Whether dragon-stories extend further into Scotland I cannot say, further than that one is current at Strathmartin, in Forfar. There stands in that village a large stone, called Martin's Stone; and it is said to commemorate the victory of a champion named Martin over a dragon which had devoured nine maidens successively, as they went out one after another on a Sunday evening to fetch water for their father from the spring. Certainly these tales appear circumscribed within a narrow district. I cannot hear of anything analogous to them in the South of England, and the dragon-stories of Sweden and Norway are of a somewhat different character. There we find these monsters inhabiting dens and holes in the earth, where they brood over the treasures they have collected from the bottom of the sea. Such a monster dwells under the foundations of Ayers Church, gloating over his stores of precious things. Others have issued forth occasionally from Dragon's Hole on Storoe in Aadal, from the Dragon's Hill on Rasvog, and other places; but we hear nothing of champions combating with them. There is a tradition, however, that a priest named Anders Madsen, who lived about the year 1631, shot the dragon which brooded over a hoard of silver in the so-called Dragon Mount near the Tvedevaud.1 From our point of view, in the nineteenth century, it is perhaps impossible to discover what local circumstances fixed the idea of dragon-foe and conquering champion so strongly in the popular mind of one especial district. It is, of course, one which meets us again and again in almost every form of belief which has prevailed in the world. Classic mythology tells us of Cadmus and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Her 1 Thorpe's Mythology, vol. ii. p. 32. cules and the Hydra, with many more. Brahminism hands down from its earliest days the wonderful picture of Krishna suffering and Krishna triumphant-a twofold representation, wherein the hero is first bound in the serpent's coils, and wounded by it in the heel, and then stands forth its conqueror with his foot set upon its head. And the mythology of our own Teuton forefathers shows us the heroic Sigurd and the fiery dragon Fafner. Surely, in these and a thousand more such instances, the ceaseless universal strife between good and evil, once shown to human eyes in its intensity upon Mount Calvary, is faintly shadowed forth with more or less of truth and clearness! 262 OCCULT POWERS AND SYMPATHIES. CHAPTER IX. OCCULT POWERS AND SYMPATHIES. Seventh Sons or 'Marcoux'-Twins-Aërial Appearances-The Schoolboy and Neville's Cross-Sympathy between Bees and their Owners -The Old Woman and Spider. AMONG Occult powers exercised, or thought to be exercised, by certain members of the human race, none have been more widely credited than those supposed to reside in seventh sons. The seventh of a family of sons, no daughters intervening, has the reputation of healing scrofula and other kindred complaints with the touch. This belief has been universal in Great Britain as well as in France, and it still crops out here and there. the village of Ideford, in South Devon, lived (perhaps still lives) a respectable farmer, who claimed to heal as a seventh son, and patients resorted to him from Exeter, Torquay, and other places at some little distance. The French name for such a person is a 'marcou,' and the Orléannais is the district where the belief in their powers is the strongest. 'If a man is the seventh son of his father, no female intervening, he is a marcou; he has on some part of his body the mark of a fleur-de-lis, and, like the King of France, he has the power of curing the king's-evil. All that is necessary to effect a cure is, that the marcou should breathe upon the part affected, or that the sufferer should touch the mark of the fleurde-lis.' Of all the marcoux of the Orléannais, he of Ormes is the best known and most celebrated. Every year, from twenty, thirty, forty leagues around, crowds of patients come to visit him. The marcou of Ormes is a cooper in easy circumstances, being the possessor of a horse and carriage. His name is Foulon, and in this country he is known by the appellation of Le beau marcou.' He has the fleur-de-lis on his left side.1 On the Borders the sign of the seven stars marks the seventh son to be a channel of healing. If seventh sons thus marked are brought up as doctors, they are in great requisition; in any case, people resort to them to be touched for the king's-evil. The belief in their powers holds its ground firmly in the Western Highlands. There the seventh son lays his hand on the party affected, commonly, but not always, uttering an invocation to the Trinity. In the island of Lewes he gives the patient a sixpenny-piece with a hole in it, through which a string is passed to wear round the neck. Should this be taken off, a return of the malady may be looked for. Mitchell adds, that when seven sons are born in succession, the parents consider themselves bound, if possible, to bring up the seventh for a doctor. Seventh sons are also seers, and have the privilege, if such it be, of second-sight. Their healing powers are, on the Borders, shared with twins and children born with cauls; but, in all these cases, the virtue is held to be so much subtracted from their own vital energy, and, if much drawn upon, they pine away and die of exhaustion. As to twins, a strong sympathy is believed to exist between them, so that what gives pain or pleasure to the one, is suffered or enjoyed by the other as well. Should one die however, the other, though weakly before, will at 1 Choice Notes.-FOLK-LORE, p. 59. Dr. 264 OCCULT POWERS AND SYMPATHIES. once improve in health and strength, the life and vital energy of his fellow being added to his own. This curious belief recalls to the memory how, in Spenser's Faerie Queene,' Agapé, the mother of three brave knights, Borne of one mother in one happie mold, Borne at one burden in one happie morne, visits the three Fates, that she may learn the length of her sons' lives; and finding the thread of their existence 'So thin as spiders' frame, And eke so short that seemed their ends out shortly came,' finding also that no prayer of hers could avail to lengthen their allotted span, she asked and obtained the following request : 'Then since,' quoth she, the 'terme of each man's life, For nought may lessened nor enlarged be ; Grant this: that when ye shred with fatall knife His life, which is the eldest of the three, Which is of them the shortest, as I see, Eft soones his life may pass into the next; North Countrie' external nature, Thus the aurora There is a strong tendency in the to connect the past and the present and the history and destiny of man. borealis is still well known there as 'the Derwentwater Lights,' in consequence of having been particularly red and vivid at the time of that unfortunate nobleman's execution. The death of Louis XVI. was foreshadowed, too, by the aurora borealis; and myriads of fighting men were seen in the sky night after night, all through Book iv. Canto 2. |