HISTORICAL SIMILITUDES.
In Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic is narrated the following incident:—
A bishop’s indiscretion, however, neutralized the apostolic blows of the major (Charles the Hammer). The pagan Radbod had already immersed one of his royal legs in the baptismal font when a thought struck him. “Where are my dead forefathers at present?” he said, turning suddenly upon Bishop Wolfrau. “In hell, with all other unbelievers,” was the imprudent answer. “Mighty well,” replied Radbod, removing his leg; “then will I rather feast with my ancestors in the halls of Woden than dwell with your little starveling band of Christians in heaven.” Entreaties and threats were unavailing. The Frisian declined positively a rite which was to cause an eternal separation from his buried kindred, and he died as he had lived, a heathen.
Kingsley, in his Hypatia, in completing the history of the Goth Wulf, after his settlement in Spain, writes as follows:—
Wulf died as he had lived, a heathen. Placidia, who loved him well—as she loved all righteous and noble souls—had succeeded once in persuading him to accept baptism. Adolf himself acted as one of his sponsors; and the old warrior was in the act of stepping into the font, when he turned suddenly to the bishop and asked, “Where were the souls of his heathen ancestors?” “In hell,” replied the worthy prelate. Wulf drew back from the font, and threw his bear-skin cloak around him.... He would prefer, if Adolf had no objection, to go to his own people. And so he died unbaptized, and went to his own.
This has suggested the query whether Mr. Kingsley uses his privilege as a novelist to make a distant historical event subserve the purposes of fiction, or whether this curious incident occurred.
But Francis Parkman in his Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, notes a corresponding unwillingness on the part of the Indians to separate from their own kindred and people:—
The body cared for, he next addressed himself to the soul. “This life is short and very miserable. It matters little whether we live or die.” The patient remained silent, or grumbled his dissent. The Jesuit, after enlarging for a time in broken Huron on the brevity and nothingness of mortal weal or woe, passed next to the joys of heaven and the pains of hell, which he set forth with his best rhetoric. His pictures of infernal fires and torturing devils were readily comprehended, if the listener had consciousness enough to comprehend anything; but with respect to the advantages of the French paradise he was slow of conviction. “I wish to go where my relations and ancestors have gone,” was a common reply. “Heaven is a good place for Frenchmen,” said another; “but I wish to be among Indians, for the French will give me nothing to eat when I get there.” Often the patient was stolidly silent; sometimes he was hopelessly perverse and contradictory. Again nature triumphed over grace. “Which will you choose,” demanded the priest of a dying woman, “heaven or hell?” “Hell, if my children are there, as you say,” returned the mother. “Do they hunt in heaven, or make war, or go to feasts?” asked an anxious inquirer. “Oh, no!” replied the father. “Then,” returned the querist, “I will not go. It is not good to be lazy.” But above all other obstacles was the dread of starvation in the regions of the blest. Nor when the dying Indian had been induced at last to express a desire for Paradise was it an easy matter to bring him to a due contrition for his sins; for he would deny with indignation that he had ever committed any. When at length, as sometimes happened, all these difficulties gave way, and the patient had been brought to what seemed to his instructor a fitting frame for baptism, the priest, with contentment at his heart, brought water in a cup or in the hollow of his hand, touched his forehead with the mystic drop, and snatched him from an eternity of woe. But the convert, even after his baptism, did not always manifest a satisfactory spiritual condition. “Why did you baptize that Iroquois?” asked one of the dying neophytes, speaking of the prisoner recently tortured; “he will get to heaven before us, and, when he sees us coming, he will drive us out.”
HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF.
