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Olive oil sacred.

Amatory

German

St.

to represent a scaling ladder. That he is not fairly entitled to this coat-armour, ecclesiastical historians prove by appealing to the cross itself on which he suffered, which St. Stephen of Burgundy gave to the convent of St. Victor, near Marseilles, and which, like the common cross, is rectangular. The cause of the error is thus explained ; when the apostle suffered, the cross, instead of being fixed upright, rested on its foot and arm, and in this posture he was fastened to it; his hands to one arm and the head, his feet to the other arm and the foot, and his head in the air.* After all, St. John Chrysostom, in his sermon on the festival of St. Andrew, says that the saint was crucified on an olive tree,† in consequence of which olive oil has long possessed a sacred repute among the vulgar.

From the Regnum Papisticum of Naogeorgus, translated divinations by Barnabe Googe, in 1570, it appears that the peasant girls in ancient times, attempted to divine the name of their future husbands, by forcing the growth of onions in the chimney corner, and they ascertained the temper of the future spouse from the straightness or crookedness of a stick, drawn from a wood stack. Amatory divinations, it will be seen, were by no means peculiar in England to the season of Advent. In Germany, it is commonly believed legend of that on St. Andrew's night and the nights of St. Thomas, Christmas, and New Year, a girl has the power of inviting and seeing her future lover. A table is to be laid for two persons, taking care, however, that there are no forks on it. Whatever the lover leaves behind him at his departure must be carefully preserved; he then returns to her who has it, and loves her passionately. It must, however, be carefully kept from his sight, because he would otherwise remember the torture of superhuman power, which he that night endured, and this would lead to fatal consequences. A fair maiden, in Austria, once sought at midnight, after

Andrew's

night.

* Dr. Aikin's Athenæum, Vol. I., p. 140.

† Serm. 133. Ser. Collier, Dict. Art. St. Andrew.

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Andrew.

performing the necessary ceremonies, to obtain a sight of
her future lover; whereupon a shoemaker appeared, having
a dagger in his hand, which he threw at her, and then dis- St.
appeared. She picked up the dagger and concealed it in a
trunk. It was not long afterwards before the shoemaker
visited, courted, and married her. Some years after their
marriage, she chanced to go one Sunday, about the hour of
vespers, to the trunk, in search of something which she
required for her work on the following day. As she opened
her trunk, her husband came to her, and would insist on
looking into it; she kept him off, until at last he pushed
her away with great violence, looked into her trunk, and
there saw his dagger. He immediately seized it, and de-
manded of her how she had obtained it, because he had
lost it at a very particular time. In her fear and alarm,
she had not the power to invent any excuse, so declared
the truth, that it was the same dagger which he had left
behind him on the night when she had obliged him to
appear to her. Her husband hereupon grew enraged, and
said with a terrible oath, - 'Twas you then that caused
me that night of dreadful misery!' and with that he thrust
the dagger into her heart.

This popular tradition of Germany is translated by Mr. Thoms,* from Grimm's "Deutsche Sagen." In England, superstitious rites of this nature, were practised on other festival nights, and among the rest, on the vigil of St. Mark, but it was believed that during the whole term of Advent, fairies, witches, goblins, and malevolent spirits possessed their most formidable powers of annoying good christians, until, we shall find, they were temporarily quelled by the " hallowed and gracious time" of the eve of Christmas. In Lithuania, even to this day, an opinion prevails among persons of the middling classes, that dreams on the night before St. Andrew's day, which is properly called the eve of St. Andrew, are particularly prophetic.

* Lays and Legends of Germany, p. 39.

F

St.

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Andrew.

In Normandy these superstitions are confined to the eight days before Christmas, which are named, Les Avents de Noel. The people in some of the cantons place bundles of hay under the fruit trees, and children, not twelve years of and incan- age, are sent with torches to set fire to the hay, which they perform, flourishing their torches among the branches, and continually crying out:

Charms

tations.

St.

"Taupes, cherilles et mulots,

Sortez, sortez de mon clos,

Ou je vous brule la barbe et les os :

Arbres, arbrisseaux,

Donnez-moi des pommes à miriot."

Of this exorcism, or charm, a translation has been made: "Mice, caterpillars, and moles, get out, get out of my field: I will burn your beard and your bones: trees and shrubs, give me three bushels of apples." M. Cochin remarks that the fire is effective against the caterpillars, but as to mice and moles, he has discovered no convincing proof of the power of the young exorcists.* Their incantation is not much unlike a magical charm of the ancients, against the cantharides, or insects of the beetle kind, by which they thought their corn was destroyed:

Φεύγετε κανθαρίδες, λύκος ἅγριος ἔμμι διώκει.

