Curiosities of Olden Times

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Baring-Gould Sabine. Curiosities of Olden Times

THE MEANING OF MOURNING

CURIOSITIES OF CYPHER

STRANGE WILLS

QUEER CULPRITS

GHOSTS IN COURT

STRANGE PAINS AND PENALTIES

WHAT ARE WOMEN MADE OF?

“FLAGELLUM SALUTIS”

“HERMIPPUS REDIVIVUS”

THE BARONESS DE BEAUSOLEIL

SOME CRAZY SAINTS

THE JACKASS OF VANVRES

A MYSTERIOUS VALE

KING ROBERT OF SICILY

SORTES SACRÆ

CHIAPA CHOCOLATE

THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE

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A strip of black cloth an inch and a half in width stitched round the sleeve – that is the final, or perhaps penultimate expression (for it may dwindle further to a black thread) of the usage of wearing mourning on the decease of a relative.

The usage is one that commends itself to us as an outward and visible sign of the inward sentiment of bereavement, and not one in ten thousand who adopt mourning has any idea that it ever possessed a signification of another sort. And yet the correlations of general custom – of mourning fashions, lead us to the inexorable conclusion that in its inception the practice had quite a different signification from that now attributed to it, nay more, that it is solely because its primitive meaning has been absolutely forgotten, and an entirely novel significance given to it, that mourning is still employed after a death.

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It is now high time that we show the reader how to find the clue to a cypher. And as illustration is always better than precept, we shall exemplify from our own experience. With permission, too, we shall drop the plural for the singular.

Well! My friend Matthew Fletcher came into a property some years ago, bequeathed to him by a great-uncle. The old gentleman had been notorious for his parsimonious habits, and he was known through the county by the nickname of Miser Tom. Of course every one believed that he was vastly rich, and that Mat Fletcher would come in for a mint of money. But, somehow, my friend did not find the stores of coin on which he had calculated, hidden in worsted stockings or cracked pots; and the savings of the old man which he did light upon consisted of but trifling sums. Fletcher became firmly persuaded that the money was hidden somewhere; where he could not tell, and he often came to consult me on the best expedient for discovering it. It is all through my intervention that he did not pull down the whole house about his ears, tear up every floor, and root up every flower or tree throughout the garden, in his search after the precious hoard. One day he burst into my room with radiant face.

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