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 7 66 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 
300 
