Chapter VII: Part 7

“A boy we wanted--’tis a girl!
Thus all our hopes that were
To have an heir unto the Throne
Are all _thrown to the air_.”

Here is a ballad on a policeman of the old style when the new regulations came in, in 1829:--

“Upon his beat he stood to take a last farewell
Of his lantern and his little box wherein he oft did dwell.
He listen’d to the clock, so familiar to his ear,
And with the tail of his drab coat he wiped away a tear.

“Beside that watchhouse door a girl was standing close,
Who held a pocket handkerchief, with which she blew her nose.
She rated well the policeman, which made poor Charley queer,
Who once more took his old drab coat to wipe away a tear.

“He turn’d and left the spot; O do not deem him weak;
A sly old chap this Charley was, though tears were on his cheek.
Go watch the lads in Fetterlane, where oft you’ve made them fear;
The hand, you know, that takes a bribe, can wipe away a tear.”

Here is one stanza by a composer with whom the writer of this article made acquaintance:--

“Pale was the light of the Pole-axe star,
When breakers would hide them so near.
But Love is the ocean of hunters far,
And convoys him to darkness so drear.
Then sad at the door of my love I lay,
Slumbering the six months all away.”

Horace sang something about lying exposed to the cold and rain at the door of his beloved, and vowed he would not do it again. There is certainly a distance of something beside two thousand years between Horace and the gentleman who wrote the above lines.

There is a really astonishing poem entitled “The Lights of Asheaton,” which, happily, everyone can purchase for a ha’penny. It is the composition of a recent Irish poet of the same class as Mr. John Morgan, and is a dissuasive against Protestantism. What the “Lights” of Asheaton are does not transpire. It opens thus:--

“You Muses now aid me in admonishing Paganism,
The new Lights of Asheaton, whose fate I do deplore.
From innocence and reason they are led to condemnation,
Their fate they’ve violated, the occasion of their woe.”

After some wonderful lines that we hardly like to quote, as savouring of irreverence--though that was far from the poet’s intention--he assures us:--

“Waters will decrease most amazing to behold,
No fanatic dissenter, no solvidian (_sic_) cripple,
Dare them to dissemble, the truths for to relinquish,
For the enthusiast will tremble at the splendors of the Pope.”

The sheet of broadside ballad that is passing away deserves a little attention before it disappears. It reveals to us the quality of song that commended itself to the uneducated. It shows us how the song proper has steadily displaced the ballad proper. It is surprising for what it contains, as well as for what it omits. Apparently in the latter part of this century the sole claim to admission is that words--no matter what they be--should be associated to a taking air. We find on the broadsheets old favourites of our youth--songs by Balfe, and Shield, and Hudson; but the Poet Laureate is unrepresented; even Dibdin finds but grudging admission. When we look at the stuff that is home-made, we find that it consists of two sorts of production--one, the ancient ballad in the last condition of wreck, cast up in fragments; and the other, of old themes worked up over and over again by men without a spark of poetic fire in their hearts. A century or two hence we shall have this rubbish collected and produced as the folk song of the English peasantry, just as we have had the black-letter ballads raked together and given to the world as the ballad poetry of the ancient English.

The broadside ballad is at its last gasp. Every publisher in the country who was wont to issue these ephemerides has discontinued doing so for thirty or forty years. In London, in place of a score of publishers of these leaves, there are but three--Mr. Fortey, of Seven Dials; Mr. Such, of the Boro’; and Mr. Taylor, of Bethnal Green. As the broadside dies, it becomes purer. There are ballads in some of the early issues of a gross and disgusting nature. These have all had the knife applied to them, and nothing issues from the press of Mr. Fortey, Mr. Such, and Mr. Taylor which is offensive to good morals. Mr. Such, happily, has all his broadsides numbered, and publishes a catalogue of them; some of the earlier sheets are, however, exhausted, and have not been reprinted.

It is but a matter of a few years and the broadside will be as extinct as the Mammoth and the Dodo, only to be found in the libraries of collectors. Already sheets that fetched a ha’penny thirty years ago are cut down the middle, and each half fetches a shilling. The garlands are worth more than their weight in gold. Let him that is wise collect whilst he may.

X.

Riddles.

There is a curious little work, the contents of which are said to have been collected by Hans Sachs, the Nuremberg cobbler and master-singer, in 1517. This curious book was reprinted several times in the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth century, but it is now somewhat scarce. It was issued without place of publication or publisher’s name, in small form without cover. The book pretends to have been prepared by Hans Sachs for his private use, that he might make merriment among his friends, when drinking, and they were tired of his songs. It does not contain any anecdotes; it is made up of a collection of riddles more or less good, some coarse, and some profane; but the age was not squeamish. The title under which the little work was issued was, _Useful Table-talk, or Something for all; that is the Happy Thoughts, good and bad, expelling Melancholy and cheering Spirits, of Hilarius Wish-wash, Master-tiler at Kielenhausen_. The book consists of just a hundred pages, of which a quarter are consumed by prefaces, introductions, etc., and about thirteen filled with postscript and index. The humours of the book are somewhat curious; for instance, in the preliminary index of subjects it gives--“IX. The reason why this book of Table-talk was so late in being published.” When we turn to the place indicated for the reason, we find a blank. There is no such reason. There is a fulsome and absurd dedication to the “Honourable and Knightly Tileburner” who lives “By the icy ocean near Moscow, in Lapland, one mile below Podolia and three miles above it.”

