CHAPTER XCI.

THE AUTHOR DISPLAYS A LITTLE MORE OF SUCH READING AS IS SELDOM READ, AND SHOWS THAT LORD BYRON AND AN ESSEX WIDOW DIFFERED IN OPINION CONCERNING FRIDAY.

Si j'avois dispersé ceci en divers endroits de mon ouvrage, j'aurois évité la censure de ceux qui appelleront ce chapitre un fatras de petit recueils. Mais comme je cherche la commodité de mes lecteurs plutôt que la mienne, je veux bien au depens de cette censure, leur épargner la peine de rassembler ce que j'aurois dispersé.

BAYLE.             

There is no superstition, however harmless it may appear, and may indeed long continue to be, but has in it some latent evil. Much has arisen from the distinction of unlucky days, which may very innocently and naturally have originated, though it was afterwards dexterously applied by astrologers, and by the priests of false religions, to their own purposes. No one would willingly commence an important undertaking on the anniversary of a day which had brought to him some great and irreparable calamity. It would be indecent to fix upon St. Bartholomew's for a day of public rejoicing in France; or in Portugal upon that day on which Lisbon was laid in ruins by the great earthquake. On the other hand an English General, and an English army, would feel something more than their wonted hope and expectation of victory, if they gave the enemy battle on the anniversaries of Waterloo, or Blenheim, Cressy, Poictiers, or Agincourt. God be thanked neither our fleets, or armies have ever yet caused a day to be noted with black in the English calendar!

But many a good ship has lost that tide which might have led to fortune, because the captain and the crew thought it unlucky to begin their voyage on a Friday. You were in no danger of being left behind by the packet's sailing on that day, however favourable the wind, if it were possible for the captain to devise any excuse for remaining till the morrow in harbour. Lord Byron partook this superstition; and if any thing of the slightest importance in which he was concerned were commenced on a Friday, he was seriously disconcerted.

Such however are the effects of superstitious animosity, that (as the Puritans in the next generation made Christmas-day a fast by an ordinance of Parliament) in James the first's reign Friday was kept as a sort of holyday. The biographer of a Spanish lady, who came to England for the purpose of secretly serving the Roman Catholic cause, says “that among her other griefs she had that of hearing the wheel go round, by which they roasted whole quarters of beef on every Friday, delighting to profane with forbidden food that day on which the catholics, by fasting and other works of penitence, manifested their sense, every week throughout the year, of the sufferings of their Lord and Saviour. In all English houses,” he says, “both private and public (to which latter great part of the people went for their meals) all kinds of meat roasted and boiled, are seen on Fridays, Good Friday not excepted, as if it were a land of Jews or Turks. The nobles in particular reserve their feasts and entertainments of all kinds of meats and delicacies for Fridays. It is the sport of the great, and their sort of piety, to testify by these sacrileges their hatred to the Roman church.”

There is probably some exaggeration in this statement; and if the biographer was conversant with the history of his own country, he must have known that there was a time when his own countrymen made it a point of duty to eat pork on Saturdays, for the sake of despiting the Jews. But the practice cannot have been so common as he represents it, for if it had, Friday would not have retained its inauspicious character to the present time. Yet even this which is in common opinion the most unlucky of all the days, may, from particular circumstances, deserve it appears to be marked with a white stone. Upon a trial brought at the Chelmsford Assizes, by a disconsolate widow against a faithless suitor, for breach of promise, a letter of the defendant's was produced, containing this passage: “Mrs. Martha Harris, you say I have used you ill; but I do not think I have at all; for I told you not to count too much, lest something should happen to disappoint. You say the day was mine; but respecting that, I said, ‘if before harvest it must be very soon, or it would be in harvest;’ and you said ‘fix any time soon.’ But you said you should like to marry on a Friday, for you thought that a good day; for on a Friday your husband died, and on a Friday I first came to see you, and Friday was market day.”

Old opinions, however groundless, are not often so easily overcome. The farmer has let precious days pass by without profiting by favourable weather, because he was warned against them by his almanack, or by tradition; and for the same reason, measures which might have relieved and saved a patient, have been fatally procrastinated. There were about thirty days in the christian year to which such malignant influences were imputed, that the recovery of any person who fell ill upon them was thought to be almost impossible: in any serious disease how greatly must this persuasion have increased the danger!

More than half the days in the year are unlucky in Madagascar: and the Ombiasses, as the sort of bastard Mahomedan jugglers in that great island are called, have made the deluded people believe that any child born on one of those days, will, if it be allowed to grow up, prove a parricide, be addicted to every kind of wickedness, and moreover be miserable throughout the whole course of its life. The infant is always exposed in consequence; and unless some humaner parents employ a slave or relation to preserve it, and remove it for ever from their knowledge, it is left for beasts, birds, or reptiles to devour!

