Mythology

trophe, probably shipwreck. Wound: Vide Desert, Goat, Stag. Woutan: Ger. Legend. The equivalent of Wodan. Wraith: An apparition of a living person in the exact likeness, thought to be seen just
before his death. The Celtic people are firm believers in “wraiths.”
King James tells us that the wraith of a person newly-dead, or about to die, appears to
his friends.
Wreath: The wreath or the ring of a bride accidentally falling off during the marriage
ceremony presages that the marriage will be unhappy. (North and Central Germany.WUTTKE,
p. 40.)
Wreaths must not be laid on the bed of a sick person. (STRACKERJAN, Vol. I, p. 49.)
Wreck: Vide Shipwreck.
Wren: If anyone kills a wren, he will break a bone before the year is out (BRAND,
Observations, Vol. III, p. 195), or the cows will give bloody milk (CHAMBERS, Pop.
Rhymes of Scot., p. 188), or in France, his house will be struck by lightning (SEBILLOT,
Vol. II, p. 214.)
In Brittany, people think that if children touch the young wrens in the nest, they will suffer
from pimples on the face, legs and so on. (SEBILLOT, Trad. et Sup. de la Haute-
Bretagne, Vol. II, p. 214; FRAZER, G.B2., Vol. II, p. 443.)
Sailors say it is unlucky to kill a wren. (BASSETT, p. 275).
cf. Word-Lore, Vol. I, p. 161. Vide Robin.
Wudu-maere: “Wood-spirit.” The Anglo Saxon name for an echo (q.v.)
Wu Lao: Chin. Myth. The five old men who were the spirits of the five planets. (MAYERS,
Chin. Read. Man. p. 279.)
Wuzl: In Oberpfalz Wodan appears as a frightful forest-spirit, and is called either Wuzl
or Hoymann. (STRACKERJAN, Vol. II, pp. 337, 342.)
Xaragua: According to an American Indian superstition, there is a lake in the province
of Xaragua, on the banks of which the spirits of the good men live united to those of
their beloved and ancestors in “shady and blooming bowers, with lovely females, and
banquet (ed) on delicious fruits.” (W. IRVING.)
Xisthorus: A Greek corruption of Atra-khasis, “very clever”: an epithet of Ut-napishtim

Note: If you are looking for good and high quality web space to host and run your application check Lunarwebhost PHP Web Hosting services

100 TOAST, Anagram A SOTT. Exposition. A Toast is like a Sot; or, what is most Comparative, a Sot is like a Toast; For when their substances in liquor sink, Both properly are said to be in drink. (8) YEW TREES IN CHURCHYARDS. There are many theories to account for the ancient practice of planting churchyards and cemeteries with yew trees. Some authorities ascribe it to the adoption of ancient funeral rites; others to the prosaic notion of keeping the wind off the church; others, again, to the warlike need of bows and arrows yew being especially serviceable. A large body of writers believe the use of the yew was symbolic it typified by its unchanging verdure the doctrine of the resurrection. A few cynically assert that yews, being gloomy and poisonous, are rightly used for churchyard decoration; and there are not wanting writers who see in the practice a tribute to the superstitious regard men have always paid to trees. We may examine one or two of these suggestions, although no definite conclusion may be possible. We know that the ancient Britons planted yews near their temples long before Christianity was introduced into England, and this would suggest a custom on the island not necessarily Roman or Christian. A writer in The Gentleman s Magazine (1781) says: We read in the Antiquities of Greece and Rome that the branches of the cypress and yew were the usual signals to denote a house in mourning. Now, sir, as Death was a deity among the antients (the daughter of Sleep and Night), and was by them represented in the same manner, with the addition only of a long robe embroidered with stars, I think we may fairly conclude that the custom of planting the yew in churchyards took its rise from Pagan superstition, and that it is as old as the conquest of Britain by Julius Caesar. Gough, in the Introduction to his second volume of Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain, speaking of the signs of death in houses among the ancients, notices branches of pine and cypress, on the authority of Euripides, Hecuba, 191, 192 Suet. Aug. 101; AEn. xi. 31. He says in a note, Will it be thought a far-fetcht conjecture that yew-trees in churchyards supply the place of cypress round tombs, where Ovid, Trist. III. xiii. 21, says they were placed? Far-fetched or not, the evidence is too slight to enable us to say confidently that the use of the yew comes to us from Pagan times. Barrington, in his Observations on the Statutes, says that trees in a churchyard were often planted to skreen the church from the wind; that, low as churches were built at this time, the thick foliage of the yew answered this purpose better than any other tree. I have been informed, accordingly, that the yew-trees in the churchyard of Gyffin, near Conway, having been lately felled, the roof of the church hath suffered excessively.

