603. Fr. 'comme font les devines et les sorcieres et les charmeresses. Et touz ceus qui en tiex choses croient ... pecchent morteument; car toutes teles choses sont contre la foi, et por ce les deffent sainte eglise.'
bacins ful of water. These were sometimes used, instead of
looking-glasses, for divination; Brand, Pop. Antiq. ed. Ellis, iii. 169. This kind of divination was called catoptromancy.
bright swerd, used, instead of a magic mirror, in catoptromancy; see Brand.
in a cercle. Circles were almost invariably drawn upon the ground by sorcerers, within which the invoked spirit was supposed to be confined; see Brand, iii. 56, 59.
in a fyr, as in pyromancy. 'Amphiaraus was the first that had knowledge in Pyromancie, and gathered signs by speculation of fire'; Holland, tr. of Pliny, bk. vii. c. 56. Cf. P. Plowman, A. xi. 158.
'Magic may be practised after diuers sorts; ... for it worketh by the means of (1) Water, hydromantia; (2) Globes or Balls, sphaeromantia; (3) Aire, aeromantia; (4) Starres, astrologia; (5) Fire-lights, pyromantia; (6) Basons, lecanomantia; and (7) Axes, axinomantia'; Holland, tr. of Pliny, bk. xxx. c. 2.
shulder-boon. See Pard. Tale, C. 351, and the note. Brand, in his Pop. Antiq., has a chapter on Divination by the Speal [rather Spaule], or Blade-bone. In Miss Burne's Shropshire Folk-Lore, p. 179, we are referred to Tylor, Prim. Culture, i. 124; Folk-Lore Record, i. 176; Henderson, Folk-Lore, p. 175.
605. divynailes, divinations. 'Devinailles, f. Divinations, predictions'; Cotgrave.
flight of briddes. This form of divination, so well known to the Romans, is still kept in remembrance by the use of the words augury and auspice. Divinations by beasts were common and various; the commonest method was by inspecting the entrails of a beast when sacrificed. See Brand's chapter on Omens, as e.g. by the howling of dogs, by cats, birds, animals crossing one's path, &c.