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JOURNAL OF BELLES LETTRES, ARTS, &c.

Published every Wednesday.-Terms, five dollars per annum, to be paid in advance. "POSCENTES VARIO MULTUM DIVEKSA PALATO."-Hor. Lib. ii. Ep. 2.

No. 17.-VOL. 1.

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.

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The graphical allusions to the dreaded Wehmegerichte or Vehmgerichte and its extensive influence in the middle ages by Sir Walter Scott in his last novel-Anne of Gierstein may render a brief account of that formidable tribunal interesting,

In criminal cases, especially, the Vehmgerichte would seem to have taken the place of the courts of justice-which had fallen entirely into decay during the middle ages. It originated and held its chief sitting in Westphalia, and its proceedings were carried on in the greatest secrecy; hence it was likewise called the Westphalian and secret tribunal. The word Vehm probably comes from the old Saxon word Verfehmen, which signifies "banished," "put to flight." The institution dates its origin from the time of Charlemagne, although no contemporary historian has made mention of it. No accurate accounts of it, indeed, appear, prior to the thirteenth cen

tury.

OCTOBER 7, 1829.

too there are said to have been similar associations.

Owing to the secrecy, in which these tribunals were enveloped, little is historically. known of their internal management. The Stuhlherr or presiding judge-commonly a prince or earl-had the chief management of the whole tribunal, whose jurisdiction embraced several free chairs (Freistuehle.) The president of the secret court was called the Freigraf, or free count: his assessors (Beisitzer) who had a voice in the judgment and who executed it, were called Freischoeffen or free sheriffs; their sittings Freidinge and the place where the sittings were held the "free seat" (der freie stuhl.) The Freischoeffen, who were appointed by the Freigrafen existed in every town of Germany; and their number was estimated at one hundred thousand. They knew each other by certain signs and watchwords which were unknown to the uninitiated-hence they were called "the informed" (die wissenden.) They bound themselves by a formidable oath; for they vowed "the holy Vehme to support, assist and conceal before wife and child, father and mother, sister and brother, fire and wind, before every thing in heaven or on earth."

They acknowledged the emperor as their These secret tribunals were most formi- sovereign: The sittings of the tribunal dable in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- were public and private; the former were turies; and they did not lose their activity held by day in the open air-the latter by until the general peace enabled the Ger- night in a forest or in subterraneous and mans to introduce a better form and ad- concealed places. The mode of proceedministration of criminal justice. The lasting in these places differed :-the crimes of Vehmgerichte was held in 1568 near Zelle. Besides Westphalia there were, in Lower Saxony and in some other German provinces, Vehmgerichte; but they had less consideration and their jurisdiction was restricted within particular limits; in Italy

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which the secret tribunal took cognizance were :—heresy, witchcraft, rape, theft and murder.

The complaint was made by a Frei schoeffe, who, without adducing evidence, deposed upon oath, that the accused had

"Collections of provincial dialects would often have been extremely useful; many words esteemed peculiar to certain counties being remnants of the language formerly in general use." NARES.

DIALECTS OF THE NORTH OF ENGLAND.

committed the crime. The accused was ENGLISH PROVINCIALISMS.—No 4. now three times summoned before the secret tribunal, the summons being secretly nailed upon the door of his dwelling or in the neighbourhood; the accuser remaining unknown. If the accused did not make his appearance at the third summons, he was once more cited before a solemn sitting of the tribunal, called the secret "Acht," and if he still disobeyed he was outlawed or given up to the Freischoeffen. The first Freischoeffen now who met him, hanged him on a tree, not on a gallowsas evidence that it had been done by a Freischoeffe. If the condemned, defended himself, the Freischoeffen were authorized to slay him. Evidences were then placed near the body to shew, that no murder had been committed, but that it was a punishment, which had been executed by a Freischoeffe.

The idea of the number of unjustifiable judicial murders, that may have taken place, in this way, from envy, hatred or malice, strikes the mind with horror. If any Freischoeffe gave the slightest hint to one condemned by the Vehmgerichte, so that he might escape, the Freischoeffe himself was punished with death: and, hence, how easy must it have been by such a hint to induce the timid (and who would not be timid under such an administration of justice?) to flee from their homes, even when innocent and really unaccused? Without excepting the Spanish inquisition, which it in many respects resembled, the Vehmgerichte would seem to have been one of the most abominable institutions, with the forms of justice, ever adopted by any civilized judge: an institution in which the judge never promulgated the grounds of his verdict; where the forms were kept a profound secret and the accused condemned, even to death, without being heard.

