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Against reproache and infamy on Susan doe they call;
Romanus driveth sprites away, and wicked devills all.

The byshop Wolfgang heales the goute, S. Wendlin kepes the shepe,
With shepheardes, and the oxen fatte, as he was woont to keepe.
The bristled hogges doth Antonie preserve and cherish well,
Who in his life tyme alwayes did in woodes and forrestes dwell.
Saint Gartrude riddes the house of mise, and killeth all the rattes;
The like doth bishop Huldrich with his earth, two passing cattes.
Saint Gregorie lookes to little boyes, to teach their a, b, c,
And makes them for to love their bookes and schollers good to be.
Saint Nicolas keepes the mariners from daunger and diseas,
That beaten are with boystrous waves, and tost in dreadfull seas.
Great Chrystopher, that painted is with body big and tall,
Doth even the same, who doth preserve and keepe his servants all
From fearefull terrours of the night, and makes them well to rest,
By whom they also all their life with divers joyes are blest.
Saint Agathæ defendes thy house from fire and fearefull flame,
But when it burnes, in armour all doth Florian quench the same.
Saint Urban makes the pleasant wine, and doth preserve it still,
And spourging vessels all with must continually doth fill.
Judocus doth defende the corne from myldeawes and from blast,
And Magnus from the same doth drive the grasshopper as fast.
Thy office, George, is onely here the horseman to defende,
Great kinges and noble men with pompe on thee doe still attende.
And Loye the smith doth looke to horse, and smithes of all degree,
If they with iron meddle here, or if they goldesmithes bee.
Saint Luke doth evermore defende the paynters facultie,
Phisitions eke by Cosme and his fellow guided be."

Moresin tells us that Papal Rome, in imitation of this tenet of Gentilism, has fabricated such kinds of genii for guardians and defenders of cities and people. Thus she has assigned St. Andrew to Scotland, St. George to England, St. Dennis to France; thus, Egidius to Edinburgh, Nicholas to Aberdeen.1

1 "Sic papa populis et urbibus consimiles fabricat cultus et genios custodes et defensores, ut Scotia Andream, Angliæ Georgium, Galliæ Dionysium, &c. Edinburgo Egidium, Aberdoniæ Nicolaum, &c." Moresini Papatus, p. 48. See also Burton's Anat. of Melancholy, 1621, p. 753. I find the subsequent patron-saints of cities: St. Eligia and St. Norbert of Antwerp; St. Hulderich or Ulric of Augsburgh; St. Martin of Boulogne; St. Mary and St. Donatian of Bruges; St. Mary and St. Gudula of Brussels; the three Kings of the East of Cologne, also St. Ursula and the eleven thousand Virgins; St. George and St. John Baptist of Genoa; St. Bavo and St. Liburn of Ghent; St. Martial of Limosin; St. Vincent of Lisbon; St. Mary and St. Rusnold of Mechlin; St. Martin and St. Boniface of Mentz; St. Ambrose of Milan; St. Thomas Aquinas and St.

I find the following patron-saints of countries in other authorities: St. Colman and St. Leopold for Austria; St. Wolfgang and St. Mary Atingana for Bavaria; St. Winceslaus for Bohemia; St. Andrew and St. Mary for Burgundy; St. Anscharius and St. Canute for Denmark; St. Peter for Flanders to St. Dennis is added St. Michael as another patron Saint of France; St. Martin, St. Boniface, and St. George Cataphractus, for Germany; St. Mary for Holland; St. Mary of Aquisgrana and St. Lewis for Hungary; St. Patrick for Ireland; St. Anthony for Italy; St. Firmin and St. Xavierus for Navarre; St. Anscharius and St. Olaus for Norway; St. Stanislaus and St. Hederiga for Poland; St Savine for Poitou; St. Sebastian for Portugal; also St. James and St. George; St. Albert and St. Andrew for Prussia; St. Nicholas, St. Mary, and St. Andrew, for Russia; St. Mary for Sardinia; St. Maurice for Savoy and Piedmont; St. Mary and St. George for Sicily; St. James (Jago) for Spain; St. Anscharius, St. Eric, and St. John, for Sweden; and St. Gall and the Virgin Mary for Switzerland.

