Sir Jno. Lubbock, Lyell and others are of opinion that to the existence of this feeling may be attributed the almost total absence of the bones of the hare amongst the débris of the ancient Swiss lake dwellings, and the kjökkenmöddings or shell mounds of Denmark. The superstition yet exists amongst the Laplanders of the present day. According to Burton, the Somal Arabs reject it as the Hottentot men do, although their women may partake of it as food, and M. Schlegel informs us that the Chinese entertain a prejudice against the animal. Owing to a false impression respecting the hare chewing its cud, the Jews pronounced it to be unclean, and therefore rejected it as food. Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, when she had harangued her soldiers, opened the drapery around her bosom and let go a hare, which she had concealed. The frightened animal's antics, according to the then orthodox laws of divination, indicated a successful issue to the pending expedition. The warrior queen improved the occasion, led her enthusiastic troops against the highly disciplined Roman legions, and vanquished them.
Kelly is satisfied of the Aryan origin of the animal's supernatural reputation. He says,—"The hare is no doubt mythically connected with the phenomena of the sky, but upon what natural grounds it has been credited with such meteoric relations is a point not yet determined. I incline to think it will be found to lie, in part at least, in the habits which the animal displays about the time of the vernal equinox, and which have given rise to the popular saying, 'as mad as a March hare.' And perhaps this very restlessness in rough weather has been the cause of the animal being regarded as a disguised witch, actively engaged in 'brewing storms.'"
Cats, as well as hares, have the reputation of being weather wise; hence their association with witches or "wise women." Hecate was supposed to frequently assume the feline form. Shakspere's witches evidently held it in reverence. One says, with great solemnity, on a momentous occasion, "Thrice the brindled cat hath mew'd." A very strong belief yet obtains, amongst persons better educated than the Lancashire peasantry, that cats can see better in the dark than in the light, and that they possess nine lives, or, in other words, that they require killing nine times, before they remain permanently defunct. The author of "Choice Notes" says that sailors have a firm belief that the presence of a dead hare on board ship is certain to bring about bad weather. They likewise object to having cats on board, and when one happens to be more frisky than usual, like a "mad March hare," they have a saying that "the cat has got a gale of wind in her tail." The same authority says that the throwing of a cat overboard will infallibly bring on a storm. Mannhardt says, in Germany, anyone who, during his lifetime, may have made cats his enemies, is certain to be accompanied to the grave with wind and rain. A writer in Notes and Queries refers to a Dutch superstition of this class, in which a rainy wedding day is supposed to result from the bride's neglecting to feed her cat. Walter Kelly thinks "the question why the chariot of the goddess Freyja was drawn by cats, and why Holda was attended by maidens riding on cats, or themselves disguised in feline form, is easily solved. Like the lynx, and the owl of Pallas Athenê, the cat owes its celestial honours above all to its eyes, that gleam in the dark like fire, but the belief in its supernatural powers may very probably have been corroborated by the common observation that the cat, like the stormy boar, is a weather wise animal."
This connection of the goddess Freyja (whence our Friday) with the feline personification of stormy weather, may lay at the root of the prejudice of sailors against commencing a voyage on that day. That this superstition has yet strong hold on the nautical imagination, was recently (1871), attested by the fact that, in consequence of the loss of the ill-fated turret-ship, "Captain," which had left port on a Friday, the "Agincourt," in order to satisfy the clamour of the crew, did not leave Gibraltar on the presumedly fatal day. The departure of the last-named war-ship on the Saturday, however, did not prevent her striking on the "Pearl Rock" shortly afterwards. This fact might, perhaps, stagger Jack's faith for a moment, but superstition is tougher than actual experience in many of its phases, and Friday will still be a black letter day in the sailor's calendar.
