, Peter's Fish, How com'st thou here to make so godly Dish?" DOREE By the same author we are instructed that "Superstition hath made the Doree rival to the Haddock for the honour of having been the Fish out of whose mouth St Peter took the Tribute-Money, leaving on its sides those incontestible proofs of the identity of the Fish, the marks of his Finger and Thumb." It is rather difficult at this time to adjust the conflicting claims of the two members of the finny tribe; for the Doree likewise asserts an origin of its spots of a similar nature, but of a much earlier date than the former; St Christopher, who caught a fish of this kind while wading through an arm of the sea, having left the impression on its sides to be transmitted to posterity as an indelible memorial of the fact. The name of the saint, it may be added in passing, incorporates his history; Xplorоpopos, from the alleged circumstance of his having carried the Saviour, when a child, over an arm of the sea. THE ASS. A superstition survives 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 in his Vulgar Errors, "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." DARK LANTERNS. Barrington, speaking of the curfew in his Observations on the Antient Statutes, observes that there is a general vulgar error that it is not lawful to go about with a dark lantern. All popular errors, he adds, have some foundation; and the regulation of the curfew may possibly have been the occasion of this. Elsewhere, however, he derives this notion from Guy Fawkes' dark lantern in the Gunpowder Plot. THAT BEARS FORM THEIR CUBS INTO SHAPE BY LICKING THEM. In A Brief Natural History by Eugenius Philalethes (1669) we read: "I shall here gainsay that gross opinion that the Whelps of Bears are, at first littering, without all form or fashion, and nothing but a little congealed Blood, or Lump of Flesh, which afterwards the Dam shapeth by licking; yet is the Truth most evidently otherwise, as by the Eye-witness of Joachimus Rheticus, Gesner, and others, it hath been proved. And herein, as in many other fabulous Narrations of this Nature (in which experience checks report) may be justly put that of Lucretius "Quid nobis certius ipsis Sensibus esse potest? qui vera ac falsa notemus?" What can more certain be than sense Discerning Truth from false pretence?" Sir Thomas Browne includes this among his Vulgar Errors; but Ross in his Refutation of Browne at the end of his Arcana Microcosmi (1652) affirms that "the Bears send forth their young ones deformed and unshaped to the sight, by reason of the thick membran in which they are wrapt, which also is covered over with so mucous and flegmatick matter, which the Dam contracts in the winter time, lying in hollow Caves without motion, that to the Eye it looks like an unformed Lump. This mucosity is licked away by the Dam, and the Membran broken; and so that which before seemed to be unformed appears now in its right shape. This is all that the Antients meant, as appears by Aristotle (Animal. lib. vi. c. 31.), who says that, in some manner, the young bear is for a while rude and without shape." OSTRICHES EATING AND DIGESTING IRON. Ross, in the work just cited, writes "But Dr Brown denies this for these reasons: I. Because Aristotle and Oppian are silent in this singularity. 2. Pliny speaketh of its wonderful digestion. 3. Ælian mentions not Iron. 4. Leo Africanus speaks dimirutively. 5. Fernelius extenuates it, and Riolanus denies it. 6. Albertus 1 Magnus refutes it. 7. Aldrovandus saw an Ostrich swallow Iron, which excluded it again undigested. Answ. Aristotle's, Oppian's, and Elian's silence is of no force; for args. ments taken from a negative authority were never held of any validity. Many things are omitted by them, which yet are true. It is sufficient that we have Eye-witnesses to confirm this truth. As for Pliny, he saith plainly that it concocteth whatsoever it eateth. Now the Doctor acknowledgeth it eats Iron; ergo, according to Pliny, it concocts Iron. Africanus tells us that he devours Iron. And Fernelius is so far from extenuating the matter, that he plainly affirms it, and shews that this concoction is performed by the nature of its whole essence. As for Riolanus, his denial without ground we regard not. Albertus Magnus speaks not of Íron, but of Stones which it swallows, and excludes again without nutriment. As for Aldrovandus, I deny not but he might see one Ostrich which excluded his Iron undigested; but one Swallow makes no Summer." THE PHOENIX. That there is but one phoenix in the world, writes Sir Thomas Browne, "which after many hundred years burns herself, and from the Ashes thereof riseth up another, is a Conceit not new or altogether popular, but of great antiquity: not only delivered by humane authors, but frequently expressed by holy writers; by Cyril, Epiphanius and others, by Ambrose in his Hexameron, and Tertullian in his Poem de Judicio Domini, and in his excellent Tract de Resurrectione Carnis-all which notwithstanding we cannot presume the existence of this animal, nor dare we affirm there is any Phoenix in Nature. For first there wants herein the definitive Confirmator and Test of things uncertain, that is, the Sense of Man. For though many writers have much enlarged thereon, there is not any ocular describer, or such as presumeth to confirm it upon aspection; and therefore Herodotus, that led the story unto the Greeks, plainly saith he never attained the sight of any, but only the picture." The learned author proceeds to make Herodotus himself confess that the account seems to him improbable; Tacitus and Pliny also expressing very strong doubts on the subject. Some, he says, refer to some other rare bird, the bird of paradise, or the like; the passage in the Psalms, “Vir justus ut Phoenix florebat," he pronounces to be a mistake arising from the Greek word Phoenix, which signifies also a palm tree. By the same equivoque he explains the passage in Job where it is mentioned. In a word, the unity, long life, and generation of this ideal bird, all militate against the fact of its existence. BIRD OF PARADISE AND THE PELICAN. In a treatise entitled A short Relation of the River Nile (1673), which was published under the sanction of the Royal Society, we read "The Unicorn is the most celebrated among Beasts, as among Birds are the Phoenix, the PELICAN, and the BIRD OF PARADISE; with which the World is better acquainted by the fancies of Preachers and Poets than with their native Soyle. Little knowledge is of any of them; for some of them, nothing but the received report of their being in Nature. It deserves reflection that the industry and indefatigable labour of Men, in the discovery of things con |