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THE JOURNAL OF HEALTH.

A new periodical has been commenced in Philadelphia under this title. It is conducted by an association of physicians, and, if executed according to the views contained in the prospectus, will be a useful work.

*

In Cumberland, Lancashire, Northumberland and Yorkshire, the dialects, which strongly resemble each other, are, to a certain extent, modified, especially in the first and third of those counties, by the frequent communication with the Scottish borderers. The two last, likewise, contain a greater proportion of that variety of the Gothic which proceeded from the Danes. A writer, in one of the volumes of the Gentleman's Magazine, has taken the trouble to sift out the words purely Danish, which still exist in the dialect of Northumberland, and they are numerous.

1. DIALECT OF CUMBERLAND. Of this Mr. Clarke, in his tour to the Lakes, has given a specimen in the following dialogue, which, he says, was actually heard by him: some of the words he has quoted incorrectly: these we have altered.

"A country wench, not long ago, laid by her clogs 1, and new greased her shun 2 and away she gangs one sunday morning to Keswick, to see her sister Ruth, who was a sarvant at yan oth public houses. She goes to the Kurk in the

morning and after dinner mud gang on to th'

lake (to be seen) because lwords and great fouk

did seah. Accordingly, a parcel of girls, such as herself, attended by shoemakers, carters, chaise-drivers, hostlers &c., took with them a few bottles of wine and cider. They spent the afternoon no doubt agreeably enough to themselves: but our heroine, after the peregrination, being to give an account to her mother why she was so late home that evening, this curious dialogue ensued.

Daughter. Oh! moother, moother, an ye had been theear ye wad ha stay'd teu; seck fine wark ye nivver saw. Efter dinner, we went toth

lake.

Mother. Lake! eigh, thou wad lake 3 an ramp and rive o the cleayths, I war'n. Lets leuk if nin o them be roven? What lake wast? Tennis or Anthony Blindman?

Daughter. Moother ye dooent understand ma., Went to th' watter, an gat ontuet in a booat; at hed things, like a battelter on aither side ont, at carrit it on some way or uther; an we drank

finest stuff at ivver was, they cawt it cine an wi-
der 4.
Mother. Cine an wider, uman, whats tatt?
Daughter. What's tatt? nay, I knaw nut.
Mother. What is't like ?

Daughter. Like, it like? like, its like! nay I knaw nut what its like; its like whey-whig 5, and drink 6, but far finer.

Mother. Hang the cine an wider, and the lakes; an thou hesnt roven the cleeaths, nur worn the stockin-heels out, I kair nnt. Gitt te cloggs on, an doff that fine goon, an ligg by the hatt an aw things; thoo mun full muck 7 to mwoarn, or gang toth' moss for this skelpin 8 to day; it's far better for tha.

Daughter. O moother! yon talear Gweordy is a canny fellow.

Mother. Gitt away with the an thy canny fellow.

The greatest part of the above will be intelligible, differing chiefly from correct English in orthography and orthoepy; there are some words, however, which require explanation.

thing—are universal, from Anglo-Saxon
lacan, to play; no other lake is known
in Cumberland-the old lady exhibits
this in asking what lake it was, Tennis
or Anthony Blindman? the latter game
is the same as blindman's buff, in which
some one must have his eyes covered
and hunt out the rest of the company.
The play is common over Great Britain
but has various names in different parts;
in the west of England it is called blind-
buck-and-Davy; perhaps
perhaps originally
blind buck and have ye; and in Scotland
it has no other appellations than blind
Harrie.

"Some were blyth, and some were sad
"And some they play'd at blind Harrie.”
Hord's Collection.

4. Cine and wider. Evidently a case of accidental Metathesis: a very awkward instance of this kind occurred to an

orator, desirous of using the expression. "It was a wound from which he had

long felt the smart:" an accidental metathesis completely put a stop to an interesting harangue from the ludicrous effects it induced upon the auditors.

5. Whey whig or whiggen'd whey means a pleasant liquor, made by infusing various aromatic herbs in whey, and suffering it to undergo fermentation. The Anglo-Saxon, hwag, means serum: and, in Cumberland as well as Scotland, whig means a thin, sour, liquid of the lacteous kind. Wodrow derives the political term whig from this very word.

