"The great authority for the modern history of the divining rod is a work published by M. Chevreul in Paris in 1854. M. Chevreul, probably with truth, regarded the wand as much on a par with the turning tables which, in 1854, attracted a good deal of attention.... M. Chevreul could find no earlier book on the twig than the _Testament du Frere_, Basile Valentin, a holy man who flourished (the twig) about 1413, but whose treatise is possibly apocryphal. According to Basile Valentin, the twig was regarded with awe by ignorant laboring men, which is still true." [3] "And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chestnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. "And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink." (Genesis xxx, 37-38.) "And the Lord said unto Moses, Go on before the people, and take with thee of the elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thy hand, and go. "Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel." (Exodus xvii, 5-6.) [4] Goclenius was a diviner who also professed to make "magnetic cures." [5] See chapter 9, p. 218. [6] Quoted from the volume, _Water Divining_ (London, 1902). [7] The Gentleman's Magazine (London, 1752). [8] By Young and Robertson (London, 1894). [9] For centuries the home of the Benedictine Order. [10] In plain English, flowers of the buttercup family. CHAPTER XV SUNDRY PIRATES AND THEIR BOOTY "Seven years were gone and over, Wild Roger came again, He spoke of forays and of frays upon the Spanish Main, And he had stores of gold galore, and silks and satins fine, And flasks and casks of Malvoisie, and precious Gascon wine; Rich booties had he brought, he said, across the Western wave. But Roger was the same man still,--he scorned his brother's prayers-- He called his crew, away he flew, and on those foreign shores, Got killed in some outlandish place,--they called it the Eyesores." (_Ingoldsby Legends._)