Indians, but all frustrated, till a fellow more bold than the rest, casing himself in leather, impenetrable to the bite of the serpent or his guards, and watching a convenient opportunity, surprised and killed him, tearing the jewel from his head, which the conjurer has kept hid for many years in some place unknown to all but two women.” (1765, Timberlake’s Memoirs, p. 48.)
Holy Innocents.—“Thus many people in this land” [England] “are afraid to begin a good worke vpon the same day that Innocents day fell on the yeare before, because they held the circumstance of time as a necessary concurrent to prosperous proceedings.” (1625, J. Iackson, The Originall of Vnbeliefe, etc., c. xv, p. 115.)
St. M. Magdalene’s Day.—“And the Scottish nation, . . . would sometimes have fought with the English vpon any festivall day in the yeare sooner than vpon Magdalene day, as fearing lest the ill happe, which it brought them, had not been expiated with the reiterated penetentiall sacrifices of many widowes teares.” (Ibid., c. xviii, p. 157.)
Swallows’ Nests.—“To robbe a swallowes nest, built in a firehouse, is from some old bell-dames Catechisms, held as a more fearefull sacrilege, than to steale a chalace out of a church.” (Ibid., c. xix, p. I77.)
Fern Seed.—“It was my happe since I vndertooke the ministerie, to question an ignorant soule, . . . what he saw, or heard, when he watcht the falling of the Ferne-seed at an vnseasonable and suspitious houre. Why (quoth he) doe you thinke that the devill hath ought to doe with that good seed? No; it is in the keeping of the King of Faynes, and he, I know, will doe me no harme, although I should watch agaene; yet had he utterly forgotten this King’s name, vpon whose kindness he so presumed, vntil I remembered it vnto him out of my reading in Huon of Burdeaux. And having made this answer, he beganne to pose me thus: Sr, you are a schollar, and I am none. Tell me what sai’d the Angell to our Lady? or what conference had our Lady with her cousin Elizabeth concerning the birth of St. John the Baptist? As if his intention had been to make bystanders belleue, that he knew somewhat more on this point, than was written in such bookes, as I vse to reade. Howbeit the meaning of his riddle I quickly conceived, and he confessed to be this: that the Angell did foretell John Baptist should be born at that very instant on which the Ferne-seede, at other times invisible, did fall; intimating further (as farre as I could then perceiue) that this saint of God had some extraordinary value from the time or circumstance of his birth.”(Ibid., c. xix, pp. 178-9.)
South-running Water.—“This vpon mine owne knowledge and observation I can relate: of two, sent more than a mile, after sun-
