Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The miracles of Aesculapius / by Warwick Wroth. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![One very odd detail is added about Ambro- sia. She is ordered by ZEsculapius to dedi- cate in his temple a silver model of a pig. This animal, whether as a votive offering in stone, terra-cotta, or metal, or as an actual sacrificial victim, is often met with in connec- tion with Greek worship; but here the familiar offering is specially “ applied” to a particular suppliant, for Ambrosia is told to dedicate the pig “ because she had displayed such stupidity,” or, as we should say, had shown so much pig-headedness. Such are the miracles of ZEsculapius. And it is difficult to part from them and all their quaintness and old-world simplicity in any very critical or serious spirit. Yet the student of ancient medicine, and, still more, the student of comparative religion, will regard these wonders as being something more than the mere curiosities of old Greek life. For they will recognize in them (and hardly without a sigh for human weakness), yet one more page added to the long catalogue of wonders which are no wonders, of miracles wrought without conscious imposture, related without conscious exaggeration, and believed by the multitude, quia impossibilia. jftotes from Cornwall. By Rev. W. S. Lach-Szyrma. p^|&3sHE very interesting and important ^|8&\work of Dr. Mitchell, The Past in K^ajjy] the Present, is capable of expansion and, support in many places besides the Highlands, of Scotland, where Dr. Mit- chell mainly foimded his theories. I would briefty, in this paper, catalogue a few of the prinvitive usages surviving in Cornwall, which seem to bear on the Past in the Present, and of Wijich I can find illustra- tions on the European 'Continent. 1. The clan theor^. of society. This tribal or clan idea, the next stage after the primitive family, SirvH. Maine and others have proved to be a\haracteristic of primitive Aryan society. The^lan preceded the nation. Now, though, in ipost civilized countries, e.g., in our midland '.or home counties, the clan idea is extinct, or nearly so it is not so either in the Scottish High- lands or in Cornwall. Researches into the vestiges of clans in Cornwall, the noticing of characteristics in physical aspect, in habits, in customs among the populations of certain villages dr hamlets, would, I am certain, show the traces, of common descent, the family having developed into the gens or clan. The custom of intermarriages in the village tend to confirm and fix these local peculiarities. In this matter the Cornish is very like the Slavonic village. A curious point in the Cornish clans is, that, like the American clans, they retain often a nickname, and that is usually the name of an ahimal. Thus we have the Mullion “ gulls ’• for the inhabitants of Mul- lion near the Lizard, the Zennor “goats” for the people of the Zennor region on the north coast of the Land’s End peninsula, the St. Ive “hakes,” tire Sancreed “hogs;” just as among, say, th<^ Wyandots of America we have the deer gens, the bear gens, the turtle gens, the wolf gens, etc. This repre- sents a survival of a very primitive instinct of mankind, quite extinct iVi most parts of Europe. The fact that many of these nicknames may be modern does not ^fect the interesting point of the survival of Che instinct. 2. Then the nature worship which had so prominent a part in ancient Europe is not extinct in Cornwall. Th& greeting of May or Spring with horn-blowina exists in Oxford- shire, and was once probably common in England, but nowhere is \it so lively as in Cornwall. In fact, the custom, like many others, has degenerated into a nuisance, or something like it. The boys'Llow horns and the girls sing, crowning themselves often with flowers and garlands. May Customs, how- ever, have a great persistence throughout Europe, probably from their beauty. The midsummer fires, in hofeour of the summer solstice, which are so congnon in out- of-the-way parts of Europe, in Russian forests, on the Carpathians, on the Apennines, on the hills of Brittany, and by the\fiords of Norway, but which have nearly die'd out in England, are common enough in the Land’s End district, nay, perhaps in no town inEurope are they better kept up than in Penzance, where the Midsummer revels—the dancing with fire-torches, and the bonfires ip the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22433594_0007.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
