Good Friday came and passed without any untoward event. Yet that is not enough to dispel the faith in Mother Shipton's prediction. She is not at fault. Some blundering calculator made a mistake as to time, and the people of Somerset are yet to have their great catastrophe.
A curious superstitious custom is observed in the Isle of Man. Mothers believe their children may be preserved from disease by placing them in the hopper of a water flour-mill while the wheel makes three revolutions. On a Sunday not long since a number of children were taken to the Grenaby mill, in the parish of Malew, three miles from Castletown, in order to be subjected to the "charm" we have mentioned. Two hoppers of the mill were crammed full of children, and, as soon as they were settled, the miller caused the wheel to revolve three times, the parents of the children being present at the time. In order to be efficacious, the ceremony must be gone through at a time when the ministers of the district are preaching in their pulpits. For this reason, about noon on Sundays is generally the time chosen for the performance of this curious rite.
At an inquest lately held in London on the body of a woman aged eighty-two years, the evidence showed that the woman's death resulted from injury to the head, caused by a fall from her chair. One of the witnesses told the coroner that he believed the time had come for the woman to die. His reason for that opinion was, that she had dreamed, a fortnight before her death, that she had a fall, and cut open her head, and was likely to die in consequence.
An awful fulfilment of a dream took place at a calico-printing establishment at Sunnyside. A clerk in the work remarked to one of the machine printers that he was glad to see him at his employment; the printer asked his reason for his congratulations, when the clerk observed that during the previous night he (the clerk) had dreamed that he (the printer) had, while at his work, dropped down dead. The printer replied, in a jocular way, "You see you were mistaken, for I am alive yet." The printer being in his usual health and spirits, no further notice was taken of the matter; but singularly, at three o'clock in the afternoon of the same day, while attending to his duties at his machine, he dropped down dead without the least warning.
This year (1879) the Deal magistrates sentenced a man named George Wylds to two months imprisonment for refusing to proceed to sea in the barque "Umzinto," on a voyage from London to Port Natal. The man told the magistrate that he was satisfied with the ship, officers, and food, but he had had a dream that the ship would be lost, and would not go to sea in her for any amount of money. Once before he had a dream that a vessel in which he was sailing would be lost, and it was lost.
It is worth recording that in many parishes of Worcestershire and Herefordshire the holly and ivy that have adorned churches at Christmas-time are much esteemed and cherished.
If a small branch of holly, with the berries upon it, is taken home and hung up in the house, it is considered sure to bring a lucky year. A little of this church ivy given to sheep is considered likely to make them bring forth two lambs a-piece. The evergreens that were hung up in the house must, however, all be burned, except the mistletoe bough, which should be kept throughout the year; and it generally is in farmhouses, as, according to old people, it prevented any bad effect from the evil eye, and fiends and hobgoblins were scared away by it, as stated in this verse of an old sagacious adviser:
"On Candlemas eve kindle the fire, and then
Before sunset let every leaf it bren;
But the mistletoe must hang agen
Till Christmas next return;
This must be kept, wherewith to tend
The Christmas bough, and house defend,
For where it's safely kept, the fiend
Can do no mischief there."
Some country churches in Worcestershire and Herefordshire are still usually decked with sprigs of yew at Easter, and boughs of fragrant fresh-leaved birch at Whitsuntide; and a sprig of yew thus consecrated, when taken and kept in the house, is deemed a preservative from the influence or entrance of any malignant spirits. In like manner, a branch of the birch is honoured by being placed on or over the kneading-trough; for, thus placed, it is considered to be a sure antidote against heavy bread.
A celebrated case, in which the pursuer, newly returned from Australia, sought to establish, in the Court of Common Pleas (we think in 1871 or 1872), his claim to the ancient baronetcy of Tichborne, recalls to mind a legend current in the Tichborne family for many generations relative to the "Tichborne Dole." The house of Tichborne dates the possession of its right to the manor of Tichborne, near Winchester, as far back as two centuries before the Norman Conquest.