Herodotus tells us (Book III. 118) that after the conspirator Intaphernes and his family had been imprisoned and held for execution by order of Darius, the wife of the condemned man constantly presented herself before the royal palace exhibiting every demonstration of grief. As she regularly continued this conduct, her frequent appearance at length excited the compassion of Darius, who thus addressed her by a messenger: “Woman, King Darius offers you the liberty of any individual of your family whom you may most desire to preserve.” After some deliberation with herself she made this reply: “If the king will grant me the life of any one of my family, I choose my brother in preference to the rest.” Her determination greatly astonished the king; he sent to her therefore a second message to this effect: “The king desires to know why you have thought proper to pass over your children and your husband, and to preserve your brother, who is certainly a more remote connection than your children, and cannot be so dear to you as your husband.” She answered: “O king! if it please the deity, I may have another husband; and if I be deprived of these I may have other children; but as my parents are both dead, it is certain that I can have no other brother.” The answer appeared to Darius very judicious; indeed he was so well pleased with it that he not only gave the woman the life of her brother, but also pardoned her eldest son.
A passage in the Antigone of Sophocles embodies the same singular sentiment. Creon forbade the rites of sepulture to Polynices, after the duel with his brother Eteocles, in which they were mutually slain, and decreed immediate death to any one who should dare to bury him. Antigone, their sister, was detected in the act of burial, and was condemned to be buried alive for her pious care. In her dangerous situation she goes on to say:—
And thus, my Polynices, for my care
Of thee, I am rewarded, and the good
Alone shall praise me; for a husband dead,
Nor, had I been a mother, for my children
Would I have dared to violate the laws—
Another husband and another child
Might sooth affliction; but, my parents dead,
A brother’s loss could never be repaired.
A story of analogous character told by an oriental to Miss Rogers, is related in her book Domestic Life in Palestine, as follows:—
When Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Mahomet Ali, ruled in Palestine, he sent men into all the towns and villages to gather together a large army. Then a certain woman of Serfurich sought Ibrahim Pasha at Akka, and came into his presence bowing herself before him, and said: “O my lord, look with pity on thy servant, and hear my prayer. A little while ago there were three men in my house, my husband, my brother, and my eldest son. But now behold, they have been carried away to serve in your army, and I am left with my little ones without a protector. I pray you grant liberty to one of these men, that he may remain at home.” And Ibrahim had pity on her and said: “O woman, do you ask for your husband, for your son, or for your brother?” And she said: “Oh, my lord, give me my brother.” And he answered: “How is this, O woman, do you prefer a brother to a husband or a son?” The woman, who was renowned for her wit and readiness of speech, replied in a blank verse impromptu:—
“If it be God’s will that my husband perish in your service,
I am still a woman, and God may lead me to another husband:
If on the battle-field my first-born son should fall,
I have still my younger ones, who will in God’s time be like unto him.
But oh! my lord, if my only brother should be slain,
I am without remedy—for my father is dead and my mother is old,
And where should I look for another brother?”
And Ibrahim was much pleased with the words of the woman, and said: “O, woman, happy above many is thy brother; he shall be free for thy word’s sake, and thy husband and thy son shall be free also.” Then the woman could not speak for joy and gladness. And Ibrahim said: “Go in peace; let it not be known that I have spoken with you this day.” Then she rose, and went her way to her village, trusting in the promise of the Pasha. After three days, her husband, and son, and brother returned unto her, saying: “We are free from service by order of the Pasha, but this matter is a mystery to us.” And all the neighbors marvelled greatly. But the woman held her peace, and this story did not become known until Ibrahim’s departure from Akka, after the overthrow of the Egyptian goverment in Syria, in 1840.
What the husband and the son thought of wifely and motherly affection when the mystery of their deliverance was cleared up, is not reported.
THE TWO STATESMEN.
Hume says (History of England):—
A little before he (Wolsey) expired (28th November, 1530) he addressed himself in the following words to Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower, who had him in custody: “I pray you have me heartily recommended unto his royal majesty (Henry VIII.), and beseech him on my behalf to call to his remembrance all matters that have passed between us especially with regard to his business with the queen, and then will he know in his conscience whether I have offended him. He is a prince of a most royal carriage, and hath a princely heart; and rather than he will miss or want any part of his will, he will endanger the one half of his kingdom. I do assure you that I have often kneeled before him, sometimes three hours together, to persuade him from his will and appetite, but could not prevail: had I but served God as diligently as I have served the king, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs. But this is the just reward I must receive for my indulgent pains and study, not regarding my service to God but only to my prince.”
