Let him for succour sue from place to place, But fall untimely by some hostile hand, And lie unburied on the barren sand." Lord Falkland's eye fell on the following lines in the eleventh book:- "Non hæc, O Palla, dederas promissa parenti. Cautius ut sævo velles te credere Marti! Haud ignarus eram, quantum nova gloria in armis, Et predulce decus primo certamine posset. -which the same translator has rendered as follows: "O Pallas, thou hast failed thy plighted word, Vain vows to heaven and unavailing care." How the most pious man of his age, and one of the best kings that ever adorned a throne, suffered death at the hands of his rebellious subjects is well known. Poor Lord Falkland-a young nobleman of the most estimable character; a poet and man of letters, so fond of books that he used to say that "he pitied unlearned gentlemen in a rainy day"-fell gallantly fighting for the royal cause in the battle of Newbury, before he had yet completed his thirty-fourth year. It is curious to find the eminent poet Abraham Cowley, a VIRGILIUS THE MAGICIAN. 15 good man too—of whom at his death Charles II. was heard to say that "Mr. Cowley had not left a better man behind in England," -it is curious, we say, to find him on a certain occasion seriously referring to the Virgilian Lots, and, what is more, avowing his firm belief in them! During the Commonwealth, Cowley was in Paris, where he acted as secretary to the Earl of St. Albans (then Lord Jermyn), and had a good deal to do with the negotiations that eventually led to the Restoration. In one of his letters, speaking of the Scotch treaty then in agitation, he says-seriously, observe, and in an official document-"The Scotch treaty is the only thing. now in which we are vitally concerned. I am one of the last hopers, and yet cannot now abstain from believing that an agreement will be made; all people upon the place incline to that union. The Scotch will moderate something of the rigour of their demands; the mutual necessity of an accord is visible, the king is persuaded of it. And, to tell you the truth (which I take to be an argument above all the rest), Virgil has told the same thing to that purpose." He had evidently consulted the Virgilian Lots, and a passage presenting itself that could somehow be twisted so as to point to a favourable issue to the Scotch business in hand, he accepts the oracle, and in all seriousness announces his belief in it! When we find a man of refinement and culture and high moral character like Cowley crediting such nonsense, can we much wonder at the lengths to which fanaticism and superstition carried people in those unhappy times? To understand why Virgil, of all the ancient poets, Roman or Greek, was selected as the oracle in this mode of divination, we must remember that the Mantuan bard had the credit amongst his countrymen of having been a sorcerer or necromancer and prophet as well as a poet, something like the British Merlin, or our own Thomas the Rhymer and Michael Scott, only more famous, perhaps. Would the reader suppose, for example, that the theory of volcanic action is all a myth, and that it is to the magic of Virgil, and to nothing else, that the south of Italy is indebted for all the earthquakes and subterranean convulsions that have afflicted it for centuries? Yet so it is, if we are to credit all the stories of "Virgilius the Magician" that were current during the Middle Ages. The celebrated Benedictine monk, Bernard de Montfaucon, author of Antiquité Expliquée one of the most learned and curious works in existence, repeats the story as it was told and credited in the Dark Ages. The following is from an old translation, quoted by Scott in his notes to the Lay of the Last Minstrel, in illustration of the magical spells attributed to the Ladye of Branksome Tower. Virgil it seems, among other things, was famous for his gallantries. On one occasion he fell in love with and carried away the daughter of a certain "Soldan," and the story proceeds: "Than he thoughte in his mynde how he myghte marye hyr, and thoughte in his mynde to founde in the middes of the see a fayer towne, with great landes belongynge to it; and so he did by his cunnynge, and called it Napells (Naples). And the foundacyon of it was of egges, and in that town of Napells he made a tower with iiii. corners, and in the toppe he set an apell upon an yron yarde, and no man culde pull away that apell without he brake it; and thoroughe that yren set he a bolte, and in that bolte set he an egge, and he henge the apell by the stauke upon a cheyne, and so hangeth it still. And when the egge styrreth so should the town of Napells quake; and when the egge brake, then shulde the town sinke. When he made an ende, he lette calls it Napells." Thomas of "Ercildoune," and he of "Balivearie," and the two Merlins,-for there were two of them, the Merlin of the Arthurian legends, and Merdwynn Wylet, or Merlin the Wild, who seems to have been a Scotchman, and whose grave is still pointed out beneath an aged thorn-tree at Drumelzier in Tweeddale,-these were accounted great magicians and "pretty fellows in their day;" but what were they to Virgilius the earthquaker, who at least THOMAS OF ERCILDOUNE. 17 attained to such an enviable state of independence, that he is represented as frequently playing at pitch and toss with the "devyl," and cheating and outwitting that crafty potentate as if he were the veriest greenhorn! The Sortes Sacra were just the Sortes Virgiliana, with this difference, that in the former case, instead of a copy of Virgil, the New Testament was used in the process of divination. The oracle is consulted in this case, according to our information, by the introduction at random of the wards end of a key (some allusion probably to the Apostolic keys) between the leaves of the closed volume, which is then opened at that place, and from the first verse that arrests the eye the desired knowledge is extracted. On inquiry, we find that this superstition was still occasionally practised in the Highlands of Scotland some fifty years ago, though we would fain hope and believe that it is now unknown. It is curious that it should still be frequently resorted to in the south-western districts. It seems to have been a very general as well as a very ancient mode of divination. Hoffman, in his Lexicon Universale, &c., informs us that it was practised by the Jewish Rabbins with their sacred books, as well as by the Pagans from very early times, and was common amongst the Christians of the Middle Ages. We are informed by a gentleman, who spent many years in the East, that the Mahometans frequently resort to this method of divination, taking the Koran as their oracle. CHAPTER III. An old Gaelic MS.-"The Bewitched Bachelor Unbewitched "-Fairy Lore-Lacteal Libations on Fairy Knowes. In looking over some old papers the other day [October 1868] we stumbled on some sheets of Gaelic MS. that had lain neglected for years, and every existence of which, indeed, we had well-nigh for gotten. One of these sheets contained the original of the following lines. It is in many respects a curious composition, written in a sort of rhythmical alliterative prose rather than in verse, somewhat in the manner of the conversational parts of the Gaelic Sgeulachdan or fireside tales of the olden time. Its tone throughout is gay and lively, with an occasional admixture of humour and double entendre that is very amusing, while its allusions to the manners and customs and superstitious observances of a past age render it, to our thinking, extremely interesting. The sheet in our possession is only a copy, the original, taken down from oral recitation, we believe, being in a MS. collection of Gaelic poems and tales by Rev. Mr. M'Donald, at one time minister of the parish of Fortingall, in Perthshire. Having only internal evidence to judge from, it is impossible with any confidence to assign even an approximate date to such a production as this, but we are probably not far wrong in placing it as early at least as the middle or close of the last century. It bears no title in the original; we may call it— THE BEWITCHED BACHELOR UNBEWITCHed. The gudeman mumbled and grumbled full sore Over cheese, over butter, and milk-pails, he swore ""Tis the work, I'll be bound, of some foul witch or fairy. |