Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/140

 126 to the men of those schools of old. Hence when the Letter reappears it is made to fit the new condition of things. In 1395, about two hundred years after its first appearance, it is found in a Codex at Eichstadt, from which Grauert has reprinted it in full. The main points are absolutely identical. The same events will occur in consequence of the conjunction of the planets in the Cauda Draconis in the month of September,—floods and storms will rage, buildings will be destroyed and valleys submerged. Terrible and long-lasting eclipses of the sun will darken the day, and fierv signs and the eclipse of the moon signify the destruction of nations. Sanguinary battles in the East and in the West, shedding of blood and earthquakes will happen. A mighty emperor will die. Few will survive. The Mohammedans will be seized with doubt and join the Christians. The only safeguard against the impending evils will be to hide in caves inside of rocky mountains provided with food for thirty days. In this prophecy joined the philosophers of Greece, Arabia, Hispania, and Francia. It was signed by twenty-one Magisters in Paris on the 1st of April. Professor Grauert asks whether the date of the "1st of April" does not point to the fact that this Letter may be the work of a wag who intended to play a practical joke. I do not think so. The people at that time were not much given to practical joking, and the year 1395 was anything but favourable for it. The world was too much distraught by internal strife and foreign wars, and minds were under the strong influence of mystical and apocalyptic literature.

I will pass over the other parallels found in the course of the fifteenth century, and will mention only one more variant of this letter, dated 1480, and published by Grauert from MSS. in the Florentine Library. This last version is of the utmost importance, for it helps us to recognise the elements out of which it had grown. It is not, as Professor Grauert suggests, a reflex of the Toledo Letter,