Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/137

 Rh hides from him: "the next day"! Here now stepped in the new science, which professed to be able to foretell not only what would happen on the morrow, but to give to the inquirer an answer as to what w^ould happen to him in the course of his life, and even foretell the length of that life and the way in which he would spend it. Backed by the authority of science and by the magic of the great names of men acquainted with all hidden mysteries and possessed of all the knowledge which canny and uncanny wisdom could grant, the belief was accepted as a key to the future, and the utterances of the astrologers were implicitly believed. It so happened that these forebodings did not come to pass. This is the psychological moment which invests these Letters with a peculiar significance from the point of view of folk-lore. They shared the fate of all unfulfilled prophecies. The first stage is, that ingenious devices are invented in order to explain the non-fulfilment. The penitent mood of the people, the mercy of God, the intervention of other unforeseen causes obviated the threatened event, and thus the world was saved for the time being. In the case of the Letter of 1186, no doubt can exist of the truth of the remarkable conjunction of the planets in that particular part of the skies. Professor Grauert, who has studied the later history of this Letter, has been able to ascertain through the instrumentality of the Astronomer-Royal in Berlin that this really happened. Minor occurrences which otherwise would have passed unnoticed were magnified into great heavenly or earthly convulsions. Winds were transformed into raging storms, and slight skirmishes sanguinary battles. In spite of all these devices the world felt that the prophecy had not been fulfilled. They did not hear the crack of doom.

The second stage is the reappearance of the Letter soon afterwards, i.e. about thirty years later. But it has already undergone a slight alteration. It is still ascribed to the astrologers of Toledo, but the name of the eminent man