Dr. Farmer, citing Bourne in this place, says: "And he quotes on this occasion, as all his predecessors had done, the well-known lines from the first hymn of Prudentius. I know not whose translation he gives us, but there is an old one by Heywood. The pious chansons, the hymns and carols which Shakespeare mentions presently, were usually copied from the elder Christian poets." Cassian, also, who lived in the same century, mentioning a host of devils who had been abroad in the night, says, that as soon as the morn approached, they all vanished and fled away; which further evinces that this was the current opinion of the time. Philostratus, giving an account of the apparition of Achilles' shade to Apollonius Tyaneus, says, that it vanished with a little glimmer as soon as the cock crowed. Vit. Apol. iv. 16. The following is from Spenser :

The morning cock crew loud;
And at the sound it shrunk in haste away,
And vanish'd from our sight."

So Butler, in his Hudibras, I. iii. 1553:

"The cock crows and the morning grows on,
When 'tis decreed I must be gone."

Thus also Blair, in his Grave:

Of horrid apparition, tall and ghastly,

That walks at dead of night or takes his stand
O'er some new-open'd grave; and, strange to tell,
Evanishes at crowing of the cock."

Bourne tells us he never met with any reasons assigned for the departure of spirits at the cock-crowing; "but," he adds, "there have been produced at that time of night things of very memorable worth, which might perhaps raise the pious credulity of some men to imagine that there was something more in it than in other times. It was about the time of cock-crowing when our Saviour was born, and the angels sung the first

"Aurora itaque superveniente, cum omnis hæc ab oculis evanisset dæmonum multitudo." Cass. Coll. viii. c. 16. Thus the Ghost in Hamlet:

And again:

"But soft, methinks I scent the morning air-
Brief let me be."

"The glow-worm shows the matin to be near."

Christmas carol to the poor shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem. Now, it may be presumed, as the Saviour of the world was then born, and the heavenly host had then descended to proclaim the news, that the angels of darkness would be terrified and confounded, and immediately fly away; and perhaps this consideration has partly been the foundation of this opinion." It was also about this time when our Saviour rose from the dead. A third reason is, that passage in the book of Genesis, where Jacob wrestled with the angel for a blessing; where the angel says unto him, "Let me go, for the day breaketh."

Bourne, however, thinks this tradition seems more especially to have arisen from some particular circumstances attending the time of cock-crowing; which, as Prudentius, as before cited, seems to say, is an emblem of the approach of the day of resurrection. "The circumstances, therefore, of the time of cock-crowing," he adds, "being so natural a figure and representation of the morning of the resurrection; the night so shadowing out the night of the grave; the third watch being, as some suppose, the time when our Saviour will come to Judgment at; the noise of the cock awakening sleepy man, and telling him, as it were, the night is far spent, the day is at hand; representing so naturally the voice of the arch-angel awakening the dead, and calling up the righteous to everlasting day; so naturally does the time of cock-crowing shadow out these things, that probably some good, well-meaning men might have been brought to believe that the very devils themselves, when the cock crew and reminded them of them, did fear and tremble, and shun the light."

The ancients, because the cock gives notice of the approach and break of day, have, with a propriety equal to anything in their mythology, dedicated this bird to Apollo. They have also made him the emblem of watchfulness, from the circumstance of his summoning men to their business by his crowing, and have therefore dedicated him also to Mercury. With the lark he may be poetically styled the "Herald of the Morn.” In England's Parnassus, 1600, I find the two following lines ascribed to Drayton :

"And now the cocke, the morning's trumpeter,
Played Hunt's-up for the day-star to appear."

Gray has imitated our poet:

"The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed."

The following is from Chaucer's Assemblie of Foules, f. 235:

"The tame ruddocke and the coward kite,

The cocke, that horologe is of Thropes lite."

Thus, in the Merry Devil of Edmonton, 4to. 1631:

[

"More watchfull than the day-proclayming cocke."

The day, civil and political, has been divided into thirteen parts. The after-midnight and the dead of the night are the most solemn of them all, and have, therefore it should seem, been appropriated by ancient superstition to the walking of spirits.

By a passage in Macbeth, "we were carousing till the second cock," it should seem to appear as if there were two separate times of cock-crowing. The commentators, however, say nothing of this. They explain the passage as follows: "Till the second cock:-Cock-crowing." So in King Lear: "He begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock." Again, in the Twelve Merry Jestes of the Widow Edith, 1573:

"The time they pas merely til ten of the clok,

Yea, and I shall not lye, till after the first cok."

It appears from a passage in Romeo and Juliet, that Shakespeare means that they were carousing till three o'clock:

66 The second cock has crow'd,

The curfew-bell has toll'd; 'tis three o'clock."

