Burning the nuts is a famous charm. They name the lad and lass to each particular nut, as they lay them on the fire, and accordingly as they burn quietly together, or start from beside one another, the course and issue of the courtship will be.—Brand’s Popular Antiquities.
Note C, [P. 11].—Fetches.
These are the exact figures and resemblances of persons then living; often seen not only by their friends at a distance, but many times by themselves; of which there are several instances in Aubrey’s Miscellanies. These apparitions are called “Fetches,” and in Cumberland “Swarths;” they most commonly appear to distant friends and relations at the very instant preceding the death of a person whose figure they put on; but sometimes there is a greater interval between the appearance and death.—Grose apud Brand.
Note D, [P. 25].—Coupled between two Foxhounds.
“Sir Peter Carew, being a boy at about the date of the tale, and giving trouble at the High School at Exeter, was led home to his father’s house at Ottery, coupled between two foxhounds.”—Hooker’s Life of Sir Peter Carew.
Note E, [P. 31].—The Parchments.
The Abbot’s connection with “The Pilgrimage of Grace” has never been proved, but it is scarcely unjust to assume, as is done in the text, his general sympathy with the movement. Froude says it was discovered that he and the Abbot of Reading had supplied the northern insurgents with money.
“Treason doth never prosper, for this reason
That if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”