The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical: A Cabinet for the CuriousStauffer, Frank H.
History
The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical: A Cabinet for the Curious
Stauffer, Frank H.
Literary curiosa
In the morning, when ye rise,
Wash your hands and cleanse your eyes.
Next be sure ye have a care
To disperse the water farre,
For as farre as that doth light,
So farre keeps the evil spright.—_Herrick._
There is mention of older charms in "Bale's Interlude Concerning the
Laws of Nature, Moses and Christ," 1562—
"With blessynges of Saynt Germayne
I will me so determyne
That neyther fox nor vermyne
Shall do my chyckens harme;
For your gese seke Saynt Legearde,
And for your duckes Saynt Leonarde,
There is no better charme."
"Take me a napkin folte
With the byas of a bolte,
For the healing of a colte
No better thynge can be;
For lampes and for bottes
Take me Saynt Wilfrid's knottes,
And holy Saynt Thomas Lottes,
On my life I warrande ye."
_Charm against Dogs._
On the 22d of November the sun enters Sagittarius. According to an old
magical manuscript of the fourteenth century, an aspect of "Sagittary"
seems to have dominion over dogs. "When you wish to enter where there
are dogs, that they may not hinder you, make a tin image of a dog, whose
head is erected towards his tail, under the first face of _Sagittary_,
and say over it, 'I bind all dogs by this image, that they do not raise
their heads or bark;' _and enter where you please_."—_Fosbroke._
_Barnacles._
An extraordinary belief was long current that the barnacle, which is
found adhering to the bottom of ships, would, when broken off, become a
species of goose. Several old writers assert this, and Holinshed gravely
declares, that "with his own eyes he saw the feathers of these barnacles
hang out of the shell at least two inches." Giraldus Cambrensis gives
similar ocular testimony. "Who," he says, "can marvel that this should
be so? When our first parent was made of mud, can we be surprised that a
bird should be born of a tree?" The following lines occur in Isaac
Walton's quotations from "The Divine Weekes and Workes" of Du Bartas—
"So, Sly Boots, underneath him sees
In the cycles, those goslings hatcht of trees,
Whose fruitfull leaves falling into the water
Are turn'd (they say) to living fowls soon after.
So rotten sides of broken ships do change
To barnacles! O, transformation strange!
'Twas first a green tree, then a gallant hull,
Lately a mushroom, now a flying gull!"
In a description of West Connaught, Ireland, by Roderic O'Flaherty
(1684), the barnacle is thus mentioned: "There is the bird engendered by
the sea, out of timber long lying in the sea. Some call these birds
_clakes_, and solan'd geese, and some puffins, others barnacles; we call
them _girrinn_." Butler tells us, in "Hudibras," of those
"Who from the most refined of saints
As naturally grow miscreants,
As barnacles turn soland geese
In the islands of the Orcades."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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