Although we are not told in the place indicated why the little collection was not issued immediately after the death of Hans Sachs, nor among his works, we learn the reason elsewhere, in the preface, where we are told that the jokes it contained were so good that a rivalry ensued among them as to precedence, and till this was settled, it was impossible to get the book printed. The collection contains in all one hundred and ninety-six riddles; among them is that which gives the date of the book, and that in a chronogram: “When was this book of Table-talk drawn up? _Answer._ In IetzIg taVsenD fIInff hVnDert sIbenzehenDen Iahr” (1517).

Here are some of the conundrums.--_Question._ After Adam had eaten the forbidden fruit, did he stand or sit down?--_Ans._ Neither; he fell.

_Ques._ Two shepherds were pasturing their flocks. Said one to the other: “Give me one of your sheep, then I shall have twice as many sheep as you.”--“Not so,” replied the second herdsman: “give me one of yours, and then we shall have equal flocks.” How many sheep had each?--_Ans._ One had seven, the other five. If the first took a sheep out of the flock of the second, he had eight, the other four; if the contrary, each had six.

_Ques._ What is four times six?--_Ans._ 6666.

_Ques._ What does a goose do when standing on one leg?--_Ans._ Holds up the other!

_Ques._ When did carpenters first proclaim themselves to be intolerable dawdles?--_Ans._ When building the Ark--they took a hundred years over it.

_Ques._ What sort of law is military law?--_Ans._ Can(n)on law.

Some of the riddles have survived in the jocular mouth to the present day; for instance, who does not know this?--_Ques._ What smells most in an apothecary’s shop?--_Ans._ The nose. There is one conundrum which surprises us. The story was wont to be told by Bishop Wilberforce that he had asked a child in Sunday School why the angels ascended and descended on Jacob’s ladder, whereupon the child replied that they did so because they were moulting, and could not fly. But this appears in Hans Sachs’ book, and is evidently a very ancient joke indeed.

In this collection also appears the riddle: “Which is heaviest, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers?” which everyone knows, but with an addition, which is an improvement. After the answer, “Each weighs a pound, and they are equal in weight,” the questioner says further: “Not so--try in water. The pound of feathers will float, and the pound of lead will sink.”

_Ques._ How can you carry a jug of water in your hands on a broiling summer day, in the full blaze of the sun, so that the water shall not get hotter?--_Ans._ Let the water be boiling when you fill the jug.

_Ques._ How can a farmer prevent the mice from stealing his corn?--_Ans._ By giving them his corn.

_Ques._ A certain man left a penny by his will to be divided equally among his fifty relatives, each to have as much as the other, and each to be quite contented with what he got, and not envy any of the other legatees. How did the executor comply with this testamentary disposition?--_Ans._ He bought a packet of fifty tin-tacks with the penny, and hammered one into the back of each of the legatees.

There is another very curious old German collection of riddles called _Æsopus Epulans_; but that contains anecdotes as well and a great deal of very interesting matter. This is a much larger volume, and is the commonplace book of a party of priests who used to meet at each other’s houses to smoke, and drink, argue, and joke. One of the members took down the particulars of conversation at each meeting, and published it. A most curious and amusing volume it is. Some of the conundrums the old parsons asked each other were the same as those in Hans Sachs’ collection; they had become traditional. We may safely say that none were better, and some were, if possible, more pointless. They have all much the same character: they resemble faintly the popular conundrum of the type so widely spread, and so much affected still by nurses and by the labouring class, and which so often begins with “London Bridge is broken down,” or, “As I went over London Bridge.” These are very ancient. We have analogous riddles among those which Oriental tradition puts into the mouth of the Queen of Sheba when she “proved Solomon with hard questions.” Mr. Kemble published for the Ælfric Society a collection of questions and answers that exist in Anglo-Saxon as a conversation between Solomon and Saturn, and numerous versions existed in the Middle Ages of the dialogue between Solomon and--as the answerer was often called--Markulf. But these questions only partially correspond with our idea of riddles.

A more remarkable collection is that in the Icelandic _Herverar Saga_, where the King Heidrek boasts of his power to solve all riddles. Then Odin visits him in disguise as a blind man, and propounds to the king some hard questions. Of these there are sixty-four. We will give a few specimens. _Ques._ What was that drink I drank yesterday, which was neither spring water, nor wine, nor mead, nor ale?--_Ans._ The dew of heaven. _Ques._ What dead lungs did I see blowing to war?--_Ans._ A blacksmith’s bellows whilst a sword was being forged. _Ques._ What did I see outside a great man’s door, head downwards, feet heavenwards?--_Ans._ An onion.

These riddles are all in verse, and the replies also in verse. The end was that Odin asked Heidrek what he, Odin, whispered into the ear of Baldur before he was burned on his funeral pyre. Thereupon Heidrek drew his sword and cut at his questioner, shouting: “None can answer that but yourself!” Odin had just time to transform himself into an eagle; but the sword shore off his tail, and eagles ever after have had short tails.

