It is still accounted undecent for widows to marry within a yeare (I thinke) Dr. Tayler sayes, because in that time the husbands body may be presumed to be rotten.[1]
Insert out of the Calender of ye old Ovids Fastorum that I have lent to Dr. Goad, the remarqueable observations as to the Weather.
There is a proverb in Welsh of great antiquity, sc.
Haf hyd gatan
Gaiaf hyd Fay.
That is, if it be somerly weather till the Kalends of January, it will be winterly weather to the Kalends of May. They look upon this as an Oracle.[2]
Democritus talem futuram hiemem arbitratur, qualis fuerit brumæ dies, & circa eum term. item solstitio aestatem.—Plin. lib. 18, cap. 26.
[Holy Bread.]
——Cui cum cereale sacerdos
Imponit libum farraq. mixta sale.—[Fasti, i. 127, 128.]
Libum[3] is a cake made of Honey (sugar is a nouvelle, since ye discovery of America), meale, and oyle. Hence I suppose are derived our Cimnells; also ye Wafer.—N.B.
Utq. Sacerdotis fugitivus, liba recuso.—Horace, Ep. [Lib. 1, x. 10.]
"Kichell is a cake, which Horace calleth Libum, and with us is called a God's Kichell, because Godfathers and Godmothers used commonly to give one of them to their God-children, when they asked blessing."[4] This word is in the Sompner's tale, fol. 39, p. 1.
I knew an usher of Winchester-schoole whose name was Kichell.
Ibidem Wastell bread (libellus) fine Cymnell.
"Pain benist, Holy bread such as is used in Churches in Catholick countries."[5]
