"To Agrio, too, I made the same demand;
A cunning woman she, I cross'd her hand:
She turn'd the sieve and shears, and told me true,
That I should love, but not be lov'd by you."
Among other modes of divination practised for the same purpose, there is one by the crowing of the cock. Thus, a farmer in Cornwall having been robbed of some property, invited all his neighbours into his cottage, and when they were assembled he placed a cock under the "brandice" (an iron vessel formerly much used by the peasantry in baking), he then asked each one to touch the brandice with the third finger, and say, "In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, speak." Every one did as they were directed, and yet no sound came from beneath the brandice. The last person was a woman who occasionally laboured for the farmer in his field. She hung back, hoping to pass unobserved amidst the crowd. The neighbours, however, would not permit her to do so, and no sooner had she touched the brandice than, before she could even utter the prescribed words, the cock crew. Thereupon she fainted on the spot, and on recovering confessed her guilt.
In the North of England there was formerly a curious process of divination in the case of a person bewitched:—A black hen was stolen, the heart taken out, stuck full of pins, and roasted at midnight. It was then supposed that the "double" of the witch would come and nearly pull the door down. If, however, the "double" was not seen, any one of the neighbours who had passed a remarkably bad night was fixed upon.
Referring in the next place to what may be considered the principal object of divination, a knowledge of futurity, we find various mystic arts in use to gain this purpose. Foremost among these may be reckoned "Spatulamancia," "reading the speal-bone," or "divination by the blade-bone," an art which is of very ancient origin. It is, we are told by Mr. Tylor, especially found in Tartary, whence it may have spread into all other countries where we hear of it. The mode of procedure is as follows:—The shoulder-blade is put on the fire till it cracks in various directions, and then a long split lengthwise is reckoned as "the way of life," while cross-cracks on the right and left stand for different kinds of good and evil fortune, and so on. In Ireland, Camden speaks of looking through the blade-bone of a sheep, to discover a black spot which foretells a death; and Drayton in his "Polyolbion" thus describes it:—
"By th' shoulder of a ram from off the right side par'd,
Which usually they boile, the spade-bone being bar'd,
Which when the wizard takes, and gazing thereupon
Things long to come foreshows, as things done long agone."
This species of divination was in days gone by much practised in Scotland, and a good account of the Highland custom of thus divining is given by Mr. Thoms in the "Folk-Lore Record" (i. 177), from a manuscript account by Mr. Donald McPherson, a bookseller of Chelsea, a Highlander born, and who was well acquainted with the superstitions of his countrymen:—"Before the shoulder-blade is inspected, the whole of the flesh must be stripped clean off, without the use of any metal, either by a bone or a hard wooden knife, or by the teeth. Most of the discoveries are made by inspecting the spots that may be observed in the semi-transparent part of the blade; but very great proficients penetrate into futurity though the opaque parts also. Nothing can be known that may happen beyond the circle of the ensuing year. The discoveries made have relation only to the person for whom the sacrifice is offered."
Chiromancy, or palmistry, as a means of unravelling hidden things, still finds favour not only with gipsy fortune-tellers, but even with those who profess to belong to the intelligent classes of society. This branch of fortune-telling flourished in ancient Greece and Italy, as we are informed it still does in India, where to say, "It is written on the palms of my hands," is the ordinary way of expressing what is looked upon as inevitable. The professors of this art formerly attributed to it a Divine origin, quoting as their authority the following verse from the Book of Job: "He sealeth up the hand of every man, that all men may know his work;" or as the Vulgate renders the passage: "Qui in manu omnium hominum signa posuit"—"Who has placed signs in the hand of all men"—which certainly gives it a more chiromantical meaning. Thus chiromancy, or palmistry, traces the future from an examination of the "lines" of the palm of the hand, each of which has its own peculiar character and name, as for instance the line of long life, of married life, of fortune, and so on. However childish this system may be, it still has its numerous votaries, and can often be seen in full force at our provincial fairs. Referring to its popularity in this country in former years, we find it severely censured by various writers. Thus one author of the year 1612 speaks of "vain and frivolous devices of which sort we have an infinite number, also used amongst us, as namely in palmistry, where men's fortunes are told by looking on the palms of the hand."
