lighter tint. This is due to the different composition of the ancients, which was chrysocolla, (carbonate of copper,) verdigris, nitrum, (carbonate of soda,) rubbed down in a copper mortar with a copper pestle; this solder was called "Santerna." In the Mertons Schaafhausen collection is an onyx intaglio, the back of which has been completely hollowed out into the form of a bowl, for the reception of a strong poison, the gem being worked so thin that it might easily be crushed by a sharp bite. (To be continued.)

OMENS CONNECTED WITH THE HUMAN

BEING.

Ir may seem incongruous, immediately after writing down this heading to our present paper, to proceed to speak of Omens connected with the cuckoo, the great black woodpecker, the swallow, the pee-wit, or what not, among birds or other animals. But it will only continue to wear the seeming of incongruity to us, as continuing to pass without more direct notice what we listened to from James Grimm's lips in our last paper, touching the fact that a part at least of the time-old regard to AnimalOmens proceeds from the universally current stories concerning the transformation of human beings, in the way of punishment for some misdeed they had been guilty of, into this or that particular kind of animal. Mr. Cavallius, with his usual clearness, adds a few words in the way of explanation to the same general statement as that of Grimm's. 'Conceived of as a mythic being,' he says, 'the body, in the case of man, as in that of other mythic nature-existences, was simply an accidental means or form of external manifestation. This outer form or case (hamn) was consequently open to change and subjected to the influence of other beings of like kind but superior power, which might chance to be either good or evil. Were the active beings good, or of the number of the gods, the transformation they operated in the outer form of the human being was, most frequently, a punishment for some transgression, or for the manifestation of some evil disposition. Förvandling was the name applied in the case of such a metamorphosis. The fundamental notion in the whole of the popular belief herein involved is,' he continues, 'purely mythic, and goes back to the earliest period. Not but what the legends in question have experienced a change in form, and the gods of the pagans assumed a new guise, derived from medieval times;-for now they enact their parts under the names of Our Lord and Saint Peter, or else the Virgin Mary.'

One or two of the instances he quotes may not be altogether uninteresting.

'The Virgin Mary had a thievishly-disposed waiting-maid. One day

VOL. 7.

20

PART 39.

the girl stole a reel of red silk and a pair of scissors out of her mistress's work-basket. The silk she hid in her bosom, and when the Virgin questioned her, she replied she knew nothing about it. So our Lady struck her a blow, and on the instant she was changed into a swallow. And one proof is that to this day the swallow bears the stolen silk on her breast before her, and the scissors in her tail; and this is her doom besides, that never more shall she light on the green bough. And more; -sentenced to fly ever betwixt the sky and the earth, her song is ever and only

"You stole my silk, my scissors too,"
The Virgin said. I did not rue,
But swore I'd not, by salt and bread,
And brought my doom on my own head,

On my own he-e-e-ad.'

Again :-'When our Lord and Saint Peter were once walking to and fro in the earth they came to a court (a farm house and its premises). The farmer was at home, but there was no mistress anywhere about. Our Lord therefore asked what had become of his wife. Gone out,' said he, shortly enough. But it was a lie all the same; for he had himself taken her life and hid her body under a hay-stack. So when our Lord saw his evil disposition He changed him into a gowk. And still, to this very day, that bird retains the murderous disposition; for from being a gowk he transforms himself into a sparrow-hawk,* and the first bird he catches and kills is the little Titling which has been his foster-mother and reared him from a nestling. Nay, it is even said that if anyone molests the cuckoo, he becomes so savage as to spit out his very heart's blood; and that is the cause of the red spots on the flowers and leaves. As the gowk flies abroad his ceaseless cry is, "Gick ut! gick ut!" (gone out! gone out!) and that lasts all the while till hay time. But when he sets eye on the first hay-stack, he holds his tongue; for, as you may suppose, he is afraid then that it will be discovered how he took the life of his own housewife.'

