not daring to utter it for fear of breaking the spell. Some such superstition has doubtless prevailed, more or less, at some period through the length and breadth of England. My kind contributor, Mrs. Lambert, has forwarded to me the following extract from a curious old journal and account-book, kept by a Lincolnshire gentleman, the uncle of her grandfather, in the year 1754:—
| £ | s. | d. | |
A poor woman at Barton, who had fits, towards buying a silver ring, 1d.
|
00 | 00 | 01 |
Very different is the treatment of epilepsy in the North of Scotland, as made known to us by Dr. Mitchell, in his deeply interesting paper on the Superstitions of the North-west Highlands and Islands of Scotland.[1] For a cure of this disease, he informs us that a literal downright sacrifice to a nameless but secretly acknowledged power is practised there: “On the spot where the epileptic first falls, a black cock[2] is buried alive, along with a lock of the patient’s hair and some parings of his nails. I have seen at least three epileptic idiots for whom this is said to have
- ↑ Edinburgh: Mill and Co. 1862.
- ↑ Black cocks have been extensively used in magical incantations and in sacrifices to the devil. A French receipt for raising the devil runs as follows: Take a black cock under your left arm, and go at midnight to where four cross-roads meet. Then cry three times, “Poule noir!” or “Poule noir à vendre!” or else utter “Robert” nine times; and the devil will appear, take the cock, and leave you a handful of money. The famous Jewish banker, Samuel Bernard, who died in 1789, leaving an enormous property, had a favourite black cock, which was regarded by many as uncanny, and as unpleasantly connected with the amassing of his fortune. The bird died a day or two before his master.
Further, a black cock sings in the Scandinavian Niflheim, or “land of gloom,” and the signal of the dawn of Ragnarok, “the great day of arousing,” is to be the crowing of a gold-coloured cock. Guibert de Nogent writes (De vita sua, l. r. c. 26): “A certain clerk lived in the country of Beauvais; he was a scribe, and I knew him. Once he had a conversation with another clerk, a sorcerer, in the castle of Breteuil, who said to him, ‘If it were worth my while, I would show you how you might daily make money without having to work for it.’ The other having asked him how this could be accomplished, the sorcerer replied, ‘You must make a sacrifice to the citizen of hell, that is, the devil.’ ‘What victim should I have to offer?’ asked the other. ‘A cock,’ replied the sorcerer, ‘but it must be a cock born of an egg laid of a Monday in the month of March. After having roasted the cock at the beginning of night, take it with you, still on the spit, and come with me to the nearest fishpond,’ ” &c.—S. B. G.
