Curious Myths of the Middle AgesBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
Curious Myths of the Middle Ages
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Folklore; Legends -- History and criticism; Tales, Medieval
As I am on the subject of the English princes, I will add another
singular coincidence, though it has nothing to do with the fatality of
numbers.
It is that Saturday has been a day of ill omen to the later kings.
William of Orange died Saturday, 18th March, 1702.
Anne died Saturday, 1st August, 1704.
George I. died Saturday, 10th June, 1727.
George II. died Saturday, 25th October, 1760.
George III. died Saturday, 30th January, 1820.
George IV. died Saturday, 26th June, 1830.
FOOTNOTE:
[36] Up to Louis XIII. all the kings of this name spelled Louis as
Loys.
The Terrestrial Paradise.
The exact position of Eden, and its present condition, do not seem to
have occupied the minds of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, nor to have
given rise among them to wild speculations.
The map of the tenth century in the British Museum, accompanying the
Periegesis of Priscian, is far more correct than the generality of
maps which we find in MSS. at a later period; and Paradise does not
occupy the place of Cochin China, or the isles of Japan, as it did
later, after that the fabulous voyage of St. Brandan had become
popular in the eleventh century.[37] The site, however, had been
already indicated by Cosmas, who wrote in the seventh century, and had
been specified by him as occupying a continent east of China, beyond
the ocean, and still watered by the four great rivers Pison, Gihon,
Hiddekel, and Euphrates, which sprang from subterranean canals. In a
map of the ninth century, preserved in the Strasbourg library, the
terrestrial Paradise is, however, on the Continent, placed at the
extreme east of Asia; in fact, is situated in the Celestial Empire. It
occupies the same position in a Turin MS., and also in a map
accompanying a commentary on the Apocalypse in the British Museum.
According to the fictitious letter of Prester John to the Emperor
Emanuel Comnenus, Paradise was situated close to--within three days'
journey of--his own territories, but where those territories were, is
not distinctly specified.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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