It were superfluous to enumerate the tutelar gods of heathenism.' Few are ignorant that Apollo and Minerva presided over Athens, Bacchus and Hercules over Baotian Thebes, Juno over Carthage, Venus over Cyprus and Paphos, Apollo over Rhodes; Mars was the tutelar god of Rome, as Neptune of Tænarus; Diana presided over Crete, &c.

St. Peter succeeded to Mars at the revolution of the religious Creed of Rome. He now presides over the castle of St. Angelo, as Mars did over the ancient Capitol.

The Romanists, in imitation of the heathens, have assigned tutelar gods to each member of the body.2

Januarius of Naples; St. Sebald of Nuremberg; St. Frides wide of Oxford; St. Genevieve of Paris; St. Peter and St. Paul of Rome: St. Rupert of Soltzberg; the Virgin Mary of Sienna; St. Ursus of St. Soleure; St. Hulderich and St. Ulric of Strasburgh; St. Mark of Venice; and St. Stephen of Vienna.

1 "The Babilonians had Bell for their patron; the Egyptians Isis and Osiris; the Rhodians the Sunne; the Samians Juno; the Paphians Venus; the Delphians Apollo; the Ephesians Diana; all the Germans in general St. George. I omit the saints who have given their names to cities; as St. Quintin, St. Disian, St. Denis, St. Agnan, St. Paul, St. Omer." Stephens's World of Wonders, fol. 1607, p. 315.

2 Membris in homine veteres præfecere suos deos, siquidem capiti numen inesse quoddam fertur. Frontem sacram Genio nonnulli tradunt,

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They of the Romish religion," says Melton in his Astrologaster, p. 20, " for every limbe in man's body have a saint; for St. Otilia keepes the head instead of Aries; St. Blasius is appointed to governe the necke instead of Taurus; St. Lawrence keepes the backe and shoulders instead of Gemini, Cancer, and Leo; St. Erasmus rules the belly with the entrayles, in the place of Libra and Scorpius: in the stead of Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius, and Pisces, the Holy Church of Rome hath elected St. Burgarde, St. Rochus, St. Quirinus, St. John, and many others, which governe the thighes, feet, shinnes, and knees."

It is, perhaps, owing to this ancient notion of good and evil genii attending each person, that many of the vulgar pay so great attention to particular dreams, thinking them, it should seem, the means these invisible attendants make use of to inform their wards of any imminent danger.

In Bale's comedy of Thre Lawes, 1538, Infidelity begins his address:

"Good Christen people, I am come hyther verelye

As a true proctour of the howse of Saint Antonye."

And boasts, among other charms:

"Lo here is a belle to hange upon your hogge,

He adds,

And save your cattell from the bytynge of a dogge."

"And here I blesse ye with a wynge of the Holy Ghost,
From thonder to save ye, and from spretes in every coost."

sicuti Junoni brachia, pectus Neptuno, cingulum Marti, renes Veneri, pedes Mercurio, digitos Minervæ consecravit antiquitas. Romanæ mulieres supercilia Lucinæ consecrarunt, quia inde lux ad oculos fluit; et Homerus carmine singulos membris honestavit deos: namque Junonem facit candidas ulnas habere, Auroram roseos lacertos, Minervam oculos glaucos, Thetidem argenteos pedes, Heben verò talos pulcherrimos. Dextram fidei sacram Numa institut, etiam cum veniam sermonis a diis poscimus, proximo a minimo digito secus aurem locum Nemeseos tangere, et os obsignare solemus, &c. Alex. ab Alex. lib. ii. cap. 19. Jam ad hanc similitudinem caput, ita, non omnibus cognita Dea, obtinet. Oculos habet Otilia. Linguam instituit Catharina, in rhetoricis et dialecticis exercitatissima. Apollonia dentes curat. Collo præsidet Blasius spiritalis Deus. Dorsum una cum scapulis obtinet Laurentius. Erasmi venter est totus cum intestinis. Sunt qui Burgharto cuidam et crura et pedes consecraverint, in parcipitatum nonnunquam admittit Antonium, Quirinum, Joannem, et nescio quos alios divos. Apollinaris quidam Priapi vices subiit, pudendorum Deus effectus. Buling. cap. xxxiv. lib. de Orig. Cult. Deor. Erron." Moresini Papatus, pp. 93, 94.

