z 62 POPULAR BELIEFS. 



less place in history than the latter. They were so frequent in the Middle 

 Ages that the gravest historians mention instances of them without making 

 the slightest reservation. It is difficult to make a choice amongst so many 

 visions combining the elements of terror and mystery, but two may be men- 

 tioned which occurred in the first centuries of the French monarchy, and 

 which are very celebrated. First that of King Childeric, who, the first night 

 of his marriage, saw, under the form of various ferocious animals, the whole 

 future of his race ; and secondly, that of a hermit in the island of Lipari, who, 

 at the very hour of King Dagobert's death, witnessed in his sleep a deadly 

 combat between the demon and various saints who were fighting for the pos- 

 session of his soul " over one of the gratings of hell." The demons were 

 vanquished, and the victors carried his soul up to heaven. 



In every page of the ancient chronicles are to be found visions and 

 prodigies of a similar kind. There is no lack of phantoms and apparitions 

 wherever the marvellous can be brought in ; and there is no fact, futile as 

 it may seem, that is not thought to deserve some supernatural manifestation. 

 As a general rule, a vision was looked upon as unlucky, and this, no doubt, 

 is the origin of the tradition, according to which a spectre always appears 

 to announce the death of the head or of some member of certain illustrious 

 families. There is the legend of the fay Melusine (Fig. 190), which 

 appeared, uttering loud cries, upon the donjon of the Chateau de Lusignan, 

 in Poitou, whenever a Lusignan was about to die. But this legend is less 

 terrible than that of the canons of Mersburg, in Saxony, for it was said that 

 three weeks before the death of a canon a strange tumult arose at midnight 

 in the choir of the cathedral, and a grim hand appeared, which struck with 

 great force the stall of the canon who was condemned to die. The guardians 

 of the church marked this stall with a piece of chalk, and the next day the 

 canon, warned of his approaching end, prepared for death, while the chapter 

 made every preparation for his obsequies. 



Visions were very often of a public character, and caused consternation 

 throughout a whole town or kingdom. Pierre Boaistuau, Francois de 

 Belleforest, and other simple-minded compilers of the sixteenth century, have 

 collected in one volume these "Histoires Prodi gieuses," and still they are 

 far from having exhausted the subject. Thus, to cite but one instance, after 

 having predicted the numerous prodigies which announced the calamities 

 of civil war, such as apparitions in the heavens of fiery dragons, of gigantic 



