Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/423

. NO 21., MAY 24. '56.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

415

EASTER SUNDAY SUPERSTITIONS. (2 nd S. i. 331.)

Superstitious practices, bearing a great resem- blance to that mentioned by MR. HAILSTONE, are, I am sorry to say, far from uncommon in Lincoln- shire ; several cases have come beneath my own notice. A few years ago, in pulling down an old house in a neighbouring village, a wide-mouthed bottle was found under the foundation, containing the heart of some small animal (it was conjectured a hare), pierced as closely as possible with pins. The elders said it had been put there to " with- stand witching." Some time after, a man digging in his garden in the village of Yaddlethorpe came upon a skeleton of a horse or ox, buried about three feet beneath the surface, and near to it two bottles containing pins, needles, human hair, and a stinking fluid, probably urine. The bottles, pins, &c., came into my possession. There was nothing to indicate the date of their interment except one of the bottles, which was of the kind employed to contain Daffy s elixir, a once popular patent medicine. The other bottle was an ordi- nary wine pint. At the time when these things were found, I mentioned the circumstance to many persons among our peasantry : they all said that it had " summut to do with witching;" and many of them had long stories to tell, setting forth how pins and needles are a protection against the malice of the servants of Satan. One anecdote is worth recording as a specimen of popular credu- lity. About thirty years ago, there lived in this village an inoffensive old man, who was feared and hated by all his neighbours because he had what is called " an evil eye." If the east wind caused rheumatism, if cattle died, or pigs would not fatten, poor Thomas K*** was sure to be at the bottom of it. It chanced once that there had been an unusual run of bad luck in the parish, most of the farmers had had serious losses among their cattle; and, as a consequence, the hatred against K*** was more active than ordinary. The climax came, by his next-door neighbour, who had ^ two young horses making up for Lincoln April fair, finding them both dead the very morning he was about to set out with them. The obvious suspicion of poison, wilful or accidental, never entered his mind ; he was sure K*** had accom- plished the deed with that evil eye of his. So he went to a person learned in forbidden lore, popu- larly called a " wise man," who told him that if he cut out the heart of one of the dead animals, stuck it full of pins, and boiled it in a pot, the man who had the evil eye would present himself at the door, and knock loudly for admittance ; but was on no account to be let in, for if he once crossed the threshold the charm would fail, The

man did as he was ordered, and used to assert that K*** loudly knocked at the door, and tried every means to effect an entrance ; but in vain, all means of ingress had been securely fastened. The result was that the wizard was so badly scalded, that he could not work for several months. The squire hinted that the east wind had given him the rheumatism, but the people knew far better.

Those who are not in daily intercourse with the peasantry can hardly be made to believe or comprehend the hold that charms, witchcraft, wise-men, and other like relics of heathendom have upon the people. EDWARD PEACOCK.

Bottesford, Brigg.

HERALDIC COLOURS INDICATED BY LINES.

(2 nd S. i. 354.)

These lines were invented by Father Silvester Petra Sancta S. J., and are used in his treatise on heraldry, entitled

" Tessera Gentilities, a Silvestre Petra Sancta, Romano Societatis Jesu, ex legibus Fecialium descriptaj." Rom., fo., 1G38, pp. 678.

At page 59. he gives the following explanation of the lines used to express the tinctures :

" Sed ut monuerim etiam fore, vt soluis beneficio sculp- ture, in tesseris gentilitijs, quas cum occasio feret, pro- ponam frequenter, turn iconis turn arose, sen metallum seu colorem, Lector absque errore deprehendere possit, Schemata id manifestum reddent ; etenim quod punctim incidetur, id aureum erit: argenteum, quod fuerit expers omnis sculpturse: puniceum, quod cffisim et ductis ab summo ad imum lineolis exarabitur: eyaneum, quod de- lineabitur ex transverse: prasinum vero, quod oblique ab angulo dextero secabitur; violaceum, quod oblique pariter scindetur, sed ab supero angulo lajvo ; nigrum quod can- cellatim et in modum seu crucularum seu plagularum intercidetur."

Gibbon Bluemantle, who had a passion for turn- ing everything into Latin verse, explains them thus : " Aurum puncta dabunt ; Argentum parmaq; simplex ;

Fascia Cserulreum, palaris linea Rubrum ;

Obliquus tractus Viridem ; Nigrumq; colorem

Transversum filum dabit et palare vicissim ;

Tractibus obliquis sit Purpura nota sinistris."

Or the fourth verse thus :

" Ductus transversi dant et perpendiculares."

Petra Sancta was born at Rome at the end of the year 1590 ; admitted into the noviciate of the Society of Jesus, Dec. 31, 1608. lie was after- wards president of the college at Loretto, and died at Rome, May 8, 1647. (See an account of him in Southwell's BiUiotlieca Scriptorum Soc. Jesu, p. 471.) THOMPSON COOPER.

Cambridge.

The use of dots to mark gold, and of lines to mark colours, was the invention of Father SU-