“My poets Shall with a satire, steep’d in gall and vinegar, Rhime ’em to death, as they do rats in Ireland.” Ben Jonson is still more specific: “Rhime ’em to death, as they do Irish rats, In drumming tunes.” From this reference to the mode of conjuring it appears that the repeating of the rhymes was accompanied with the beating of a drum, as is still the usage in France. From the very earliest times a peculiar magical potency has been ascribed to words woven into rhythmic form. The fascination which metrical expression, even as a mere jingle and jargon, still retains for the youth of the individual was yet far more strongly felt in the youth of the race. The simple song was intoned as a spell and the rude chant mumbled as a charm. In France the conjuration of field-mice bears a more distinctly religious stamp. On the first Sunday in Lent, the so-called Feast of the Torches (_la Fête des Brandons ou des Bures_), the peasants wander in all directions through the fields and orchards with lighted torches of twisted straw, uttering the following incantation, which not only threatens to burn the whiskers of obdurate mice, but also hints at the wine-bibbing propensities of the curate: “Sortez, sortez d’ici, mulots! Ou je vais vous bruler les crocs! Quittez, quittez ces blés! Allez, vous trouverez Dans la cave du curé Plus à boire qu’à manger.” The form of imprecation varies in different provinces, but usually includes some threat of breaking the bones or burning the beards of the refractory rodents, in case they refuse to quit the close, as in the following summons: “Taupes et mulots, Sors de mon clos, Ou je te casse les os; Barbassione! Si tu viens dans non clos, Je te brûle la barbe jusqu’aux os.” The utterance of these words is emphasized by loud and discordant noises of cat-calls, tin horns, and similar instruments of “Callithumpian” music. Gregory, who was Bishop of Tours in the latter half of the sixth century, states in his _History of the Franks_ (VIII. 35) that bronze talismans representing dormice and serpents were used in Paris to protect the city against the ravages of these creatures; and when the town of Le Mans was rebuilt after its destruction by fire in 1145, a toad with a gold chain round its neck, was enclosed in a block of stone as a preservative against venomous reptiles. (Le Corvasier: _Hist, des Évêques du Mans_, 1648, p. 441. Cf. Desnoyers: _Recherches_, etc., p. 7.) The use of the above-mentioned means of conjuration is unquestionably of very ancient date. Thus in a treatise on agriculture entitled τὰ γεωπονικά and consisting of twenty books, written in the tenth century by the Bithynian Byzantine, Kassianos Bassos, the following prescription is given for getting rid of field-mice: