tible an agreement with the Dragon Stone in the romance of the Horny Siegfried, sufficient to account for the appellation of the White Serpent, given by Merlin to the mistress of the place. The further account of the cavern by the Italian poet coincides in many respects with the Nymphæa, or Mithratic grottoes, described by Porphyry and others; and the name by which Ariosto distinguishes the lady who shows the " generosa Bradamante" the wonders of the cavern, is that of the priestess of Mithras, which so strikingly resembles Melusina, the counterpart of the viperous monster, Echidna.

Passing from the creations of mythology, legend, and romance, we may pursue the hint furnished by Merlin's enchanted cave, and consider, under the same point of view, the celebrated purgatory of St Patrick. This is a small artificial cavern, built upon an island in Lough Derg, in the southern part of Donegal, and is formed by two parallel walls covered with large stones, on a floor of natural rock. A winding passage, part of which is yet visible, led to the interior. This purgatory, for there is another hole bearing the same name, was once called Uamh Treibb Oin, which General Vallancey explains to be the "Cave of the Tribe of Oin, or Owen," a person who is said to have entered it by a miracle, and there to have witnessed the joys of the blessed and the torments of the damned. Henry of Huntingdon, em. bellishing the narrative of Matthew Paris, relates that Christ appeared to St Patrick, and, showing him a deep hole, informed him that whoever remained in that pit a day and a night, if he had previously repented, should be purged from his sins, and behold the same scenes as are said to have been shown to Owen. But the account of this place, in a quotation by Mr Thoms from a manuscript preserved at Paris, is different, and is far from promising much comfort to him that shall venture into it, even with the precaution of confession and repent

ance:

"En Irlande si est un leus Ke jur et nuit art cum feus, K'um apele le Purgatore

Sainz Patrice, et est teus encore Ke s'il vunt aucunes genz,

Which of them is, therefore, the real purgatory, is not very evident ; but the number of chapels erected round the hole in Lough Derg, shows that public opinion gave it the preference. While Mr Ledwich exerts himself to prove that neither Owen nor Patrick ever existed out of monkish romance, Mr Faber makes the tutelary saint of Ireland a Pataric or Arkite deity, the same as the Mithras Petreus of Persia, and the Nus Patricius of the Chaldean oracles; and he observes that when this branch of the old Cabiric worship was ingrafted upon Christianity, Oannes Patricus, or the Pataric Noah, was divided into two persons, Owen and Patrick. this as it may, the use of the cave as a place of purification resembles that of the Druidical deity, Tolmen, or hole of stone, in Cornwall and Scilly, amply described by Dr Borlase; and that of the perforated stones in India, through which devout people squeeze themselves in order to be regenerated.

Be

Considering that we almost live, as Sir James Mackintosh observes, in the houses, employ the utensils, and speak the language of the Saxons, it is remarkable that we have derived from them so few superstitions that can be directly traced to the religion of Scandinavia. The destruction of the monastic libraries, during the Reformation, under the sanction of the act of 3 Edward VI., for "the accomplishing and putting awaie diverse books

and images, was fatal to the bulk of the relics of Saxon literature, and hence, no doubt, is to be dated the loss of many popular legends and traditions, such as are still to be found in other parts of Europe. Memorials of this kind are valuable as records of former languages, manners, and customs, and as affording evidence of national genealogy in the intimate connexion which they show to have subsisted between distant nations now strikingly different in all those respects. Here and there, however, a legend or superstition may be correctly assigned to its Saxon authors or importers; such is the tradition connected with the crest of the eagle and child borne by the noble house of Stanley. It is said that Sir Thomas de Lathom had an only daughter Isabella, but desiring a son to inherit his name and fortune, he formed an intrigue, of which the

produce was a boy. He contrived to have the infant conveyed by a confidential servant to the foot of a tree in the park which was frequented by an eagle. Here Sir Thomas and his lady, on taking their usual walk, found the infant as if by accident. The old lady, considering it as a gift from Heaven brought thither by the eagle, and miraculously preserved, consented to adopt the foundling as their heir. In the metrical "History of the House of Stanley," written about the time of Henry VIII. by a bishop of Man, and transcribed by Cole into the 29th vol. of his MSS. (in the British Museum), the "Seconde Fitte" represents "Lord Lathome" as eighty years of age at the time of the discovery of the child, and his lady as "ould and past worldly courage," and relates the following circumstances of the discovery :

Neither popular tradition nor authentic records ascend so high into antiquity. Sir Thomas Lathom died about the reign of Edward III. The child was named Oskatill, from the family name of his mother, Mary Oskatill; and, from the time of the discovery, it is said the crest of the eagle and child was assumed. But as the old knight approached near the grave, he repented, and, on his deathbed, bequeathed the principal part of his estates to his daughter, Isabella, who had now become the lady of Sir John Stanley, leaving to Oskatill two manors, and

some possessions in.Cheshire, where he settled, and became the founder of the family of Lathom of Astbury.

