BOURKE.] GIRDLES AND CORDS. end 
une infinité @autres miracles édifians.”! This author says of the gir- 
dle of St. Augustine ‘“‘ Elle est de cuir,” and adds that the Augustin- 
ians have a book which treats of the origin of their order, in which 
occurthese words: ‘ [lest probable que nos premiers Peres, qui vivoient 
sous la Loi de nature, étant habillés de peau devoient porter une 
Ceinture de méme étoffe.”* This last assumption is perfectly plausible. 
For my part it has always seemed to me that monasticism is of very 
ancient origin, antedating Christianity and representing the most con- 
servative element in the religious part of human nature. It clings 
obstinately to primitive ideas with which would naturally be associated 
primitive costume. The girdle of St. Monica had five knots. ‘The 
monks [of the Levant] use a girdle with twelve knots, to shew that they 
are followers of the twelve apostles.”* Among the ‘“‘sovereign remedies 
for the headache” is mentioned “the belt of St. Guthlac.”* Buckle 
refers to the fact that English women in labor wore *‘ blessed girdles.” 
He thinks that they may have been Thomas Aquinas’s girdles.*® 
And good Saynt Frances gyrdle, 
With the hamlet of a hyrdle, 
Are wholsom for the pyppe.® 
Some older charms are to be found in Bale’s Interlude concerning the 
Laws of Nature, Moses, and Christ, 4to, 1562. Idolatry says: 
For lampes and for bottes 
Take me Sayné Wilfride’s knottes.’ 
The “ girdle of St. Bridget,” mentioned by Mooney® and by other 
writers, through which the sick were passed by their friends, was 
simply a “survival” of the * Cunni Diaboli” still to be found in the 
East Indies. This * girdle of St. Bridget” was made of straw and in 
the form of a collar. 
The custom prevailing in Catholic countries of being buried in the 
habits of the monastic orders, of which we know that the cord was a 
prominent feature, especially in those of St. Francis or St. Dominick, 
is alluded to by Brand.’ This custom seems to have been founded 
upon a prior superstitious use of magical cords which were, till a com- 
paratively recent period, buried with the dead. The Roman Catholic 
church anathematized those “qui s’imaginent faire plaisir aux morts ou 
leur mettant entre les mains, ou en jettant sur leurs fosses, ou dans 
leurs Pes de petites cordes nouées de SST HES & Vautres 
'Cérémonies et Coittumes Religieuses, Amsterdam, 1739, vol. 2, pp. 28, 29. 
2Thid., p. 29. 
% Higgins, Anacalypsis, vol. 2, book 2, p. 77. 
‘Pettigrew, Medical Superstitions, Philadelphia, 1844, p. 61. See also Black, Folk-Medicine, p. 93. 
*Citations, Common place Rook, p. 395, London, 1872 
* Brand, Popular Antiquities, vol. 3, pp. 310, 311. 
7 Brand, Popular Antiquities, vol. 3, p. 310. 
8 Holiday Customs of Ireland, pp. 381 et seq. 
* Popular Antiquities, vol. 3, p. 325. 
