another corner of the church, he read this gospel, "Ye men of Galilee," etc., with the whole office, a farthing being laid upon the book, and taken up again; in the third corner he read this gospel, "I am the good shepherd," etc., with the whole office, a farthing being laid upon the book, and taken up again; and in the fourth corner he read this gospel, "In these days," etc., with the whole office, a farthing being laid upon the book, and taken up again. After that, he sprinkled all the sheep with holy water, saying: "Let the blessing of God the Father Almighty, descend and remain upon you; in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen." Then he signed all the sheep with the sign of the cross; repeated thrice some Latin verses, with the Paternosters and Ave Marias; sung the mass of the Holy Ghost, and at the conclusion an offering of fourpence was for himself, and another of threepence was for the poor. This ceremony was adopted by the Romish Church from certain customs of the ancient Romans, in their worship of Pales, the goddess of sheepfolds and pastures. They prayed her to bless the sheep, and sprinkled them with water. The chief difference between the forms seems to have been, that the ancient Romans let the sheep remain in their folds, while the moderns drove them into the church. Baal-Zebub, the name of a god who had a temple of some sort in the city of Ekron (2 Kings i. 2), was the tutelary deity that protected the people from the plagues of gnats. The inhabitants of Olympia and Elis had, in like manner, their protecting deities; the Trojans their Apollo, from his having destroyed mice; the inhabitants of Mount (Eeta, their Hercules, to protect them from the locusts, and the Erythreans their god, who destroyed vermin. The sacred pigs of the ancients (as well as other animals) were those intended for immolation. Menæchmi, in Plautus, asks the price of the "porci sacres, sinceri." These were the white and spotless pigs offered to the Lares on behalf of the insane. In St. Agnes's Church, at Rome, it was customary on that saint's day to bring two snow-white lambs to the altar, upon which they were laid while the "Agnus Dei" was sung, by way of offering. These consecrated animals were afterwards shorn, and palls made from their fleeces; for each of which, it is said, the pope exacted of the bishops from eight to ten or thirty thousand crowns. This custom, somewhat modified, exists at the present time at Rome, for we read in a public journal (the Standard, January 23, 1879), that on the fête of St. Agnes (January 22), the pope (Leo XIII.) "received, according to immemorial custom, the two white lambs which are due from the Basilica of St. Agnes to the Lateran Chapter. These lambs furnish the wool from which the sacred pallii of the pontiff, patriarch, and primates are made." The legend of St. Agnes is, that in eight days after her death she came to her parents, arrayed in white, attended by virgins with garlands of pearls, and a lamb whiter than snow: "But where was Agnes at that time?-who offer'd up, and how, Dogs and horses had the special protection of Sts. Eustace and Hubert. A white race of hounds were dedicated to St. Roche, and great numbers of them were solemnly blessed before his altar, on the day of his festival. Both Sts. Eustace and Hubert were famous hunters, who were said to have been miraculously converted by snow-white stags, which they followed far into the depths of the forest, and which, suddenly turning on their pursuers, displayed the crucifix between their antlers. In Southern Europe St. Eustace is the great patron of the chase; in the north it is St. Hubert. Some relics of the latter (who is supposed to have died about the year 727), Isaid to have been removed from his shrine at the time of its translation from Liège, form the chief treasure of the church of Limé; not far from Soissons. Neither man nor beast, says the local tradition, has ever been attacked by "rage" (hydrophobia) within the limits of the commune. A grand pilgrimage is made to the church of Limé on the 2nd of November, when the following rhyme-half charm, half prayer-is recited: "Saint Hubert glorieux, Non plus qu'étoile au ciel." On the festival of St. Hubert (November 2), at his church in the province of Luxembourg, pilgrims assemble from all parts to obtain a blessing on themselves and their dogs, and to receive the small cakes of bread, which, blessed on the altars of St. Hubert or St. Roche, and duly distributed among the hounds, are believed to