Note: If you are looking for good and high quality web space to host and run your application check Lunarwebhost Clan Web Hosting services

Wolf: If a wolf sees a man before the man sees the wolf, the man will be struck dumb.
Men are sometimes changed into wolves. (Vide Lycanthropy.)
A wolf’s tooth used at one time to be hung on the neck of a child to charm away fear.
If you mention the word “wolf” in the month of December, you run the risk of being torn
to pieces by werewolves. (TETTAU UND TEMME, p. 281; FRAZER, G.B2., Vol. I, p.
454.)
In Vancouver Island the wolf is important in ritual, legend and crest representation, and
is believed to grant power and medicine. The wolves are supposed to form a supernatural
community of their own with the raven as news-teller.
In popular superstition of many lands, wolves are the ghosts of the dead. (cf. RIDER
HAGGARD, Nada the Lily.) Vide Lycanthropy, Werewolves, Bereserker, Raven, Lycaon.
Wolfgang, St.: This saint relieves people suffering from gout.
Wolta: According to a superstition of the Gold Coast negroes, ghosts build themselves
houses and dwell on the banks of the river Wolta. (TYLOR, P.C., Vol. II, p. 7.)
Woman: In Sweden if a woman steps over a fishing-rod, no fish will bite. (JONES,
Credulities, p. 134; BASSETT, p. 427.)
If seven women stand together at the cross-roads, there will be rain. (STRACKERJAN,
Vol. I, p. 29.) (For numerous superstitions connected with women see PLOSS, Das
Weib.) Vide Amethyst, Canace’s Mirror, Alasnam’s Mirror, Florimel’s Girdle, Sophia’s
Picture, Boar’s Head, Ring, Bertha’s Emerald, Drinking Horn, Water of Jealousy, Grotto
of Ephesus, Candle, Glowing, Salt-cellar, Bee, Virgin, Blood.
Woo-rie: The woo-rie of the Watchandis of Australia is the spirit of the warrior’s victim,
which enters the warrior’s body and becomes his warning spirit. It takes its abode near
the liver, and informs him of the approach of danger by a scratching or tickling sensation.
(OLDFIELD, Aborigines of Australia in Tr. Eth. Soc., Vol. III, p. 240.)
Wong: Wong is the Gold Coast negro’s generic name for a fetish-spirit.
Woodcutter and the Wen: It is a popular Japanese story and describes how a woodcutter’s
happy disposition and dancing were the means of curing himself of a wen by the
help of the elves. An envious neighbour came the next day to cure himself too, but the
elves were enraged at his bad dancing and gave him the other wen too. (GRIFFIS,
M.E., p. 494.)
Work: If a girl falls asleep at work, she will marry a widower. (Hanover.-WUTTKE, p.
42.)
Worm: If, on your way to a sick person, you pick up a stone and find no living thing
under it, it tells you that the sick person will die; but if you find there a worm or an ant,
it presages the patient’s recovery.
If the sound of a worm boring the planks of a ship be audible, it forebodes some catas-

Note: If you are looking for good and high quality web space to host and run your application check Lunarwebhost Clan Web Hosting services

rion, by R. Thorius (1651), the following passages occur: Cast wood upon the fire, thy loyns gird round With warmer clothes, and let the tosts abound In close array, embattled on the hearth, So again: And tell their hard adventures by the fire, While their friends hear, and hear, and more desire, And all the time the crackling chesnuts roast, And each man hath his cup, and each his toast. From these passages it is apparent that the saying, Who gives a toast? is synonymous with Whose turn is it to take up his cup and propose a health? It was the practice to put toast into ale with nutmeg and sugar. Evidently the toast as we know it to-day began in this prac tice, and a good toaster was described with accuracy so far back as 1684 in The New Help to Discourse.

Note: If you are looking for good and high quality web space to host and run your application check Lunarwebhost Inexpensive Web Hosting services

99 Whatever fancy and superstition may do by way of investing the robin with a glory that does not belong to him, the plain truth is that there is no more impertinent or mischievous thief in the whole tribe of feathers. (7) DRINKING CUSTOMS: TOASTS. When John Smith raises his glass in the saloon bar of The World s End, and proposes the health of his friend, John Jones, he little thinks he is perpetuating a custom which goes back in unbroken succession to the days of the Greeks and Romans. A Roman gallant would drink as many glasses as there were letters in the name of his mistress. Thus Martial: Six cups to Naevia s health go quickly round, And he with seven the fair Justina crowned. The Tatler (vol. i. 24) ventures to account for the origin of the word toast in the following man ner, stating that it had its rise from an accident at Bath in the reign of Charles the Second: It happened that, on a public day, a celebrated beauty of those times was in the Cross Bath, and one of the crowd of her admirers took a glass of the water in which the fair one stood, and drank her health to the company. There was in the place a gay fellow, half fuddled, who offered to jump in, and swore, though he liked not the liquor, he would have the toast. He was opposed in his resolution; yet this whim gave foundation to the present honour which is done to the lady we mention in our liquor, who has ever since been called a toast. This is not con vincing, although it cannot be disproved. But in a book called Checmono

