Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/333

 s. ii. OCT. i, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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toads alive in the Stamford Mercury of 15 September, 1882, which it may be well to reproduce :

"Witchcraft in Normandy. A woman named Adele Mathieu has been sentenced to six months' imprisonment by the tribunal at Lisieux for obtain- ing money from the peasants in that part of Normandy under the false pretence of being able to cure them and their animals of every kind of disease. Adele Mathieu urged in her defence that she had the power of exorcising evil spirits, of which there were three kinds, one of which could only be got rid of by burning toads in a cauldron. Upon one occasion she was sent for by a farmer who had seventeen of his cattle ill, and she burnt 570 toads in the presence of the villagers, several of whom declared that they saw a dog jump out from the mouth of one of the beasts and run away. Adele Mathieu also resorted to the well-known device of larding a sheep's or bullock's heart with pins and needles and burning it in a wood-fire, and some of the witnesses who were called to prove the case against her naively declared that, though she charged more than the doctor, she had done them more good. But in spite of this and of her energetic assertion that she was gifted with supernatural powers, the tribunal sent her to prison."

The practice of sticking pins into the heart of animals, usually that of a calf or a hare, has often been noticed. A curious example of this, taken from the Blackburn Standard* occurs in the Boston, Lincoln, Louth, and Spalding Herald of 27 December, 1837, which it may be useful to give, as I have not come upon it elsewhere :

" On Saturday the sexton of St. Mary's, observing an elegantly-dressed female walking mysteriously up and down the churchyard, watched her, when he saw her rake up the earth with her foot, and after depositing something in the ground carefully cover it up. Induced by curiosity, he opened the place, and found a hare's heart, in which 385 pins were stuck, buried. It is an old superstition in this county, that if a person who has been forsaken by one professing love for her shall bury a hare's heart stuck full of pins, near a newly-made grave in a churchyard, as the heart decays in the ground the health of the faithless swain will decline, and that he will die when it is mouldered into dust. The fair deceived one had been instigated by revenge to this act of folly and credulity."

Kirton-in-Lindsey.

EDWARD PEACOCK.

Toads were often associated with witches. One of the most innocent recreations at a witches' sabbath was the baptism of toads. The familiar was treated cruelly by its friend in Derbyshire. The sticking pins into sub- stances by witches, in order to cause pain to absent people, was an ancient practice : Devovet absentes, simulacraque cerea figit,

Et miserum tenues in jecur urget acus. This is shown in a story in the * GestaRoma- norum,' which is the original of 4 The Leech of Folkestone.' E. YARDLEY.

MARTYRDOM OF ST. THOMAS : ST. THOMAS- OF HEREFORD (10 th S. i. 388, 450 ; ii. 30, 195). The latter belonged to the " noble family of Cantilupe," being a grandson of William de Cantilupe, d. 1238 (see Foss's 'Judges of Eng- land '). He was Bishop of Hereford in 1283, and was buried in the Lady Chapel at Here- ford Cathedral (Leland's 4 Itin.,' vol. viii. p. 80). He was canonized by Pope John XXII. on 17 April, 1320, and is stated to be the last Englishman to have been so honoured. "The Life and Gests of S. Thomas Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford, and some- time before Lord Chancellor of England, extracted out of the Authentic Records of his Canonization as to the Maine Part, Anonymous, Matt. Paris, Capgrave, Harpsfeld, and others, by R. S[trange], S.J.," small 8vo, was published by R. Walker at Gant in 1674. There is a copy of it in the Huth Library. In the Anastatic Drawing Society's volume for 1855 there is an illustra- tion of a picture of him from a drawing by Dr. William Stukeley, 1721. It shows his chasuble powdered with his armorial bear- ings, which became adopted as those of the see of Hereford. They are Gu., three leopards' heads reversed, jessant de lis or (cf. Parker's 'Glossary of Terms in Heraldry/ 1894, pp. 341-2). As to the origin of the name Cantilupe, see 9 th S. xii. 368. His uncle Walter was Bishop of Worcester, and died 1265 (see Foss).

Connected with the same family was Nicholas de Cantilupe, who founded Beau- vale Abbey, in Nottinghamshire, in 1343 (see * Griseleia in Snotinghscire,' by the Rev. Rodolph Baron von Hube, Nottingham, 1901, p. 8, et seq.\ H. W. UNDERDOWN.

Thomas de Cantelupe, Bishop of Hereford* was, with the exception of Bishop Grosseteste of Lincoln, the greatest bishop of his time. He was, according to Butler, "most nobly born, being eldest son of William, Lord Cantilupe, one of the greatest generals that England ever produced." His birth took place about the year 1218, at Hambleden, not far from the Thames, near Marlow, in Buckinghamshire, and he was there baptized in the parish church. He was the last Eng- lishman canonized that is, the last until of late years and his shrine, of which an excel- lent cast is preserved in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, is still regarded with venera- tion oy Roman Catholics. The north transept r a very beautiful and striking feature in Here- ford Cathedral, is rendered the more in- teresting by the presence of this shrine of St. Cantelupe, in whose honour the arms of the see were changed from those of the kings