The Sphinx will recur to the recollection of the reader, who tore to pieces those who could not answer its riddles. At last Creon, King of Thebes, offered his sister, Jocasta, to anyone who could solve the enigmas propounded by the Sphinx. Œdipus ventured, and when asked by the monster, “What animal is four-footed in the morning, two-footed at noon, and three-footed in the evening?” answered: “Man, who as a babe crawls, and as an old man leans on a crutch.” The Sphinx was so distressed at hearing its riddle solved, that it precipitated itself from a precipice and was dashed to pieces.

The Persian hero, Sal, who was brought up by the gigantic bird Simorg, appears before Mentuscher, Schah of Iran. The latter, forewarned that Sal will be a danger to him, endeavours to get rid of him. However, he first tests him with hard questions. If he answers these, he is to be allowed to live. The first question is: “There stand twelve cypresses in a ring, and each bears thirty boughs.” Sal replies, “These are the twelve months, each of which has thirty days.” Another question is--“There were two horses, one black, the other clear as crystal.” “They are Day and Night,” replied Sal.

In English and Scottish Ballads a whole class has reference to the importance of riddle answering.

A girl is engaged to a young man who dies. He returns from the grave and insists on her fulfilling her engagement to him and following him to the land of the dead. She consents on one condition, that he will answer her riddles, or else she pleads to be spared, and the dead lover agrees on condition that she shall answer some riddles he sets. Such is a ballad which was formerly enacted in the farmhouses in Cornwall. The girl sits on her bed and sighs for her dead lover. He reappears and insists on her following him. Then she sets him tasks, and he sets her tasks.

Those he sets her are:--

“Thou must buy me, my lady, a cambrick shirt
Whilst every grove rings with a merry antine (antienne = anthem),
And stitch it without any needle work,
O, and thou shalt be a true love of mine.

“And thou must wash it in yonder well
Where never a drop of water fell.

“And thou must hang it upon a white thorn
That never has blossomed since Adam was born.”

Those she sets him are:--

“Thou must buy for me an acre of land
Between the salt ocean and the yellow sand.

“Thou must plough it over with a horse’s horn,
And sow it all over with one pepper corn.

“Thou must reap it too with a piece of leather,
And bind the sheaf with a peacock’s feather.”

“In all stories of this kind,” says Mr. Child, in his monumental work on English Ballads, “the person upon whom a task is imposed stands acquitted if another of no less difficulty is desired, which must be performed first.”

An early form of this story is preserved in the _Gesta Romanorum_. A king resolved not to marry a wife till he could find the cleverest of women. At length a poor maid was brought to him, and he made trial of her sagacity. He sent her a bit of linen three inches square, and promised to marry her, if out of it she could make him a shirt. She stipulated in reply that he should send her a vessel in which she could work. We have here only a mutilated fragment of the series of tasks set. In an old English ballad in the Pepysian library, an Elfin knight visits a pretty maid, and demands her in marriage.

“‘Thou must shape a sark to me
Without any cut or heme,’ quoth he.
‘Thou must shape it knife-and-sheerless
And also sue it needle-threadless.’”

She replies:--

“I have an aiker of good ley-land
Which lyeth low by yon sea-strand.
For thou must car it with thy horn,
So thou must sow it with thy corn,
And bigg a cart of stone and lyme.
Robin Redbreast he must trail it hame,
Thou must barn it in a mouse-holl,
And thrash it into thy shoes sole.
And thou must winnow it in thy looff,
And also sech it in thy glove.
For thou must bring it over the sea,
And thou must bring it dry home to me.”

As the Elfin knight cannot fulfil these tasks, the girl is not obliged to follow him to Elfin Land. There is another song, known in a fragmentary condition all through England:--

“Cold blows the wind to-night, sweetheart,
Cold are the drops of rain.
The very first love that ever I had
In greenwood he was slain.”

The maiden being engaged to the dead man can obtain no release from him till he restores to her her freedom. She goes and sits on his grave and weeps.

“A twelvemonth and a day being up,
The ghost began to speak;
Why sit you here by my grave side
From dusk till dawning break?”

She replies:--

“O think upon the garden, love,
Where you and I did walk;
The fairest flower that blossomed there
Is withered on its stalk.”

The ghost says:--

“What is it that you want of me,
And will not let me sleep?
Your salten tears they trickle down
My winding sheet to steep.”

She replies that she has come to return his kisses to him, so as to be off with her engagement. To this the dead man replies:--

“Cold are my lips in death, sweetheart,
My breath is earthy strong,
If you do touch my clay-cold lips,
Your time will not be long.”

Then comes a divergence in the various forms the ballad assumes. Its most common form is for the ghost to insist on her coming into his grave, unless she can perform certain tasks:--

“Go fetch me a light from dungeon deep,
Wring water from a stone,
And likewise milk from a maiden’s breast
Which never babe hath none.”

She strikes a spark from a flint, she squeezes an icicle, and she compresses the stalk of a dandelion or “Johnswort.” So she accomplishes the tasks set her.

Then the ghost exclaims:--

“Now if you had not done these things,
If you had not done all three,
I’d tear you as the withered leaves
Are torn from off the tree.”

And the maiden, released from her bond, sings:--

“Now I have mourned upon his grave
A twelvemonth and a day,
I’ll set my sail before the wind
To waft me far away.”

