water; and one is always told that were the effects in the one case as dangerous as in the other, fishermen and sailors could not live.[1]
Such are, or have been, some of the beliefs about the sea among the folk of the north-east of Scotland with respect to its health-giving powers. Walter Gregor.
THE FOLK-LORE OF DRAYTON.
PART III.—Witchcraft and other things preternatural—
Astrology, &c.
(Continued from page 277.)
OR poetical purposes, at any rate, Drayton was true to the belief of his age, touching witchcraft, astrology, and other allied arts. It is observable that in his Elegy[2] on Lady Aston's departure for Spain, he ventures to rate the power of his own desire—psychic force, the spiritualists call it — respecting her good passage, as being equal in potency to the spells of Norwegian witches, who can sell winds that will steadily waft their sea-faring clients to a wished-for harbour. It may be, however, that this was but a temporary boldness, induced by hyperbole. Selden[3] claims the same faculty for some "nuns" (as Drayton[4] terms them) who, of yore, dwelt in the Seams,
"Gave answers from their caves and took what shapes they please;"
and he refers to the wind-directing skill of Lapp and Finland witches in later times. "Mother Bumby," in her contribution to the fire-side tales told in the Mooncalf,[5] enters into considerable detail as to the powers exercised by such weird women—
- ↑ Paul Sébillot, L'Eau de Mer dans les Superstitions et les Croyances populaires, pp. 5, 6.
- ↑ [iv. 1251.] An island off the coast of Brittany.
- ↑ [ii. 673.]
- ↑ Pol. i. [ii. 657].
- ↑ [ii. 499.] Who was the original Mother Bumby? Gerarde, writing years before the Mooncalf appeared, says, sub Varvain, "It is reported to be of singular force against the tertian and quartaine fevers; but you must observe Mother Bumbie's rules to take just so many knots or sprigs, no more, least it
