

CONNECTION WITH ASTROLOGY, ETC. 145 



of his followers will put his tail in at the neck of the net, 

 who with his teeth fast holding the same, never leave him, 

 until they have pulled him out. Barbies, if one of them 

 chance to be engaged, will set the line against their backes, 

 and with a fin they have, toothed like a sharp saw, pre- 

 sently saw and fret the same asunder." 



In the narrative of St. Brandan, in one of the poetical 

 effusions of the Anglo-Norman Trouveres, we find that 

 the wandering saint met in his travels with Judas Iscariot, 

 who was undergoing his punishment in the infernal re- 

 gions ; sometimes placed in the midst of burning pitch 

 and sulphur, and sometimes doomed to sit upon a naked 

 and desolate rock in the frozen regions. But what excited 

 the saint's curiosity not a little was a cloth bandage which 

 Judas had placed around his head. On inquiring the 

 purpose of it, the traitor affirmer/ that it was an effectual 

 charm with the ferocious fish among which he was often 

 doomed to be thrown ; that when they snw it around his 

 head they were deprived of the power of biting him. 

 This shield of protection was obtained because he had once, 

 when on earth, given a piece of cloth to a naked beggar ; 

 and this deed of chanty was not allowed to pass without 

 its reward. 



Some writers have gone upon the opposite tact, and 

 ascribed revengeful feelings to the finny tribes. A great 

 number of legends are taken up with these topics in the early 

 and middle ages. Geraldus tells a story, that in Normandy, 

 a few days before the death of Henry TI, the fish of a 



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