welcomed at Rome 204 B.C., with unusual pomp;[1] while the basilica of St. Clement, perhaps, after the Pantheon, the most interesting ecclesiastical relic in that city, is built over a temple dedicated to Mithra. In his Customs and Lore of Modern Greece,[2] Mr. Rennell Rodd tells us that a church dedicated to the Virgin of Fecundity has been shown to occupy the site of a temple of Eilythuia, the deity who presided over childbirth, while the Twelve Apostles have succeeded to the altar of the Twelve Gods. Professor Rhys and other authorities assert with good reason that our own cathedral of St. Paul stands on the same high ground where a temple to the Celtic god Lud was raised; and so one might go on quoting examples, wherein are more than allegories; even unbroken evidences of the pagan foundation which, itself resting on barbaric bedrock, upholds the structures of classic and christian faiths.
In my former address some examples of survivals of superstition among the uncultured, both here and abroad, were given. They were drawn from newspaper reports, as best verifying what one sought to maintain in proof of the living power of folklore. Did time allow, and did the subject demand it, there would be no difficulty in presenting a fresh selection gathered from the same popular source during the current year. There was the incident at Long Sutton where a farmer's wife assaulted an old woman named Perkins for bewitching her cream and her hens, so that the one couldn't be churned, and the others wouldn't lay.[3] That was settled by a payment of £4 to the injured bewitcher. There was the curious evidence at the inquest on a drowned woman at Spalding that the device of floating a loaf of bread containing quicksilver
- ↑ Gregorovius: Hist. of Rome, i. 90; Mommsen, iii. 115.
- ↑ Ch. v.
- ↑ Daily Chronicle, 8 June, 1895.
