“Jessica, my girl,
Look to my house. I am right loath to go:
There is some ill a brewing towards my rest,
For I did dream of money-bags to-night.”
In “Julius Cæsar,” dreaming of banquet is supposed to presage misfortune.
It was also supposed that malicious spirits took advantage of sleep to torment their victims;[944] hence Macbeth (ii. 1) exclaims:
“Merciful powers,
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature
Gives way to in repose!”[945]
Duels. The death of the vanquished person was always considered a certain evidence of his guilt. Thus, in “2 Henry VI.” (ii. 3), King Henry, speaking of the death of Horner in the duel with Peter, says:[946]
“Go, take hence that traitor from our sight;
For, by his death, we do perceive his guilt:
And God in justice hath reveal’d to us
The truth and innocence of this poor fellow,
Which he had thought to have murder’d wrongfully.—
Come, fellow, follow us for thy reward.”
We may also compare what Arcite says to Palamon in the “Two Noble Kinsmen” (iii. 6):
“If I fall, curse me, and say I was a coward;
For none but such dare die in these just trials.”
Among the customs connected with duelling, it appears that, according to an old law, knights were to fight with the lance and the sword, as those of inferior rank fought with an ebon staff or baton, to the farther end of which was fixed a bag crammed hard with sand.[947] Thus Shakespeare, in “2 Henry VI.” (ii. 3), represents Horner entering “bearing his staff with a sand-bag fastened to it.” Butler, in his “Hudibras,” alludes to this custom:
“Engag’d with money-bags, as bold
As men with sand-bags did of old.”