At the council of Constance, held 1414, Sigismund used the word schisma as a noun of the feminine gender (illa nefanda schisma). A prig of a cardinal corrected him, saying “‘Schisma,’ your highness, is neuter gender;” when the kaiser turned on him with ineffable scorn, and said, “I am king of the Romans, and what is grammar to me?” [Ego sum rex Romanus et super grammaticam.]--Carlyle, Frederick the Great (1858).
Superstitions about Animals.
Ant. When ants are unusually busy, foul weather is at hand.
Ants never sleep.--Emerson, Nature, iv.
Ants lay up food for winter use.--Prov. vi. 6-8; xxx. 25.
Ants’ eggs are an antidote to love.
Ass. The mark running down the back of an ass, and cut at right angles over the shoulders, is the cross of Christ impressed on the animal because Christ rode on an ass in His triumphant entry into Jerusalem.
Three hairs taken from the “cross” of an ass will cure the whooping-cough, but the ass from which the hairs are plucked will die.
The ass is deaf to music, and hence Apollo gave Midas the ears of an ass, because he preferred the piping of Pan to the music of Apollo’s lute.
Barnacle. A barnacle broken off a ship turns into a Solan goose.