Fly, beetles, the ravenous wolf pursues you.

Our old authors mention a custom, that held on the Thursday three weeks before the Nativity, when boys and girls went about in troops, crying, "Advent! Advent !” and wishing a happy new year to the neighbours, who requited their benediction with money and fruit. The new year, at this period, began with the festival of the Nativity, which was the termination of Advent.

The festival of St. Nicholas† is observed on the 6th of Nicholas. December, and is marked by several peculiarities which

*Time's Telescope for 1828.

+ See Gloss. of Dates, Sancti Nicholai Festa.

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connect the saint with the marine deities of Scandinavia, Greece, and Rome. He is said by Moreri to have been bishop of Myra, in the 4th century, and he was Nicholas. accounted a saint of the highest virtue, even in his earliest infancy. This saint has ever been considered the patron of scholars and of youth, of which the reason has been assigned by the Rev. W. Cole, from a Life of St. Nicholas, 3rd Edition, 4to., 1645. "An Asiatic gentleman, sending his two sons to Athens for education, ordered them to wait on the bishop for his benediction. On arriving at Myra with their baggage, they took up their lodgings at an inn, proposing to defer their visit till the morrow; but, in the mean time, the innkeeper, to secure their effects to himself, killed the young gentlemen, cut them into pieces, salted them, and intended to sell them for pickled pork. St. Nicholas being favoured with a sight of these proceedings in a vision, went to the inn, and reproached the landlord with the crime, who, immediately confessing it, entreated the saint to pray to heaven for his pardon. The bishop, moved by his confession and contrition, besought forgiveness for him, and supplicated restoration of life to the children. Scarcely had he finished, when the pieces reunited, and the resuscitated youths threw themselves from the brine tub at the feet of the bishop: he raised them up, blessed them, and sent them to Athens, with great joy, to prosecute their studies."*

In old representations, as in that of the Salisbury Missal Patron of of 1540, fo. xxvii,† the bishop is always depicted along sailors. with the children rising from the tub. The common people, however, in Catholic countries, generally misunderstood these figures, and regard the boys in the tub as sailors in a boat, a mistake which derives apparent corroboration from the belief that St. Nicholas is the patron of mariners; thus, in the Norman-French life of the saint, he is distinctly

* Hone, Anc. Myst., p. 193.

+ Engraved in Hone's Every Day Book, Vol. I.

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St.

Nicholas.

Nick, a form of Odin.

said to afford his aid to travellers by sea as well as by land, who require his assistance :

"Seynz vos ke alez par mer,
De cet barun oiez parler,
Ke tant est par tut socurable,
E ke en mer est tant aidable."

And, in a storm described in this legend or romance, the sailors, “miserable and weary, often cry out, often they invoke St. Nicholas, saying, Help us, O lord St. Nicholas, if thou beest such as men say." At length the saint appeared, and stood close to them in the vessel:

"Souent se claiment cheitiff e las.

Souent dient sein Nicholas.
Sucurez nus sein Nicholas sire.

Si tel es cum oum dire.

A taunt uns houme lur aparutt

Ke en la nef iuste eus se estutt."*

According to the Scandinavian mythology, the supreme god Odin assumes the name of Nick, Neck, Nikkar, Nikar, or Hnikar, when he acts as the evil or destructive principle. In the character of Nikur, or Hnikudur, a Protean water sprite; he inhabits the lakes and rivers of Scandinavia, where he raises sudden storms and tempests, and leads mankind into destruction. Nick, or Nickar, being an object of dread to the Scandinavians, propitiatory worship was offered to him, and hence it has been imagined that the Scandinavian spirit of the waters, became in the middle ages St. Nicholas, the patron of sailors, who invoke his aid in storms and tempests. This supposition, which will be advanced to a degree of probability almost amounting to certainty, receives countenance from the great devotion still felt by Gothic nations towards St. Nicholas, to

* Apud Hickes, Thesaur., Tom. I., p. 146 and 149.

+ "Hnikari edur Nikar: Nikur edur Hnikudur."-Edda Islandorum, Dæmesaga 3. "Hnikudur," says Snorro," som er selsom varius, inconstans.” Quarterly Rev., Vol. XXII., p. 260, 261.