Remedy for Bad Dreams.
When a man has dreamed a bad dream in China he need not despair, for an interpreter of dreams is ready to supply him with a mystic scroll, which will avert the impending calamity. It is written on red or yellow paper, and the interpreter rolls it up in the form of a triangle and attaches it to the dress of his client. The dreamer is then made to look toward the east, with a sword in his right hand and his mouth full of spring water. In this position he ejects the water from his mouth, and beats the air with the sword, repeating in an imperative tone certain words, of which the following is an interpretation: "As quickly and with as much strength as rises the sun in the east, do thou, charm or mystic scroll, avert all the evil influences which are likely to result from my bad dream. As quickly as lightning passes through the air, O charm, cause impending evils to disappear."—Credulities Past and Present.
The Letiche.
At Bayeux, in Normandy, one of the superstitions still current relates to a being called a letiche. It is an animal whose form is scarcely defined—of dazzling whiteness—which is only seen in the night time, and disappears the moment any one attempts to touch it. The letiches are believed to be the souls of infants who died without baptism. Most probably this pretty little spirit was no other than the agile and timid ermine of Normandy and Brittany.—Summer Among the Bocages.
Hell-stones.
These were vast stones formerly used for covering graves, helicin being the Saxon for "to cover" or conceal. In Dorsetshire is one of these stones; and the tradition is, that the devil flung it from Portland Pike to its present position, as he was playing at quoits.
The Golden Tooth.
In 1593 it was reported that a Silesian child, seven years old, had lost all its teeth, and that a golden tooth had grown in the place of a natural double one. In 1595 Horstius, professor of medicine in the University of Helmstadt, wrote the history of this golden tooth. He said it was partly a natural event and partly miraculous, and that God had sent it to the child to console the Christians for their persecution by the Turks. In the same year Rullandus drew up another account of the golden tooth. Two years afterwards, Ingosteterus, another learned man, wrote against the opinion which Rullandus had given on this golden tooth. Rullandus immediately replied in a most elegant and erudite dissertation. Libavius, a very learned man, compiled all that had been said relative to this tooth, and subjoined his remarks upon it. Nothing was wanting to recommend these erudite writings to posterity but proof that the tooth was gold. A goldsmith examined it, and found it a natural tooth artificially gilt.
The Devil Regarded as a Benefactor of the Human Race.
The Ophites were a sect who, like most Gnostics, regarded the Jehovah of the Old Testament with great abhorrence. Regarding the emancipation of man from the power and control of Jehovah as the most important end, they considered the serpent who tempted Eve and introduced "knowledge" and "revolt" into the world, to have been the great benefactor of the human race. They worshipped the serpent, and sought to engraft Ophism upon Christianity by causing the bread designed for the Eucharistic sacrifice to be licked by a serpent which was kept in a cave for the purpose, and which the communicants kissed after receiving the Eucharist.