When this story undergoes the scrutiny of the heraldic antiquary, it becomes divested of all probability. The eagle's claw, we are told, was the badge of the Lathoms from the earliest period; and the crest of an eagle standing over a cradle, with an inscription for prayers for the soul of Philip Lathom of Astbury, who was the uncle of Oskatill's patron, once decorated the windows of Astbury Church. The crest was therefore borne by the family before the cir

cumstance, in which it is said to have originated.

The Bishop of Man places the incident before the Conquest, and he may have had in mind an anecdote related by one of his predecessors in that see, the contemporary biographer of King Alfred. Asser says, that one day as Alfred was hunting in a wood, he heard the cry of an infant in a tree, and ordered his attendants to examine the place. They ascended the branches, and found at the top, in an eagle's nest, a beautiful child, dressed in purple, with golden bracelets, the marks of nobility, on his arms. The King had him brought down, baptized, and well educated. From this accident he called the foundling Nesting. The daughter of Nesting's grandson is said to have been one of the ladies for whom Edgar indulged an improper passion.*

The fairies have been supposed to be a direct importation of the silvan deities of Greece and Rome

"Nos beati Fauni proles; " but Sherringham traces them to the Alfes, or Elves, of the Edda.† Gervase of Tilbury, in the beginning of the 13th century, describes a diminutive kind of spirits, who performed, in the night, much the same kind of services in the farm, barn, and mill, as were supposed to be done by the fairies. He denominates them Portuni, which seems to be Barton, a granary or out-house, softened into Latin. This being, however, is certainly the same as the Húdekin of Germany, the Nis of Denmark, the Brownie of Scotland, the Bar-gaist of Yorkshire, the Red-cap of Lancashire, and the Puck of other parts of England, all of whom proceed from the Roman Lares, which are unquestionably no other than the household idols of the remotely ancient Cabirian superstition.

The cup of magical powers, which forms a prominent part in innumerable romances common to several nations, seems to have been generated from the cup in which Hercules, the sun, is said to have crossed immense

seas, and which, placed in the heavens as a constellation near the vessel Argo, became like that an object of early idolatry. One of our old historians, William of Newbury, has a strange tale of a rustic, who obtained from some persons, carousing at midnight, in an illuminated tumulus, or barrow, a cup of unusual colour and form, and of unknown material, which, after being presented to Henry I., was finally consigned to David King of Scotland, in whose treasury it was preserved many years.

That horrific creation of uninstructed imagination, the Wild Huntsman, who still rides in the midst of nocturnal storms in some parts of Germany, is shown, by the author of a learned dissertation on popular fictions in the Quarterly Review, said to be Sir Francis Palgrave, to have existed in Normandy. It exercised its influence in England in the Normanno-Saxon era, and was not unfelt in Lancashire in the last century. Whether this Scandinavian superstition were introduced into Britain by the Saxons or Normans, it will be difficult to decide. The instances mentioned by the reviewer are purely traditionary; but in this country the Wild Huntsman with his train occurs in tradition and history; and, as in France, has given his name to the scene of his perambulations. In the Saxon Chronicle, under the year 1127, when the abbey of Medeshamstede was surrendered to the rapacity of Henry of Angeli, we are told that "several persons saw many huntsmen hunting. The huntsmen were swarthy, huge and ugly; and their hounds were all swarthy and broad-eyed and ugly. And they rode on swarthy horses, and [pursued] swarthy bucks. This was seen in the very deer-fold in the town of Peterborough, and in all the woods from that town to Stamford. And the monks heard the horns that they blew in the night. Credible men who watched them in the night, said they thought there might be twenty or thirty horn-blowers. This was seen and heard from the time he (Henry) came thither all

Hist. Lib. I. cap. 28,

the Lent-tide onward to Easter. This was his entry; of his exit we can as yet say nought."

The same supernatural appearance occurs in the reign of Henry IV., but in a form more resembling that of Rodenstein and his military followers. These the reviewer has satisfactorily connected with Sir Hellequin, and the Hela-kion, or infernal race of Hela, when," according to the popular belief of the Cimbric peasants, she spreads plague and pestilence, and diffuses all evil while she rides by night the Helhest, or three-footed horse of Hell." The rebellion of the Percies was preceded by spectral conflicts, in the summer time, between Bedford and Bicklesande, as recorded in the Ypodigma Neustriæ of Walsingham, and repeated by Speed:-" Sundry monsters of divers colours, in the shapes of armed men, were often seen to issue out of the woods at morning and at noone; which to such as stood farre off seemed to encounter one another in a most terrible manner, but where they drew neare nothing was to be found." Though these sights are to be explained by natural phenomena, the belief in the stories of the Wild Huntsman, in one or other of his forms, appears to have directed the spectator to the first formed conclusion of the nature of the apparition.