Another ballad of the same class is that of the knight who betrays a maiden, and refuses to marry her unless she can answer certain riddles. These are:--

“What is louder than a horn?
And what is sharper than a thorn?
What is broader than the way?
And what is deeper than the sea?”

The answers are:--

“Thunder is louder than a horn,
And hunger is sharper than a thorn,
Love is broader than the way,
And hell is deeper than the sea.”

Now these ballads and a crowd of folk tales that bear on the same point show plainly enough that there was a time when quite as certainly as there were contests of arms, so contests of wit were gone through for great ends, sometimes with life at stake. That was a period when there was a struggle between man and man, and the fittest survived; but this fittest was not always the strongest animal, but the man of keenest wit. I do not know how else to explain the universality of these legends. The riddle is an amusement at the present day. It was an amusement at a Greek banquet, as we learn from Plutarch. But in a pre-historic period--in a mythic epoch--it was something very grave. He or she who could not solve a riddle, or a succession of riddles, forfeited life or honour.

There are two of the earliest extant rhymes of the Norse people which hinge on the same idea, and in them the gods themselves have their existence or honour at stake. These are the Vafthrudnis Mâl and the Alvis Mâl, in the Elder Edda.

In the first of these Odin the god and mythical ancestor of the Scandinavian race visits the Jute, the giant Vafthrudnir, representative of the large-sized pre-historic race which occupied Scandinavia, Great Britain, and Gaul. They go through a contest of wit. He who is defeated in this trial of skill has to lose his life.

Vafthrudnir asks:--

“Tell me, Gagnrad,
Since on the floor thou wilt
Prove thy proficiency,
How is the horse called
That draws each day
Forth over mankind?”

Odin, who has called himself Gagnrad, replies:--

“Skinfaxi he is named
That the bright day draws
Forth over mankind.
Of horses is he highest esteemed
Amidst the Reid-Goths,
Light ever streams from that horse’s mane.”

Next comes the question relative to the black horse of night. Then as to the stream that divides the Jutes from the Æsir (the Scandinavians). Then as to the name of the plain on which the great final fight will take place, in which the light of the gods will be quenched. And so on. The giant is overcome. This song is interesting because it is a poetic representation of an historic event, the conquest of the Jute by the Scandinavian, not so much by force of arms, as by superior mental sagacity.

The other song in the Edda is the prototype of all the Elfin Knight and analogous ballads in which a being of the under world, now an elf, then a devil, then a dead man, seeks to win to himself a maiden of the upper world, and of the dominant race.

The dwarf Alvis, who lives under the earth and under stones, _i.e._, in a beehive hut, a representative of the pre-historic, small, short-headed, metal-working race, has somehow extorted a promise from the god Thorr, that he will give him his daughter, the “fair-bright, snow-white maiden.” Thorr shrinks from doing this, but is reminded of his promise. We do not know the particulars, but in all probability the dwarf Alvis had fashioned for him his hammer, and had received the promise in return. Thorr at last yields, but only on condition that Alvis shall solve a series of riddles, or rather answer a number of questions as to the various names given to sun, moon, wind, sky, etc.

The last question asked is:--

“Tell me, Alvis,
How beer is called
Which the sons of men
Drink in all worlds.”

Alvis answers:--

“_Ale_ is it called by men,
By the Æsir _Beer_,
By the Vans _Veig_,
By the Jotuns _Hreina lögi_;
In Hell it is _meed_,
The sons of Sutung call it _sumbl_.”

Then the sun rises--and as it has risen before all the questions are answered, Alvis loses his bride.

Precisely so in the Cornish version of the Elfin-Knight. Unable to accomplish the task, the dead man is caught by the sunrise, and says:--

“The breath of the morning is raw and cold,
The wind is blowing on forest and down,
And I must return to the churchyard mould,
And the wind it shaketh the acorns down.”

It is deserving of note that in all these early accounts of riddle-setting, the _forfeit_ is either life or honour. We have instances of riddle-setting as a test before marriage, or what is the same thing, the setting difficult tasks to be accomplished--something to prove the wit of the young woman. Unless she were “up to mark” in wit, she was held to be unfit for the marriage proposed. In one folk tale a girl is given straw to spin into gold, grains to collect and count. In Cupid and Psyche, the fair seeker after her divine lover is set tasks by Venus, without the accomplishment of which she cannot win him. In many a tale a prince is set tasks, without the accomplishment of which he cannot be accepted as lover for the daughter and heiress of a king.

In the saga of Ragnar Lodbrog, the King bids Aslaug come to him clothed yet naked, accompanied yet alone, fed yet empty. She complies by casting off her garments but covering herself with her golden hair that flows to her feet, taking with her a dog only, and chewing a blade of garlic. Satisfied with her wit, Ragnar marries her. She became by him the mother of five sons, one of whom was the ancestor of Harald Fairhair, who made Norway into one realm under his sceptre. Aslaug was the daughter of Sigurd and Brunhild, made familiar to us through Wagner’s “Ring of the Nibelungen.”

The forfeits of a child’s game of the present day, to stand in the corner on one leg, to call up the chimney, to kiss everyone in the room--are the faintest ghostly reminiscences of the terrible forfeit, which, in the mythic age of mankind, had to be paid by the man or woman who became liable through lack of shrewdness in the great contest of wit. The man who did not solve the riddle lost his life. The woman who failed to answer the questions had to leave her race, suffer social death, and pass over to the realm of the conquered race.

