implied by the term miles. A knight, even in the full chivalric meaning, was a military servant of somebody, either of the king, the queen, a favourite lady, or some person of dignity. In a state very similar to this are the cnihtas in the Saxon wills. They appear to us, in like manner, in a rank far above a servant in the Saxon gild-scipes. Of these fraternities, cnihts constituted a part, and are distinctly mentioned, though with a reference to some lord to whom they were subordinate; a situation which seems best explained, by supposing them free and respectable military dependents. "If a cniht draw a sword, the lord shall pay one pound, and let the lord get it when he may; and all the gild-scipe shall help him, that he may get his money. And if a cniht wounds another, his lord shall avenge it. And if a cniht sits within the ascent, let him pay one syster of honey; and if he has any footstool, let him pay the same." In another gild-scipe, after each of the gild has been directed to bring two systers of malt, it is added, "And let every cniht bring one, and a sceat of honey."s

It occurs again, as a known and recognised character, in an act of a slave's emancipation, "Thereto is witness, William of Orchut, and Ruold the cniht, and Osbern fadera, and Umfreig of Tettaborn, and Alword the portreeve, and Johan the cniht."

It occurs again, as the designation of a known and reputable character in society, in a Saxon charta about land; for after many witnesses have been mentioned by name, these words follow: "And many a good cniht besides these.""

The term as well as the character of cniht was, therefore, in the Anglo-Saxon period, rising fast to its full station of dignity.

There is a character represented in the illuminations and drawings of a Saxon MS. which I think answers to the situation of a cniht, in its more advanced meaning. When a king is sitting on his throne, he is drawn as holding his sceptre. Close by him, and as a part of his public dignity, a person is standing, holding his sword and shield. This figure occurs several times in the drawings of Genesis, in Claud. B. 4. A similar character occurs near a king in the battle. The king is fighting; an armed attendant, apparently a young man, is fighting near him. I consider these to represent what was originally called a king's thegn, or miles, and afterwards a cniht; and such a character Lilla appears to have been, who received the assassin's blow that was intended for Edwin."

Tournaments appear to have been used in the age of the AngloSaxons, for they are expressly mentioned in the laws of the Emperor of Germany, Henry the First. It was in 934 that he published in

See the Gild-scipe in Hickes's Diss. Ep. p. 21. t Ibid. p. 18. a Hickes, Gram. Pref. p. xxi.

s Ibid. p. 22.

See the 1st vol, of this work.

stitutions concerning them. By these he directs, that the equestrian games, to be fought by the usual weapons, should be solemnly exhibited in the empire by those of noble descent. All blasphemers and traitors; they who had deprived widows or virgins of their honour or property; the perjured, the coward, the homicide, and the sacrilegious; they who had robbed the orphan, who had attacked the unsuspecting, who had harassed society, and injured the commercial; the adulterer and the merchant; were prohibited from partaking of the diversions. If they presumed to present themselves, their horses were taken away, and they were to be thrown on the septum.

The city or place appropriated for the exercises was made free to all except heretics, thieves, and traitors, during the time of the games, and for fourteen days preceding and afterwards. The area of the games was to be hedged round: every combatant was to be first confessed and absolved; every count was to bring with him but six companions; a baron four, a knight three, others only two, unless they maintained them at their own expense."

Something like a trophy appears in a description of Saxon boundaries of land: "Thence to the limit of a banner, coat of mail, and helmet, both of the kings and of Eadbald in an ash-tree."

No shield-maker was allowed to put a sheep's skin on a shield." Was this provision made to favour the manufacture of parchment for their books?