Now, it may be perfectly true that all these legends or stories-and the number of them is literally legion-may have originated, in the dim. childhood's time of our Indo-European race, in some fanciful expression, some figure of speech, or parable from nature; but it would be none the less true that, once originated, they would have that species of substance or reality with which imagination invests its own creatures for the young whether in literal years or in the ages of man's history. And one important element, and fully as real and true to the human child-mind as the assumed fact of the transformation, would be the recollection by

*This metamorphosis is devoutly believed in still in many parts of the North of England. The Rev. H. B. Tristram mentioned to the author, about three years since, a recent case in which a gamekeeper, whom he met with a cuckoo he had newly killed, avowed that he had done so because, 'as everybody knew,' the cuckoo changed into a sparrow-hawk in the winter. It is possibly this same instance which is referred to by Mr. Kelly, Indo-Eur. Folk-lore, p. 105, note.

the transformed human being of its former human feelings, thoughts, experience, and prescience. That recollection, it should be remarked, stands out prominently in the two legends we have just translated. It stands out as prominently, or more so, in all others; and especially so in the forms of classical origin. Witness the stories of Philomela, Tereus, Alcyone, and so forth.

The cuckoo, the swallow, the black woodpecker, the pee-wit, then, and all the other host of creatures which were human beings once, which, when human beings in that mythic age, had the mythic gifts common to other besides the human creatures that lived then, though transformed had not lost their gifts; on the contrary, they retained them still, enhanced, if anything, by the change, that is to say, by the addition of the gifts of the creatures they were changed into, and so their appearance, and their actions, and their utterances, were all wise and prophetic. The creatures seen or heard were animals of omen; but still in the main, the omens were omens originally connected with the human being.

But perhaps the phrase, 'Omens connected with the human being,' may itself seem to require a word of comment or illustration. It is easily given. Why, when a person sneezes, should another standing by exclaim, 'God bless you?' Why, on a shiver or shudder running through a person's frame, should there be a saying, as I have heard in Essex a score of times, 'Somebody is walking over my grave with bright buttons on his coat'? Or more soberly, as in Brand, (iii. 92,) 'a person being suddenly taken with a shivering is a sign that some one has just then walked over the spot of their future grave'? Or, as in Thiele, (p. 166,) 'When a cold shiver creeps over one, it is said that death is stalking over his grave'? And so too in Sweden, Flanders, France? Why, if the right eye tickles or itches, should it be said it is a sign of gladness, if the left, of sorrow? Why, if small white spots come in the nails, should it be affirmed, in Sweden, that if it be on the right hand it denotes good report, if upon the left, misrepresentation? In Denmark and the Rhineland, that each spot betokens a lie to be told? In Germany, that the spots betoken luck? In England, that they signify gifts? Or these ; -If a man's chin itches, news will soon be heard of a bearded corpse (the death of a man); if a girl's chin itches, the death of a young man will be heard of; if the right palm itches, it means money to be received, if the left, money to be paid; if the nose itches, there is news to be heard; if one's ears ring, folks are talking about him—the sound in the right ear denoting praise or commendation, in the left the contrary; if one promises and sneezes thereupon, the promise is sure to be kept; if a man, on leaving the house on any given errand, finds himself compelled to return to the house, he must needs defer the business till another day, as otherwise it will be sure to turn out very badly;-all these from a page of Thiele's Popular Danish Superstitions,' while Brand, Choice Notes, Henderson, Cavallius, Grimm, would furnish out a list so long that few would care to read it, all being omens connected with the human being.

And yet we have not so much as hinted at dreams, Scottish wraiths, or Northumbrian wafts, presentiments, and all the varieties of second sight and premonition, or the powers and gifts of the Old Norse framsynir and forspár.

In a few words:-there can be no question-the thing is self-evident as soon as our attention is fairly directed upon the subject—that there are almost more omens connected with the doings, sensations, experiences, perceptions-but always involuntary, by the superstition-of the human being, than in any connection with all other beings put together. Every individual man, woman, or child, is, at least potentially, a walking magazine of Omens.

