First, get a broad square christall or Venice glasse, in length and breadth three inches. Then lay that glasse or christall in the blood of a white hen, three Wednesdayes or three Fridayes. Then take it out and wash it with holy aq; and fumigate it. Then take three hazle sticks or wands of an yeare groth; pill them fayre and white; and make them so longe as you write the spiritt’s name, or fayrie’s name, which you call three times on every stick being made flatt on one side. Then bury them under some hill, whereat you suppose fayries haunt, the Wednesday before you call her; and the Fridaye followinge take them uppe and at eight, or three or ten of the clocke which be good planetts and houres for that turne; but when you call be in cleane life and turn thy face towards the east, and when you have her bind her in that stone and glasse.[424] Whiston, the translator of Josephus, publicly proclaimed in London that the comet of 1712 would be visible on October 14 of that year, and that on the Friday morning ensuing the world would be destroyed by fire. In the resulting panic, many people embarked in boats on the Thames, believing the water to be the safer element, on that particular Friday at least. Mr. Charles Godfrey Leland, in his “Etruscan Roman Remains,” says that in certain mediæval manuscripts the Goddess Venus was represented as the Queen of Hearts and a dealer of lucky cards. Therefore Friday, the _Dies Veneris_, was sometimes considered a lucky day, especially for matrimony. This opinion finds favor in Glasgow, where a large proportion of marriages take place on this day; whereas, in the midland counties of England, less than two per cent. of the weddings occur on the sixth day of the week.[425] References to the popular sentiment regarding Friday are frequent in the works of English writers. Sir Thomas Overbury, in his description of “a faire and happy Milk-mayd,” says: “Her dreams are so chaste that shee dare tell them; only a Fridaie’s dream is all her superstition: that she conceales for feare of anger.” Again, in the play of “Sir John Oldcastle” is this passage: “Friday, quotha, a dismal day, Candlemas Day this year was Friday.”[426] And in Scott’s “Marmion” is the following:— The Highlander, whose red claymore The battle turned on Maldas’ shore, Will on a Friday morn look pale If asked to tell a fairy tale. He fears the vengeful Elfin King, Who leaves that day his grassy ring; Invisible to human ken, He walks among the sons of men. As a refreshing instance of independence of thought in a credulous age, we may quote from a letter written by Sir Winston Churchill, father of the Duke of Marlborough, and printed in a tract of 1687. The letter, though ungrammatical, is given verbatim:—