Goldastus, in his Constitutiones Imperiales, vol. ii. p. 41, has the Henrici I. Aucupis leges hastiludiales sive de torneamentis, which he says, were latæ Gottingæ in Saxonia, 938. The author of the Aquila Saxonica, p. 27, says, it should be 934. These leges are also mentioned in Fabricius, Hist. Sax. i. p. 122. The Aquila Saxonica quotes also at length other statuta et privilegia of these games, made at Mag. deburg. This imperial document contradicts the opinion, that tournaments origi. nated in 1066, which Dufresne gives, 3 Gloss. Med. 1147. Wittichind, who addressed his history to the granddaughter of Henry, expressly says of this emperor, "In exercitiis quoque ludi tanta eminentia superabat omnes ut terrorem cæteris ostentaret," p. 15. Previous to this, Nithard mentions, that some French gentlemen fought in play on horseback,

* Goldastus, ubi supra.

Aquila Saxonica, p. 28, 29, where the other provisions, established for the regulation of the tournaments, may be seen.

z Hem. Chart. p. 7.

a Wilk. Leg. p. 59. I observe another passage in the canons of Edgar relating to cnihtes: "We teach that every priest should have at the synods his cleric, and a fit man to cnihte, and no one unwise that loves folly." Wilk. Leg. p. 82. This is not a passage applicable to a boy, but to a manly attendant on the superior priests at the great councils.

CHAPTER XIII.

Their Superstitions.

THE belief, that some human beings could attain the power of inflicting evils on their fellow-creatures, and of controlling the operations of nature, existed among the Anglo-Saxons, but did not originate with them. It has appeared in all the regions of the globe; and from its extensive prevalence we may perceive that the human mind, in its state of ignorance and barbarism, is a soil well adapted to its reception and cultivation. It is not true that fear first made a deity; but it cannot be doubted that fear, vanity, and hope, are the parents of superstition.

Life has so many evils which the uninstructed mind can neither prevent nor avert, and encourages so many hopes which every age and condition burn to realize, that we cannot be astonished to find a large portion of mankind the willing prey of impostors, practising on their credulity by threats of evil and promises of good, greater than the usual course of nature would dispense. In every country where the intelligent religions of Judaism or Christianity were unknown, these delusions obtained a kind of legal sovereignty, and peculiarly in Thrace and Chaldea. But that such frauds and absurdities should be countenanced, where the genuine revelations of the Divine wisdom prevail, may reasonably excite both our astonishment and regret, especially as they have been steadily discountenanced by both civil and ecclesiastical laws. Their foundation seems to lie deep in the heart's anxiety about futurity; in its impatience for good greater than it enjoys; and in its restless curiosity to penetrate the unknown, and to

meddle with the forbidden.

But the superstitions of magic and witchcraft began among the civilized nations of the earth, and prevailed even in Greece and Rome, before the Saxons are known to have had an historical existence. The general diffusion of the fond mistake forbids us to derive the latter impostures from those which preceded; but as every thing that was popular among the Romans must have scattered some effects on the nations with whom they had intercourse, we will glance at the opinions which the masters of the world, who so long colonized our island, admitted on this delusive subject.

We are familiar in our youth with the incantations alluded to by Virgil and Horace, and described by Lucan: it is still more

amusing to read of Apuleius, who flourished under the Antonines, and who, though born in Africa, was educated at Athens, that he was accused of magic arts, and of having obtained a rich wife by his incantations. In his Metamorphoseon we have a curious picture of the witchcraft which was believed to exist in the ancient world. One of his characters is described as a saga, or witch, who could lower the sky, and raise the manes of the dead. She is stated to have transformed one lover into a beaver, another into a frog, and another into a ram; to have condemned a rival wife to perpetual gestation: to have closed up impregnably all the houses of a city, whose inhabitants were going to stone her; and to have transported the family of the authors of the commotion to the top of a distant mountain.