A superstition akin to palmistry is onymancy, or divination by the finger-nails, which is still a widespread object of belief. Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Vulgar Errors," describing it, admits that conjectures "of prevalent humours may be gathered from the spots on the nails," but rejects the sundry prognostications usually derived from them, such as "that spots on the tops of the nails signify things past, in the middle things present, and at the bottom events to come; that white specks presage our felicity, blue ones our misfortunes; that those in the nail of the thumb have significations of honour, of the fore-finger riches." As practised at the present day, this mode of divination differs in various counties. Thus, in Sussex, we are told by Mrs. Latham that the fortune-tellers commence with the thumb, and say "A gift," judging of its probable size by that of the mark. They then touch the fore-finger, and add "A friend;" and should they find a spot upon the nail of the middle finger, they gravely affirm it denotes the existence of an enemy somewhere. It is the presence or absence of such a mark on the third finger that proves one's future good or ill success in love; whereas one on the little finger is a warning that the person will soon have to undergo a journey.
Again, some profess to be able to tell events by the face, or "look-divination"—a species of physiognomy which was formerly much believed in by all classes of society, and may still be met with in country villages. Indeed, there is scarcely a mark on the face which has not been supposed to betoken something or other; and in a book of "Palmistry and Physiognomy," translated by Fabian Withers, 1656, are recorded sundry modes of divination from "upright eyebrows, brows hanging over, narrow foreheads, faces plain and flat, lean faces, sad faces, sharp noses, ape-like noses, thick nostrils," &c. However foolish these may appear, yet there will always be simple-minded persons ready to make themselves miserable by believing that the future events of their life—either for weal or woe—are indelibly written on their face. Equally illogical and fanciful is that pseudo-science, astrology, whereby the affairs of men, it is said, can be read from the motions of the heavenly bodies. A proof of the extensive belief at the present day in this mode of divination may be gathered from the piles of "Zadkiel's Almanacks" which regularly appear in the fashionable booksellers' windows about Christmas-time. That educated people, who must be aware how names of stars and constellations have been arbitrarily given by astronomers, should still find in these materials for calculating human events, is a curious case of superstitious survival. Very many, for instance, are firmly convinced that a child born under the "Crab" will not do well in life, and that another born under the "Waterman" is likely to meet with a watery death, and so forth. This science, as is well known, is of very old institution, and originated in a great measure in the primitive ages of the world, when animating intelligences were supposed to reside in the celestial bodies. As these mythical conceptions, however, have long ago passed away under the influence of civilisation, one would scarcely expect to find in our enlightened nineteenth century so great a number of intellectual persons putting faith in such a system of delusion. In this respect, happily, we are not worse than our Continental neighbours; for there are many districts in Germany where the child's horoscope is still regularly kept with the baptismal certificate in the family chest. In days gone by, this kind of divination was very widely credited in this country, and by most of our old writers is most unsparingly condemned. Thus Shakespeare, in King Lear (Act i., sc. 2), has ridiculed it in a masterly way, when he represents Edmund as saying: "This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behaviour—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence." Sir Thomas Browne goes so far as to attribute divination by astrology to Satan, remarking how he "makes the ignorant ascribe natural effects to supernatural causes; and thus deludes them with this form of error." And another old writer sensibly adds that, although astrologers undertake "to tell all people most obscure and hidden secrets abroad, they at the same time know not what happens in their own houses and in their own chambers." In spite, however, of the frequent denunciations of this popular form of superstition, it appears that they had little effect, for James I. was notorious for his credulity about such delusions; and both Charles I. and Cromwell are said to have consulted astrologers.
A further form of divination still much practised is by a pack of cards, most of these being supposed to have a symbolical meaning; the king of hearts, for example, denoting a true-loving swain, and the king of diamonds indicating great wealth. The following quaint lines, extracted from an old chap-book quoted in Brand's "Popular Antiquities," describe this mode of fortune-telling as it was formerly consulted by our credulous countrymen:—