[P. 176]. “Manacies.” Not having met with this form, I presume that it is a press error for “menacies”. It is so changed in the second edition.
[P. 180]. “Faile to dreame by night.” Scot’s general statement may be true, but must in some instances be modified. From my youth, for many—say at least twenty—years, I tried to remember my dreams for this very purpose, and could remember them for a short while very well; but never could I find that what I had thought on during the day, or the days before, gave even a suggestion to my dreams. Thrice, however, of late years, I have been able to trace my dream to something I had casually thought of, though not meditated on. This edition of Scot, as well as the question of witchcraft, has occupied both my mind and time since November, and it is now October, yet not a single dream has had reference to anything connected with these subjects. Similarly, family matters have both busied me and worried me for some months, and yet these matters have never intruded themselves, not even when my dreams, and at one time a near approach to nightmare, showed that my digestion was out of order. From my own instance, I should rather say that dreams most frequently seem to be natural reliefs to the thoughts that I had indulged in, or that might have beset me, in my waking hours.
[P. 182]. “Of physicall dreames.” I suppose he means dreams from physical causes.
[P. 182]. “Melancholicall.” Proceeding from “black bile”, which, in the opinions of that day, produced melancholy, that form of madness called melancholia. I would add that “melancholy” is often used in Scot for mad melancholia, and for the supposed humour melancholy or black bile, and that, unless this is borne in mind, some of his sentences will be misunderstood.
[P. 183]. “De Profundis.” Ps. cxxix; Vulg. cxxx; Prayer Book. All that follow are given consecutively, I think, in the Rit. Rom. Officium Defunctorum.
——— “Pleasant and certain dreams.” Formerly an at least English notion, as expressed by the servant-lover of Bombastes:
“And morning dreams, they say, come true.”
[P. 184]. “Eleoselinum.” Translated in the second edition as “mountain parsley.”
——— “Sium” in the second edition is “yellow water-cress”.
——— “Acarum vulgare”, “common acorus”—our “Asarum Europ.”