issued from the shrine of Juno; that a statue of Julius on the Tiberine island had turned round from west to east without any perceptible agency; that an ox in Etruria had spoken; that animals had brought forth strange progeny; and that other alarming exceptions to the laws of nature had been observed (Ibid., i. 86. 1). The supposed contraction of a man's shadow is thought in South Africa to portend his death (R. S. A., pt. i. p. 126). The Irish Banshee is a being who does not belong to any species recognized by science, and who, moreover, is heard to scream only before a death in the family to which she is attached. The ticking sound produced by a small insect in the wooden furniture of a room is termed in Scotland the death-watch, and has the same ominous significance. To one family, a drummer heard to drum outside the castle is significant of death; in another, it may be that a particular ghost, seen by a casual visitor who knows nothing of its meaning, conveys a similar intimation. The birth of great men is often supposed to be marked by extraordinary signs. "At my nativity," says Owen Glendower,
"The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
Of burning cressets; and at my birth,
The frame and huge foundation of the earth
Shak'd like a coward."
And again:—
"The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds
Were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields.
These signs have marked me extraordinary;
And all the courses of my life do show
I am not in the roll of common men."[1]
From signs which the bounty of nature supplies without effort on the part of human beings, we proceed to those which are granted only in reply to solicitations on the part of some person or persons in quest of supernatural information. Of these, a leading place must be assigned to those which are obtained through the medium of diviners. Divination is in many parts of the world a highly-developed and lucrative art.
- ↑ Henry IV., pt. 1, act iii. scene 1.