be effectual for averting canine madness from the kennel during the ensuing year. It was believed that the descendants of St. Hubert had the power of healing persons suffering from canine madness, by a simple imposition of hands. Scot, in his "Discoverie of Witchcraft," says: "Many used to boast that they are of St. Paul's race and kindred, shewing upon their bodies the prints of serpents which, as the papists affirm, were incident to all them of St. Paul's stock. Marry, they say withal, that all his kinsfolke can handle serpents, or any poisons, without danger." Among the old charms mentioned in Bales's "Interlude concerning the Laws of Nature, Moses, and Christ" (1562), St. Leger (whose day is October 2) appears as the patron of geese. Idolatry says: "With blessynges of Saynt Germayne, I will me so determyne, That neyther fox nor vermyne Shall do my chyckens harme. CHAPTER VIII. BIRDS. F all animals, birds seem to have been the special object Ο of superstition, whether portents of good or evil, in all ages and countries. Why this should be is matter for conjecture. It may arise from a combination of qualities peculiar to birds. From being continually on the wing, they were supposed to observe and to know the most hidden actions of men, and to be acquainted with all secrets. Hence the proverb, No one knows except, perhaps, some bird." A modern writer observes: "The very paradise of nature is the birds: the gracefulness of their form, the exquisite delicacy of their covering, the inimitable brilliancy of their colours, the light and life-giving transparency of the element in which they live, the singular variety of their habits, and the delightful melody of their songs." "Ibi aves, ibi angeli," is a dogma of Thomas Aquinas, which he was fond of quoting. To this I may add, the remarkable caution and foresight of some.birds, the cunning, artifice, and dissimulation, seem to account for the fables, legends, and romances connected with them from the earliest times.* * Under much apparent buffoonery, the play of the "Birds" by Aristophanes discovers the most profound mysteries of the Athenian politics— the divers movements which agitated Greece-in a word, the secret history of the Peloponnesian war. All that was remarkable in the stories about birds in natural history, in mythology, in the love of augury, in sop's "Fables," or even in proverbial expressions, the poet has ingeniously blended in this poem. Birds, being supposed to be milder than beasts by nature, are employed by old writers to represent the better class of men. The idea of the excellence of birds seems to have been due to the expression "volucres cœli," the birds of heaven, in Matthew viii. 20. In the "Ancren Riwyle," a treatise on the "Rules and Duties of Monastic Life" (a semi-Saxon MS. of the thirteenth century, published by the Camden Society), we have true anchoresses compared to birds: "For they leave the earth; that is the love of all earthly things; and through yearning of heart after heavenly things, fly upwards towards heaven. And although they fly high, with high and holy life, yet they hold the head low, through meek humility, as a bird flying boweth down its head, and accounteth all her good deeds and good works nothing worth. . . . True anchoresses are indeed birds of heaven, that fly aloft and sit on the green boughs singing merrily." In the story of "Nella-Rajah," we find that in the world of Daivers or Genii, there are milk-white birds called Aunnays, remarkable for the gracefulness of their walk, wonderfully endowed with knowledge and speech, incapable of deceit, and having power to look into the thoughts of men. The Welsh have a tradition concerning the birds of Rhianon, a female personage who has a principal part in carrying on the spells in Gwladyr Hud, or the Enchanted Land of Pembrokeshire. "Whoso happened to hear the singing of her birds stood seven years listening, though he supposed the while that only an hour or two had elapsed.” Plutarch tells us that the Egyptians adored some image of the divine faculties in animals-patience, utility, vivacity, etc. Thus the IBIS (religiosa) was reared in their temples and embalmed after death. It was worshipped because, as some said, it devoured the serpents, which, otherwise, would have become dangerous to the country; others attributed the divine honours paid to it, from a resemblance between its plumage and some of the phases of the moon. The shape of its body was supposed to represent the heart; its legs described a triangle, and |