Note: If you are looking for good and high quality web space to host and run your application check Lunarwebhost Mac Web Hosting services

Witch: These are women who deny God, and renounce Him and His grace; who havemade a compact with the devil, and have given themselves up to him body and soul;
who attend his assemblies and sabbaths, and receive from him poison-powder to injureand destroy men, animals and property, and who by their devilish arts stir up storms,
call down lightning, damage the corn, fields; etc., and confound the powers of nature.
Many superhuman powers are ascribed to them, such as flying through the air onbroomsticks, goats, etc., instantly assuming various forms at will, causing and spreading
diseases at will by mere glance. They are supposed to come back to earth asghosts after death. (HAZLITT, pp. 641-662.)”To make ewes cast their lambs, swine eat their farrow, And housewives’ tun not work, nor the milk churn! Writhe children’s wrists, and suck their breath in sleep,Get vials of their blood! and where the sea Casts up his slimy ooze, search for a weed To open locks with, and to rivet charms, Planted about her in the wicked feat Of all her mischiefs; which are manifold.” -BEN JONSON, The Sad Shepherd (1637)
Vide Dancing, Goat, Broomstick, Sabbath, Blood, Iron, Scissors, Catseye, Coral,
Broom, Blocks berg, Brocken, Hekla, Calf, Cat, Dove, Flying, Horseshoe, Tulsi, Key,
Knot, Ice, Rain, Lightning, Storm, Rowan-tree, Urine Vermin, Weather, Thunder, Illness,
Saliva. Witchcraft: Bringing cattle in and out of stables backwards protects them against witchcraft.
(STRACKERJAN, Vol. II, p. 17.)
Spitting in the right shoe is a talisman against witchcraft. Vide Circasea Lutetiana,
Witch.
Witch-doctor: Among the Africans, especially the Kaffirs, a magician whose business is
to “smell out” or detect witches, and to counteract magic spells by sorceries.
Witch Hazel: A forked twig of witch hazel made into a divining rod was supposed in the
15th, 16th and 17th centuries, to give warning of witches, and to be efficacious in discovering
them.
Witch’s Sabbath: Folklore. A midnight orgy in which witches and devils are supposed to
participate, often with travesties of Christian ceremonies.
Wodan, Wode: The leader of the Wild Hunt or spirit-host was given the name of
Wodan. In process of time Wodan. was deified, and in some Teutonic countries came
to be recognized as a supreme god.
Wodejager: The German prototype of the version of the Wild Huntsman.

Note: If you are looking for good and high quality web space to host and run your application check Lunarwebhost services

98 history have borne the marks of an epidemic, and even Dr Mayo was not averse to the proposition that a man who had a wasting disease, or was threatened with one, could imagine himself vampirised and thus spread the contagion to others. Vampirism is only another proof of the power of the mind over the body. It is the fixed idea that does the work. Mr Stanley Redgrove quotes an illustration from J. G. Fraser s Psyche s Task: In illustration of the real power of the imagination, we may instance the Maori superstition of the Taboo. According to the Maoris, any one who touches a tabooed object will assuredly die, the tabooed object being a sort of anti-talisman. Professor Frazer says: Cases have been known of Maoris dying of sheer fright on learning that they had unwittingly eaten the remains of a chiet s dinner, or handled something that belonged to him, since such objects were ipso facto tabooed. He gives the following case on good authority: A woman, having partaken of some fine peaches from a basket, was told that they had come from a tabooed place. Immediately the basket dropped from her hands and she cried out in agony that the atua or godhead of the chief, whose divinity had been thus profaned, would kill her. That happened in the afternoon, and next day by twelve o clock she was dead. For us the power of the taboo does not exist; for the Maori, who implicitly believes in it, it is a very potent reality, but this power of the taboo resides, not in the external objects, but in his own mind. Very true. And the power of the vampire is the power of the idea. (6) ROBIN REDBREAST. Birds have always figured conspicuousjy in pagan superstitions, and it is possible that the superstitions which still linger among us, in some places at least, with regard to certain English birds, may be an echo of the older variety. Robins are held in high esteem by most people, except gardeners and farmers, an esteem which is partly accounted for by their coloured breasts and partly by the song-powers of the male bird. Probably, too, this esteem arises out of the old time superstition referred to in ancient ballads, beginning with The Babes in the Wood. Percy says: No burial this pretty pair Of any man receives, Till Robin Redbreast painfully, Did cover them with leaves. From this fancy seems to have grown the notion that it is unlucky to kill or keep a robin, and this is alluded to in the following lines of an eighteenth century poet, which occur in an ode to the Robin: For ever from his threshold fly, Who, void of honour, once shall try, With base inhospitable breast, To bar the freedom of his guest; O rather seek the peasant s shed, For he will give thee wasted bread, And fear some new calamity, Should any there spread snares for thee. J. H. Pott s Poems, 1780.

