Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/329

Rh As to twins, a strong sympathy is believed to exist between them, so that what gives pain or pleasure to the one is suffered or enjoyed by the other as well. Should one die, however, the other, though weakly before, will at once improve in health and strength, the life and vital energy of his fellow being added to his own.

This curious belief recalls to the memory how, in Spenser’s “Faerie Queene,” Agapé, the mother of three brave knights,

visits the three Fates that she may learn the length of her sons’ lives, and finding the thread of their existence

finding also that no prayer of hers could avail to lengthen their allotted span, she asked and obtained the following request:

While speaking of twins, I may perhaps mention that in Sussex a “left twin,” that is a child who has outlived its fellow twin, is thought to have the power of curing the thrush by blowing three times successively into the patient’s mouth, provided this same patient be of opposite sex to the operator.

There is a strong tendency in the “North Countrie” to connect the past and the present, external nature and the history and destiny of man. Thus the aurora borealis is still well known there as “the Derwentwater Lights,” in consequence of having been particularly red and vivid at the time of that unfortunate nobleman’s execution. The death of Louis XVI. was