1. Clogs. These are a sort of wooden shoes, the upper part formed of strong hide leather, and the soles of wood, plated beneath with iron-often termed cawkers. This word cawkers sets all etymology at defiance :-some have supposed, that it might be derived from calx Lat. the heel but this is frivolous. In Scotland the word is applied to the curved horse shoe, or frost shoe, perhaps, as Ja-"The poor honest people, who were in mieson remarks, from Isl. Keikr, curved; and from that of the horse it may have been extended to the human shoe.

2. Shun, shoon-this is old English.
"Spare none but such as go in clouted shoon
"For they are thrifty honest men."

SHAKSPEARE.

Whos shoon y am not worthi to bere.
Matthew iii. WICLIF.

The Anglo-Saxon word is

Teut. Schoen.

sceon.

raillery called whiggs, from a kind of milk they were forced to drink in their wanderings and straits became name-fathers to all who espoused the interest of liberty and property through Britain and Ireland." Wodrow, however, himself, prefers the etymon, which is given by Burnet in his " own times."

"The south west counties of Scotland have seldom corn enough to serve them round the year; and the northern parts producing more than they need, those in the west come in the summer to buy at Leith, the stores that come from the north; and from a word wiggam, 3. Lake, to play, and laking, a play- used in driving their horses, all that

Schone is the word used in Scotland.
This emprioure causit rich perle and precious

stanis to be set in his schone. &c. &c.

BELLEND, Chron.

drove were called the whiggamors and shorter the whiggs. Now, in that year (1648,) after the news came down of Duke Hamilton's defeat, the ministers animated their people to rise and march to Edinburgh; and they came up marching at the head of their parishes, with an unheard of fury, praying and preaching all the way as they came. The marquis of Argyll and his party, came and headed them, they being about six thousand. This was called the whiggamors inroad; and, ever after that, all that opposed the court came, in contempt, to be called whiggs; and from Scotland the word was brought into England, where it is now one of our unhappy terms of distinction." Own Times i. 58.

6. Drink. This usually means, beer, small-beer.

7. Full muck-to load with muck or dung: muck is a good old English word from Saxon meox, dung. A heap of muck, or a dung hill is called a muckmiddin middin is also good Saxon in the same signification. Both muck and middin pervade all the northern counties as well as Scotland.

:

OF THE BATAKS, A NATION OF CANNIBALS IN SUMATRA.

"of the Cannibals that each other eat, "The Anthropophagi."

SHAKSPEARRE.

It is a matter of well founded doubt, whether Cannibalism ever existed, with any people, from a fondness for human flesh as an article of diet; or that there ever was a time

"When men devour'd each other like the beasts

"Gorging on human flesh."

We have, in the antient writers, numerous accounts of Anthropophagous nations, and individuals, of Cyclops, Læstrygones, Egyptians and Kelts, but the authors, who Scylla, Scythians, Sarmatians, Ethiopians, have made us acquainted with some of their peculiarities, Homer, Herodotus, Pliny, Strabo, Juvenal, Solinus, and Pelloutier have not dwelt much upon the causes, which could have impelled them to this revolting banquet. More modern and accurate observations have generally exhibited, that this practice has been suggested by religious, or vindictive associations, sufficiently powerful to vanquish that repugnance which must necessarily be felt in feeding on our own species.

It is true, that we have some modern ac8. Skelpin is not often used in Cun-counts, which would militate against this berland, although to skelp is very com-idea, if implicitly credited, as that of Hermon in Scotland; it means here" to move quickly on foot, to trip along, especially applied to one who is barefooted."

"The well-win thousands of some years "In ae big bargain disappears : "Tis sair to bide, but wha can help it, "Instead of coach, on foot they skelp it." RAMSAY'S Poems.

"As lightsomely I glowr'd abroad,

"To see a scene so gay, "Three hizzies, early at the road,

"Came skelpin up the way."-BURNS Jamieson thinks that the word skelp, in this signification, may have the same derivation as skelp to beat, which seems to be from A. S. scylf-an to tremble

Isl. skelf-a to shake, to cause to tremble; and, as a sharp noise is made by the feet in walking quickly, the term has received the other signification.

