'The Irish or Welsh during eclipses run about beating kettles and pans, thinking their clamour and vexations available to the assistance of the higher orbes.' In 1654 Nuremberg went wild with terror of an impending solar eclipse; the markets ceased, the churches were crowded with penitents, and a record of the event remains in the printed thanksgiving which was issued (Danckgebeth nach vergangener höchstbedrohlich und hochschädlicher Sonnenfinsternuss), which gives thanks to the Almighty for granting to poor terrified sinners the grace of covering the sky with clouds, and sparing them the sight of the awful sign in heaven. In our own times, a writer on French folklore was surprised during a lunar eclipse to hear sighs and exclamations, 'Mon Dieu, qu'elle est souffrante!' and found on enquiry that the poor moon was believed to be the prey of some invisible monster seeking to devour her.[1] No doubt such late survivals have belonged in great measure to the ignorant crowd, for the educated classes of the West have never suffered in its extreme the fatal Chinese union of scepticism and superstition. Yet if it is our mood to bewail the slowness with which knowledge penetrates the mass of mankind, there stand dismal proofs before us here. The eclipse remained an omen of fear almost up to our own century, and could rout a horror-stricken army, and fill Europe with dismay, a thousand years after Pliny had written in memorable words his eulogy of the astronomers; those great men, he said, and above ordinary mortals, who, by discovering the laws of the heavenly bodies, had freed the miserable mind of men from terror at the portents of eclipses.
Day is daily swallowed up by Night, to be set free again at dawn, and from time to time suffers a like but shorter durance in the maw of the Eclipse and the Storm-cloud;
- ↑ Grimm, 'D. M.' pp. 668-78, 224; Hanusch, 'Slaw. Myth,' p. 268; Brand, 'Pop. Ant.' vol. iii. p. 152; Horst, 'Zauber-Bibliothek,' vol. iv. p. 350; D. Monnier, 'Traditions populaires comparées,' p. 138; see Migne, 'Dic. des Superstitions,' art. 'Eclipse'; Cornelius Agrippa, 'De Occulta Philosophia,' ii. c. 45, gives a picture of the lunar eclipse-dragon.