I repeat it, it is quite impossible to explain the stories of riddle-setting which appear as a matter of most serious import as they come to us out of a remote antiquity, and from every part of Europe and Asia, unless we hold that there were in a pre-historic age these contests of wit for the highest stakes, just as there were holm-gangs, duels, like those of David and Goliath, of the Horatii and Curiatii, of Herakles and Geryon.

But the existence of the riddle and of the forfeit attaching to inability to answer the riddle, does not, we may be sure, begin with such cases as the contest of Odin and Vafthrudnir, Thorr and Alvis, Œdipus and Sphinx. As it appears thus in myth, it is a survival of a still earlier condition of affairs.

At the present day throughout Europe, nurses ask children riddles, and very often a forfeit attaches to inability to answer them. This points to the riddle as a means of education of the young mind, but also as a test of its powers. In legend and myth it does not appear as educative, but as a test of mental power. How came it to be a test?

We know that among certain races in a primitive, even in a cultivated condition, the feeble and halt children are cast forth to perish. It was so with the Greeks and Romans, it was so with the Norse, it has been so in every ancient race. I cannot but suspect, from the many indications given by tradition, that the riddle was employed at one time as a brain test. That not only were the physically weak cast out, but also the mentally incapable.

The most startling reminiscence of the old ordeal of brains is that of the Wartburg Contest in 1206 or 1207, under the Landgrave Hermann. The poem of the “Kriec von Wartburg” was not indeed composed till a century later, but that only makes it the more astonishing. It represents the minnesingers under the Landgrave contesting in song and riddle, and those who are defeated forfeit _life_. Christian knights and ladies could look on at a tourney in the lists with life at stake, and Christian knights and ladies in the fourteenth century thought it by no means a monstrous thing that he who could not answer a riddle should submit his neck to the executioner’s sword. Such a condition of ideas is only conceivable as a heritage from a past when men had to show that they had an intellectual as well as a physical qualification to live among their fellow-men.

The riddle has gone into an infinity of forms. A German writer[39] sets to work to analyse its various manifestations. There is the numerical riddle, the conundrum, the logogryph, the charade, the rebus, the picture puzzle, the epigram, and so forth. Its last transformation is the novel of the type of Wilkie Collins’ “Moonstone,” in which the brain of the reader is kept in tension throughout, and the imagination at work to discover the solution of the question--Who stole the moonstone? A German poet, who cannot have thought much on the matter, says:--

“The riddle, charade, and all of that ilk,
Are the bacon and beans of small brains.”

But the riddle and the forfeit have had to do with the development of mankind, the killing out of the witless, and the survival of the intelligent. As the young were tested whether strong enough to live and by brute force to hold their own, so, apparently, at a remote period in man’s history the brains of the young were passed through ordeal, and those who lacked readiness were also cast out as profitless.

That was the first stage--and that is one which we conjecture that man passed through; we have no direct evidence that it was so. Then came the second, in which a trial of strength or of wit determined great issues. Lastly, the riddle degenerated into a mere pastime. But as a pastime it remains to us a monument of great interest and of great antiquity. In every railway station in Germany is a measure. He who is below that mark is unprofitable for Fatherland and rejected from military service. The riddle was this mark before history dawned. Only such as were mentally capable of solving a simple question were considered worthy to be enrolled in the family or tribe. As in Germany at the present day, the lad who cannot pass the examination loses all chance of the short military service to which the man of culture is entitled, and is subjected to the long service of a common country lout, and the fact of his failure closes to him all professions, so was it in the primeval world. He who could not pass through his examination in riddles was condemned, if not to lose his life, at least to lose caste, and the consciousness that each lad must pass through this mental test served to sharpen intelligences, and so conduced to the advancement of mankind.

XI.

The Gallows.

Among our national institutions there is one--the gallows--to the roots of which, in a remote past, antiquarians have, to the best of my knowledge, not dug, and which they have not laid bare. Possibly this omission is due to the fact that it is not an institution of which we are proud; possibly also to the fact that it is an institution which we keep as clear from touching as we well can.

Nevertheless, the origin and original signification of the gallows are too curious to be neglected. The origin is, moreover, so remote that unless it were pointed out it would be wholly unsuspected.

In France and in Germany the wheel has occupied the place in the history of crime which the gibbet has taken with us; and the wheel, as I shall presently show, has as old and significant an origin.

We know pretty exactly the date of the introduction of this institution into our island; we owe it, along with our ale and our constitutional government, to the Anglo-Saxon invaders.

There were no gallows in Britain under the Celts. The kingdom of Kent was founded in 449, and it was then that the gallows first made their appearance among us; and from the Isle of Thanet spread over the whole land.

The great god of the conquering races, who invaded Britain and subdued the Britons, was Woden, who has given his name to Wednesday; and this god with one eye had a double aspect. He was god of the air, the wind, and he was also god of the sun. According to the etymology of his name, he was the god of the gale, and the source of all breath; but his one fiery eye was most certainly the sun; and he was represented holding a wheel of gold, and that golden wheel symbolised the sun. The Gauls also had a sun god, representations of whom holding a wheel have been discovered in France in considerable numbers; and, unquestionably, when Goths, Burgundians, and Franks invaded Gaul, or swept over it, their sun god and the Gallic wheel-bearing god were identified.