Holinshead says in his famous old Chronicles:—
This year (1540), in the month of August, Sir James Hamilton of Finbert, Knight, Controller to the King (James V. of Scotland), who charged him in the king’s name to go toward within the castel of Edinburgh, which commandment he willingly obeyed, thinking himself sure enough, as well by reason of the good service he had done to the king, specially in repairing the palaces of Striviling and Linlithgow, as also that the king had him in so high favour, that he stood in no fear of himself at all. Nevertheless, shortlie after he was brought forth to judgement, and convicted in the Tolboth of Edinburgh, of certain points of treason, laid against him, which he would never confesse; but that notwithstanding, he was beheaded in the month of September next insuing, after that he had liberallie confessed at the place of execution, that he had never in any jot offended the king’s majesty; and that his death was yet worthilie inflicted upon him by the Divine justice, because he had often offended the law of God to please the prince, thereby to obtain greater countenance with him. Wherefore he admonished all persons, that moved by his example, they should rather follow the Divine pleasure than unjustlie seek the king’s favour, since it is better to please God than man.
THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.
Several parallels to Solomon’s judgment, I. Kings iii. 16–28, are recorded. One occurs in Gesta Romanorum. Three youths, to decide a question, are desired by their referee, the King of Jerusalem, to shoot at their father’s dead body. One only refuses; and to him, as the rightful heir, the legacy is awarded.
In the Harleian MS., 4523, we are told of a woman of Pegu, a province of Burmah, whose child was carried away by an alligator. Upon its restoration another woman claimed the child. The judge ordered them to pull for it; the infant cried, and one instantly quit her hold, to whom the child was awarded.
The same story, substantially, is told in the Pali commentary on the discourses of Buddha, translated by Rev. R. S. Hardy, as follows:—
A woman who was going to bathe, left her child to play on the banks of a tank, when a female who was passing that way carried it off. They both appeared before Buddha, and each declared the child was her own. The command was therefore given that each claimant should seize the infant by a leg and an arm, and pull with all her might in opposite directions. No sooner had they commenced than the child began to scream; when the real mother, from pity, left off pulling, and resigned her claim to the other. The judge therefore decided that, as she only had shown true affection, the child must be hers.
Suetonius tell us that the Emperor Claudius, when a woman refused to acknowledge her son, ordered them to be married. The mother confessed her child at once.
PRECEDENCY.
The Emperor Charles V. was appealed to, by two women of fashion at Brussels, to settle the point of precedency between them, the dispute respecting which had been carried to the greatest height. Charles, after affecting to consider what each lady had to say, decided that the greater simpleton of the two should have the pas; in consequence of which judgment the ladies became equally ready to concede the privilege each had claimed. Napoleon, on the occurrence of a similar difficulty at a Court ball supper, based his decision on the question of age. Mr. Hey, of Leeds, at a dinner-party of gentlemen, made merit the test.
THE LEGEND OF BETH GELERT.
In F. Johnson’s translation from the Sanscrit, occurs the following passage:—
In Ougein lived a Brahman named Mádhava. His wife, of the Brahmanical tribe, who had recently brought forth, went to perform her ablutions, leaving him to take charge of her infant offspring. Presently a person from the Raja came for the Brahman to perform for him a Párrana s’ráddha (a religious rite to all his ancestors.) When the Brahman saw him, being impelled by his natural poverty, he thought within himself: If I go not directly, then some one else will take the s’ráddha. It is said:—
“In respect of a thing which ought to be taken, or to be given, or of a work which ought to be done, and not being done quickly, time drinks up the spirit thereof.”
But there is no one here to take care of the child: what can I do then? Well: I will go, having set to guard the infant this weasel, cherished a long time, and in no respect distinguished from a child of my own. This he did and went. Shortly afterwards, a black serpent, whilst silently coming near the child, was killed there, and rent into pieces by the weasel; who, seeing the Brahman coming home, ran towards him with haste, his mouth and paws all smeared with blood, and rolled himself at his feet. The Brahman seeing him in that state, without reflecting, said, “My son has been eaten by this weasel,” and killed him: but as soon as he drew near and looked, behold the child was comfortably sleeping, and the serpent lay killed! Thereupon the Brahman was overwhelmed with grief.
