Folk-Lore of West and Mid-WalesDavies, Jonathan Ceredig
History
Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales
Davies, Jonathan Ceredig
Folklore -- Wales; Wales -- Social life and customs
which I have so much more reason to lament, as the ignominy you
have published redounds to my own injury.' The woman thus detected,
was unable to dissemble her confusion, betrayed the inward feelings
of her mind by external signs; shame and sorrow urging her by turns,
and manifesting themselves, now by blushes, now by paleness, and lastly
(according to the custom of women), by tears.
The shoulder of a goat was also once brought to a certain person
instead of a ram's, both being alike when cleaned, who, observing
for a short time the lines and marks, exclaimed 'Unhappy cattle
that never was multiplied! Unhappy likewise the owner of the cattle,
who never had more than three or four in one flock!'
Many persons, a year and a half before the event, foresaw by
the means of the shoulder bones the destruction of their country
after the decease of King Henry the First, and selling all their
possessions, left their homes, and escaped the impending ruin. In
our time, a soothsayer, on the inspection of a bone, discovered not
only a theft, and the manner of it, but the thief himself, and all
the attendant circumstances; he heard also the striking of a bell,
and the sound of a trumpet, as if those things which were past were
still performing. It is wonderful, therefore, that these bones,
like all unlawful conjurations, should represent by a counterfeit
similitude to the eyes and ears, things which are past as well as
those which are now going on."
It is evident that the Celts, as well as the Flemings, knew something
of Shoulder-bone Reading, for J. G. Campbell, in his "Superstitions
of the Scottish Highlands," an interesting book presented to me by
Countess Amherst, states that this mode of divination was practised,
like the augury of the ancients, as a profession or trade; and Pennant,
in his "Tours in Scotland," 150 years ago, says that when Lord Loudon
was obliged to retreat before the Rebels to the Isle of Skye, a
common soldier, on the very moment the battle of Culloden was decided,
proclaimed the victory at a distance, pretending to have discovered
the event by looking through the bone; and Sir S. R. Meyrick, in his
"History of Cardiganshire," writing one hundred years ago, says that
the remains of this custom still existed in Cardiganshire in his time;
"but the principal use made of the bone is in the case of pregnant
women. The shoulder bone of a ram being scraped quite clean, a hole
is burnt in it, and it is then placed over the door of the apartment
in which the pregnant woman is, and she is told that the sex of her
offspring will be precisely the same as that of the first person who
shall enter the room."
DREAMS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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