Olden Time Beliefs.

Otago Witness, Issue 1342, 18 August 1877, Page 4

Olden Time Beliefs.

By J. G. S., Longbush.

Mankind, unenlightened by the great truths reyealed by Christianity, and unacquainted with the laws which regulate the ordinary phenomena of Nature, have ever been prone to fall into debasing idolatries and lamentable superstitions. These were not confined to the barbarous or semi-barbarous nations of the earth, but extended to the moat learned and civilised people of antiquity. Egypt — that ancient land of learning and refinement — had magnificent temples erected, and an order of priesthood consecrated, for the worship of tb/j moat worthless and contemptible objects. It bowed ike knee before the crocodile as a personification of the Nile ; and even the wolf and the cat were honoured with a share of its homage and adoration. It had a firm belief in the efficacy of charms — in days propitious and unpropitious — in prognostications by dreams and omens — and in tho power of magic and enchantments. The Greeks and Romans, who were debtors to Egypt for much of their learning and civilisation, were inheritors also of its miserable and superstitious delusions, which maintained their power over the minds of the people till the Empire of the West was overrun by the nations of the North. These, whether known under the name of Scandinavians, Goths, Saxons, &c, brought along with them their own peculiar superstitions, remnants of which till a period by no means remote lingered among the credulous beliefs of the people of Britain's Isle, and more especially among tho3e on the borders of the two kingdoms.

To us, who occupy the vantage ground of superior knowledge, and of an intimate acquaintance with the laws which regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies and the phenomena of the universe, the superstitious notions of our ancestors must appear, in many respects, silly and ridiculous, and deserving, as old things, to pass away into the dark shades of oblivion. But ere this can happen, some little obstacles must be removed out of the way. Our ballad-lore must be blotted out — " Tarn Lane and Garter Ha'," "True Thomas and the Eildon Tree," and Sir Patrick Spence, with the illfated omen of his expedition — ♦• The new mune wi' the auld ane in her arms "—" — must for ever be forgotten— our ancient castles, the haunts of Red Gap and his kindred sprites, must be razed to the ground— our rivers, the abodes of the Water Kelpie, must be dried vp — oar hills and glens, where the fairies in their rokelays of green held their moonlight revels, must be Bwept away — in short, any and everything which, by the power of association, can recall to mind ihe beliefs and practices of the days gone by, when pure and unspasmodic religion prevailed, must be destroyed, ere thefolk-iore of a bye-past age can be plunged into "Lethe's turbid stream."

The superstitions, beliefs, and ceremonies of the olden times are not yet dead. They linger around the "bleezin' ingle" in many a cot in the secluded glens of bonnie Scotland. They are attendants at the birth of a child, they hover over the cherub infaut sleeping in the cradle, they join in the fe-itivities of a wedding, they preside over the bed of death, they accompany the weepers to the house of mourning, and they finally stand by the grave when the coffin is lowered into its last resting-piace, and earth returns to mix with its kindred clay. Their external observance is, no doubt, in the present day, very greatly modified, and in many localities altogether discontinued ; but they still exercise a degree of power over the modes of thought and feeling of our peasantry ; and in a few years, by means of the Press — that powerful engine of a nation's weal or woe — and a more elevated and high-toned education of the people, and pulpit ministrations bearing more upon the realities and economics of everyday life, the ghost of the last superstition may be laid, and man, " emancipate from fancied ilia, will stand erect and free."

The superstitions which prevailed in the olden time were numerous and varied. Our ancestors imagined, that they were surrounded by spirits of various kinds, who presided over different departments and phenomena of Nature, or the everyday life economy, both individual and social, of the human race. Elves and fairies, brownies and powries, ghosts, wraiths, and apparitions — et hoc genus omne — formed no insignificant portion of their creed ; and any one who ventured to express doubts aa to the existence of these supernatural beings, was looked on as something uncanny, and deserving of pity for his ignorance and incredulity. Every action, every undertaking of whatever kind, waa preceded and regulated by dreams, to which a certain neverfailing signification was attached by a code of interpretations established among them, or by omens and warnings derived from things animate and inanimate, from things above the earth, and even from things under the earth.

In order to show how deeply these superstitions were interwoven into the web of every-day life among those who lived in the last century, I shall here present an extract from "Peter Galbraith hi 3 Diary," to which I have already referred in a former paper. " 17G3. — June 14th, being the Lord's Day, was alao the day of the occasion at the Kirk clachan o' Miresykes, about four Scots miles and a bittock frao the Overtown. To accommodate mysel and my wife — wha is no very yauld now — our maister allowed us to tak' tho use o' auld Dayio— that's the odd

horse about the place ; sac after praise an' prayer, as our wont is on the Sabbath mornin', I hied awa to the stable to ger the saddle an' the soukets a' right for me an' the wife ; an' just as I was leadin' auld Da via out at the stable- door, the wee round stane wi' the hole in't, that lay aboon the lintel for luck, fell down frao its place afore my een. The auld rhyme o' 'True Thomas' cam' into my head —

Misluck, misluck at Overtowne, Whene'er this etane sail fa' doune.