The tradition prevalent in the south of Lancashire previous to the invention of the steam-engine, which has dispelled so many visionary terrors by causing the diffusion of education, was, that a dark gigantic rider, upon a steed of vast dimensions, was wont to traverse in stormy nights the hills of Horwich Moor, and the usual spot of his disappearance near relics of the same kind as the reviewer's tomb of the sinful Hackelberg," one of those monuments which we call Druidical for want of a better name," lends its testimony to the correctness of his observations on that superstition.

As the Lancashire tradition has hitherto been unnoticed, except to form the groundwork of a terrific tale of the act of demoniacal possession, by Mr Roby, it will be necessary, in order to show its intimate connexion with those which are decidedly of Scandinavian origin, to quote a part

The

of the reviewer's explanation. "peasants of Scandinavia," he says, "still tremble when the murky air resounds with the baying of the hounds, and when the steeds hold their course between earth and heaven, are heard to rush amongst the clouds an. nouncing the course of the Wild Huntsman."* After this description of a thunderstorm, he says, that the name of Wodin or Odin is found in a root existing in the Anglo-Saxon (Pod), which signifies the wild or furious one; that this etymology would alone indicate the connexion between the Wütend Heer, or wild army, as the Wild Huntsman and his train are popularly called, and the god; that the Wütend Heer are also called Groden's Heer; that Wodin is known in Brunswick as the Hunter of Hackelberg, whose sepulchre, a vast unhewn stone, is of importance in confirming the connexion between the popular mythology and the ancient religion of the country, and that he still retains his power in the neighbourhood of the Oden Wald, or Forest of Odin, and amidst the ruins of Rodenstein Castle.

Mr Rasbotham, a Lancashire magistrate in the last century, describes the ancient monuments, called the Wilder Lads, as they existed in 1776:

66

Upon the summit of Horwich Moor," he says, "lie the Wilder Lads, two rude piles of stone, so called from the popular tradition of the country, that they were erected in memory of two boys who were wildered (that is, bewildered), and lost in the snow at this place. They may be seen at a considerable distance. They are undoubtedly of very high antiquity, and were originally united by a circular mound, above three quarters of which as yet remains visible. Their circumference is about twenty-six and a half feet, and the passage betwixt them six and a half feet.' "About three miles from the Wilder Lads, upon a piece of rock, is a huge, hard, gray moor stone, fourteen feet long, five feet thick, and nine feet broad at the top, which is five feet eight inches from the ground. A rude mark of a cross, of about seven inches by six has, at a remote period of time, been cut upon the top. This is called by

some the Hanging Stone, and by others the Giant's Stone, from a tradition of the common people, that it was thrown by a giant from Winter hill, on the opposite range of mountains. Antiquaries consider it to be a Druidical remain. One part of this range is distinguished by the name of Egbert Den; and there are the remains of a very remarkable trench, called Danes' Dike, extending more than three miles in a straight line from north west to south east." In addition to this description, which is itself almost sufficient to account for the gigantic rider of the storms, the name of the two monuments, called the Wilder Lads, is literally the Wild People, from pild and leod; and a wood in the immediate vicinity, which is called the Wilder Wood, instantly recals to memory the expression pilde puda in the Saxon Chronicles.

This

rope.

Analogous to the perpetuation of Oriental fictions, that derived their first form of allegory from the mystical descriptions, in which the motions of the heavenly bodies were veiled, and which, misconceived by the vulgar, were altered and adapted by successive transmitters, until they degenerated into inane gossip and childish tales of fairies, dragons, and enchantments, is the continuation of the popular customs and observances of various nations. A wide and open field, which has scarcely been entered by philosophical investigation, is here displayed. In tracing nations to their particular sources, the main dependence for assistance has usually been rested upon etymology, but evidence of their common origin, more directly conclusive, may be deduced from the positive identity of customs, existing among the uninstructed in different parts of the earth, and scarcely changed from the rites of the universal idolatry which originally diffused them. Etymology, though not to be made the chief reliance, is of great importance in historical investigations of facts like these, which, when pursued to their source, afford convincing testimony of the affinity of distant nations, and, out of Holy Writ, are the best refutation of the wild, but sometimes plausible speculations of infidelity.

Why, papa! you look at us quite reproachfully," exclaimed the pretty Lucy, jumping up to obey her father's requisition, and as she did so, putting her arms about his neck, and kissing him with coaxing fondness.

"You know, papa, you love music dearly, and this room is so low, and so unfavourable for our beautiful instrument; and Rosomond's voice will sound twice as well where there is space to throw it out, and even Master Edmund there but he is quite conceited enough of himself and his flute, so I shall say nothing about him; I know mamma will be delighted, though she sits and says nothing."

"Don't take any notice of her flippant speeches, mother!" joined in the