Observations on Popular Antiquities: Chiefly Illustrating the Origin of Our Vulgar Customs, Ceremonies, and Supersititions, Volume 3

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Charles Knight and Company, 1842 - Christian antiquities - 288 pages
 

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Page 96 - So when a child, as playful children use, Has burnt to tinder a stale last year's news, The flame extinct, he views the roving fire, There goes my lady, and there goes the 'squire ; There goes the parson, oh ! illustrious spark, And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk.
Page 81 - They see the gliding ghosts unbodied troop. Or, if in sports, or on the festive green, Their destined glance some fated youth descry, Who now, perhaps, in lusty vigour seen, And rosy health, shall soon lamented die. For them the viewless forms of air obey; Their bidding heed, and at their beck repair: They know what spirit brews the stormful day, And, heartless, oft like moody madness, stare To see the phantom train their secret work prepare.
Page 54 - Down in the deep the stool descends, But here, at first, we miss our ends; She mounts again, and rages more Than ever vixen did before. So, throwing water on the fire Will make it...
Page 52 - I'll speed me to the pond, where the high stool On the long plank hangs o'er the muddy pool, That stool, the dread of every scolding quean.
Page 157 - ... that in former times they have been cleft asunder. These trees, when young and flexible, were severed and held open by wedges, while ruptured children stripped naked were pushed through the apertures, under a persuasion that by such a process, the poor babes would be cured of their infirmity. As soon as the operation was over, the tree in the suffering part was plastered with loam, and carefully swathed up. If the parts coalesced and soldered together, as usually fell out where the feat was performed...
Page 22 - The conceit that a cat has nine lives, has cost at least nine lives in ten of the whole race of them. Scarce a boy in the streets but has in this point outdone Hercules himself, who was famous for killing a monster that had but three lives.
Page 26 - Nothing," says Mr. Dallaway, in his Account of Constantinople, 1797, p. 391, "can exceed the superstition of the Turks respecting the evil eye of an enemy or infidel. Passages from the Koran are painted on the outside of the houses, globes of glass are suspended from the ceilings, and a part of the superfluous caparison of their horses is designed to attract attention and divert a sinister influence.
Page 27 - And seven times does her prayers backward pray. Till Plotcock comes with lumps of Lapland clay, Mixt with the venom of black taids and snakes ; Of this unsonsy pictures aft she makes Of ony ane she hates — and gars expire With slaw and racking pains afore a fire ; Stuck fu' of prins, the devilish pictures melt, The pain, by fowk they represent, is felt.
Page 193 - ... out of which when he recovers, he returns to the same state of youth he was in when Jesus suffered, being then about thirty years of age. He remembers all the circumstances of the death and resurrection of Christ, the saints that arose with him, the composing of the apostles' creed, their preaching, and dispersion ; and is himself a very grave and holy person.
Page 184 - As, indeed," saith our author, "under so auspicious a position of heaven it had been strange if she had missed so to have done ; for herein you see Jupiter in the ascendant in sextile aspect of the sun ; and the moon, who is lady of the horoscope, and governess of the hour in which she weighed anchor, is applying ad trinum Veneris. She returned to London again very well laden, in three weeks' time, to the great content as well as advantage of the owner.

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