Another lady of similar taste is mentioned to have been a maga, mistress of every sepulchral song, who, by twigs, little stones, and such like petty instruments, could submerge all the light of the world in the lowest Tartarus, and into ancient chaos; who could turn her lovers that displeased her into stones or animals, or entirely destroy them.b

Apuleius afterwards gives us a description of one of her achievements. In the dead of the night, as two friends are sleeping in a room, the doors burst open with great fury; the bed of one is overturned upon him; two witches enter, one carrying a light, the other a sponge and a sword. This stabs her sleeping faithless lover, plunges the weapon up to its hilt in his throat, receives all the blood in a vessel, that not a drop might appear, and then takes out his heart. The other applied her sponge to the wounds, saying, "Sponge! sea-born! beware of rivers!" The consequence was, that though he awaked, and travelled as well as ever, yet when on his journey he approached a river, and proceeded to drink at it, his wounds opened, the sponge flew out, and the victim fell dead.c

Apuleius himself was a great student of magic. The chief seat of all these wonders is declared to have been Thessaly; and so

Apul. Metamorph. lib. i. p. 6.

b Ibid. i. p. 21.

c Mr. Cumberland in his Observer, No. 31, has noticed the magical powers ascribed in the Clementine recognitions, and Constit. Apos. to Simon Magus, viz. That he created a man out of the air; that he had the power of being invisible; that he could make marble as penetrable as clay; could animate statues; resist the effects of fire; present himself with two faces, like Janus; metamorphose himself into a sheep or a goat; fly at pleasure through the air; create gold in a moment; and at a wish take a scythe in hand and mow a field of corn almost at a stroke; and recall the unjustly murdered to life. A woman of public notoriety looking out of the window of a castle on a great crowd below, he was said to have made her appear, and then fall down from every window of the place at the same time. To these fancies Anastacius Nicenus added, that Simon was frequently preceded by spectres, which he declared to be the spirits of certain persons that were dead. It is extraordinary that the ancients framed no romantic tales on imaginations so favourable to interesting fiction.

popular was the notion of witchcraft among those nations whom in our youth we are taught almost exclusively to admire, that even philosophers thought that they accounted sufficiently for the miracles of the Christian legislator, by referring them to magic. We will consider the Anglo-Saxon superstitions under the heads of their witchcraft, their charms, and their prognostics.

Their pretenders to witchcraft were called wicca, scin-læca, galdor-craftig, wiglær, and morthwyrtha. Wiglær is a combination from wig, an idol or a temple, and lær, learning, and may have been one of the characters of the Anglo-Saxon idolatry. He was the wizard, as wicca was the witch. Scinl-æca was a species of phantom or apparition, and was also used as the name of the person who had the power of producing such things: it is, literally, a shining dead body. Galdor-cræftig implies one skilled in incantations; and morthwyrtha is, literally, a worshipper of the dead.

Another general appellation for such personages was dry, a magician. The clergy opposed these follies in their homilies.d

The laws notice these practices with penal severity. The best account that can be given of them will be found in the passages proscribing them.

"If any wicca, or wiglær, or false swearer, or morthwyrtha, or any foul, contaminated, manifest horcwenan, (whore, quean or strumpet,) be anywhere in the land, man shall drive them

out."

"We teach that every priest shall extinguish all heathendom, and forbid wilweorthunga (fountain-worship), and licwiglunga (incantations of the dead), and hwata (omens), and galdra (magic), and man-worship, and the abominations that men exercise in various sorts of witchcraft, and in frithsplottum, and with elms and other trees, and with stones, and with many other phantoms."

From subsequent regulations, we find that these practices were made the instruments of the most fatal mischief; for penitentiary penalties are enjoined if any one should destroy another by wiccecræfte; or if any should drive sickness on a man; or if death should follow from the attempt.

They seem to have used philtres; for it is also made punishable if any should use witchcraft to produce another's love, or should give him to eat or to drink with magic. They were also forbid

d Thus in a homily against auguries, it is said, "That the dead should rise through dry-craft, deofol gild, wicce-cræft, and wiglunga, is very abominable to our Saviour; and they that exercise these crafts are God's enemies, and truly belong to the deceitful devil, with him to dwell for ever in eternal punishment." MSS. Bodl. Wanl. Cat. p. 42.

e Wilk. Leg. Anglo-Sax. p. 53. Ibid. p. 93.

f Ibid. p. 83.

h Ibid. p. 93.