Red Rain 



prevailed, alarmed the Senate so much that they ordered the 

 consuls to sacrifice to such gods as their judgment should direct 

 victims of the larger kinds, and that the decemvirs should consult 

 their books. Pursuant to their direction, a supplication for one 

 day was proclaimed to be performed at every shrine in Rome; 

 and they advised, besides, and the Senate voted, and the consul 

 proclaimed, that there should be a supplication and public worship 

 for three days throughout all Italy. In the year 169 B. c, Livy 

 also mentions that a shower of blood fell in the middle of the day. 

 The decemvirs were again called upon to consult their books, 

 and again were sacrifices offered to the deities. The account, 

 also, of Livy, of the bloody sweat on some of the statues of the 

 gods, must be referred to the same phenomenon, as the predilec- 

 tion of those ages to marvel, says Thomas Browne, and the want 

 of accurate investigation in the cases recorded, as well as the rare 

 occurrence of these atmospherical depositions in our own times, 

 inclines us to include them among the blood-red drops deposited 

 by insects. 



"In Stow's ' Annales of England' we have two accounts of 

 showers of blood, and from an edition printed in London in 

 1592, we make our quotations: ' Rivallus, sonne of Cunedagius, 

 succeeded his father, in whose time (in the year 766 b. c.) it 

 rained bloud three dayes: after which tempest ensued a great 

 multitude of venemous flies, which slew much people, and then 

 a great mortalitie throughout this lande, caused almost desolation 

 of the same.' The second account is as follows: 'In the time 

 of Brithricus (a. d. 786) it rayned blood, which falling on men's 

 clothes, appeared like crosses.' 



" Hollingshed, Grafton, and Fabyan have also recorded these 

 instances in their respective chronicles of England. 



"A remarkable instance of bloody rain is introduced into the 

 very interesting Icelandic ghost-story of Thorgunna. It appears 

 that in the year of our Lord 1009 a woman called Thorgunna 

 came from the Hebrides to Iceland, where she stayed at the house 

 ofThorodd; and during the hay season a shower of blood fell, 

 but only, singularly, on that portion of the hay she had not piled 

 up as her share, which so appalled her that she betook herself to 

 her bed, and soon afterward died. She left, to finish the story, a 

 remarkable will, which, from not being executed, was the cause 

 of several violent deaths, the appearance of ghosts, and, finally, a 



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