This fable was introduced to give point to the moral:—The fool who, without knowing the true state of the case, becomes subject to anger, will find cause for regret. Its similarity to the well-known Welsh legend is so remarkable that we append Spencer’s touching ballad.
The spearman heard the bugle sound,
And cheerily smiled the morn;
And many a brach, and many a hound
Attend Llewellyn’s horn:
And still he blew a louder blast,
And gave a louder cheer:
“Come, Gelert! why art thou the last
Llewellyn’s horn to hear?
“Oh! where does faithful Gelert roam?
The flower of all his race!
So true, so brave; a lamb at home,
A lion in the chase!”
In sooth he was a peerless hound,
The gift of royal John;
But now no Gelert could be found
And all the chase rode on.
And now, as over rocks and dells
The gallant chidings rise,
All Snowdon’s craggy chaos yells
With many mingled cries.
That day Llewellyn little loved
The chase of hart or hare;
And small and scant the booty proved,
For Gelert was not there.
Unpleased, Llewellyn homeward hied,
When, near the portal-seat,
His truant Gelert he espied,
Bounding his lord to greet.
But when he gain’d the castle door,
Aghast the chieftain stood;
The hound was smear’d with gouts of gore,
His lips and fangs ran blood!
Llewellyn gazed with wild surprise,
Unused such looks to meet:
His favorite checked his joyful guise,
And crouch’d and lick’d his feet.
Onward in haste Llewellyn passed—
And on went Gelert too—
And still, where’er his eyes were cast,
Fresh blood-gouts shock’d his view!
O’erturn’d his infant’s bed, he found
The blood-stain’d covert rent;
And all around, the walls and ground
With recent blood besprent.
He called his child—no voice replied;
He search’d—with terror wild;
Blood! blood! he found on every side,
But nowhere found the child!
“Hell-hound! by thee my child’s devoured!”
The frantic father cried;
And to the hilt the vengeful sword
He plunged in Gelert’s side!
His suppliant, as to earth he fell,
No pity could impart;
But still his Gelert’s dying yell
Pass’d heavy o’er his heart.
Aroused by Gelert’s dying yell,
Some slumberer waken’d nigh:
What words the parent’s joy can tell,
To hear his infant cry!
Conceal’d beneath a mangled heap,
His hurried search had miss’d,
All glowing from his rosy sleep,
His cherub-boy he kiss’d.
Nor scratch had he, nor harm, nor dread—
But, the same couch beneath,
Lay a great wolf, all torn and dead
Tremendous still in death!
Oh! what was then Llewellyn’s woe;
For now the truth was clear:
The gallant hound the wolf had slain,
To save Llewellyn’s heir.
Vain, vain was all Llewellyn’s woe;
“Best of thy kind adieu!
The frantic deed which laid thee low,
This heart shall ever rue!”
And now a gallant tomb they raise,
With costly sculpture deck’d;
And marbles storied with his praise,
Poor Gelert’s bones protect.
Here never could the spearman pass,
Or forester unmoved;
Here oft the tear-besprinkled grass,
Llewellyn’s sorrow proved.
And here he hung his horn and spear;
And, oft as evening fell,
In fancy’s piercing sounds would hear
Poor Gelert’s dying yell!
ART STORIES.
Art has parallel stories of a tragic nature. In the
Chapel proud
Where Roslin’s chiefs uncoffined lie,
Each baron, for a sable shroud,
Sheathed in his iron panoply,
stands an exquisite example of Gothic tracery-work, known as the Apprentice’s Pillar, neighbored by corbels carved with grim, grotesque human faces. How it came by its name may best be told as the old dame who acted as cicerone at the beginning of the present century used to tell it.
“There ye see it, gentlemen, with the lace-bands winding sae beautifully roond aboot it. The maister had gane awa to Rome to get a plan for it, and while he was awa, his ’prentice made a plan himsel, and finished it. And when the maister cam back and fand the pillar finished, he was sae enraged that he took a hammer and killed the ’prentice. There you see the ’prentice’s face—up there in ae corner wi’ a red gash in the brow, and his mother greetin’ for him in the corner opposite. And there, in another corner, is the maister, as he lookit just before he was hanged; it’s him wi’ a kind o’ ruff roond his face.”