I kenned fu' weel that this boded nae gude to our expedition, and that, somehow or other, it was a warnin' o' some impendin' evil. I couldna forget it ; but 1 saidna a word about it to Mysie, for fear o' puttiu' her about. But though I tried to meditate on the psalm we had sung at family worship in the mornin' — 'If the Lord be for us, who can be against us' — it was aye uppermost in my mind, and I couldna banish't out ava. It was a fine simmer mornin', an' auld Davie trotted alang the road like a springald. We took the short cut through the moss, and everything gaed weel wi' us a' till we cam' near the Blin' Well — about twa mile or sac frae hame — when Davie stoppit a' at ance, an' stood stock-still in the verra middle o1o 1 the road. I kennedna what to do : I jaloused he wanted a drink, and had fand the smell o' the fresh water o' the Blin' Well afar off. Sac Mysie, with- ] out thinkin', advised me to slacken the bridle, an' let him tak' his am gate. Nae sooner said than dune, for I really was glad to gie the beast an opportunity o' quenchin' his thirst, which is a sair thing to thole, as I ken by experience. Weel, when Davie fand he was his am maister, an' could gang where he likit, he turned round to the left an' waded down tha syke till he cam' within twa or three yards o' the well, when a' at ance he sank to the wame in a shuggie bog, an' could neither move back nor forrit. I employed a' the airts I could, consistent wi' the holiness o' the day, to get him to move, but he wadna budge. Hers was a predicament j an', to crown a', the sound o' the kirk bell o' the clachan cam' jow-jowin' alang the hillside, and warned us that the solemn services o' ihe day were about to begin, while we were fixed in a slough, which, so far as we were concerned, was really an' truly a 'Slough o' Despond.' I now kenned that the stane didna fa' at the stabie : door for naething. What was to be dune 1 Davie stood laired i' the shuggie bog, an' couldna move, an' mair than that, he didna seem inclined to try ; an' if either Mysie or me had jumpit.aff, we wad have been up to the oxters in a jiffey, and unable to move as the puir auld horse. ' Aweel, Mysie,' quo I, 'this is a' owin' to my unbelief in the warnin's that Providence whiles gies us o' comin' evil.' Sac I tauldher a' the story about the lucky, or rather the unlucky, stane, an' when I lookit round to see what effect it had upon her, I saw she was in a bonnie pliskie, as pale as a corp, an' a cauld tear rinnin' down her cheek. ' Q Patie, Patie,' she sobbed, out at last, ' had ye tauld me this i' tha mornin', neither you nor me wad hae been , where v/e are the now.' Thi3 is aye the way, as a' body kens wi' the women folk ; they are awf u' wise ahint the han', grand prophets after the event, an' gayin' keen o' showin' off their am wisdom an' foresight. However, it didna become me to gainsay her. Sac I just said, ' Mysie, my woman, it's likely we'll be here, gudeness kens how lang, and it's our duty, aa Christians, to improve the occasion.' She loosed out her Bible, which she carried slung on her arm, weel rowed up in a clean white napkin, an' handit it to me. Auld Davie, puir beast, had a sort o' inklin' o' what ' was gaun on, for he cockit up his lugs, an' lookit round wi' a kind o' feeling o1o 1 sympathy for us prentit in his face. I opened the Book, and read the chapter about Jacob sleepin' out ac nigho wi' naething but a cauld stane for his pillow ; an' I tried to persuade Mysie that, after a', we werena sac badly off, an' that, if night should overtake us, we had mair comfortable quarters than him, which we didna at a' deserve, an' that in God's am time He wad send us a happy issue out o' a' I our troubles. But it was unco lang o' comin', an' we had a dreich time o' it, sittin' for houra thegither anefch a burnin' simmer sun, an' neither able to move oursela nor gar the puir auld beast move. At last he began to shake an' tremle a' ower, an' afore I could say Jack Kobison, he whammled right ower on his braid side, an' Mysie an' me lay wammlein' i' the bog. How it happened I canna tell, but after warselin' about for a while, I succeeded in reachin' a bit dry grassy knowe, an' when I got to my feet an' glowered about, wha should I see but Mysie, halfsittin', half-lyin', on the ither side o' the syke — her braw Sunday claes a' daibled ower wi' wset an' dirt, an' lookin' awfu' dumbfoundered an' rauifeesled like. Howsomever, to mak' a lang tale short, we gat back to the moss road ance mair, an' landit safe at the Overfcown just as our neighbours were comin' hame by the lang road frae the clachan, an' arguin' gayin' loud about some trittle point o' doctrine they had heard frae the tent that day. When they heard the story, they a' ran aff to try an' rescue Davie, puir fellow, f iae the syke ; but when they gaed there, his troubles were a' endit, for he was lyin' stark, stiff, an' dead. The wee stane o' the O^ertown is in mair repute than ever ; an' to prevent ony misluck again, it has been securely fixed to the lintel o' the stable, an' mony a ane comes i a lang way just to get a sight o't."