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CURIOSITIES OF OLDEN TIMES

by

S. BARING-GOULD, M.A.

Author of 'Iceland, Its Scenes and Its Sagas,' 'Mehalah,' etc.

Revised and Enlarged Edition







Edinburgh
John Grant
31 George IV. Bridge
1896




PREFACE


An antiquary lights on many a curiosity whilst overhauling the dusty tomes
of ancient writers. This little book is a small museum in which I have
preserved some of the quaintest relics which have attracted my notice
during my labours. The majority of the articles were published in 1869. I
have now added some others.

  LEW TRENCHARD,
    _September 1895_.




CONTENTS


                                    PAGE

  THE MEANING OF MOURNING              1

  CURIOSITIES OF CYPHER               17

  STRANGE WILLS                       39

  QUEER CULPRITS                      57

  GHOSTS IN COURT                     74

  STRANGE PAINS AND PENALTIES         89

  WHAT ARE WOMEN MADE OF?            102

  "FLAGELLUM SALUTIS"                119

  "HERMIPPUS REDIVIVUS"              135

  THE BARONESS DE BEAUSOLEIL         153

  SOME CRAZY SAINTS                  167

  THE JACKASS OF VANVRES             207

  A MYSTERIOUS VALE                  217

  KING ROBERT OF SICILY              237

  SORTES SACRAE                      256

  CHIAPA CHOCOLATE                   268

  THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE            280




CURIOSITIES OF OLDEN TIMES




THE MEANING OF MOURNING


A strip of black cloth an inch and a half in width stitched round the
sleeve--that is the final, or perhaps penultimate expression (for it may
dwindle further to a black thread) of the usage of wearing mourning on the
decease of a relative.

The usage is one that commends itself to us as an outward and visible sign
of the inward sentiment of bereavement, and not one in ten thousand who
adopt mourning has any idea that it ever possessed a signification of
another sort. And yet the correlations of general custom--of mourning
fashions, lead us to the inexorable conclusion that in its inception the
practice had quite a different signification from that now attributed to
it, nay more, that it is solely because its primitive meaning has been
absolutely forgotten, and an entirely novel significance given to it, that
mourning is still employed after a death.

Look back through the telescope of anthropology at our primitive ancestors
in their naked savagery, and we see them daub themselves with soot mingled
with tallow. When the savage assumed clothes and became a civilised man,
he replaced the fat and lampblack with black cloth, and this black cloth
has descended to us in the nineteenth century as the customary and
intelligible trappings of woe.

The Chinaman when in a condition of bereavement assumes white garments,
and we may be pretty certain that his barbarous ancestor, like the Andaman
Islander of the present day, pipeclayed his naked body after the decease
and funeral of a relative.