In the same century that the Prince of Orkney founded the chapel at Roslin, the good people of Stendal employed an architect of repute to build them one new gate, and entrusted the erection of a second to his principal pupil. In this case, too, the aspiring youth proved the better craftsman, and paid the same penalty; the spot whereon he fell beneath his master’s hammer being marked to this day by a stone commemorating the event; and the story goes that yet, upon moonlight nights, the ghost of the murdered youth may be seen contemplating the work that brought him to an untimely end, while a weird skeleton beats with a hammer at the stone he wrought into beauty.
Another stone, at Grossmoringen, close by Stendal, tells where an assistant bell-caster was stabbed by his master because he succeeded in casting a bell, after the latter had failed in the attempt. It is a tradition of Rouen that the two rose-windows of its cathedral were the work of the master-architect and his pupil, who strove which of the two should produce the finer window. Again the man beat the master, and again the master murdered the man in revenge for his triumph. The transept window of Lincoln Cathedral was the product of a similar contest, but in this instance the defeated artist killed himself instead of his successful rival.
BALLADS AND LEGENDS.
Scott’s ballad of “Wild Darrell” was founded upon a story, first told by Aubrey, but for which the poet was indebted to Lord Webb Seymour. An old midwife sitting over her fire one dark November night was roused by a loud knocking at the door. Upon opening it she saw a horseman, who told her her services were required by a lady of rank, and would be paid for handsomely; but as there were family reasons why the affair should be kept secret, she must submit to be conducted to her patient blindfolded. She agreed, allowed her eyes to be bandaged, and took her place on the pillion. After a journey of many miles, her conductor stopped, led her into a house, and removed the bandage. The midwife found herself in a handsome bedchamber, and in presence of a lady and a ferocious-looking man. A boy was born. Snatching it from the woman’s arms, the man threw the babe on the blazing fire; it rolled upon the hearth. Spite of the entreaties of the horrified midwife, and the piteous prayers of the poor mother, the ruffian thrust the child under the grate, and raked the hot coals over it. The innocent accomplice was then ordered to return whence she came, as she came; the man who had brought her seeing her home again, and paying her for her pains.
The woman lost no time in letting a magistrate know what she had seen that November night. She had been sharp enough to cut a piece out of the bed-curtain, and sew it in again, and to count the steps of the long staircase she had ascended and descended. By these means the scene of the infanticide was identified, and the murderer Darrell, Lord of Littlecote House, Berkshire was tried at Salisbury. He escaped the gallows by bribing the judge, only to break his neck in the hunting-field a few months afterwards, at a place still known as Darrell’s Stile. Aubrey places Littlecote in Wiltshire, makes the unhappy mother the waiting-maid of Darrell’s wife, and concludes his narration thus: “This horrid action did much run in her (the midwife’s) mind, and she had a desire to discover it, but knew not where ’twas. She considered with herself the time that she was riding, and how many miles she might have ridden at that rate in that time, and that it must be some great person’s house, for the room was twelve feet high. She went to a justice of the peace, and search was made—the very chamber found. The knight was brought to his trial; and, to be short, this judge had this noble house, park, and manor, and (I think) more, for a bribe to save his life. Sir John Popham gave sentence according to law, but being a great person and a favorite, he procured a nolle prosequi.”
In Sir Walter’s ballad the midwife becomes a friar of orders gray, compelled to shrive a dying woman,
A lady as a lily bright,
With an infant on her arm;
and when
The shrift is done, the friar is gone,
Blindfolded as he came—
Next morning, all in Littlecote Hall
Were weeping for their dame.
It was hardly fair to make Darrell worse than he was, by laying a second murder at his door, merely to give a local habitation and a name to a Scotch tale of murder that might have been an adaptation of the Berkshire tragedy.
