Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/375

Rh There is some jargon about the mystery of numbers in the Man in the Moon. Phœbe (moon) says,

and she shows how her phases are regulated with respect to this wondrous numeral. Somewhat later we learn that Endymion sees how the signs in their triplicities sympathise with the elements from which our bodies take their "complexions," natures, and numbers; so that what men on earth call fortune is really stellar influence for evil or for good. The treble Trine that makes up the holy theologic nine—the nine orders of angels—is referred to in the same poem, as also in the very curious lines in which Drayton commended the Polyolbion of 1612 to his loyal countrymen by praising the rising hope of England. These are so little known that I think I may give them at full length without apology, although they be but weak in yield of folk-lore.

A sublunary mode of divination, osteomancy, which has already been discussed before the Folk-Lore Society by Mr. Thoms, is said by Drayton to be rife in that little England beyond Wales, the Flemish colony in Pembrokeshire.