Perhaps Tusser makes this point clear,-Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, 1585, p. 126 :

"Cocke croweth at midnight times few above six,
With pause to his neighbour to answer betwix :
At three aclocke thicker, and then as ye knowe,
Like all in to mattens neere day they doo crowe;
At midnight, at three, and an hour yer day,

They utter their language as well as they may."

11. After midnight. 2. Cock-crow. 3. The space between the first cock-crow and break of day. 4. The dawn of the morning. 5. Morning. 6. Noon. 7. Afternoon. 8. Sunset. 9. Twilight. 10. Evening. 11. Candle-time. 12. Bed-time. 13. The dead of the night. The Church of Rome made four nocturnal vigils: the conticinium, gallicinium or cock-crow, intempestum, and antelucinum. Durand. de Nocturnis. There is a curious discourse on the ancient divisions of the night and the day in Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, i. 223 et seq.

The following very curious Old Wives Prayer' is found in Herrick's Hesperides, p. 205:

"Holy-rood, come forth and shield

Us i' th'citie and the field;
Safely guard us, now and aye,
From the blast that burns by day;
And those sounds that us affright
In the dead of dampish night.
Drive all hurtful fiends us fro,

By the time the cocks first crow."

66

Vanes on the tops of steeples were anciently made in the form of a cock,' (called from hence weathercocks,) and put up, in Papal times, to remind the clergy of watchfulness. In summitate crucis, quæ companario vulgò imponitur, galli gallinacei effugi solet figura, quæ ecclesiarum rectores vigilantiæ admoneat." (Du Cange, Gloss.) I find the following on this subject, in A Helpe to Discourse, 1633. "Q. Wherefore on the top of church steeples is the cocke set upon the crosse, of a long continuance? A. The flocks of Jesuits will answer you. For instruction: that whilst aloft we behold the crosse and the cocke standing thereon, we may remember our sinnes, and with Peter seeke and obtaine mercy as though without this dumbe cocke, which many will not hearken to, untill he crow, the Scriptures were not a sufficient larum." "The inconstancy of the French," says Dr. Johnson, was always the subject of satire. I have read a dissertation written to prove that the index of the wind upon our steeples was made in form of a cock to ridicule the French for their frequent changes." A writer, dating Wisbech, May 7, in the St. James's Chronicle, June 10, 1777, says that "the intention of the original cock-vane was derived from the cock's crowing when St. Peter had denied his Lord, meaning by this device to forbid all schism in the Church, which might arise amongst her members by their departing from her communion, and denying

"The lyon hath an antipathy with the cocke, especially of the game; one reason is, because he sees him commonly with his crowne on his head, while princes commonly are jealous of each other. Some say because he presumes to come into his presence booted and spurred, contrary to the law in court. But I thinke rather because he meetes with a lyon's heart in so weake a body." See A Strange Metamorphosis of Man transformed into a Wildernesse, deciphered in Characters, 1634.

the established principles of her faith. But though this invention was, in all probability, of popish original, and a man who often changes his opinion is known by the appellation of a weathercock, I would hint to the advocates of that unreformed church, that neither this intention, nor the antiquity of this little device, can afford any matter for religious argument." A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for Jan. 1737, vii. 7, says: "Levity and inconstancy of temper is a general reproach upon the French. The cock upon the steeple (set up in contempt and derision of that nation on some violation of peace, or breach of alliance) naturally represents these ill qualities." This derivation, however, seems to be as illiberal as it is groundless. In the Minute Book of the Society of Antiquaries, i. 105, we read: "29 Jan. 1723-4, Mr. Norroy (Peter Le Neve) brought a script from Gramaye, Historia Brabantiæ, Bruxell. p. 14, showing that the manner of adorning the tops of steeples with a cross and a cock is derived from the GOTHS, who bore that as their warlike ensign."

COCK-FIGHTING.

MEN have long availed themselves of the antipathy which one cock shows to another, and have encouraged that natural hatred with arts that may be said to disgrace human reason. Stubs, in his Anatomie of Abuses, 1585, p. 117, inveighs against Cock-fighting, which in his days seems to have been practised on the Sabbath in England: "They flock thicke and threefolde to the Cock-fightes, an exercise nothing inferiour to the rest, where nothing is used but swearing, forswearing, deceipt, fraud, collusion, cosenage, skoldyng, railyng, convitious talkyng, fightyng, brawlyng, quarrellyng, drinkyng, and robbing one another of their goods, and that not by direct, but indirect means and attempts. And yet to blaunch and set out these mischiefs withall (as though they were virtues), they have their appointed dayes and set houres, when these devilries must be exercised. They have houses erected to that purpose, flags and ensignes hanged out, to give notice of it to others, and proclamation goes out, to proclaim the same, to the ende