Summer watch. Vide Sir Thomas Smyth's Commonwealth de hac. Cause is that the blood is then high: keepe downe the juvenilis impetus. The old men in those dayes were not so ignorant in philosophy as the virtuosi, forsooth, doe thinke they were. They knew, etc.—MS. Aubr. 21, p. 11.
<Provincial manners.> Collect[1338] the gothicismes and clownrys of ... in Chester. Dick Pawlet, Secole Chivers, W. Ducket's clan of Clowne-hall. Their servants like clownes too, drunkards too: qualis herus, talis servus; breeches of one sort, doublet of another, drabled with the teares of the tankard and greasie. He built an alehouse for his servants, without the gate, for convenience sake, because the servants should be within call. (Before they came hither above a mile for their ale.) Vide Osburne, of distinction of habitts.—MS. Aubr. 21, p. 12.
Country magique. Walking about the church Midsomer eve at night, one shall meet the party that shall marry. They must goe round the church nine times (or seven times), with a sword drawne, if a man; if a woman, with a scabbard.—To putt a smock on the hedge on Midsommer-eve night, the man that is to have her shall come and turne it.—They take orpin and stick branches of it on the wall, and fancy such a branch for such a man, such a branch for such a woman, and divine their loves and marriage or not-marriage by the inclining or aversion of the branches.—They tye magicall knotts with certayne grasses, which, putt in the bosome of the man or woman, if their love have not love for them, will untye.—MS. Aubr. 21, fol. 24v.
<Sketches for designed inventions: MS. Aubr. 21, fol. 57: illustrated in most cases by drawings. One (fol. 57) is for a cart with one wheel, imitated from 'the slids in the forrest of Deane, for their narrow wayes where carts cann't passe.'
'A forrest cart'
Another (fol. 57v) is for a balloon:—'Fill or force in smoake into a bladder and try if the bladder will not be carryed up in the ayre. If it is so, severall bladders may drawe a man up into the ayre a certaine hight, as the holly-berrys arise to the middle of water in a glasse. Memorandum try to what hight they will ascend in a deep vessell, and also try other berryes if any will doe so.'
Another (fol. 57) is for a flying machine and parachute:—'Memorandum to propose that Mr. Packer sends to Norfolk or Suffolke to the gentleman that hath with much curiosity measured the feathers in the wings of severall birds and taken proportions of them and the weight of their bodies, and to send to Mr. Francis Potter for his notions of flying and of being safely delivered upon the ground from great heights with a sheet, etc.'
Another (fol. 58) is for sailing a ship:—'Memorandum Dr. Wilkins his notion of an umbrella-like invention for retarding a ship when shee drives in a storm.'