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JUNE, 1895.)
SPIRIT BASIS OF BELIEF AND CUSTOM.
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The Russian babe's cradle is hung round with a curtain of dark print or silk, apparently to keep off the evil eye. Formerly nurses were more afraid of the evil eye, and used to draw the curtain close round the babe.100 The Communion cloth is sacred in Russia. Laymen and the lowest order of the clergy may not touch it. No church can be consecrated without its cloth. Formerly, at a Swedish wedding, the bride and bridegroom sat under a canopy. The Russian Czar goes to be crowned under a canopy of eagles, cloth of gold and ostrich feathers. In the Russian Church a curtain or veil is drawn between the body of the church and the altar. At the mysteries of the Cabiri candidates were given a girdle, which they wore like an apron, as an amulet to keep off danger.5 The mason wears a white leather apron; the Persians in the mysteries of Mithra, and also the Jewish priest, wore an apron coloured blue, purple, and scarlet. The Germans put a right shirt sleeve, or a left stocking, in a cradle of an uubaptised babe to keep off Nickert ; and it is a German belief that, if you find a treasure, you should either throw bread over it, or a piece of clothing that has been worn next the skin. In Germany, there was a belief that if a shirt is spun and stitched by a maiden who has kept silence for seven years, it not only undoes charms, but makes the wearer spell-proof and victorious. Dreams are driven away by wearing a nightcap, because dreams are caused by the cold driving the blood to the brain. 10 Saint Teresa of Spain (1540) was presented by the Virgin with an invisible cope, which guarded her from sin. The guardiad virtue of cloth seems to be the origin of the Scotch and French belief, that the child born with a canl (a veil or holy hood) will be lucky.13 Compare the Roman Catholic scapulaire “fwo bits of cloth, an inch and a half square, which they join at the corners with tapes, throw them over their heads, and make one end lie on the breast and the other on the back,"Is On State occasions, a silk canopy is carried over the Pope, 14 From a time of which no memory remains, & canopy of cloth of gold or purple silk, with a gilt bell at each corner, has been carried over the king and queen of England on the coronation day. 15 After the king of England is anointed on the chest, between the shoulders, and on the arms, palms and head, he is arrayed in his robes, a cap is put on his head and glover on his hands.16 After being anointed, Ricbard I. had his head covered with a linen cloth.17 cloth gives power over spirits. Compare the invisible coat and Prospero's magic garment. The Anglo-Saxons held a care-cloth over the bride and bridegroom.18 Cloth, like other sourers, is also either & spirit-prison or a spirit-home. This explains the invi. sible-making coat of Middle Age legends and Prospero's magic garment, 19 tbe hiding and other magical properties being due to the dwelling in the cloth of some charmed spirit. So the sense of the practice in North-West Scotland and elsewhere of covering bushes near holy wells with pieces of cloth nailed on by patients20 is that the disease-spirit is prisoned by the guardian spirit of the well. The English sovereign on the day of coronation walks on cloth from the door of Westminster Hall to the Abbey. If clothes are offered to a Brownie or working spirit, or to a Devonshire Pixie, they fly away.21 On St. Agnes's Eve, North England girls lay their stockings and garters cross-wise.** A cure for boils is to lay the poultice-cloth in a coffin with a dead body. In England, it was believed that to lay part of the father's clothes over a girl's body and a petticoat over a boy, was to ensure them favour with the opposite sex. So a girl's spell for procuring a sight of her fature husband, is to wash her sash and lay it on a chair, to roll the left garter round the right stocking, or to lay a pair of garters across at the
100 Op. cit. p. 59. * Jones' Crowns, p. 385. > Mackey's Freemasonry, p. 45. · Henderson's Folk-Lore, p. 14. • Op. cit. pp. 1098, 1099. 1 Quar. Rev. October 1883, p. 413. 13 Hume, Vol. II. p. 415. 15 Jones' Crowns, p. 113. 15 The Tempest, Act I, Scene 2. 11 Dyer's Polk-Lore, p. 195. 13 Dyer's Folk-Lore, P. 171.
1 Op. cit. p. 51.
- Chambers's Book of Days, p. 720. • Mrs. Romanoff's Rites and Customs of the Greco-Russian Church, p. 84. • Op. cit. p. 22. . Grimm's Tonto. Myth. Vol. III. p. 971. 10 St. James' Budget, 28th December 1883. 13 Henderson's Folk-Lore, p. 22. 14 Chambera's Book of Dayı, Vol. I. p. 427. 16 Op. cit. pp. 290, 291. 11 Op. cit. p. 195. 19 Jones' Crowns, p. 118. 90 Mitchell's Highland Superstitions, p. 5. 12 Henderson's Folk Lore, p. 249.
Thorpe's Mythology, Vol. II, p. 109.