But those who thought of and adored Woden as god of the wind thought nothing of the wheel. Woden was a cruel deity, who demanded sacrifices; and the sacrifices he required were human.

In the Elder Edda, a collection of very ancient songs relating to the Norse gods and heroes, who were the same as the gods and heroes of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, is one mysterious poem, supposed to be sung by Odin (Woden) himself as he hangs in the world-tree, a self-immolated victim, between heaven and earth for nine nights.

“I knew that I hung
In the wind-rocked tree
Nine whole nights,
Wounded with a spear;
And to Odin offered
Myself to myself,
On that tree,
Of which no one knows
From what root it springs.”

As he thus hangs, himself the sacrifice offered to himself as god, he composes a song of twice nine runes, and the result of the twelfth is:--

“If on a tree I see
A corpse swinging by a halter,
I can so grave runes
And them write
That that man shall with me
Walk and converse.”

That is to say, every victim hung on a tree becomes one of Odin’s band, with whom he rides in the storm blast over the earth.

Unfortunately, the myth connected with this curious poem is not preserved; but we can gather so much from it, that Odin was said to have immolated himself to himself by hanging in the world-tree, and that thenceforth he claimed all men who had been hung as members of his band.

In one of the early Norse sagas we have a story about a king called Vikarr, who desired to dedicate himself to the god, and so he had a gallows erected before his palace, and got a friend to fasten a halter round his neck and hang him on the gallows. Another tells of a woman who, to gain her husband’s love, hung her son to the god to obtain his assistance so as to brew a good vat of ale. At Lethra, in Denmark, every nine years ninety-nine men, and as many horses, were hung in honour of the god; and at Upsala numerous human victims swung by the neck about the image of Odin. After their great victory over the Romans the Cymbri and Teutons hung all their captives as a thank-offering to their gods; and after the slaughter of the legions of Varus the horses of the Romans were found hung on the trees on the scene of defeat.

Indeed, one of the names of Odin was the Hanging God, either because he hung himself, or because he had victims hung to him.

The world-tree, the great tree in which he hung, the tree which supports heaven and earth, was called Yggdrasil, which means Ogre’s horse, for one of the names of Odin was Yggr or Ogre, to express his love of human sacrifices; and all the old nursery tales and rhymes concerning ogres have reference to this great god of the English people. Jack mounts the beanstalk, and above the clouds enters the land of the Ogre, with his one eye, who devours men. Jack the Giant Killer, who lives in Cornwall, represents the British Christian fighting against the Pagan Saxon, impersonated as the great man-eating ogre.

“Fee-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Whether he be alive, or whether he be dead,
I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.”

In this again we have a reference to Woden or Odin, who was also called the Miller; for the mutter or roll of the thunder was supposed to be the working of his quern, grinding up his human victims for his meal.

Originally, victims were either freewill offerings, or were chosen from among the best in the land. So we hear of a Norse king every ten years sacrificing one of his sons, and of the Swedes, in time of famine, sacrificing their king, but it became general to offer the prisoners taken in war, and when these lacked, to sacrifice those who lay in prison condemned for crimes.

In one of the Norse sagas, we are told of a king’s daughter that, on hearing of the death of her father in battle, she went to the valley dedicated to the gods and there hung herself. Her father, having died in battle, went to Walhalla to Odin, and her only chance of being with him in the spirit world was to hang herself to the honour of Odin, who would then receive her among his elect, and so associate her with her father. If she were to die in her bed, she would go down to the nether world of Hela.

It is curious that in the West of England there are fields, generally situated in lonely spots, that go by the name of gallows’-traps, and the popular saying concerning them is that whoever sets foot in them is predestined to die on the gibbet. The probable origin of this superstition is that these were actual traps for the unwary, in which to catch victims for sacrifice.

In certain districts a parcel of land was set apart to the god, and it was agreed that whosoever set foot on it should be sacrificed. Usually this was a stranger, unaware of the sacredness of the ground he trod. He was seized and hung to Woden. We cannot say for certain that this is the origin of the gallows-traps, but it is the most probable explanation of their origin, and of the superstitious dread of them still existing among the people.

In France and Germany the wheel was used as the instrument of death as frequently as the gallows; those executed on the wheel were set upon poles, the wheel horizontal, and their broken limbs intertwined among the spokes. Originally they were thus put to death as oblations to the sun-god, whose symbol was the wheel. Little by little the idea of sacrifice in these executions disappeared. When Germans, Franks, and Anglo-Saxons became Christian, human sacrifices ceased as a matter of course, but as it was still necessary to put malefactors to death, the same kind of death was adjudged to them as before Christianity was professed. The gradual process whereby human sacrifices were changed in the classic world is well known to us. At first every victim was a freewill offering, and even a beast was obliged to appear so. To make the ox seem to consent to its despatch, drops of oil or water were put into its ears, that it might nod and shake its head. Prisoners taken in war, then criminals, were substituted for persons voluntarily devoting themselves to death to the honour of the gods. When it came to the execution of criminals, the idea of sacrifice readily evaporated.

