A crystal brook, in the amiral's garden in Flor and Blancheflor, when crossed by a virgin remains pellucid, but in the other case becomes red, or turbid: ed. Du Méril, p. 75, vv 1811-14; Bekker, Berlin Academy, XLIV, 26, vv 2069-72; Fleck, ed. Sommer, p. 148, vv 4472-82; Swedish, ed. Klemming, p. 38, 1122-25; Lower Rhine, Haupt's Zeitschrift, XXI, 321, vv 57-62; Middle Greek, Bekker, Berlin Academy, 1845, p. 165, Wagner, Mediæval Greek Texts, p. 40 f, vv 1339-48; etc. In the English poem, Hartshorne's Ancient Metrical Tales, p. 93, if a clean maid wash her hands in the water, it remains quiet and clear; but if one who has lost her purity do this, the water will yell like mad and become red as blood.
The stone Aptor, in Wigamur, vv 1100-21, is red to the sight of clean man or woman, but misty to others: Von der Hagen und Büsching, Deutsche Gedichte des Mittelalters, p. 12 (Warnatsch).[253]
A statue, in an Italian ballad, moved its eyes when young women who had sacrificed their honor were presented to it: Ferraro, Canti popolari di Ferrara, Cento e Pontelagoscuro, p. 84, 'Il Conte Cagnolino.' There was said to be a statue of Venus in Constantinople which could not be approached by an incontinent woman without a very shameful exposure; and again, a pillar surmounted by four horns, which turned round three times if any [Greek: keratas] came up to it.[254] Virgil, 'Filius,' made a brass statue which no misbehaving woman might touch, and a vicious one received violent blows from it: Meisterlieder der Kolmarer Handschrift, Bartsch, p. 604, 14th century. This statue would bite off the fingers of an adulteress if they were put in its mouth, according to a poem of the same century published by Bartsch in Germania, IV, 237; and a third version makes the statue do this to all perjurers, agreeing in other respects with the second: Kolmarer Meisterlieder, as before, p. 338. In the two last the offence of the wife causes a horn to grow out of the husband's forehead. Much of the story in these poems is derived from the fifteenth tale of the Shukasaptati, where a woman offers to pass between the legs of a statue of a Yaksha, which only an innocent one can do: Benfey, Pantschatantra, I, 457.[255]
According to a popular belief in Austria, says J. Grimm, you may know a clean maid by her being able to blow out a candle with one puff and to light it again with another. The phrase was known in Spain: "Matar un candil con un soplo y encenderlo con otro." Grimm adds that it is an article of popular faith in India that a virgin can make a ball of water, or carry water in a sieve: Rechtsalterthümer, p. 932.[256]
An ordeal for chastity is a feature in several of the Greek romances. In Heliodorus's Æthiopica, X, 8, 9, victims to be offered to the sun and moon, who must be pure, are obliged to mount a brazier covered with a golden grating. The soles of those who are less than perfect are burned. Theagenes and Chariclea experience no inconvenience. The Clitophon and Leucippe of Achilles Tatius, VIII, 6, 13, 14, has a cave in the grove of Diana of Ephesus, in which they shut up a woman. If it is a virgin, a delicious melody is presently heard from a syrinx, the doors open of themselves, and the woman comes out crowned with pine leaves; if not a virgin, a wail is heard, and the woman is never seen again. There is also a not perfectly convincing trial, by the Stygian water, in § 12, which seems to be imitated in the Hysmine and Hysminias of Eustathius [Eumathius], VIII, 7, XI, 17. In the temple of Diana, at Artycomis, stands a statue of the goddess, with bow in hand, and from about her feet flows water like a roaring river. A woman, crowned with laurel, being put in, she will float quietly, if all is right; but should she not have kept her allegiance to Dian, the goddess bends her bow as if to shoot at her head, which causes the culprit to duck, and the water carries off her wreath.[257]
It is prescribed in Numbers v, 11-31, that any man jealous of his wife may bring her to the priest, who shall, with and after various ceremonies, give her a bitter drink of holy water in which dust from the floor of the tabernacle has been infused. If she have trespassed, her body shall swell and rot. In the Pseudo-Matthew's Gospel, ch. xii, Joseph and Mary successively take this aquam potationis domini. No pretender to innocence could taste this and then make seven turns round the altar, without some sign of sin appearing in the face. The experiment shows both to be faultless. So, with some variation, the sixteenth chapter of the Protevangelium of James. This trial is the subject of one of the Coventry Mysteries, No 14, p. 137 ff, ed. Halliwell, and no doubt of other scripture plays. It is naturally introduced into Wernher's Maria, Hoffmann, Fundgruben, II, 188, line 26 ff, and probably into other lives of the Virgin.
Herodotus relates, II, 111, that Pheron, son of Sesostris, after a blindness of ten years' duration, received an intimation from an oracle that he would recover his sight upon following a certain prescription, such as we are assured is still thought well of in Egypt in cases of ophthalmia. For this the coöperation of a chaste woman was indispensable. Repeatedly balked, the king finally regained his vision, and collecting in a town many women of whom he had vainly hoped aid, in which number his queen was included, he set fire to the place and burned both it and them, and then married the woman to whom he was so much indebted. (First cited in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1795, vol. 65, I, 114.) The coincidence with foregoing tales is certainly curious, but to all appearance accidental.[258]
The 'Boy and the Mantle' was printed "verbatim" from his manuscript by Percy in the Reliques, III, 3, ed. 1765. The copy at p. 314 is of course the same "revised and altered" by Percy, but has been sometimes mistaken for an independent one.