AN EXTRAORDINARY CUSTOM.

Grey River Argus, Volume XXXIX, Issue 6989, 14 February 1891, Page 2

AN EXTRAORDINARY CUSTOM.

« In the middle ages the lower animals were frequently tried, convicted, and punished for various offences. Mr BaringGould has collected some curious'cases of this kind. In 1266 a pig was burnt at Fontaney-aux-Roses, near Paris, for having eaten a child. In 1386 a judge at Falaise condemned a sow to be mutilated and hanged for a similar offence. Three years later a horse was solemnly tried before the magistrate and condemned to death for having killed a man. During the fourteenth century oxen and cows might be legally killed whenever taken in the act of marauding ; and asses, for a a first offence, their lives became forfeit to the Crown. " Criminal" animals frequently expiated their offence, like all other malefactors, on the gallows, but subsequently they were summarily killed without trial, and their owrers mulcted in heavy damages. In the fifteenth century it was popularly believed that cocks were intimately associated with witches, and and they were somewhat credited with the power of lying accursed eggs, from which sprung winged serpents. In 1474, at Bate, a cock was publicly accused of having laid one of these dreadful eggs. He was tried, sentenced to death, and, together with the egg was burned by (See fourth page.)

the executioners in the market place ami<3 a great concourse of people. In 1694 dur ing the witch persecution inNew England, a dog exhibited such strange symptoms of afflication that he was believed to have ridden by a warlock, and he was accordingly hanged. Snails, flies, mice, ants, caterpillar, and other obnoxious creatures have been similarly proceeded against and condemned to various punishment— mostly by ecclesiastical courts. And, stranger still, inanimate objects have suffered the same fate. In 1685, when the Protestant chapel at Rochelle was condemned to be demolished, the bell thereof was publically -whipped for having assisted heretics with its tongue. After being whippec*, it was catechised, compelled to recant and then baptised and hung up in a Roman Catholic place oi worship. Probably similar absurdities may have been perpetrated in ourcountry; for it must be remembered that only in the present reign was the law repealed which made a cart wheel, a tree, or a beast which killed a man forfeit to the State for the benefit of the poor. It had been said that punishment is not likely to be efficacious unless it swiftly follows the offence. This' was improved on by a Barbary Turk who, wherever he bought a fresh| Christian slave, had him hung up by the heels and bastinadoed, on the principle, it is supposed — through the application is decidedly singular — that prevention is better than cure. — All the Yeai Rouud.