his belief in the value of his new prerogative; simply by the pressure of the
seer’s right foot on the novice’s left, holding one hand on his head, while he was
admonished to look over the master’s right shoulder. Thus, Lilly, the astrologer
—Butler’s “hight Sidrophel”—relates how one John Scott desired William
Hodges, an astrologer in Staffordshire, to show him the person and features of
the person he should marry. Hodges carried him into a field not far from his
home; pulled out his magic crystal; bade Scott set his foot against his, and after
awhile desired him to inspect the crystal, and observe what he saw there. Of
course he saw exactly what his fevered wishes were resolved to see.
Ceremonies of a more fantastic character were sometimes involved, and round
the novice’s body was coiled a hair rope with which a corpse had been bound to
its bier. He was then required to look through a hole left by the removal of a fir
knot; and, on stooping, he was instructed to look back between his legs, until an
advancing funeral procession should cross the boundary of the estates of two
different owners. The inconvenience of this complicated performance is obvious;
it might also be dangerous; for if the wind changed while the novice was girded
with the mystical cord, he was liable to the penalty of death.
A seer gifted with this wonderful faculty could not divest himself of it, though
often he would fain have done so. However acquired, it was a perilous
endowment, fraught with physical and mental suffering, and reputed to be no gift
from on high, but to have come from the Father of Evil.
The objects seen were generally sad and sorrowful; calamities to persons or
nations. Woodrow says that before the Marquis of Argyll went to London in
1660, he was playing “at the bullets,” or bowls, with some Scottish gentlemen;
when one of them, as the Marquis stooped down to lift the bullet, “fell pale,” and
said to those about him: “Bless me, what is this I see? my lord with his head off,
and all his shoulder full of blood?”
On one occasion, a gentleman joined a company, all of whom were very frank
and cheerful. He had no sooner entered than one of the guests, who had not
previously known him, showed much depression of spirit. Without taking any
notice of it the new-comer quickly rose, and went his way. The other thereupon
showed great concern, and wished he would remain; for he saw him, he said,
with a shroud up to his neck, and he knew that this sign foreboded his death. In
vain some of the company would have persuaded the doomed man to take
warning, but he departed, and having ridden a short distance, he and his horse
fell, and he broke his neck.