Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/311

 Their Bearing on Folklore. 285

from an Easy Chair, would have told what this monk tells of the accurate knowledge of his day.

And an important point which we should notice is the proportion which truth bears to error. We are somewhat apt in our search for beliefs and superstitions to overlook or reject the true, and to spend our time only in gloating over and classifying the items of the false that we come across.

We may remark then that, side by side with the belief in Astrology, we have a list of the planets. In one and the same paragraph we have the exact locality of hell explained to us, and we hear that " as an apple the earth is round." We are told that the earth is nine times as big as the moon, while the explanation of the moon's phases is correctly given.

We have, too, a similar treatise on Natural History, the MS. of which dates from about the middle of the thirteenth century. It is a translation from the Latin Physiologus of Theobaldus.

" A Bestiary" gives us true and fancied details of many animals, birds and reptiles.

The adder, we are told, casts his slough by crawling through a stone with a hole in it, the point about the hole in the stone being that it should be so narrow as to allow the snake to wriggle through, but only without his skin [ The adder will only attack a clothed man.

The ant likes wheat but avoids barley.

The ant bites grains of corn in two, that they may not sprout in her store-room.

Dragons won't stir out when they hear the panther's roar.

The fox's wiliness is shown by its lying still until the ravens think it dead : upon their approaching him, he jumps up and captures them.

A hart can swallow an adder without being harmed by^ the poison.