218 PAriLTONTDiE — BUTTERFLIES. 



Hollingshed, Graften, 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 of Thorodd : 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 seve- 

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

 legal action of ejectment against the ghosts, which, it need 

 hardly be said, drove them effectually away.'' 



In ion, a shower of blood fell in Aquitaine f and Sleidan 

 relates that in the year 1553 a vast multitude of Butterflies 

 swarmed through a great part of Germany, and sprinkled 

 plants^ leaves, buildings, clothes, and men with bloody drops, 

 as if it had rained blood. ^ We learn also from Bateman's 

 Doome, that these "drops of blonde upon hearbes ftnd trees," 

 in 1553, were deemed among the forewarnings of the deaths 

 of Charles and Philip, dukes of Brunswick.^ 



In Frankfort, in the year 1296, among other prodigies, 

 some spots of blood led to a massacre of the Jews, in which 

 ten thousand of these unhappy descendants of Abraham 

 lost their lives. "^ 



In the beginning of July, 1608, an extensive shower of 

 blood took place at Aix, in France, which threw the people 

 of that place into the utmost consternation, and, which is a 

 much more important fact, led to the first satisfactory and 

 philosophical explanation of this phenomenon, but too late, 

 alas ! to save the Jews of Frankfort. This explanation was 

 given by M. Peiresc, a celebrated philosopher of that place, 

 and is thus referred to by his biographer, Gassendi: "No- 

 thing in the whole year 1608 did more please him than that 

 he observed and philosophized about, the bloody rain, which 



1 Ilolling., i. 449. Graft., i. 37. Fabyan, p. 17. 



2 Howitt's North. Literat., i. 187. 



3 Bucke on Nature, i. 277. 



4 :Moufct, p. 107. 



5 Hone's Ev. Day Booh, p. 1127. 



6 Chambers' Domest. Annals of Scotland, ii. 489.' 



