Some thirty or forty years since, my wife's sister, being nurse to Baronet Rudd's three eldest children, and (the Lady mistress being dead) the Lady comptroller of the house going late into the chamber where the maid servants lay, saw no less than five of these lights together. It happened a while after, that the chamber being newly plaistered, and a grate of coal fire therein kindled to hasten the drying of the plaister, that five of the maid servants went to bed as they were wont (but as it fell out) too soon; for in the morning they were all dead, being suffocated in their sleep with the steam of the new tempered lime and coal. This was at Langathen in Carmarthenshire. --- Jo. Davis. See more.--- Generglyn, March 1656. To this account of Mr. Davis, I will subjoin what my worthy friend and neighbour Randal Caldicot, D.D. hath affirmed to me many years since, viz. When any Christian is drowned in the river Dee, there will appear over the water where the corps is, a light, by which means they do find the body: and it is therefore called the Holy Dee. The doctor's father was Mr. Caldicot, of Caldicot in Cheshire, which lies on the river. ORACLES. HIERONIMUS Cardanus, lib. 3, "Synesiorum Somniorum", cap. 15, treats of this subject, which see. Johannes Scotus Erigena, when he was in Greece, did go to an Oracle to enquire for a Treatise of Aristotle, and found it, by the response of the oracle. This he mentions in his works lately printed at Oxford; and is quoted by Mr. Anthony a Wood in his Antiquities of Oxon, in his life. He lived before the conquest, and taught Greek at the Abby in Malmesbury, where his scholars stabbed him with their penknives for his severity to them. Leland mentions that his statue was in the choir there. ECSTACY. Cardanus, lib. 2. Synes. Somniorum, cap. 8. "IN Ecstasin multis modis dilabuntur homines, aut per Syncopen, aut animi deliquium, aut etiam proprie abducto omni sensu externo, absque alia Causa. Id vero contingit consuetis plerunque, & nimio affectu alicujus rei laborantibus; --- Ecstasis medium est inter vigiliam & somnium, sicut somnus inter mortem & vigiliam, seuvitam --- Visa in Ecstasi certiora insomniis: Clariora & evidentiora --- Ecstasi deprehensi audire possunt, qui dormiunt non possunt". Men fall into an Ecstacy many ways, either by a syncope, by a vanishing and absence of the spirits, or else by the withdrawing of every external sense without any other cause. It most commonly happens to those who are over sollicitous or fix their whole minds upon doing any one particular thing. An Ecstacy is a kind of medium between sleeping and waking, as sleep is a kind of middle state between life and death. Things seen in an Ecstacy are more certain than those we behold in dreams: they are much more clear, and far more evident. Those seized with an Ecstacy can hear, those who sleep cannot.