DELUSIONS AND SUPERSTITIONS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1966, 29 October 1891, Page 38

DELUSIONS AND SUPERSTITIONS.

By Dinornis.

A few days ago I was looking at an engraving of a very rickety old house in London, said to have been a palace of Heniy VIII. It is hard to believe that a kingespecially a powerful English king — could ever have " pufc up " in such an insignificant abode as that shabby old house, even at its best, must always have been. It is inevitable that a passing incident of this kind should set one a-thinking about the dwelling places of pa6t generations, and I might have run into a homily of old houses, and how they are cast off like old clothes, and, like clothes, often adopted by other owners at second band. I might have urged various objections against this being done, and on various grounds. I might have argued for a trial of the plan pursued by certain savages, who when their houses — or huts rather — get overcrowded with live stock set them on fire and build in a new place. The great fire of London, following on the plague, might have been cited as an instance in civilisation of a similar means towards an end. However, as it happened I simply fell to thinking about SOME OF THE CUBIOUS AND NOW EXPLODED IDEAS that dwelt in the mental chambers of the men and women of bygone days. What men thought and what they did in dark old days is always of interest to me. In our days, when education is free to those who wish for it and is forced on those who don't, we can scarce realise what the state of the mental atmosphere was even one hundred years ago. Folk may have a deal of information without being much the better for it, but the mere increase of knowledge -of everyday knowledge— has at least destroyed the eredulosity of human nature. In these very matter-of-fact days we are without doubt very much freer from the tendency to be deluded than our forefathers were. Education and enlightenment in their advance have done a great deal to destroy the tendency to adopt false and fanciful explanations of simple everyday incidents. No fisherman nowadays would consider it specially unlucky ;ta see a hare cross his path as he went forth of a morning, nor count much on the day's luck from having seen a single magpie or a pair as he passed from his hut to his boat. In various remote parts of Britain stolid iustics still cling to many shreds and tatters of such -like delusions and superstitions which are now almost unknown in all places where life throbs most vigorously. But in Britain town boys still cling to the delusion that the simple little water-newt is a vicious and poisonous biter. This is an old and baseless superstition — the animal is called an " asp" in many ancient ballads— and it is as harmless and inoffensive as any creature that lives. A vast amount of cruelty has been perpetrated in consequence of this and similar errors due to entire lack of observation. Human nature is Tory in regard to its old notions, especially if they are harmful ones. We ourselves are possibly not so far away from the delusions and superstitions of our grandfathers as we boast of being, and probably to future generations the most superrefined reasonings of the present time will seem as rude and benighted as the credulity of our forefathers seems to us. Let us remember the warning note of the poet who wrote : We think our fathers wrong, so wise we grow - Our wiser sons no doubt will think us bo. ' Yet many of the beliefs that formed part j and parcel of the everyday life of past times were so absurd and irrational that no excuse is needed for treating them as worthy only oE ridicule. Lying before me is a little book —"Remarkable Delusions "—fairly running over with a rich assortment of the most absurd, foolish, and incredible delusions ever swallowed by mortals. Indeed my ? command of adjectives is quite inadequate to the occasion for them. Great part of this mass of fabulosities is of interested monkish origin but apait from that is ' A VAST GROWTH OF WEEDY SUPERSTITIONS that seems to have germinated as readily in the uninformed human mind as do weeds in neglected land. The mention of weeds reminds me that hardly a plant— not even the most insignificant weed— existed but had a superstition of some kind attached to it A handful of asmarc placed under a saddle caused the horse to carry his rider easily • docks boiled with meat made the toughest viand tender (boarding-house mistresses should make a note of that) ; moonwort trodden on by a horse loosened the shoes from its feet ; rue was a preventive of witchcraft; a bay leaf was a preservative against thunder ; the deadly nightshade was supposed to derive its poisonous qualities from its growing, as it often did, among the dank deposits of death and corruption. This plant was credited with many magical virtues. But of all plants the mandrake was

chief, in that superstitions of a horrible kind clung thickest round it. ATTRIBUTES THE MOST DEADLY AND PORTENTOUS were associated with its growth. It was imagined to grow under the gallows, and to be nourished by the distillations of executed malefactors, and it was believed that when it was uprooted it uttered a great shriek, as if possessing sensibility. To guard against the pestilential effects of gathering it some authors recommended that the plant should ! be tied to a dog, who being driven away I would pull up the plant with it. I have never seen the true mandrake — it is a South of Europe native; but, from what I have heard of it, it is just such a growth as in a dark and superstitious age would be sure to inspire sensations of extreme horror in the minds of the ignorant. Its root, severed in | some directions, bears a considerable resemI blance to the human form. Its smell is extremely foetid, and its properties venomous |to a high degree. Its roots, after due manipulation, were during the Middle Ages in great demand as charms. Old fables tell that when kept and ceremoniously treated it was a potent love charm, and also drew wealth and all desirable things to it. In old books references to it are common. Shakespeare says somewhere : And shrinks like mandrake torn out of the earth, That living moitali, hearing them, rua mad. In the dark ages the moon was credited wich great influence on everyday affairs. Peas and beans were to be sown in the moon's wane — why I cannot tell ; but the singular beliefs of early times in regard to the moon seem to be remnants of a much earlier pagan worship of that luminary. Pigs were to be killed and sheep shorn at the period of the moon's fulness, and wood was to be cut at the game fortunate conjuncture. Among the caricatures to be found in an old book a superstitious man is thus satirised : — " He will, not commit his seed to the earth when the soil, but when the moon requires it. He will have his hair cut when the moon is either in Leo, that his locks may stare like the lion's shag, or in Aries, that they may curl like a ram's horn. Whatever he would have to grow he sets about when she is in her increase, but for what he would have made less he chooses her wane." Some of the methods of cure — of the discovery of cures rather — were as highly absurd as well could be. One philosopher of an experimental turn of mind " cut a serpent nearly in pieces, and then watched what it would do." One would think it would be most likely to die ; but this philosopher observing that it dragged its body to a plant, the leaves of which immediately made it whole, regarded the circumstance as an infallible indication of the medicinal virtues of the indicated plant. In a future paper I may lay before you a more compact selection of these old superstitions, in the hope at least that they may interest young colonials.