One remarkable fact remains to be noticed. In all religions the sacrifice becomes identified with the god to whom it is offered, and partakes of his powers.

Whether this be a mere confusion of ideas, or whether there is some logical process at the bottom, we will not stop to consider, but it remains a fact everywhere. The victim is always thought to become invested with some of the attributes of the god.

Now a whole series of superstitions exists connected with men hung; and an executioner till of late years derived a small revenue from the sale of the cord, or other articles connected with the criminal who had been hung, and these relics were preserved, not out of a morbid love of horrors, but out of a real belief that they were beneficial, that they brought with them protection against accidents and ailments. I remember, not ten years ago, being shown by a woman, by no means in the lowest walks of life, a small object in a frame. This she said was a bit of the skin of a certain famous murderer, for which she had given a guinea.

“And what on earth makes you preserve it?” I inquired.

“Oh!” replied the woman, “the house will never catch fire so long as that is in it.”

The mutilation of bodies hung in chains was of frequent occurrence in former times, on account of like beliefs. The hands and feet and hair of the dead were cut off. The former were constantly taken by thieves and burglars, who believed that the hand of the man hung would enable him to open any lock, and enter any house with immunity.

The plunder of the gallows was sought in the first days of Christianity in England by those who were still Pagans at heart, and desired to put themselves under the protection of the old gallows god, Woden, but the original meaning of this robbery of the dead soon faded away, and the practice remained without explanation.

Our word gallows is compound. The old word is _galz_, and gallows means the _low_ or mound of the gibbet, and we speak of the gallow-tree, or the wood on the gibbet hill. When we remember that the gallows on which Odin hung is called Ogre’s horse, it is interesting to note a popular riddle asked children in Yorkshire. “What is the horse that is ridden that never was foaled, and rid with a bridle that never had bit?” The answer is--The Gallows. A German name for it is the raven’s stone, not only, perhaps, because ravens come to it, but because the raven was the sacred bird of Odin.

Now let us turn to the wheel.

On the Continent, in Germany and in France, breaking on the wheel was a customary mode of execution. The victim was stretched on the wheel, and with a bar of iron his limbs were broken, and then a blow was dealt him across the breast. After that the wheel was set up on a tall pole, with the dead man on it, and left to become the prey to the ravens.

This was a survival of human sacrifices to the sun-god, as hanging is a survival of human sacrifices to the wind-god.

With regard to the solar-wheel, a great deal of very interesting information has been collected by M. Gaidoz.[40] He points out that in the museums of France there are a good many monuments that represent the sun-wheel along with the thunderbolt as the symbol of Jupiter, that is to say, the old Gaulish solar-god identified with the Roman deity, Jupiter. Gaulish warriors wore a wheel on their helmets--a wheel was a favourite symbol as a personal ornament, or perhaps as an amulet. The wheel-window in a Gothic minster derives from the solar-wheel.

When Constantine led his legions against Maxentius, he professed to have seen a sign in the heavens, and he believed it to be a token of Christ’s assistance. What he really saw was a mock-sun. He adopted and adapted the sign for his standards, and the _Labarum_ of Constantine became a common Christian symbol. That there was policy in his conduct we can hardly doubt; the symbol he set up gratified the Christians in his army on one side, and the Gauls on the other. To the former it was a sign compounded of the initial letters of Christ, to the latter it was the token of the favour of their solar deity. An addition Constantine certainly made to the six-rayed wheel, but it was not one that materially affected its character.

Among the Sclavonic races in like manner the sun was worshipped, and worshipped with symbols precisely the same.

The solar god of the Sclaves was Swanto Wit or Swato Wit, _i.e._, Holy Light. The sun was the chief god of the Sclaves, and as the cock crows before sunrise and announces the coming day, the cock was regarded as sacred to the god, and sacrificed to it. The worship of this god consisted in circular dances, called _kolos_, and the dance was taken to represent the revolution of the planets, the constellations, the seasons about the sun. An old writer says of the dances of Swanto Wit that they were celebrated annually on the feast of St. John the Baptist, that is, on Midsummer Day. “Benches are placed in a circle, and these are leaped over by those who take part in the rite. No one is allowed to be present dressed in red. The entire month that precedes St. John’s Day, the votaries are in an excited condition, and in carrying on their dances they fall a prey to nervous terrors.”[41] Another writer tells us that they swung about a fiery wheel in their dances, a symbol of the solar disc.[42]

In the Bavarian highlands, where the mountain names are many of them of Sclavonic origin, and testify to a Sclavonic race having occupied the Alps, this is still customary. The midsummer dances, and the whirling of fiery wheels, are still in vogue. It is the same elsewhere. A writer on the customs of the Sclaves says: “They give each other a hand, and form a circle, whence the name of the dance, kolo = a circle, or wheel. They take three quick steps or leaps to the left, then a slow stride to the right; but when men alone dance it, after the three quick steps, they stand, and kick with the right leg into the middle of the circle. When the dance is accompanied by singing, one portion of the circle sings one strophe, and the other repeats it. The Sclave dance is most wild; and the same is found among the Carinthians and the Croats.”[43] In Dalmatia and Croatia, on St. Vitus’ Day the peasants dance, holding burning pieces of fragrant wood in their hands.

