When a light is brought into a room, the person who brings it in wishes those already in the room "good evening."
No. 13 in Richard Wagner's life: "The composer was born in 1813; his Tannhauser failed in Paris, March 13th, 1861; he died in the 13th year of his married life, and on the 13th of Feb. 1883. His name contained 13 letters."—Egyetertes (Concord) Journal.
Lore of the rebounding shot: Paul Kinizsy is a semi-mythical hero in Hungarian history, who distinguished himself in the wars against the Turks. After his death a marble slab was erected over him, and, according to the popular tradition, a Turkish soldier, recognising the grave, discharged his musket at the slab, and was killed by the rebounding shot. (Turkish saying, "Kinizsy was the terror of the Turk even in his death.")
(At Peterborough we are told that when the cathedral was occupied by Cromwell's soldiers, one of them having charged his musket in order to destroy the four evangelists in the roof above the altar was struck blind by the rebound of his own shot.[1])
Styes may be cured by some one spitting into the eye of the afflicted. This superstition has more than once caused a difference of opinion, when the person operated upon was ignorant of this branch of medical lore.
Execution in Serajavo, the capital of Bosnia, Nov. 27th, 1882: "A Bosnian gendarme being shot for desertion to the enemy, the mob crowded round his corpse, and everyone tried to get a rag or tatter of his clothes still smoking with his blood, for such pieces of cloth are considered infallible charms against being wounded on the field of battle. The week before this execution two brigands were shot in Banjaluka; the original sentence was hanging, but the military commandant of the place altered it to being shot in deference to the culprits' religion, they being Mohammedans, and according to that belief he who dies on the gallows cannot enter Mohammed's paradise."—Concord Journal.
The origin of Easter Eggs: The historian Ælius Lampridius narrates that on the day when Marcus Aurelius was born, a hen belonging to his mother laid an egg all covered with red spots, which was
- ↑ Cf. "The Knight and the Necromancer," Gesta Romanorum.