Somewhere about the beginning of the last century, an Edinburgh clergyman was called out of his bed at midnight on the pretext that he was wanted to pray with a person at the point of death. The good man obeyed the summons without hesitation, but wished he had not done so, when, upon his sedan-chair reaching an out-of-the-way part of the city, its bearers insisted upon his being blindfolded, and cut his protestations short by threatening to blow out his brains if he refused to do their bidding. Like the sensible man he was, he submitted without further parley, and the sedan moved on again. By and by, he felt he was being carried up-stairs: the chair stopped, the clergyman was handed out, his eyes uncovered, and his attention directed to a young and beautiful lady lying in bed with an infant by her side. Not seeing any signs of dying about her, he ventured to say so, but was commanded to lose no time in offering up such prayers as were fitting for a person at the last extremity. Having done his office, he was put into the chair and taken down-stairs, a pistol-shot startling his ears on the way. He soon found himself safe at home, a purse of gold in his hand, and his ears still ringing with the warning he had received, that if he said one word about the transaction, his life would pay for the indiscretion. At last he fell off to sleep, to be awakened by a servant with the news, that a certain great house in the Canongate had been burned down, and the daughter of its owner perished in the flames. The clergyman had been long dead, when a fire broke out on the very same spot, and there, amid the flames, was seen a beautiful woman, in an extraordinarily rich night-dress of the fashion of half a century before. While the awe-struck spectators gazed in wonder, the apparition cried, “Anes burned, twice burned; the third time I’ll scare you all!” The midwife of the Littlecote legend and the divine of the Edinburgh one were more fortunate than the Irish doctor living at Rome in 1743; this gentleman, according to Lady Hamilton, being taken blindfolded to a house and compelled to open the veins of a young lady who had loved not wisely, but too well.
BURIAL ALIVE.
In the year 1400, Ginevra de Amiera, a Florentine beauty, married, under parental pressure, a man who had failed to win her heart, that she had given to Antonio Rondinelli. Soon afterwards the plague broke out in Florence; Ginevra fell ill, apparently succumbed to the malady, and being pronounced dead, was the same day consigned to the family tomb. Some one, however, had blundered in the matter, for in the middle of the night, the entombed bride woke out of her trance, and badly as her living relatives had behaved, found her dead ones still less to her liking, and lost no time in quitting the silent company, upon whose quietude she had unwittingly intruded. Speeding through the sleep-wrapped streets as swiftly as her clinging cerements allowed, Ginevra sought the home from which she had so lately been borne. Roused from his slumbers by a knocking at the door, the disconsolate widower of a day cautiously opened an upper window, and seeing a shrouded figure waiting below, in whose upturned face he recognized the lineaments of the dear departed, he cried, “Go in peace, blessed spirit,” and shut the window precipitately. With sinking heart and slackened step, the repulsed wife made her way to her father’s door, to receive the like benison from her dismayed parent. Then she crawled on to an uncle’s, where the door was indeed opened, but only to be slammed in her face by the frightened man, who, in his hurry, forgot even to bless his ghostly caller. The cool night air, penetrating the undress of the hapless wanderer, made her tremble and shiver, as she thought she had waked to life only to die again in the cruel streets. “Ah” she sighed, “Antonio would not have proved so unkind.” This thought naturally suggested it was her duty to test his love and courage: it would be time enough to die if he proved like the rest. The way was long, but hope renerved her limbs, and soon Ginevra was knocking timidly at Rondinelli’s door. He opened it himself, and although startled by the ghastly vision, calmly inquired what the spirit wanted with him. Throwing her shroud away from her face, Ginevra exclaimed, “I am no spirit, Antonio; I am that Ginevra you once loved, who was buried yesterday—buried alive!” and fell senseless into the welcoming arms of her astonished lover, whose cries for help soon brought down his sympathizing family to hear the wondrous story, and bear its heroine to bed, to be tenderly tended until she bad recovered from the shock, and was as beautiful as ever again. Then came the difficulty. Was Ginevra to return to the man who had buried her, and shut his doors against her, or give herself to the man who had saved her from a second death? With such powerful special pleaders as love and gratitude on his side, of course Rondinelli won the day, and a private marriage made the lovers amends for previous disappointment. They, however, had no intention of keeping in hiding, but the very first Sunday after they became man and wife, appeared in public together at the cathedral, to the confusion and wonder of Ginevra’s friends. An explanation ensued, which satisfied everybody except the lady’s first husband, who insisted that nothing but her dying in genuine earnest could dissolve the original matrimonial bond. The case was referred to the bishop, who, having no precedent to curb his decision, rose superior to technicalities, and declared that the first husband had forfeited all right to Ginevra, and must pay over to Rondinelli the dowry he had received with her: a decree at which we may be sure all true lovers in fair Florence heartily rejoiced.
