The last line, as our readers may remember, (see ante, No. 7. p. 97.), was fixed on the gates of Holyrood on the morning (16th of May) after the marriage of Mary Queen of Scots and Bothwell.]
Throwing Old Shoes at a Wedding.—At a wedding lately, the bridesmaids, after accompanying the bride to the hall-door, threw into the carriage, on the departure of the newly-married couple, a number of old shoes which they had concealed somewhere. On inquiry, I find this custom is not uncommon; I should be glad to be favoured with any particulars respecting its origin and meaning, and the antiquity of it.
ARUN.
[We have some NOTES on the subject of throwing Old Shoes after a person as a means of securing them good fortune, which we hope to insert in an early Number.]
Sir Thomas Boleyn's Spectre.—Sir Thomas Boleyn, the father of the unfortunate Queen of Henry VIII., resided at Blickling, distant about fourteen miles from Norwich, and now the residence of the dowager Lady Suffield. The spectre of this gentleman is believed by the vulgar to be doomed, annually, on a certain night in the year, to drive, for a period of 1000 years, a coach drawn by four headless horses, over a circuit of twelve bridges in that vicinity. These are Aylsham, Burgh, Oxnead, Buxton, Coltishall, the two Meyton bridges, Wroxham, and four others whose names I do not recollect. Sir Thomas carries his head under his arm, and flames issue from his mouth. Few rustics are hardy enough to be found loitering on or near those bridges on that night; and my informant averred, that he was himself on one occasion hailed by this fiendish apparition, and asked to open a gate, but "he warn't sich a fool as to turn his head; and well a' didn't, for Sir Thomas passed him full gallop like:" and he heard a voice which told him that he (Sir Thomas) had no power to hurt such as turned a deaf ear to his requests, but that had he stopped he would have carried him off.
This tradition I have repeatedly heard in this neighbourhood from aged persons when I was a child, but I never found but one person who had ever actually seen the phantom. Perhaps some of your correspondents can give some clue to this extraordinary sentence. The coach and four horses is attached to another tradition I have heard in the west of Norfolk; where the ancestor of a family is reported to drive his spectral team through the old walled-up gateway of his now demolished mansion, on the anniversary of his death: and it is said that the bricks next morning have ever been found loosened and fallen, though as constantly repaired. The particulars of this I could easily procure by reference to a friend.
E.S.T.
P.S. Another vision of Headless Horse is prevalent at Caistor Castle, the seat of the Fastolfs.