It appears that the modern Greeks have a custom of depositing parboiled wheat with the dead on interment. Gregory says the ceremony was intended to "signifie the resurrection of the body." Referring to peas as an element of the Aryan mythology, Walter Kelly says; "The plant and the fruit are in some way or other related to celestial fire. It may be that they were regarded in this light because they belong to the class of creeping or climbing plants to which such relations were pre-eminently attributed; at all events, the fact that they represented something in the vegetation of the sky is substantiated by numerous details in their mythical history."
According to Dr. Kuhn and Schwartz, the flying dragons that poison the air and the waters let fall peas in such quantities that they filled the wells and rendered the water so foul that cattle refused to partake thereof. In the German traditions the Zwergs, the forgers of Thor's lightning hammer, were so fond of peas that they plundered the fields of the husbandman, after rendering themselves invisible by means of their "caps of darkness." Peas with sour crout are yet eaten in Berlin on Thursday (Thor's day), from immemorial habit. Mannhardt speaks of their medical as well as mystical properties, and says that their relation to the lightning is evidenced by the fact of their being used as hazel nuts, and the thunderbolts (certain fossil shells and meteoric stones) to augment the fertility of the corn seed.
A singular custom formerly existed on Maundy Thursday, or the Thursday preceding Easter, when royal personages distributed alms to poor persons. It was named Maundy Thursday from the baskets (or maunds) which contained the gifts. In the "Festival," published in 1511, it is said to have been likewise called "Shere Thursday," because "anciently people would that day shere theyr hedes and clypp theyr berdes, and so make them honest against Easter-day." After the distribution of the alms in meat, drink, clothing, and money, it was customary for royalty, in imitation of the humility of Jesus Christ, to wash the feet of the recipients of their bounty. James II. was the last of our monarchs who performed this ceremony in person. He was likewise the last who successfully (?) "touched" for the cure of the "king's evil," a conclusive reason to the old Jacobites that his successors were all usurpers!
This, however, did not appear to have been the orthodox faith in earlier times. Aubrey, in his "Miscellanies" (1696), gravely relates that the manner in which the king's evil was cured by the "touch of the king does much puzzle our philosophers (?); for, whether our kings were of the house of York or Lancaster, it did the cure for the most part!" He further informs us that the seventh son of a seventh son possessed the regal power; but he qualifies the important fact by the condition that it must be "a seventh son, and no daughter between, and in pure wedlock." He likewise adds, "The touch of a dead hand hath wrought wonderful effects." This last superstition is still current in Lancashire. In the time of James II., the remedial power of the "king's touch," in cases of scrofula, was firmly believed in by others than the vulgar; for, it appears, the corporation of Preston voted the sum of five shillings each to two poor women afflicted with this disease, towards their expense in travelling to Chester, which city his Majesty had honoured with a special visit at the time, to avail themselves of the supposed potency inherent in the royal digits, under such circumstances. This superstition was not entirely discountenanced by those in authority until the reign of George III.
This belief in the supernatural authority of monarchs is but a remnant of the long supposed "divine right" of kings to govern, which resulted from the conviction that they could trace their pedigrees back to the deities themselves. Shakspere, even, puts into the mouth of the murderer and usurper, Claudius, King of Denmark, the following sentence:—
Let him go, Gertrude. Do not fear our person.
There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.
This superstition is by no means confined to civilised or semi-civilised nations. It is almost a universal feeling amongst savage tribes. The ignorant serf of Russia believed, and indeed yet believes, that if the deity were to die the emperor would succeed to his power and authority. Speke, referring to a very childish but nevertheless very great potentate, who ruled the territory adjacent the Victoria N'yanza, says, "I found that the Waganda have the same absurd notion here as the Wangambo have in Karagué, of Kamrasi's supernatural power in being able to divide the waters of the Nile in the same manner that Moses did the Red Sea."
FOOTNOTES:
[19] The hawthorn, as will be shown in the following chapter, was invested with much superstitious reverence, and especially in connection with the spring festivals; and, singularly enough, Mr. John Ingram, in his delightful "Flora Symbolica," informs us that the hawthorn is, in "florigraphy," an emblem of Hope. This is, evidently, no accidental coincidence.
[20] This is an error. Bury is certainly famous for its simnels, but other towns in Lancashire, and elsewhere, both keep up the custom and boast of the quality of their confectionery.