It is related in French jest-books, that during the period of the religious troubles of France, when decapitation was so common, a Gascon executioner, boasting of his skill, was heard to protest that his victims were so artistically despatched as to remain unconscious of their execution. He was forced to say to them, ‘have the goodness to shake your head!’—when it rolled to the ground. In emulation of this foolish joke, people used to assert during the Reign of Terror, that they were forced to shake their heads every morning to be certain that, amid the general massacre, they had escaped the guillotine. A century hence, what with the acceleration of motion in every department—the application of caoutchouc and bitumen to all sorts of purposes—and the general diffusion of chemical science, we shall scarcely know whether we are on terra-firma, or in the air; and the reflective powers of the human race may chance to become strangely confused by such universal motation.
We may at least anticipate from the same source, the obliteration of vulgar errors, and the dissolution of popular prejudices. Our successors will have no time to cherish such chimeras as omens, presages, or presentiments: no leisure for listening to old wives’ tales, or traditions of ghosts and devils.
For all classes, education effects the miracle of making the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk; and in our own, its operations commence at too early an age to leave our children at the mercy of ignorant nurses—the fountain-head of all popular superstition.
A love of the marvellous is, however, so strongly implanted in certain natures, and our capacity is after all so finite, that prejudices must ever, to a certain extent, prevail. Hypochondriacs, invalids, and pregnant women, will always be susceptible of the terrors of superstition; and so long as children are born with the marks and deformities to which all animated nature is liable, so long as the winter wind howls, ‘the owls shriek, and the crickets cry,’ nervous persons will not be wanting to listen to the foolish interpretations of any empty-headed gossip at hand.
To remedy the mischief, it becomes a peremptory duty to render the rising generation ‘wise virgins’ in their youth, in order that they may not become foolish old women in their age, to perpetuate the evils of POPULAR PREJUDICES and NATIONAL SUPERSTITIONS.
END.
LONDON:
Printed by Schulze & Co., 13, Poland Street.
Footnotes:
[1] The reader will be struck by the affinity between this Legend, and the Ettrick Shepherd’s beautiful tale of “Kilmeny,” taken from a Highland tradition.