In the Tryall of a Man's own Selfe, by Thomas Newton, 1602, p. 44, he inquires, under "Sinnes externall and outward" against the first commandment, "whether, for the avoiding of any evill, or obtaining of any good, thou hast trusted to the helpe, protection, and furtherance of angels, either goode or badde. Hereunto is to be referred the paultring mawmetrie and heathenish worshipping of that domesticall god, or familiar aungell, which was thought to bee appropriated to everie particular person.

In answer to a query in the Athenian Oracle, vol. i. p. 4, "Whether every man has a good and bad angel attending him?" we find the following to our purpose: "The ministration of angels is certain, but the manner how, is the knot to be untied. 'Twas generally believed by the ancient philosophers, that not only kingdoms had their tutelary guardians, but that every person had his particular genius, or good angel, to protect and admonish him by dreams, visions, &c. We read that Origen, Hierome, Plato, and Empedocles in Plutarch, were also of this opinion; and the Jews themselves, as appears by that instance of Peter's deliverance out of prison. They believed that it could not be Peter, but his angel. But for the particular attendance of bad angels we believe it not, and we must deny it till it finds better proofs than conjectures.”

MICHAELMAS GOOSE.

66

September, when by custom, right divine,

Geese are ordain'd to bleed at Michael's shrine."-CHURCHILL.

THERE is an old custom still in use among us of having a roast goose to dinner on Michaelmas-day. "Goose-intentos," as Blount tells us, is a word used in Lancashire, where "the husbandmen claim it as a due to have a Goose-intentos on the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost: which custom took origin from the last word of the old church-prayer of that day: 'Tua

nos quæsumus, Domine, gratia semper præveniat et sequatur; ac bonis operibus jugiter præstet esse intentos.' The common people very humorously mistake it for a goose with ten toes. This is by no means satisfactory. Beckwith, in his new edition of the Jocular Tenures, p. 223, says, upon it: "But besides that the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, or after Trinity rather, being moveable, and seldom falling upon Michaelmas-day, which is an immoveable feast, the service for that day could very rarely be used at Michaelmas, there does not appear to be the most distant allusion to a goose in the words of that prayer. Probably no other reason can be given for this custom, but that Michaelmas-day was a great festival, and geese at that time most plentiful. In Denmark, where the harvest is later, every family has a roasted goose for supper on St. Martin's Eve."

[The old custom of eating goose on Michaelmas-day has much exercised the ingenuity of antiquaries. Brady remarks that this festival "is no longer peculiar for that hospitality which we are taught to believe formerly existed, when the landlords used to entertain their tenants in their great halls upon geese: then only kept by persons of opulence, and of course considered as a peculiar treat, as was before the case at Martinmas, which was the old regular quarterly day: though as geese are esteemed to be in their greatest perfection in the autumnal season, there are but few families who totally neglect the ancient fashion of making that bird a part of their repast on the festival of St. Michael." There is a current but erroneous tale, assigning to Queen Elizabeth the introduction of this custom of the day. Being on her way to Tilbury Fort on the 29th September, 1588, she is alleged to have dined with Sir Neville Humfreville, at his seat near that place, and to

See Molesworth's Account of Denmark, p. 10. From Frolich's Viatorium, p. 254, I find that St. Martin's Day is celebrated in Germany with geese, but it is not said in what manner. See Sylva Jucund. Serm. p. 18, and Martinmas infra. The practice of eating goose at Michaelmas does not appear to prevail in any part of France. Upon St. Martin's Day they eat turkeys at Paris. They likewise eat geese upon St. Martin's Day, Twelfth Day, and Shrove Tuesday, at Paris. See Mercer, Tableau de Paris, tom.i. p. 131. In the King's Art of Cookery, p. 63, we read,—

"So stubble geese at Michaelmas are seen,
Upon the spit; next May produces green."

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