This Italian romance of real life has its counterpart in a French cause célèbre, but the Gallic version unfortunately lacks names and dates; it differs, too, considerably in matters of detail; instead of the lady being a supposed victim of the plague, which in the older story secured her hasty interment, she was supposed to have died of grief at being wedded against her inclination; instead of coming to life of her own accord, and seeking her lover as a last resource, the French heroine was taken out of her grave by her lover, who suspected she was not really dead, and resuscitated by his exertions, to flee with him to England. After living happily together there for ten years, the strangely united couple ventured to visit Paris, where the first husband accidentally meeting the lady, was struck by her resemblance to his dead wife, found out her abode, and finally claimed her for his own. When the case came for trial, the second husband did not dispute the fact of identity, but pleaded that his rival had renounced all claim to the lady by ordering her to be buried, without first making sure she was dead, and that she would have been dead and rotting in her grave if he had not rescued her. The court was saved the trouble of deciding the knotty point, for, seeing that it was likely to pronounce against them, the fond pair quietly slipped out of France, and found refuge in “a foreign clime, where their love continued sacred and entire, till death conveyed them to those happy regions where love knows no end, and is confined within no limits.”
RING STORIES.
Of dead-alive ladies brought to consciousness by sacrilegious robbers, covetous of the rings upon their cold fingers, no less than seven stories, differing but slightly from each other, have been preserved; in one, the scene is laid in Halifax; in another, in Gloucestershire; in a third, in Somersetshire; in the fourth, in Drogheda; the remaining three being appropriated by as many towns in Germany.
Ring-stories have a knack of running in one groove. Herodotus tells us how Amasis advised Polycrates, as a charm against misfortune, to throw away some gem he especially valued; how, taking the advice, Polycrates went seaward in a boat, and cast his favorite ring into the ocean; and how, a few days afterward, a fisherman caught a large fish so extraordinarily fine, that he thought it fit only for the royal table, and accordingly presented it to the fortunate monarch, who ordered it to be dressed for supper; and lo! when the fish was opened, the surprised cook’s astonished eye beheld his master’s cast-away ring; much to that master’s delight, but his adviser’s dismay; for when Amasis heard of the wonderful event, he immediately dispatched a herald to break his contract of friendship with Polycrates, feeling confident the latter would come to an ill end, “as he prospered in everything, even finding what he had thrown away.” The city of Glasgow owes the ring-holding salmon figuring in its armorial bearings to a legend concerning its patron saint, Kentigern, thus told in the Acta Sanctorum: A queen who formed an improper attachment to a handsome soldier, put upon his finger a precious ring which her own lord had conferred upon her. The king, made aware of the fact, but dissembling his anger, took an opportunity, in hunting, while the soldier lay asleep beside the Clyde, to snatch off the ring, and throw it into the river. Then returning home along with the soldier, he demanded of the queen the ring he had given her. She sent secretly to the soldier for the ring, which could not be restored. In great terror, she then despatched a messenger to ask the assistance of the holy Kentigern. He, who knew of the affair before being informed of it, went to the river Clyde, and having caught a salmon, took from the stomach the missing ring, which he sent to the queen. She joyfully went with it to the king, who, thinking he had wronged her, swore he would be revenged upon her accusers; but she, affecting a forgiving temper, besought him to pardon them as she had done. At the same time, she confessed her error to Kentigern, and solemnly vowed to be more careful of her conduct in future. In 1559, a merchant and alderman of Newcastle, named Anderson, handling his ring as he leaned over the bridge, dropped it into the Tyne. Some time after, his servant bought a salmon in the market, in whose stomach the lost ring was found: its value enhanced by the strange recovery, the ring became an heirloom and was in the possession of one of the Alderman’s decendants some forty years ago. A similar accident, ending in a similar way, is recorded to have happened to one of the dukes of Lorraine.
