[1145] Spottiswoode Miscellanies, II. 69.
[1146] Alphonsi de Spina Fortalicium Fidei Lib. III. consid. vii.
[1147] Vitodurani Chron. ann. 1331.
[1148] Swartii Chron. Ottbergensis § xlvii. (Paullini Antiq. Germ. Syntagma).
[1149] Val. Anshelm, Berner-Chronik, ann. 1503 (Bern, 1886, II. 393).
[1150] Oelsner de Jure Feretri c. iii. § 8. This little thesis was written in 1680. It seems to have met with approval, for it was reprinted in 1711 and 1735.
[1151] Oelsner op. cit. cap. iii. § 7. A variant of this story is told by Scott in his notes to the “Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.” In this the bone chances to be fished up from a river, where it had lain for fifty years, and the murderer, then an old man, happens to touch it, when it streams with blood. He confesses the crime and is duly condemned.
[1152] Carena, op. cit. P. II. Tit. xii. § 22.
[1153] Oelsner, cap. iii. § 6. Joh. Christ. Nehring de Indiciis, Jenæ, 1714, p. 19.—Königswarter (op. cit. p. 183) tells us that this custom was observed also in the Netherlands and throughout the North.
[1154] Unde forte contingit ut occisi hominis vulnus etiam jacente cadavere, in eum qui vulneraverat, si modo ille comminus instet, vulnus ipsum inspiciens, sanguinem rursus ejiciat, quod quidem evenire nonnunquam Lucretius affirmavit et judices observarunt.—De Immortalitate Animæ Lib. XVI. c. 5.