"There are two passages in Homer, which, however poetical, are applicable to a rain of this kind; and among the prodigies which took place after the death of the great dictator, Ovid particularly mentions a shower of blood:
"'Sæpe faces visæ mediis ardere sub astris, Sæpe inter nimbos guttæ cecidere cruentæ.'
"('With threatening signs the lowering skies were fill'd, And sanguine drops from murky clouds distilled.')
"Among the numerous prodigies reported by Livy to have happened in the year 214 B.C., it is instanced that at Mantua a stagnating piece of water, caused by the overflowing of the river Mincius, appeared as of blood; and in the cattle-market at Rome a shower of blood fell in the Istrian Street. After mentioning several other remarkable phenomena that happened during that year, Livy concludes by saying that these prodigies were expiated, conformably to the answers of the aruspices, by victims of the greater kinds, and supplication was ordered to be performed to all the deities who had shrines at Rome. Again, it is stated by Livy that many alarming prodigies were seen at Rome in the year 181 B.C., and others reported from abroad; among which was a shower of blood which fell in the courts of the temples of Vulcan and Concord. After mentioning that the image of Juno Sospita shed tears, and that a pestilence broke out in the country, this writer adds that these prodigies, and the mortality which prevailed, alarmed the Senate so much that they ordered the consuls to sacrifice to such gods as their judgment should direct victims of the larger kinds, and that the decemvirs should consult their books. Pursuant to their direction, a supplication for one day was proclaimed to be performed at every shrine in Rome; and they advised, besides, and the Senate voted, and the consul proclaimed, that there should be a supplication and public worship for three days throughout all Italy. In the year 169 B.C., Livy also mentions that a shower of blood fell in the middle of the day. The decemvirs were again called upon to consult their books, and again were sacrifices offered to the deities. The account, also, of Livy, of the bloody sweat on some of the statues of the gods, must be referred to the same phenomenon, as the predilection of those ages to marvel, says Thomas Browne, and the want of accurate investigation in the cases recorded, as well as the rare occurrence of these atmospherical depositions in our own times, inclines us to include them among the blood-red drops deposited by insects.
"In Stow's 'Annales of England' we have two accounts of showers of blood, and from an edition printed in London in 1592, we make our quotations: 'Rivallus, sonne of Cunedagius, succeeded his father, in whose time (in the year 766 B.C.) it rained bloud three dayes: after which tempest ensued a great multitude of venemous flies, which slew much people, and then a great mortalitie throughout this lande, caused almost desolation of the same.' The second account is as follows: 'In the time of Brithricus (A.D. 786) it rayned blood, which falling on men's clothes, appeared like crosses.'
"Hollingshed, Grafton, and Fabyan have also recorded these instances in their respective chronicles of England.
"A remarkable instance of bloody rain is introduced into the very interesting Icelandic ghost-story of Thorgunna. It appears that in the year of our Lord 1009 a woman called Thorgunna came from the Hebrides to Iceland, where she stayed at the house of Thorodd; and during the hay season a shower of blood fell, but only, singularly, on that portion of the hay she had not piled up as her share, which so appalled her that she betook herself to her bed, and soon afterward died. She left, to finish the story, a remarkable will, which, from not being executed, was the cause of several violent deaths, the appearance of ghosts, and, finally, a legal action of ejectment against the ghosts, which, it need hardly be said, drove them effectually away.
"In 1017 a shower of blood fell in Aquitaine; and Sleidan relates that in the year 1553 a vast multitude of butterflies swarmed through a great part of Germany, and sprinkled plants, leaves, buildings, clothes, and men with bloody drops, as if it had rained blood. We learn also from Bateman's 'Doome' that these 'drops of bloude upon hearbes and trees' in 1553 were deemed among the forewarnings of the deaths of Charles and Philip, dukes of Brunswick.
"In Frankfort, in the year 1296, among other prodigies, some spots of blood led to a massacre of the Jews, in which ten thousand of these unhappy descendants of Abraham lost their lives.
"In the beginning of July, 1608, an extensive shower of blood took place at Aix, in France, which threw the people of that place into the utmost consternation, and, which is a much more important fact, led to the first satisfactory and philosophical explanation of this phenomenon, but too late, alas! to save the Jews of Frankfort. This explanation was given by M. Peiresc, a celebrated philosopher of that place, and is thus referred to by his biographer, Gassendi: 'Nothing in the whole year 1608 did more please him than that he observed and philosophized about, the bloody rain, which was commonly reported to have fallen about the beginning of July; great drops thereof were plainly to be seen, both in the city itself, upon the walls of the churchyard of the church, which is near the city wall, and upon the city walls themselves; also upon the walls of villages, hamlets, and towns, for some miles round about; for in the first place, he went himself to see those wherewith the stones were coloured, and did what he could to come to speak with those husbandmen, who, beyond Lambesk, were reported to have been affrighted at the falling of said rain, that they left their work, and ran as fast as their legs could carry them into the adjacent houses. Whereupon, he found that it was a fable that was reported, touching those husbandmen. Nor was he pleased that naturalists should refer this kind of rain to vapours drawn up out of red earth aloft in the air, which congealing afterwards into liquor, fall down in this form; because such vapours as are drawne aloft by heat, ascend without colour, as we may know by the alone example of red roses, out of which the vapours that arise by heat are congealed into transparent water. He was less pleased with the common people, and some divines, who judged that it was the work of the devils and witches who had killed innocent young children; for this he counted a mere conjecture, possibly also injurious to the goodness and providence of God.