BOOK tillage ", for the difcovery of loft property ", and 11. for the prevention of casualties 14. Specimens of their charms for these purposes still remain to us. Bede tells us, that "many, in times of difeafe (neglecting the facraments) went to the erring medicaments of idolatry, as if to reftrain God's chaftifements by incantations, phylacteries, or any other fecret of the demoniacal arts 15."

THEIR prognoftics from the fun, from thunder, and from dreams, were fo numerous, as to display and to perpetuate a moft lamentable debility of mind. Every day of every month was catalogued as a propitious or unpropitious feafon for certain transactions. We have Anglo-Saxon treatises which contain rules for discovering the future fortune and disposition of a child, from the day of his nativity. One day was useful for all things; another, though good to tame animals, was baleful to fow feeds. One day was favourable to the commencement of bufinefs; another to let blood; and others wore a forbidding afpect to thefe and other things. On this day you was to buy, on a fecond to fell, on a third to hunt, on a fourth to do nothing. If your child was born on fuch a day, it would live; if on another, its life would be fickly; if on another, he would perish early. In a word, the most alarming

12 For charms to make fields fertile, fee Wanley, p. 98, 225.

13 For charms to find loft cattle, or any thing ftolen, fee Wanley, p. 114, 186.

For amulets against poison, disease, and battle, fee alfe Wanley.

Bede, 1. iv. c. 27.

XIV.

fears, and the most extravagant hopes, were perpe. CHA P. tually raised by these fo6lifh fuperftitions, which tended to keep the mind in the dreary bondage of ignorance and abfurdity, which prevented the growth of knowledge, by the inceffant war of prejudice, and the flavish effects of the moft imbecile apprehenfions 15.

THE fame anticipations of futurity were made by noticing on what day of the week or month it first thundered, or the new moon appeared, or the new. year's-day occurred. Dreams likewife had regular interpretations and applications; and thus life, inftead of being governed by the councils of wisdom, or the precepts of virtue, was directed by thofe folemn leffons of grofs fuperftition, which the most. ignorant peasant of our days would be ashamed to

avow.

See efpecially MS. Tiberius, A. 3, and Bede's works on thefe fubjects.

HISTORY OF THE MANNERS, &c.

Their Funerals.

THE

BOOK THE northern nations, at one perio their dead. But the custom of the body had become established among the Saxons, at the æra when their history beg recorded by their Chriftian clergy, and w difcontinued.

3

THEIR Common coffins were wood; t coftly were ftone. Thus a nun who had ried in a wooden coffin was afterwards one of ftone. Their kings were interred coffins; they were buried in linen 3, and t in their vestments 4. In two inftances m by Bede, the coffin was provided before dea alfo read of the place of burial being chof death, and sometimes of its being ordered

WITH the common fympathy of huma friends are described as attending, in illne the bed of the difeafed. On their depa read of friends tearing their clothes and ha who died is mentioned to have been buried day. As Cuthbert, the eleventh bishop guftin, obtained leave to make cemeter

* Bede, l. iv. c. 19.

3 Ibid. l. iv. c. 19.

Ibid. 1. v. c. 5 and 1. iv. c. 11. 7 Eddius, p. 64.

2 Ibid. 1. i

4 Ibid. p.

6

3 Gale,

* Bede, p.

XV.

cities, we may infer that the more healthful cuf- CHA P. tom of depofiting the dead at fome distance from the habitations of the living, was the general practice; but afterwards it became the custom of England to bury the dead in the churches. The first restriction to this practice was the injunction that none fhould be fo buried, unless it was known that in his life he had been acceptable to God. It was afterwards ordered that no corpfe fhould be depofi ted in church, unless of an ecclefiaftic, or a layman fo righteous as to deferve fuch a distinction. All former tombs in churches were directed to be made level with the pavement, fo that none might be feen and if in any part, from the number of the tombs, this was difficult to be done, then the altar was to be removed to a purer fpot, and the occupied place was to become merely a burying ground

10

SOME of their customs at death may be learnt from the following narrations. It is mentioned in Dunstan's life, that Ethelfleda, when on her deathbed, faid to him, "Do thou, early in the morning, "cause the baths to be haftened, and the funeral "vestments to be prepared, which I am about to "wear; and after the washing of my body, I will "celebrate the mafs, and receive the facrament; "and in that manner I fhall die "."

9 Dugd. Mon. i. p. 25.

10 Wilk. Leg. Anglo-Sax. p. 179. p. 84.

"MSS. Cleop. B. 13. This life has been printed in the Ada Sanctorum for May, from a MS. brought from the Vedastine monaftery at Rome. This MS. differs from the Cotton MS. in fome particulars.

It has the preface, which

BOOK

II.

THE fickness, death, and burial of Arch Wilfred, in the eighth century, is defcribe thefe particulars. On the attack of his illn the abbots and anchorites near were unwea their prayers for his recovery. He furvived his fenfes; and power of speech returned, for and a half. A short time before his death, vited two abbots and fix faithful brethren to him, and defired them to open his treafur with a key. The gold, filver, and precious therein were brought out, and divided int parts, as he directed. One of these he ord be fent to the churches at Rome, as a pref his foul; another part was to be divided am poor of his people; a third he gave to fom nafteries, to obtain therewith the friendship kings and bishops; and the fourth he defti those who had fhared in his labours, and to he had not given lands.

AFTER his death, one of the abbots fpr linen garments on the ground. The brethr his body on it, washed it with their hands, a on his ecclefiaftical drefs. Afterwards they ped it in linen, and, finging hymns, they con it in a carriage to the monaftery. All the came out to meet it; none abstained from te weeping. They received it with hymns and

the Cotton MS. wants; but it has not two pages of clufion, which are in the Cotton MS. In the bod Roman MS. there are forty-two hexameters, which in the Cotton MS.