Hallam, in his "View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages," when discussing the probabilities of the guilt or innocence of the Knights Templars, concerning which there still exists great diversity of opinion, refers to the evidence adduced by M. von Hammer as the most difficult of refutation. This authority contends that the adoption of the infamous practices of the Gnostic superstition, which the Templars are said to have imported from the East, is proved by certain obscene sculptures found in secret places in edifices erected by the members of this order in various parts of Europe. He says these scandalous figures resemble those in the Gnostic churches. Hallam adds, however, "The Stadinghi, heretics of the thirteenth century, are charged, in a bull of Gregory IX., with exactly the same profaneness, even including the black cat [canis aut gattus niger] as the Templars of the next century. This is said by Von Hammer to be confirmed by sculptures." May not these coincidences have arisen from the common Aryan origin of the pagan superstitions; and, in some instances, at least, in the figurative meaning of the sculptures referred to? There was a famous "cat stone" in Leyland old church, which was said to be the "devil in the form of a cat," who "throttled" an individual that witnessed his removal, by night, of the stones used by the builders of the church in the day-time. The morals, as well as the manners, of the thirteenth century were very different to those of the nineteenth; and yet I could point out, within Lancashire and Cheshire, at least two instances, where obnoxious sculpture of this class has been preserved from mediæval times to the present day.
The notorious besom or broomstick is an instrument in the operations of witchcraft common to all the Aryan nations. According to the "Asiatic Register," for 1801, the Eastern, as well as the European witches, "practice their spells by dancing at midnight, and the principal instrument they use on such occasions is a broom." It is regarded as "a type of the winds, and therefore an appropriate utensil in the hands of the witches, who are wind makers and workers in that element."
Dr. Kuhn says, "In the Mark, an old broom is burned in order to raise a wind. Sailors, after long toiling against a contrary wind, on meeting another ship sailing in an opposite direction, will throw an old broom before the vessel, which, they contend, will reverse the wind, and consequently cause it to blow in their favour."
Burns, in his "Address to the Deil," makes his witches and warlocks "skim the muirs and dizzy crags" on "ragweed nags," "wi' wicked speed." Witches notoriously ride swiftly and easily through the air astride of a broomstick.[24] Hence this superstition may be said to personify the light scudding clouds that pass rapidly across the sky, and herald squally weather. Dr. Kuhn regards the broom as the implement used by the Aryan demi-deities in sweeping the sky; for that such was a portion of the duty devolving upon its riders may be inferred from the still existing Hartz tradition that witches must dance away all the snow upon the Blocksberg, on the first of May.
The hanging out of a broom when a man's wife is from home, to intimate to the husband's unmarried friends that the usual matrimonial restraint is temporarily suspended, and that bachelor fare and bachelor habits will be the order of the day, for a time, is yet well known in Lancashire. I am not aware how far it is practised or understood in other parts of the country, neither have I been able to find a satisfactory explanation of its origin. As the "Lancashire witches" of the present day do "work their spells" upon their masculine friends, though in a more pleasing form and agreeable manner than their haggard and aged predecessors, it is not improbable that the emblem of power may have accompanied the transmission of the once dreaded appellation. Brooms, after being used in the performance of divers mythical ceremonies, were hung up in houses, and regarded, like pieces of the rowan or mountain ash-tree, as powerful charms against the entrance of evil doers. Perhaps the "bachelor husband" of by-gone times removed the broom to the outside of the house with the view to destroy its power over the interior, as well as to inform his roystering friends that the coast was clear, and that there existed no impediment to unlimited jollification.[25] Dr. Kuhn says in several parts of Westphalia, at Shrovetide, cows' horns are decorated with white besoms with white handles. After the house has been swept by them, they are hung, as a kind of talisman, over or near the door of the cow-house. Have these white besoms any relationship to those ornamental ones formerly much hawked in England by German peasant girls, who likewise sung in the streets the once popular song, "Buy a broom?"
Gaule says there were "eight classes of witches distinguished by their operations: first, the diviner, gipsy or fortune telling witch; second, the astrologian, star-gazing, planetary, prognosticating witch; third, the chanting, canting, or calculating witch, who works by signs or numbers; fourth, the venefick, or poisonous witch; fifth, the exorcist, or conjuring witch; sixth, the gastromantick witch; seventh, the magical, speculative, sciential, or arted witch; eighth, the necromancer."