Church-building.
Captain Silas Taylor says, that in days of yore, when a church was to be built, they watched and prayed on the vigil of the dedication, and took that point of the horizon where the sun arose for the east, which makes that variation, so that few stand true, except those built between the two equinoxes. I have experimented some churches, and have found the line to point to that part of the horizon where the sun rises on the day of that saint to whom the church was dedicated.
Before the wake, or feast of the dedication of the church, they sat up all night fasting and praying, (viz.) on the eve of the wake.
New Moon.
In Scotland, especially among the Highlanders, the women make a courtesy to the new moon; and our English women in this country have a touch of this, some of them sitting astride on a gate or style the first evening the new moon appears, and say, “A fine moon, God bless her!” The like I observed in Herefordshire.
Husbandry—Shepherds.
The Britons received the knowledge of husbandry from the Romans; the foot and the acre, which we yet use, is the nearest to them. In our west country, (and I believe so in the north,) they give no wages to the shepherd, but he has the keeping so many sheep with his master’s flock. Plautus hints at this in his Asinaria, act 3, scene 1, “etiam Opilio,” &c.
Architecture.
The Normans brought with them into England civility and building, which, though it was gothic, was yet magnificent.
Mr. Dugdale told me, that, about the time of king Henry III., the pope gave a bull, or patent, to a company of Italian architects, to travel up and down Europe to build churches.