MYSTERIOUS FORMS AND SIGNS.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Dendy, Walter Cooper
The monk stood dumb before the darken’d shrine:
With faltering hand uprais’d the cross on high,
To chase that dismal omen from the sky.”
The wonders told me by one of my reverend ancestors of the “Aurora,” years ago, are so circumstantial, and withal so prophetic, that well might she, like the Lady of Branxholme, believe that “spirits were riding the northern blast.”
Speed repeats a record in the “Ypodigma Neustriæ” of “Walsingham,” that the rebellion of the Percies was preceded by spectral battles in Bedfordshire, “sundry monsters of divers colours and shapes issuing from woods,” &c.
Remember, it is a matter of history, that phantasms were seen by numbers in Whitehall during the Commonwealth. And the wondrous narrative of The Just Devil of Woodstock, which was writ in 1649, by Master Widows, the learned clerk of Woodstock, “who each day put in writing what he heard from the mouths of the commissioners, and such things as they told to have befallen them the night before; therein keeping to their own words:”—the coney-stealers were so alarmed that they left their ferrets beyond Rosamond’s well. And this he saith also, that “At Saint James’s the Devil so joaled the centinals against the sides of the Queen’s Chappell doors, that some of them fell sick upon it, and others, not taking warning by it, killed one outright; and all other such dreadful things those that inhabited the royal houses have been affrighted with.”
I remember not the source from which I gleaned some mysteries of “The Lyffe of Virgilius,” a professor of the occult sciences, alluded to, I believe, in Gower’s “Confessio Amantis,” and identified with the Mantuan poet,—a magus, who “dyd many marvayles in hys lyfe tyme by whychcrafte and nygramancye thorowgh the helpe of the devyls of hell.” One of these marvels I well recollect. This Virgil was cut up, salted and pickled, at his own request, in a barrel; and when the emperor discovered him, he slew Virgilius’ man, and “then sawe the emperoure and all his folke a nakyd chylde, three tymes rennynge aboute the barell, sayinge the wordes, ‘Cursed be the tyme that ye cam ever here;’ and with those wordes vanyshed the chylde away.”
Then in the associations of lucky days and influential colours, is there not often a striking truth?
Sir Kenelm Digby, writes Master Aubrey, among other wonders of his “Miscellanies,” was born, fought, and conquered at Scanderoon, and died,—on the 11th day of June.
In a book, printed in 1687, we learn that the fourteenth of October was a lucky day for the princes of England. On it William the Conqueror won the crown: Edward III. landed: and James II. was born.
In the eventful life of Napoleon, the number eighteen was associated with so many important events, that you will scarce deny something more than casualty. Such were, the engagement from which he assumed the consulate: that of Torlina on the river Beresina: the battles of Leipsic and of Waterloo: which were all fought on the 18th of the month. On that day also his corpse was landed on St. Helena: and on the 18th also the “Belle Poule” sailed with his remains for France.
As of the Emir of the East, green was the favourite colour of the “Daoine Shi,” or men of peace, in Scotland; and the Druids waved a green standard, as we read in the Scandana, when they fought with the Fingallians. From some cause, perchance from their adoption of it, this colour was fatal to the clan “Grahame.” The Highlanders believe to this day that the field of Killicrankie was lost because Dundee was habited in green uniform; and an old Græme, when his horse stumbled at a fox-chace, referred his disaster to his green whip-cord.
Do not so many sequences prove a consequence?
Ev. You do not mince the matter, Astrophel; indeed, from the boldness of your display, I might think you had kissed the blarney-stone, by which charm, the Irish believe you will ever after be free from bashfulness.
But coincidence, and the natural leaning of the mind to superstition, will unfold all your mysteries: and these your illustrations (I cannot term them arguments,) are even weaker than the former. Remember, that the mind of some beings is impressible as the yielding wax, and especially, if under the constant influence of other minds; which, as continual dropping will wear away a stone, first tends to bewilder, and, at length, to convince. And as to the special trifles to which you allude, although it is certain a sparrow falls not to the ground without a Providence, and the hairs of our head are all numbered, I cannot believe that the Creator will thus alter a gigantic law for an atom.