In the reign of Pepin, the father of Charlemagne, the Abbot Fulrad obtained the relics of St. Vitus, a boy-martyr, from Rome, and conveyed them to St. Denis. When the Abbey of New Corbey was founded in Saxony, Warin, the abbot, wrote to Hilduin of St. Denis, to entreat the gift of these relics for his church. Accordingly, in 836, they were conveyed to their new resting-place in Saxony. In 879, the monks of Corbey started on a mission to the Sclaves in Rügen and Pomerania, carrying with them a portion of the relics of St. Vitus. They erected a chapel in Rügen, which they dedicated to the saint. The attempt failed; and when, later, the Rugians were converted, the missionaries supposed that the Swanto Wit, whom they found them worshipping, was this very St. Vitus, in Sclave Swante Vit, whose relics had been laid in Rügen. When, in 1124, Otto, Bishop of Bamberg, laboured for the conversion of the Pomeranians, he took with him a figure of a cock and a silver arm that contained bones of St. Vitus. The Pomeranians reverenced the cock as a sacred being, and when Otto appeared before them, holding up the cock and the silver arm, they prostrated themselves to the cock, and he was gratified at having thus inveigled them into doing honour to the relics of St. Vitus.

Saint Wenceslas, Prince of Bohemia, in 930 destroyed the temple of Swanto Wit at Prague, and erected on its site a church to Swante Vit, _i.e._, St. Vitus.

When Ancona was besieged by the Christian host under Waldemar I., a prophecy circulated that the city would fall into their hands on St. Vitus’ Day. So it did, and Waldemar at once destroyed the temple of Swanto Wit in the city, and on its ruins erected a church to Swante Vit.

Thus it came to pass that in Sclavonic lands the _cultus_ of St. Vitus usurped the worship of the sun-god. But to return to the dances. As we have seen, the solar dances held in honour of Swanto Wit were held an entire month. St. Vitus’ Day falls on June 15th, very near to Midsummer Day, and as these dances continued in Christian times, and St. Vitus had taken the place of the sun-god, they acquired his name; they were called the dances of St. Vitus.

In 1370 an epidemic of chorœa broke out in Germany, especially along the valley of the Rhine. Young people of both sexes were the victims; they danced, jerked, and fell into hysterical convulsions. Those who saw them were affected in like manner. The phenomenon so much resembled the annual St. Vitus’ dances that the disorder thenceforth took as its special designation, “St. Vitus’ Dance.”

Dancing in a circle was a piece of sacred ritual in honour of the revolving wheel of the sun. In the Bavarian highlands at Midsummer a fiery wheel is waved and rolled down the mountain sides. The same sort of rite was anciently observed at the same time in England. A monk of Winchelscombe, in the reign of Henry VI., gives an account of the popular festivals in his time. He speaks of three sorts of amusements that take place on the vigil of St. John the Baptist. One of these is the whirling of a cart wheel. Another writer of the following century, in his poem, “Regnum papisticum,” gives further details. He says that the country people take an old wheel, surround it with straw, so as completely to cover it, and carry it to a height. At nightfall they set it on fire and roll it down; a monstrous sight, he adds, and one would believe that the sun was rolling down out of heaven.

Exactly the same usage is, or was, common in Belgium. In a charter, by which the Abbess of Epinal ceded a wood to the magistrates of that town in 1505, she made provision that every year, as an acknowledgment, they should furnish “The Wheel of Fortune, and the straw wherewith to cover it.”

Pages might be crowded with illustrations. I must refer the curious to the treatise of M. Gaidoz. Sufficient evidence has been collected that the wheel was the sacred symbol of the sun among the Gauls, the Teutons, and the Sclaves. We can, therefore, see how that an execution on the wheel was in its original conception a sacrifice to the sun.

Long after this was forgotten the wheel remained, as has the gallows with us, as the instrument for the execution of criminals. In Germany, even in cases of decapitation, the person executed was placed on a wheel and his head on a pole, when separated from the body. The last instances of breaking on the wheel were in the first forty years of this century. The fact of the use of the wheel as a means of execution continuing so many hundreds of years after the worship of the sun-god had ceased, and of the gallows with us, for the same purpose, is a very curious and instructive illustration of the persistence of customs of which the original significance is absolutely lost.

XII.

Holes.

In the village churchyard where as a boy I often played, is a tomb, built up to the height of about five feet, with a slate slab let into the south face, on which is an inscription. In this slab is a hole, and it used to be said among the village boys that any one who looked in through this hole and knocked at the slate would see the dead man within open his eyes. Often have I and my brother peeped in and knocked, but the experiment failed, because, when the eye was applied to the hole, it excluded external light.

(_From Mitchell’s “The Past and the Present.”_)]

The monument is still where it was, and is in the same condition. Whether boys still knock and look in I do not know.[44]

Curiously enough, a somewhat similar practice exists at Burghead, about nine miles from Elgin, which is described by Professor Mitchell in his “Rhind Lectures,” 1880. He says: “There is a memorial slab built into the wall of the burial-ground, called the Chapel Yard, at the south-east corner; it is 35 inches high by 20 inches wide; close above it, and also built into the wall, there is a hewn lintel-like stone, 37 inches long by 1½ inches thick. On the narrow exposed face of this stone there is no sculpturing.