Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/234

 226

NOTES AND QUERIES, [ii s. xii. SEPT. is, 1915

became an ethical or religious rule. The reason for unlucky days may often have been that the day is the anniversary of a calamity, such as a Roman defeat in battle. But often the original reason, adequate or inadequate, is lost. Then invention has its chance and uses it. One thing only is certain : " Lucky and unlucky days are found in the unwritten calendars of primitive peoples in many parts of the world " (W. Warde Fowler, ' Religious Experience of the Roman People,' p. 40 ; see also his ' Roman Festivals' and Ovid, 'Fasti'). The Romans had their forty-eight dies ne fasti and fifty-seven dies religiosi. The ancient Mexicans had unlucky days, fit only for doing nothing, and woe might be looked for by those who were born on these days (Frazer, * Golden Bough,' vi. p. 28, note). Our own credulous, chatty Aubrey expands on this subject. He gives many unlucky dates, and had himself seen, and shown to that "great astrologer Elias Ashmole, Esq.," an " old Romish MSS. prayer-book. ... at the beginnings whereof was a Calendar wherein were inserted the unlucky days of each month set out in verse " (Aubrey, ' Miscellanies,' p. 6). Yet the earlier people who trembled upon fixed unlucky days may have been really progressive. Their activities were hampered, but they generally had attained to the stage of the calendar, accurate or inaccurate, and so had entered into the realm of possible history. When we read of this belief we must remember the ship- wrecked man who, cast on an unknown coast, and seeing a gallows, cries out : "Thank God I am in a civilized country ! "

GEORGE WHALE. Savile Club, Piccadilly.

See Skeat's edition of Chaucer, vol. i. pp. 493, 494. In his note on

I trowe hit was in the dismal,

That was the ten woundes of Egipte.

' The Book of the Duchesse,' 1206 sg f we read :

" The whole sentence means : ' I think it must have been in the evil days (i.e., on an unlucky day), such as were the days of the ten plagues of Egypt ' ; and the allusion is clearly to the so- called dies dZgyptiaci, or unlucky days ; and icoundes is merely a rather too literal translation of Lat. plaga, which we generally translate by plague. In Vincent of Beauvais, * Speculum Naturale,' lib. xv. c. 83, we find : ' In quolibet mense sunt duo dies, qui dicuntur sEgyptiaci, quorum unus est a principio mensis, alter a fine.' He goes on to show how they are calculated, and says that in January the Egyptian days are the 1st, and the 7th from the end, i.e., the 25th ; and he expressly refers the name sEgyptiaci to the plagues of Egypt, which (as some said) took place

on Egyptian days ; for it was asserted that there were minor plagues besides the ten."

Skeat also refers to Ellis' s edition of

Brand's ' Popular Antiquities,' from which

source he takes several quotations. See

further ' The Ency. Brit.' under ' Dismal.'

EDWARD BENSLY.

Unlucky, fate"ul periods : I believe that some were times at which it was possible to foresee coming weather and, perhaps, otherwise unknown conditions. The repu- tation of the Egyptians for wisdom, running into sorcery, may have led to the days being called after them. W^e may remember Othello's statement :

That handkerchief

Did an Egyptian to my mother give ;

She was a charmer.

Act III. sc. iv.

Schmidt glosses the word "gipsy" in his ' Shakespeare Lexicon.'

Mention is made of "Dies ^Egyptiaci " in Brand's ' Popular Antiquities ' (vol. i. p. 38, vol. ii. p. 47). The first reference brings you to St. Paul's Day (25 January), a point from which meteorological conditions may be discerned very far ahead. We are told that the day is called " Dies Egyptiacus " in an ancient calendar of the Church of Rome. At the second reference a quotation from Melton's * Astrologaster ' declares :

" The Christian faith is violated when, like a pagan and an apostate, any man doth observe those days which are called Egyptiaci, or the calends of Januarie, or any moneth, or day, or time, or yeere, eyther to travel 1, marry, or doe anything in."

The definition of " Dies ^Egyptiaci " in Sir Harris Nicolas's valuable ' Chronology of History ' runs :

" Certain days which were reputed unfortunate, according to an ancient superstition, on which it was considered wrong to be bled or to commence any undertaking." ^ gwrpHIN.

[C. C. B. also thanked for reply.]

HERALDIC QUERY (11 S. xii. 118, 170). Perhaps the following from a well-known English authority may be of service to the MARQUIS DE TOURNAY in answer to two out of the half-dozen names whose arms he inquires for :

4. Erard de la Marck, Bishop of Liege, 1506. In giving some examples of the arms borne by the Prince Bishops of Liege the late Dr. Woodward in his ' Ecclesiastical Heraldry' (1894), p. 299, states that Eber- hard von der Mark (de Sedan), Prince - Bishop (1506-38), used two white griffins as supporters to the quartered coat of the see,