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rera, who speaks of great markets in China furnished wholly with human flesh for the better sort of people; orthat of Marco Polo, who refers to the circumstance in his time in the kingdom of Concha and in the island of Zapengit; and the same thing has been asserted to have been met with in Java, Siam, Sumatra and other oriental countries.

Unreserved confidence must not, however, be placed in the assertions of these old travellers: their fondness for the marvellous has now become proverbial, and we have no stronger instances of this, than in the records of the Mexican portion of our own continent, especially as regards the number of human victims, sacrificed in Mexico, so much exaggerated by the Spanish historians. According to Gomara, there was no year in which twenty thous

* See Virey's Hist. Naturelle du Genre Humain tii p. 46.

death makes no great difference in their opinion, or whether it be recently dead or bordering on putridity.

"Nothing" says Messrs. Burton and Ward can be more erroneous than the opinions, commonly entertained by the Malays, in their neigh

and human victims were not offered to the Mexican divinities; and, in some years, they amounted to fifty thousand. Herrera's account is still more incredible,—that five thousand were sacrificed in one day and, on some occasions, not less than twenty thousand. The fact that, if such a de-bourhood as well as by Europeans, with regard struction of human life had really occurred the country must soon have become depopulated, never seems to have struck those historians.. Still the number immo-clusion, that they were a remarkably ferocious lated was probably very great.

to the gencral character and disposition of the Bataks. The well established fact of their Cannibalism, has, perhaps, naturally led to the con

and daring people. So strongly indeed had this When this continent was discovered the impression taken hold of our minds that, although practice of Cannibalism was found to be a residence of two years on the border of their almost universal, but, in all instances, it country had furnished nothing to confirm the was probably followed merely for the satis-opinion, we still expected to find proofs of it in faction of revenge. the interior. So far from this, however, what

These observations have been occasion- ever may be the fact with respect to other dised by the report of a journey into the Ba-tricts, the people of Silindung, in quietness and tak country, in the interior of Sumatra, inade timidity, are apparently not surpassed even by in the year 1824 by Messrs. Burton and the Hindus. Misunderstandings between indiWard, Baptist missionaries; which was pub-viduals of the same village seldom go beyond lished in the third part of the first volume of the "Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland." The people of this country had been already described by Mr. Marsden as Anthropophagous, eating human flesh as a a species of ceremony, 66 as a mode of shewing their destestation of crimes by an ignominious punishment; and as a horrid indication of revenge and insult to their unfortunate enemies."

words, or a complaint to the chief; and their wars are little more than nominal. These will often continue for five or six years without proving fatal to more than two or three persons of each side. The hostile parties commit no depredations on each other's crops or cattle; and an instance occurred, during our stay in Silindung, of two men coming upon private business to the village where we resided, from one with which our host was at war, when he hospitably entertained them and suffered them to depart in peace. We mean not to say, however, that the Bataks are a kind and humane people; instances of their extreme unfeelingness and cruelty towards the afflicted and to enemies in their power are lamentably numerous.

Their seem

Messrs. Burton and Ward undertook their journey at the request of the late Sir Stamford Raffles, then Lieutenant Governor of Bencoolen. The enterprize was hazardous, chiefly from the reported ferocity of the Batak character and their known Ca-ingly peaceable disposition may perhaps be renibalism; but the travellers seem to have solved into cowardice, and the influence of a dark and enslaving superstition, from the been agreeably disappointed in this reshackles of which they are never, for a moment, spect. free."

Great ignorance appears to prevail amongst the Bataks, who are estimated by Messrs. Burton and Ward to amount to a million of souls. They resemble, in their appearance, the Hindus; wear the hair long and tied at the top of the head, and the women part their hair in front; both according to the custom of Hindusthan. Their principal food is rice and the sweet potatoe; animal food being a luxury indulged only on particular occasions. In their choice of animals they are by no means delicate; they do not scruple to eat horses, dogs, cats, snakes, monkies and bats: and whether the animal was killed or died a natural

Their religion is a wild and incoherent system, but they "believe in the existence of one supreme being, creator of the world, whom they name Debati Hasi Asi” who has retired in their opinion, from the government of the universe, which he has committed wholly to the care of his three sons, Batra Guru, Sori Pada, and Magnana Bulan, the first the god of Justice, the second the god of mercy and the last the source of evil. They do not worship idols; but in every village there is the image of a man whom they use in administering

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