The unfortunate days in Christendom, according to the received superstition in different countries, were either a little more or less than thirty,—about a twelfth part of the year; the fortunate were not quite so many, all the rest are left, if the astrologers had so pleased, in their natural uncertainty. And how uncertain all were is acknowledged in the oldest didactics upon this subject, after what were then the most approved rules had been given.

Ἃιδε μεν ἡμέραι εἰσίν ἐπιχθονίοις μέγ’ ὄνειαρ.
Ἃι δ’ἄλλαι μεταδουποι, ἀκήριοι, οὔτι φερουσαι.
Ἂλλος δ’ἀλλοίην αἰνεῖ, παῦροι δε τ’ἴσασιν.
Ἀλλοτε μητρυιὴ πελει ἡμέρη, ἄλλοτε μήτηρ.
Τάων ἐυδαίμων τε και ὄλβιος ὃς τάδε πάντα
Ἐιδὼς ἐργάζηται ἀναίτιος ἀθανάτοισιν,
Ὂρνιθας κρίνων, και ὑπερβασίας ἀλεείνων.1

1 HESIOD.

    These are the days of which the careful heed
Each human enterprise will favouring speed:
Others there are, which intermediate fall,
Mark'd with no auspice, and unomen'd all:
And these will some, and those will others praise;
But few are vers'd in mysteries of days.
Now as a stepmother the day we find
Severe, and now as is a mother kind.
O fortunate the man! O blest is he,
Who skill'd in these, fulfills his ministry:—
He to whose note the auguries are giv'n,
No rite transgress'd, and void of blame to Heaven.2

2 ELTON.

The fixed days for good and evil were said to have been disclosed by an angel to Job. I know not whether it comes from the Rabbinical mint of fables that Moses determined upon Saturday for the Israelites' Sabbath, because that day is governed by Saturn, and Saturn being a malignant planet, all manner of work that might be undertaken on the Saturday might be expected not to prosper. The Sabbatarians might have found here an astrological argument for keeping their sabbath on the same day as the Jews.

Sunday however is popularly supposed in France to be a propitious day for a Romish sabbath,—which is far better than a Sir-Andrew-Agnewish one. Il est reconnu, says a Frenchman, whose testimony on such a point is not invalidated by his madness,—que les jours de la semaine ne peuvent se ressembler, puisqu'ils coulent sous l'influence de differentes planettes. Le soleil, qui preside au dimanche, est censé nous procurer un beau jour plus riant que les autres jours de la semaine; et voila aussi pourquoi on se reserve ce jour pour se livrer aux plaisirs et amusements honnêtes.

The Jews say that the Sun always shines on Wednesdays, because his birth day was on Wednesday, and he keeps it in this manner every week. In Feyjoo's time the Spaniards had a proverbial saying, that no Saturday is ever without sunshine; nor could they be disabused of this notion because in their country it is really a rare thing to have a Saturday, or any other day, in some part or other of which the sun is not seen. But on the Wednesday in Passion week they held that it always rains, because on that day it was that Peter went out and wept bitterly, and they think that it behoves the heavens to weep, after this manner, as if in commemoration of his tears.

The saints indeed have been supposed to affect the weather so much upon their own holydays, that a French Bishop is said to have formed an ingenious project for the benefit of a particular branch of agriculture, by reforming a small part of the Calendar. This prelate was the Bishop of Auxerre, Francis D'Inteville, first of that name. He had observed that for many years the vineyards had suffered severely on certain Saints days, by frost, hail, cold rains or blighting winds, and he had come to the conclusion that though the said Saints had their festivals during the time when the sun is passing through Taurus, they were nevertheless Saints gresleurs, geleurs, et gasteurs du bourgeon.

Now this Bishop loved good wine, comme fait tout homme de bien; and he conceived that if these foul weather Saints, who seemed in this respect to act as if they had enrolled themselves in a Temperance Society, were to have their days changed, and be calendared between Christmas Day and St. Typhaines, they might hail, and freeze and bluster to their hearts content; and if their old festivals were assigned to new patrons, who were supposed to have no dislike for vineyards, all would go on well. St. George, St. Mark, St. Philip and St. Vitalis were some of the Saints who were to be provided for at Christmas; St. Christopher, St. Dominic, St. Laurence and St. Magdalene, the most illustrious of those who should have been installed in their places,—for on their days tant s'en faut qu'on soit en danger de gelèe, que lors mestier au monde n'est qui tant soit de requeste comme est des faiseurs de friscades, et refraischisseurs de vin. These changes however in the Saints' administration were not effected; and it appears by Rabelais' manner of relating the fact, that the Bishop never got from the optative to the potential mood.

