Category: Superstitions

Having never met with any rational account of certain stoney concretions, thrown up by the tides on a certain part of the shore at this place, and thinking them very extraordinary, I have attempted a description of them, which I request you to insert, with the drawings which accompany them (Pl. III. fig. 7, 8, […]

Being Candlemas Day, there was a grand entertainment at the Temple Hall, for the Judges, Sergeants-at-law, etc. The Prince of Wales was there incog., the Lord Chancellor, Earl of Macclesfield, Bishop of Bangor, and several persons of quality. Mr. Baker was Master of the Ceremonies, and received all the company ; at night there was […]

In an excursion to the North of England, I was easily prevailed upon to see the Luck of Edenhall,* celebrated in a ballad of Ritson’s Select Collection of English Songs. The only description I can give you of it is, a very thin, bell mouthed, beaker glass, deep and narrow, ornamented on the outside with […]

That curious piece of antiquity, called the Lee-penny, is a stone of a dark red colour and triangular shape, and its size about half an inch each side. It is set in a piece of silver coin, which, though much defaced, by some letters still remaining is supposed to be a shilling of Edward I., […]

AN UNCOMMON STONE, OF WHICH AN ACCOUNT WAS READ TO THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, AT PARIS. On the 15th of February, 1752, the workmen who were digging in a quarry in Montmartre, near Paris, about 80 yards from its mouth, found a solid body in the form of a table, not like any sort […]

The sacred ash Ydrasil is displayed in a wildly sublime allegory ; and many words signifying strength, valour, or pre-eminence, are compounds of the Saxon word AErc, and in the fifth fable man is described as being formed from the ash. Hesiod in like manner deduces his brazen race of men Ex Meniav, from the […]

Such of your readers as are members of the Camden Society may remember that in the volume of Anecdotes and Traditions, among other curious illustrations of our folk-lore, which Aubrey has recorded in his “Remains of Gentilism and Judaism,” there occurs the following remarkable allusion to a very repulsive superstition : “The Holy Mawle, which […]

As from your earliest years you have shown a true appreciation of literary curiosities of all kinds, I send you “a charm” which in some degree explains itself. The copy from which I take this was made by a Lincolnshire clergyman, from one in the possession of an honest farmer’s wife at Saltfleetby St. Clements, […]

Among the figured tiles in Great Malvern Church engraved in your Magazine for (844, plate 1, figure vii. (and at large in Nichol’s ” Specimens of Encaustic Tiles,” fig. 75, where it is mentioned as having been found also at Shrewsbury) is one which I will request you to introduce again to the notice of […]

I recognize every one of your correspondent, Mr. Noake, charms, omens, and cautionary denouncements, but do not admit their exclusive application to Worcester. [See ante, p. I 33.] I have had the benefit of their inculcation in every county in England, and I have rigidly and reverently obeyed, as my fingers and toes will testify, […]