Category: Superstitions

Sir David Dalrymple, in his ” Annals of Scotland,” lately published, thinks it improbable, because inconsistent with the religious rigour of the times, that Margery, daughter of King Robert the First, in 1316, should take the diversion of hunting on a Shrove Tuesday. But Shrove Tuesday, as soon as the Shrift, or confession at Mattins, […]

We all know the general custom, practice, or superstition, if you please, of interring the dead on the South side of our churches, in preference to the North side ; so much so, that this latter place is never dug open but to throw therein poor unfortunate strangers who may happen to die in the […]

Dining lately with a friend, our conviviality was suddenly interrupted by the discovery of a maiden lady, who observed that our party consisted of thirteen. Her fears, however, were not without hope, till she found, after a very particular enquiry, that none of her married friends were likely to make any addition to the number. […]

A Charm, or Protection, found in a Linen Purse of Jackson, the Murderer and Smuggler, who died (a Roman Catholic) in Chichester Goal. ” Sancti tres Reges “Gaspar, Melchior, Balthasar, ” Orate pro nobis nunc et in bora ” Mortis nostre. ” Ces billets ont touche aux trois testes de S. S. Roys a Cologne. […]

The following is a very remarkable vision of a Highland Seer, who is famous among the Mountains, and known by the Name of Second-Sighted Sawney. Had he been able to write, we might probably have seen this Vision sooner in print ; for it happen’d to him very early in the late hard winter ; […]

In Dunsford’s ” Memoirs of Tiverton” (4to, Exeter, 1790, p. 285, note 50), is the following very extraordinary tale : ” Many attempts have been made by poor workmen, who frequently left their daily employ, to discover money supposed to be hid near this chapel, without success; it was therefore proposed, that some person should […]

How can one account for some things ? Would any man in his senses have ever expected to find, and under the sign of the cross, the following Christian charm for an ague (of which I have been in possession these twenty years) in Mr. Marsden’s excellent ” History of Sumatra,” p. 342, used, I […]

It is apprehended that what your correspondent, Mr. Bickerstaff, describes as found in St. Mary’s churchyard, at Leicester, and imagines a plate once charged with salt, and laid on a corpse [see Note 371 was a patten intombed in the coffin of some priest or incumbent of that church. The custom of putting a plate […]

Having accidentally been this day a spectator of the funeral pro-cession of Sir Barnard Turner, I was referred, by a learned friend, in consequence of a conversation on the subject of the delay in moving the body, to Mr. Barrington’s ” Observations on the more antient Statutes,” p. 474; where it clearly appears that, whatever […]

A mite towards an history of the force of Imagination in Brutes : A Mr. William Chamberlain, an intelligent farmer and grazier at Ayleston, in Leicestershire, had six cows that cast calf, occasioned, he thinks, by the miscarriage of one in the same pasture, by a kind of contagious sympathy; which common experience, he says, […]