Master Rabelais says that the Bishop called the mother of the Three Kings St. Typhaine;—it is certain that such a Saint was made out of La Sainte Epiphanié, and that the Three Kings of Cologne were filiated upon her. But whether or not this Prelate were in this respect as ignorant as his flock, he is praised by writers of his own communion for having by his vigilance and zeal kept his diocese as long as he lived, free from the Lutheran pestilence. And he deserves to be praised by others for having given a fine organ to his cathedral, and a stone pulpit, which was scarcely surpassed in beauty by any in the whole kingdom.

The Japanese, who are a wise people, have fixed upon the five most unfortunate days in the year for their five great festivals; and this they have done purposely, and prudently, in order by this universal mirth to divert and propitiate their Camis, or Deities; and also by their custom on those days of wishing happiness to each other, to avert the mishaps that might otherwise befall them. They too are careful never to begin a journey at an inauspicious time, and therefore in all their road and house books there is a printed table, shewing what days of the month are unfortunate for this purpose: they amount to four and twenty in the year. The wise and experienced Astrologer, Abino Seimei, who invented the table, was a personage endowed with divine wisdom, and the precious gift of prognosticating things to come. It is to be presumed that he derived this from his parentage, which was very remarkable on the mother's side. Take, gentle Reader, for thy contentment, what Lightfoot would have called no lean story.

Prince Abino Jassima was in the Temple of Inari, who, being the God and the Protector of Foxes, ought to have a temple in the Bishoprick of Durham, and in Leicestershire, and wherever Foxes are preserved. Foxes' lungs, it seems, were then as much esteemed as a medicine by the Japanese, as Fox-glove may be by European physicians; and a party of Courtiers were fox-hunting at this time in order to make use of the lungs in a prescription. They were in full cry after a young fox, when the poor creature ran into the temple, and instead of looking for protection to the God Inari, took shelter in Prince Jassima's bosom. The Prince on this occasion behaved very well, and the fox-hunters very ill, as it may be feared most fox-hunters would do in similar circumstances. They insisted upon his turning the fox out; he protested that he would commit no such crime, for a crime it would have been in such a case; they attempted to take the creature by force, and Prince Jassima behaved so bravely that he beat them all, and set the fox at liberty. He had a servant with him, but whether this servant assisted him, has not been recorded; neither is it stated that the Fox God, Inari, took any part in the defence of his own creature and his princely votary; though from what followed it may be presumed that he was far from being an unconcerned spectator. I pass over the historical consequences which make “the hunting of that day” more important in Japanese history, than that of Chevy Chace is in our own. I pass them over because they are not exactly pertinent to this place. Suffice it to say that King Jassima, as he must now be called, revenged his father's murder upon these very hunters, and succeeded to his throne; and then, after his victory, the fox appeared, no longer in vulpine form, but in the shape of a lady of incomparable beauty, whom he took to wife, and by whom he became the happy father of our Astrologer, Abino Seimei. Gratitude had moved this alopegyne, gynalopex, fox-lady, or lady-fox, to love; she told her love indeed,—but she never told her gratitude: nor did King Jassima know, nor could he possibly suspect, that his lovely bride had been that very fox whose life he had with so much generosity and courage preserved,—that very fox, I say, “another and the same;”—never did he imagine, nor never could he have imagined this, till an extraordinary change took place in his beautiful and beloved wife. Her ears, her nose, her claws and her tail began to grow, and by degrees this wonderful creature became a fox again! My own opinion is, that she must have been a daughter of the great Fox-God Inari himself.

Abino Seimei, her son, proved to be, as might have been expected, a cunning personage, in the old and good meaning of that word. But as he inherited this cunning from his mysterious mother, he derived also an equal share of benevolence from his kind-hearted father, King Jassima: and therefore, after having calculated for the good of mankind the table of unfortunate days, he, for their farther good, composed an Uta, or couplet, of mystical words, by pronouncing which, the poor traveller who is necessitated to begin a journey upon one of those days, may avert all those evils, which, if he were not preserved by such a spell, must infallibly befall him. He did this for the benefit of persons in humble life, who were compelled at any time to go wherever their lords and masters might send them. I know not whether Lord Byron would have ventured to set out on a Friday, after reciting these words, if he had been made acquainted with their value; but here they are, expressed in our own characters, to gratify the “curious in charms.”

Sada Mejesi Tabicatz Fidori Josi Asijwa,
        Omojitatz Figo Kitz Nito Sen.