Thomas Loggan, of Basinghall Street. He says, “I was sitting alone last Easter Tuesday at breakfast, at the Talbot, in Shrewsbury, when I was surprised by the entrance of all the female servants of the house handing in an arm-chair, lined with white, and decorated with ribbons and favours of all kinds. I asked them what they wanted; they said they came to ‘heave’ me; it was the custom of their place, and they hoped I would take a seat in the chair. It was impossible not to comply with a request so modestly made by a set of nymphs in their best apparel, and several of them under twenty. I wished to see all the ceremony, and seated myself accordingly; the group then lifted me from the ground, turned the chair about, and I had the felicity of a salute from each. I told them I supposed there was a fee due, and was answered in the affirmative; and having satisfied the damsels in this respect, they retired to ‘heave’ others.”
The usage is said to be a vulgar commemoration of the event which the festival of Easter celebrates. Lancashire, Staffordshire, and Warwickshire still retain the Easter custom.
Whether or not the notable Norfolk “chairing” takes its origin from the same is open to question; possibility there is without doubt that it does so. Be it as it may, it must, we fear, be numbered among the departed joys of the poor folks.
CHAPTER VII.
superstitions.
Superstitions.—Witchcraft.—Heard’s Ghost.—Wise Men and Women.—Sayings by Mrs. Lubbock.—Prophecies.—Treasure Trove.—Confessions of Sir William Stapleton and Sir Edward Neville.—Cardinal Wolsey supposed to have been conversant with Magic.—Effect of Superstition on the Great and Noble in Early Times.
Forby, in his “Vocabulary of East Anglia,” has described the whole of this district of the country as barren of superstitions or legendary lore. Its characteristics are adverse to the growth of that natural poetry in the minds of the people which gives birth to nymphs, water-sprites, elves, or demons. It has neither woods, mountains, rocks, caverns, nor waterfalls, to be the nurseries of such genii; its plains are cultivated, its rivers navigable, its hills and valleys furrowed by the plough, even to the very basement of any lingering ruin of tower or steeple that may be scattered amongst them. How much more, therefore, may we expect to find a dearth of such literature in the heart of the great city, where the struggles
of working-day life among looms and factories, leave little time or room for aught else than the stern realities of existence to be known or felt?
But every where there exist some fragments of superstition, poetical or uncouth; and we may not feel surprise that among such a people as the lower orders of society, in an East Anglian manufacturing city, they should bear little trace of the refinement which beautiful and romantic scenery and occupation are wont in other scenes to throw over them. Rarely do we hear of a haunted house, or a walking ghost; but not unseldom do we see the horse-shoe nailed over the door-way of the cottage, as an antidote to the power of witchcraft,—nor is it uncommon to hear among the poor, of charms to cure diseases, of divinations by wise men and wise women, who by mystic rites pretend to discover lost or stolen property,—nor even of animals bewitched, exercising direful influence over the lives and health of human beings. Within the limits of this age of enlightenment and civilization, many are the recorded facts of this nature, and many more of continual recurrence might be added, in illustration of the truth, that the lowest and grossest forms of vulgar superstition yet lurk about in the purlieus and by-ways of the old city.
Not long since, a woman, holding quite a respectable rank among the working classes, and in her way a perfect “character” avowed herself determined
“to drown’d the cat,” as soon as ever her baby, which was lying ill, should die; for which determination the only explanation she could offer was, that the cat jumped upon the nurse’s lap, as the baby lay there, soon after it was born, from which time it ailed, and ever since that time, the cat had regularly gone under its bed once a day and coughed twice. These mysterious actions of poor “Tabby,” were assigned as the cause of the baby wasting, and its fate was to be sealed as soon as that of the poor infant was decided. That the baby happened to be the twenty-fourth child of his mother, who had succeeded in rearing four only of the two dozen, was a fact that seemed to possess no weight whatever in her estimation. The same strong-minded individual, for in many respects she is wonderfully strong-minded, scruples not to avow greater faith in the magical properties of red wool, tied round a finger or an arm, in curing certain ailments of the frame, than in many a remedy prescribed by “doctor’s” skill; nor has the theoretical belief been altogether unsupported by practice; on more than one occasion, she will aver, her own life has thus been saved.