Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/130

 116 close to the shore will be covered with sand and earth. All this is to happen through the conjunction of all the planets in the sign of the Scales and in the tail of the Dragon, and will take place in the month of September. The sun also will enter into the same conjunction. Such a rare occurrence can only occur by the will of God, in order to be as a wonderful sign of the change to which all mutable things are to be subjected. The premonitory sign will be an eclipse of the sun, immediately before the conjunction of the planets, obscuring the whole body of the sun; and the moon in the opposition will also be totally eclipsed. The sun will appear fiery red and distorted during the eclipse, which, moreover, signifies approaching bloodshed in the neighbourhood of a river in the East and similarly in the West. Doubt and ignorance will seize Jews and Muhammetans until they forsake their synagogues and "mahumeries." Their sect will then be utterly destroyed by the will of God. Know ye therefore to leave the land so soon as you see the eclipse.

This letter or message was sent in the first place in the name of the astrologers of Toledo, and especially in the name of the Magister Johannes Davidis Hispalensis. There are many variations of the letter, and it has a history of its own, which I intend discussing here. It may appear somewhat remote from the immediate object of our investigations. It has apparently nothing of the folk in it. It is neither a tale nor a custom, nor does it lend itself to any of the metaphysical speculations so much in favour in so many of the more recent researches in the field of folk-lore. The general inclination seems to be to go to the very remote and necessarily obscure origins of all the manifestations of spiritual folklore, and to attempt thereby to solve the manifold problems which the study of the folk presents. I do not undervalue the merit of these speculations, nor do I intend criticising the work accomplished hitherto: but each of us looks upon these problems in the