Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/233



ELIEF in the esoteric properties of stones and gems is now, I think, but very loosely held in England. Here and there we may have it somewhat incredulously hinted that good or bad fortune is connected with this or that particular specimen of precious crystal (the Koh-i-nûr for instance), and that opals are pierres de malheur is a fancy that not infrequently crops up; but it is certain that cost and beauty are with most people the only attributes of gems; and it may be suspected that the most superstitious of fair ones would rather "witch the world" in opals than suffer any eclipse for lack of them. One reason, I suppose, why the folk-lore of gems has lost its vigour is that it probably never gained good root-hold in the soil that would best have fostered it. Supposed influence of diamonds or of rubies had but little to do with the every- day experiences of men and women of the class which down to this age of universal schooling has unlearned even less than it has learned. It is there that the natural life of folk-lore is sustained—folk-lore which exists in independence of it is like a gathered flower which, at best, soon becomes nought "to the general," but a curiosity in a hortus siccus.

Drayton has considerately embalmed much of the creed of his time concerning gems as a curative, prophylactic, and talismanic agents. Verily, as Dr. Thomas Browne remarks, "he must have more heads than Rome had hills that makes out half of those virtues ascribed unto stones."

The nymphs of the Muses Elysium are our poet's mouth-pieces, and they hymn the results of his reading to Apollo:—

No gems from rocks, seas, running streams (Their numbers let us muster),