But before seeking to account for this fact, or indeed for so much as an illustration of it, it is not superfluous to remark that there is an element of perplexity involved in the inquiry, which is scarcely, if at all, to be met with, or even looked for in the like inquiries touching Animal Omens. What I mean is that there is something, in some of the more striking divisions of the subject-the wraith or waft premonition, second-sight phenomena, for instance-which assumes an aspect of reality so real that it is hard to relegate it altogether to the realms of superstition, over-trow, or even delusion. Mr. Henderson's premonition story,* of which I have also heard from another source, is a very remarkable instance; and others which have occurred to personal friends of my own are fully as remarkable. One that I am at liberty to mention, and which was not only told me by word of mouth by one in the presence of a second of the other two persons concerned, but which was also written out for me by the narrator, is, as briefly as I can tell it, as follows. Two ladies, both young and unmarried, plan on Saturday afternoon, with other friends, an excursion of pleasure for the ensuing Monday. On the Sunday one of the two (whom I shall designate as S.) to the great surprise of the others, signifies her inability to join the party. After much remonstrance, and some persuasion, she eventually tells her sister that she will be obliged to leave the place at which they were staying, on the morning of the proposed expedition, in order to nurse her brother H., who, it would prove, had been thrown from his pony on the morning on that very day in which she was telling about it, and had broken his thigh in the fall. She even indicated the point at which the accident would be mentioned as having happened, and the manner of it. Early the next morning the-by S.-expected messenger arrived, brought confirmation of her prevision, and summoned her to go and nurse her brother instead of joining the pleasure party as projected.

Another case, in which all the parties were intimately known to me, runs thus. Mr. N., a medical man, is in attendance on a confirmed invalid, and is by her sister informed of the death of a lady he had some years before been on most intimate terms with. Seeming to be almost astounded with the intelligence, he hurriedly asks when she died, and

* Folk-lore of the Northern Counties, p. 296.

having been told, leaves the room and the house with none of the usual formalities of leave-taking or even civility. A week elapses before he visits the patient again, and then both he and his informant begin mutual apologies the one for abruptly and unthinkingly mentioning news so distressing, the other for rudeness, at least abruptness, in going away as he had done. But,' he continued, 'I was so much affected by what you told me, and the date annexed, that I have been to London since to verify both the fact and the date. Miss G- is dead, did die that day, and at such and such an hour in the evening. At that very hour I was going out of the front door of my house, and I saw her, as plainly as I see you, among the shrubs a little on one side of the door. I spoke to her, but there was no answer. I advanced to touch her, but she receded, and as I pressed on she disappeared.'

Two such cases as these, not to mention others I have personal knowledge of, or others yet which have been published, and which are to the full as remarkable (perhaps almost more so, some of them), make one hesitate as to the origin or explanation of Omens connected with the human being, so far as such origin or explanation may be assumed a priori to rest upon the same grounds as the account already given of Animal Omens.

Passing by all attempts at explanation on or of these undoubtedly mysterious cases as not to be made, at least at present, it may not be out of place to remark, as Mr. Cavallius does, that it would have been strange, seeing how powerful imagination has been in the child-ages of our race in investing every object in creation with a kind of mythic life alike active and sentient, even intelligent and prophetic, if the human being, with all the distinction consequent on his superior attributes, had not also been credited with the possession of a mythic nature and of powers equally marvellous and mysterious belonging to it. Thus, one such notion is that man, in the early morning of his existence in the world, lived a loftier, nobler kind of life than now, and looked abroad on all things in life and nature with the prophet-gaze of a seer. One old Swedish legend tells how men in those old days looked clearly on to the day which should end their span of earthly life. It was at this time it once befell that a man had to repair a fence, and he used for the purpose only alder sticks and bands of birch bark. For he said to himself—

'Alder-sticks and birchen bark
Will last the year ere I am stark.'.

But God came by and looked at him as he wrought.
him, 'That's but poor work, man!'

Then He said to

'Good enough for the purpose,' was the answer, for I have but a year longer to live.' So the order of God was given that for the future man should not know the days and years of his life.

This may perhaps help us forward a step or two in the way of seeking for illustration of the very prevalent notions, that no nation or period