Strange Survivals

Jovienus Pontanus, in the fifth Book of his History of his own Times. He died 1503.

3

These cauldrons walled into the sides of the churches are probably the old sacrificial cauldrons of the Teutons and Norse. When heathenism was abandoned, the instrument of the old Pagan rites was planted in the church wall in token of the abolition of heathenism.

4

There is a rare copper-plate, representing the story, published in Cologne in 1604, from a painting that used to be in the church, but which was destroyed in 1783. After her resurrection, Richmod, who was a real person, is said to have borne her husband three sons.

5

Magdeburg, Danzig, Glückstadt, Dünkirchen, Hamburg, Nürnberg, Dresden, etc. (see Petersen: “Die Pferdekópfe auf den Bauerhäusern,” Kiel, 1860).

6

Herodotus, iv. 103: “Enemies whom the Scythians have subdued they treat as follows: each having cut off a head, carries it home with him, then hoisting it on a long pole, he raises it above the roof of his house – and they say that these act as guardians to the household.”

7

The floreated points of metal or stone at the apex of a gable are a reminiscence of the bunch of grain offered to Odin’s horse.

8

Aigla, c. 60. An Icelandic law forbade a vessel coming within sight of the island without first removing its figure-head, lest it should frighten away the guardian spirits of the land. Thattr Thorsteins Uxafots, i.

9

Finnboga saga, c. 34.

10

Hood is Wood or Woden. The Wood-dove in Devon is Hood-dove, and Wood Hill in Yorkshire is Hood Hill.

11

See numerous examples in “The Western Antiquary,” November, 1881.

12

On a discovery of horse-heads in Elsdon Church, by E. C. Robertson, Alnwick, 1882.

13

“Sir Tristram,” by Thomas of Erceldoune, ed. Sir Walter Scott, 1806, p. 153.

14

See an interesting paper and map, by Dr. Prowse, in the Transactions of the Devon Association, 1891.

15

Two types, the earliest, convex on both faces. The later, flat on one side, convex on the other. The earlier type (Chelles) is the same as our Drift implements. Till the two types have been found, the one superposed on the other, we cannot be assured of their sequence.

16

In the artistic faculty. The sketches on bone of the reindeer race were not approached in beauty by any other early race.

17

“The Past and the Present,” by A. Mitchell, M.D., 1880.

18

The author found and planned some hut circles very similar to those found in Cornwall and Down, on a height above Laruns. There was a dolmen at Buzy at the opening of the valley.

19

Hor. Sat. ii. 8.

20

Fornaldar Sögur. iii. p. 387.

21

Heimskringla, i., c. 12.

22

I have given an account of the Carro already in my book, “In Troubadour Land.”

23

Roman and Greek ladies employed parasols to shade their faces from the sun, and to keep off showers. See s. v. Umbraculum in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.

24

A good deal of information relative to umbrellas may be got out of Sangster (W.). “Umbrellas and their History.” London: Cassell & Co., Ltd.

25

The first Englishman who carried an umbrella was Jonas Hanway, who died in 1786, but it was known in England earlier. Beaumont and Fletcher allude to it in “Rule a Wife and Have a Wife”:

“Now are you glad, now is your mind at ease;
Now you have got a shadow, an umbrella,
To keep the scorching world’s opinion
From your fair credit.”

And Ben Jonson, in “The Devil is an Ass”: