Page images
PDF
EPUB

mention of the cucking-stool. He says, "This way of punishing scolding women is pleasant enough. They fasten an arm-chair to the end of two beams twelve or fifteen foot long, and parallel to each other; so that these two pieces of wood with their two ends embrace the chair, which hangs between them upon a sort of axle; by which means it plays freely, and always remains in the natural horizontal position in which a chair should be that a person may sit conveniently in it, whether you raise it or let it down. They set up a post upon the bank of a pond or river, and over this post they lay, almost in equilibrio, the two pieces of wood, at one end of which the chair hangs just over the water; they place the woman in this chair, and so plunge her into the water as often as the sentence directs, in order to cool her immoderate heat.

Cole, the antiquary already mentioned, in one of his manuscript volumes in the British Museum, says, " In my time, when I was a boy and lived with my grandmother in the great corner-house at the bridge-foot, next to Magdalen College, Cambridge, and rebuilt since by my uncle, Joseph Cock, I remember to have seen a wo man ducked for scolding. The chair hung by a pulley fastened to a beam about the middle of the bridge, in which the woman was confined, and let down under the water three times, and then taken out. The bridge was then of timber, before the present stone bridge of one arch was builded. The ducking-stool was constantly hanging in its place, and on the back panel of it was engraved devils laying hold of scolds, &c. Some time after, a new chair was erected in the place of the old one, having the same devices carved on it, and well painted and ornamented. When the new bridge of stone was erected in 1754, this was taken away; and I lately saw the carved and gilt back of it nailed up by the shop of one Mr. Jackson, a whitesmith in the Butcher-row, behind the town-hall, who offered it to me, but I did not know what to do with it. In October, 1776, I saw in the old town-hall a third ducking-stool, of plain oak, with an iron bar before it to confine the person in the

seat; but I made no inquiries about it. I mention these things, as the practice seems now to be totally laid aside." Mr. Cole died in the year 1782.

The custom of the ducking-stool was not confined to England. In the Regiam Majestatem' of Sir John Skene it occurs as an ancient punishment in Scotland. Under Burrow Lawes,' chap. 69, noticing Browsters, that is, "Wemen quha brewes aill to be sauld," it is said, "gif she makes gude Ail, that is sufficient; bot gif she makes evill Ail, contrair to the use and consuetude of the Burgh, and is convict thereof, she sall pay ane unlaw of aucht shillinges, or sall suffer the justice of the Burgh, that is, she sall be put upon the COCK-STULE, and the Aill sall be distributed to the pure folke.”

Gay mentions the ducking-stool, in his Pastorals, as a punishment in use in his time:

"I'll speed me to the pond, where the high stool
On the long plank hangs o'er the muddy pool,
That stool, the dread of every scolding quean."
The Shepherd's Week. Pastoral iii.

[ocr errors]

IV. MONUMENT OF THE LAST OF THE
PALEOLOGI.

Ir is not generally known that about two centuries ago, in an obscure corner of the kingdom, lived and died Theodore Paleologus, the immediate descendant of the Constantine family, and in all probability the lineal heir to the empire of Greece.

In the parish church of Landulph, in the eastern extremity of Cornwall, is a small brass tablet fixed against the wall, with the following inscription :

"Here lyeth the body of Theodore Paleologus, of Pesaro in Italye, descended from the Imperial lyne of the last Christian Emperors of Greece, being the sonne of

Camilio, the sonne of Prosper, the sonne of Theodoro, the sonne of John, the sonne of Thomas, second brother of Constantine Paleologus, the 8th of the name, and last of that lyne that rayned in Constantinople until subdued by the Turks; who married with Mary, the daughter of William Balls, of Hadlye, in Souffolke, gent., and had issue 5 children, Theodoro, John, Ferdinando, Maria, and Dorothy; and departed this life at Clyfton, the 21 st of Jany 1636."

Above the inscription are the imperial arms proper of the empire of Greece-an eagle displayed with two heads, the two legs resting upon two gates; the imperial crown over the whole, and between the gates a crescent for difference as second son.