DEATH PROPHECIES.
Monk Gerbert, who wore the tiara as Sylvester II., a man of whom it was said that—thanks to the devil’s assistance—he never left anything unexecuted which he ever conceived, anticipating Roger Bacon, made a brazen head capable of answering like an oracle. From this creature of his own, Gerbert learned he would not die until he had performed mass in Jerusalem. He thereupon determined to live forever by taking good care never to go near the holy city. Like all dealers with the Evil One, he was destined to be cheated. Performing mass one day in Rome, Sylvester was seized with sudden illness, and upon inquiring the name of the church in which he had officiated, heard, to his dismay, that it was popularly called Jerusalem; then he knew his end was at hand; and it was not long before it came. Nearly five hundred years after this event happened, Master Robert Fabian, who must not be suspected of inventing history, seeing, as sheriff and alderman, he was wont to pillory public liars, wrote of Henry IV., “After the feast of Christmas, while he was making his prayers at St. Edward’s shrine, he became so sick, that such as were about him feared that he would have died right there; wherefore they, for his comfort, bare him into the abbot’s place, and lodged him in a chamber; and there, upon a pallet, laid him before the fire, where he lay in great agony a certain time. At length, when he was come to himself, not knowing where he was, he freyned [asked] of such as were there about him what place that was; the which shewed to him that it belonged unto the Abbot of Westminster; and for he felt himself so sick, he commanded to ask if that chamber had any special name. Whereunto it was answered, that it was named Jerusalem. Then said the king, ‘Laud be to the Father of Heaven, for now I know I shall die in this chamber, according to the prophecy of me beforesaid, that I should die in Jerusalem;’ and so after, he made himself ready, and died shortly after, upon the Day of St. Cuthbert, on the 20th day of March, 1413.”
BATTLES.
Three of the most famous battles recorded in English history were marked by a strange contrast between the behavior of the opposing armies on the eve of the fight. At Hastings, the Saxons spent the night in singing, feasting, and drinking; while the Normans were confessing themselves and receiving the sacrament. At Agincourt, “the poor condemned English” said their prayers, and sat patiently by their watch-fires, to “inly ruminate the morrow’s danger;” while the over-confident French revelled the night through, and played for the prisoners they were never to take. “On the eve of Bannockburn,” says Paston, who fought there on the beaten side, “ye might have seen the Englishmen bathing themselves in wine, and casting their gorgets; there was crying, shouting, wassailing, and drinking, with other rioting far above measure. On the other side we might have seen the Scots, quiet, still, and close, fasting the eve of St. John the Baptist, laboring in love of the liberties of their country.” Our readers need not be told that in each case the orderly, prayerful army proved victorious, and so made the treble parallel perfect.
BISHOP HATTO.
The legend of Hatto, bishop of Mayence, has been preserved in stanzas which are well remembered by school children. To avoid the importunity of the starving during a period of famine, the wicked prelate collected them into a barn,
“And while for mercy on Christ they call,
He set fire to the barn, and burnt them all.”
Thereupon he was attacked by an army of mice, and escaped to his tower (the Mäuseschloss) on a rock in the Rhine. But they quickly followed him and poured in by thousands, “in at the windows and in at the door,” until he was overpowered and destroyed.
“They gnawed the flesh from every limb,
For they were sent to do judgment on him.”
The same story is told of the Swiss baron, von Güttingen, who was pursued and devoured by mice in his castle in Lake Constance. It is also told, with a variation, of the Polish King Popiel. When the Poles murmured at his bad government, and sought redress, he summoned the chief remonstrants to his palace, poisoned them, and had their bodies thrown into the lake Gopolo. He sought refuge from the mice within a circle of fire, but was overrun and eaten by them.