nations and solemn ordeals. Cornelius Agrippa speaks of it as thus employed, and in Hudibras we find mention of—
The oracle of sieve and shears,
That turns as certain as the spheres.
There is a record of its use in the North of England in the 16th century. The private book of Dr. Swift, who was Vicar-General and official Principal of the diocese of Durham from 1561 to 1577, contains “A confession to be made by Allice Swan, wife of Robert Swan, in S. Nicole’s church at Newcastle. for turning the ridle and shears, with certen others, after the minister upon Sonday after the sermon.”
The practice has descended in Germany almost to our own day. It is thus carried on in Mecklenburg. They take a sieve that has been inherited from relations, lay it on the rim, open a pair of inherited scissors, and stick the points so deep into the rim of the sieve that it may be supported by them. Two persons then, of opposite sexes, go with the sieve into a perfectly dark place, hold the middle finger of the right hand under the ring of the scissors, and so raise up the sieve. One then inquires, “In the name, &c. I ask of thee; tell me truly, has Hans, Fritz, Peter, done it?” On naming the guilty one, the ring slides off, the sieve falls to the ground, and the thief is detected.[1]
In the passage above cited, from Potter’s Grecian Antiquities, he says that the vulgar in many parts of England have an abominable practice of using a riddle and a pair of shears in divination. A book and key, however, appear commonly to have superseded the sieve and shears in this country. When Reginald Scott speaks of this species of divination (in his Discovery of Witchcraft, A.D. 1599), it is with a Psalter and a key; and in a case brought before the Thames Police, in 1832, the Bible was used. One Mr. White, it seems, had lost some property, and agreed with the neighbours to resort to the Bible and key in discovery of the thief. They placed the street-door key on the fiftieth Psalm, closed the volume, and fastened it tightly with a string. The Bible and key were then suspended to a nail, and the name of Mrs. Blucher (the person on whom suspicion had
- ↑ Thorpe’s Mythology, vol. iii. p. 161.