Clyfton, above mentioned, was an ancient mansion of the Arundel family in the parish of Landulph.

V. CONTRIBUTION TO THE NATURAL
HISTORY OF IRELAND.

WE have all heard that neither serpents nor any venomous thing can exist in Ireland; the fact is asserted by the gravest historians of old times. Giraldus Cambrensis tells the following story in his Irish history, and says the thing happened in his time.

"One day a knot of youngsters in the north of England went to take a nap in the fields. As one of them lay snoring with his mouth wide open, as though he would catch flies, an ugly serpent or adder slipped into his mouth and glided down into his belly, where, harbouring itself, it began to roam up and down, and to feed on the youth's entrails. This 'greedy guest' sorely tormented him for a long time. The worm would never cease from gnawing the patient's carcass, but when he had taken his repast, and his meal was no sooner digested than it would give a fresh onset in boring

his guts. Divers remedies were sought,-as medicines, pilgrimages to saints,-but all would not prevail. Being at length schooled by the grave advice of some sage and expert father, who willed him to make his speedy repair to Ireland, where neither snake nor adder would live, he presently thereupon would tract no time, but busked himself over sea and arrived in Ireland. He had no sooner drunk of the water of that island and eaten of the victuals thereof, but forthwith he killed the snake, avoided it downwards, and so, being lusty and lively, he returned into England." This curious story is repeated by old William Winstanley in his Historical Rarities,' which is now a rare book.

VI. ANCIENT PETER SCHLIMMELS;
OR, MEN DEPRIVED OF THEIR SHADOWS.

THERE is a curiously written modern German romance which has attracted extraordinary attention from the singular nature of the main incident, on which the whole story turns. Peter Schlimmel, the hero of the tale, is a shadowless man, having sold his shadow, as Doctor Faustus sold his soul, to the devil, for certain valuable considerations. Whether by the light of sun, moon, stars, torches, lamps, chandeliers, wax-lights, tallow candles, or bonfires, the body of Peter casts no shade either hefore him, or behind him, or on either side of him; and the deprivation of this valuable appendage proves the curse of his life, for he finds that nobody can tolerate a man without a shadow. Even in the happiest moments of love, when abroad with him in groves and moonshine the mistress of his soul is about to yield to his ardent suit, he loses all his advantages by her companion's discovering his defect and suddenly exclaiming," God bless my soul! the gentleman has got no shadow !"-on which the ladies shriek and withdraw. Whenever Peter appears in the streets, the little boys shout after him, "There goes the man that has got no shadow!" In short, Peter

very soon repents of his bargain, and would give the devil his substance to get his shade back again.

Very few of the persons who have been amused by this extravagant idea of a man without a shadow are aware that the notion is a very ancient one, and that according to the Greeks the gods deprived men of their shades for a certain act of intrusion or impiety. Theopompus, as quoted by Polybius, seriously asserts that all those who dared to enter the temple of Jupiter in Arcadia were punished with a strange chastisement-i. e. their bodies no longer gave any shadow.

Pausanias repeats the same story in a somewhat more circumstantial manner, and adds a punishment which seems at first sight more serious than the loss of one's shade. He says that on Lycæus, a mountain of Arcadia, there was a place held sacred to Jupiter and inaccessible to mortals; and that if any man braved the prohibition and entered therein, from that time his body, though exposed to the rays of the sun, cast no shadow, and he died within a year. See Theopomp. ap. Polyb. lib. xvi. and Pausan. in Arcad.

VII. DILEMMAS.

ONE of the most celebrated dilemmas is one of the most ancient. A rhetorician had instructed a youth in the art of pleading, on condition that he was to be remunerated only in case his pupil should gain the first cause in which he was engaged. The youth immediately brought an action against his teacher, of which the object was to be freed from the obligation which he had contracted, and then endeavoured to perplex his instructor with this dilemma: "If I gain my suit," said he, "the authority of the court will absolve me from paying you; if I lose, I am exonerated by our contract." The rhetorician answered by a similar dilemma: "If you gain your suit, you must pay me according to our contract; if you lose

« PreviousContinue »