SUGGESTIONS OF A BROOMSTICK. 83 



they laid plots and counterplots to involve poor human nature in the 

 suiFerings of superstition : — 



Do not strange matrons mount on high, 

 And switch their broomsticks through the sky,— 

 Ride post o'er hills, and woods, and seas, 

 From Thule to the Hesperides ? * 



Verily they do; but they are only the embodied sins of men-con- 

 sciences, which have taken shape and come back again and again to 

 stick pins in sinners' sides ; stifle the babe which has been neglected 

 by a harsh mother; fling cattle which want tending into bogs which 

 ought to have been di-ained ; spoil milk which has been left by sluttish 

 dairy-maids ; and jabber, scoff, and torture men in the reflected 

 images of their own wickedness. Why always in the night ? why 

 ever amid 



The dark sublime of extra-natural scenes ? 



The vulgar magic's puerile rite demeans ; 



Where hags their cauldrons, fraught with toads, prepare, 



Or glide on broomsticks through the midnight air ? t 



Why, but that all evil spirits are but human vices riding on the 

 broomsticks of memory, and compounding in the cauldron of remorse, 

 the toads and snakes of retribution ; The diseased mind peoples the 

 night with hags and witches, and influences dire, as excuses — lame as 

 they are — for its own wickedness and folly, which dare not face the 

 daylight. 



Some strange old customs suggest themselves in connection with 

 broomsticks. There is the salutation of the broom, which, like the 

 throwing of old shoes for luck, has a smack of poetry in it, and recals 

 Arbuthnot's remark on the brooming of servants, who ** if they came 

 into the best apartment to set anything in order were saluted with a 

 broom." The hanging out of the broom at the mast-heads of ships 

 offered for sale, originated from that period of our history when the 

 Dutch admiral, Van Tromp, with his fleet, appeared on our coasts in 

 hostility against England ; and to indicate that he would sweep the 

 English navy from the seas, hoisted a broom at the mast-head of his 

 ship. To repel this insolence the English admiral hoisted a horse- 

 whip, equally indicative of his intention to chastise the Dutchman. 



* Somerville — Epistle to Allan Ramsey. 



t Amwell Scott — On Painting. 

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