Note: If you are looking for good and high quality web space to host and run your application check Lunarwebhost Mac Web Hosting services

97 ments made in the following paper. Most of the statements made have been verified by more than one of the investigators into the subjects dealt with, observers who have developed within themselves extensions of faculties possessed by all, but latent as yet in most of us. When Mr A. O. Eaves starts out in this manner, we know what value to place upon his stories, his arguments, and his conclusions. Of course, to him the origin of vampire superstitions is in the fact that vampires have always existed. A bad man dies and can t get away from his earth life. He strives to come back again into earthly conditions, and Vampirism is one of the ways open to him. Says Mr Eaves: In the case of those removed by accident, or suicide, in which no preparation of any kind has been made, and where all the life-forces are in full play, if the life has been a degraded one, then they will be alive to the horrors of this plane. They will be cut adrift, as it were, with all their passional nature strong upon them, and must remain on that plane until the time their death in an ordinary manner would have taken place. Thus a man killed at 25, who would otherwise have reached the age of 75, would spend half a century upon this plane. In case of the suicides, seeing they have not accomplished their end, viz., to put an end to existence, the return for earth-life grows upon them with terrible zest. It is here that one of the dangers of Vampirism occurs. If the experience they seek cannot be obtained without a physical body, only two courses are open for them. One is to do so vicariously. To do this, they must feed on the emanations arising from blood and alcohol; public houses and slaughterhouses are thronged with these unhappy creatures, which hang about and feed thus. From this standpoint the habit of offering blood-sacrifices to propitiate entities, as found recorded in some of the world-scriptures, becomes luminous, and the history of magic teems with such examples. Not content, however, with thus prolonging their existence on the lower level of the astral plane, the entities lure on those human beings whose tastes are depraved, causing them to go to all kinds of excesses, enticing them on in sensuality and vice of every kind. Each time a man yields to temptation, the supremacy over him which these creatures hold becomes the stronger; they gain possession of his will, till at length they control him altogether. How many men, who have hitherto lived a blameless life, have on the spur of the moment committed some heinous crime, and the public have marvelled how they came to do it. The explanation offered after the commission of the crime has often been to the effect that they could not tell what possessed them to do it, but they felt a sudden impulse sweep over them and they obeyed it. Here, without doubt, is the genesis of the conception of a tempter, and one feels more inclined to pity than to blame in many cases. If the censorship of books is needed, it is needed in such cases as Modern Vampirism. A young girl of highly nervous temperament might easily be obsessed by reading it, purely through the action of imagination. Mr Eaves is quite sincere, and means well, but the mischief of his book in some hands is palpable. No doubt, to think and live purely is, as he says, a defence ; it is a defence against many evils on the ordinary plane of life; but when he advocates a plentiful use of garlic and the placing of small saucers of nitric acid to scare away vampires, we wonder whether we are still in the middle ages. To recapitulate: The origin of vampire superstitions must be sought in the ignorance of early races who buried their dead in the earth, for it is singular that the races which cremate their dead have been practically free from vampire legends. Earth burial has never been free from the possibility of premature interment, and although there is no reason to believe that a man buried alive will not die in his coffin of suffocation, an ignorant peasantry seemed to imagine that he could live, issue forth at night, and keep himself alive by sucking the blood of the living. It is notable that as disbelief in this notion assumed large proportions, owing to the advance of education and refinement, the phenomena disappeared. Visitations as recorded in

Note: If you are looking for good and high quality web space to host and run your application check Lunarwebhost Inexpensive Web Hosting services

. It is the ghost of the vampire which visits the victim and sucks his blood: a very substantial ghost, indeed. But he thinks the death-trance of the victim may become epidemic, acting by means of suggestion. Very true; the whole thing is suggestion from beginning to end. We have only to make people believe in the possibility of being operated upon after the manner of the vampire, and imagination will do the rest. It is distinctly annoying to take up a modern book on the subject and find that the author s first words are: Want of space will prevent elaborate and detailed proofs being given of the state-

Note: If you are looking for good and high quality web space to host and run your application check Lunarwebhost Mac Web Hosting services