Untill such time as he hir found,
He hir beat and he hir bound.
Untill hir troth she to him plight,
She would not come to hir (him) that night:"[348:A]
a form which is quoted nearly verbatim, and professedly as a night-spell, in the Monsieur Thomas of Fletcher.[348:B] It should be observed, that the influence over incubi ascribed by our poet to St. Withold, has
been subsequently given to other Calendarian saints, and especially to that dreaded personage St. Swithin, who is indebted to Mr. Colman, in his alteration of Lear, for the transference of this singular power.
The mass of popular credulity, indeed, is so enormous, that, limited, as we are in this chapter, to the consideration of only a portion of the subject, it is still difficult, from the number and variety of the materials, to present a sketch which shall be sufficiently distinct and perspicuous. It is highly interesting, however, to observe to what striking poetical purposes Shakspeare has converted these imbecillities of mind, these workings of fear and ignorance; how by his management almost every article which he has selected from the mass of vulgar delusion, assumes a capability of impressing the strongest and most cultivated mind with grateful terror or sublime emotion. No branch, for instance, of the popular creed has been more extended, or more burdened with folly, than the belief in Omens, and yet what noble imagery has not the poet drawn forth from this accumulation of fear-struck fancy and childish apprehension.
With the view of placing the detail of this vast groupe in a clearer light, it will be necessary to ascertain, what were the principal omens most accredited in the days of Shakspeare, and after giving a catalogue of those most worthy of notice, to exhibit a few pictures by the poet as founded on some of the most remarkable articles in the enumeration, and afterwards to fill up the outline with additional circumstances from other resources.
How prone the subjects of Elizabeth were to pry into futurity, through the medium of omens, auguries, and prognostications, may be learnt from the following passage in Scot, taken from his chapter on the "common peoples fond and superstitious collections and observations." "Amongst us," says he, "there be manie wemen and effeminat men (manie papists alwaies, as by their superstition may appeere) that make great divinations upon the shedding of salt, wine, &c. and for the observation of daies, and houres use as great
witchcraft as in anie thing. For if one chance to take a fall from a horse, either in a slipperie or stumbling waie, he will note the daie and houre, and count that time unlucky for a journie. Otherwise, he that receiveth a mischance, wil consider whether he met not a cat, or a hare, when he went first out of his doores in the morning; or stumbled not at the threshold at his going out; or put not on his shirt the wrong side outwards; or his left shoo on his right foote.