but if it does make us sad to think on the changes of the year, and particularly on its close, let us turn our eye up to God, and if he smiles upon us, our melancholy will depart and we shall be happy. In the beautiful words of an American Poet, I would say to the dying year; There's loveliness in thy decay, Which breathes, which lingers on thee still, valleys are panting in the hot sun; near by the sparkling | deemer, whose throne is above the stars, and whose dwellrivulet bounds onward to the river, while from a remote ing-place is the universe. It should not have that effect, distance we hear the mighty cataract hurrying its waters to the distant sea; the woods are filled with the music of birds, and all nature is laughing under the glorious influence of Summer. The good man enumerates his blessings, and thanks his Maker that he is permitted to enjoy so many. Now it is, we feel most happy, excepting in those hours when the strange reality appears, telling us "we are passing away." Another change, and lo! the eventide of the year, the melancholy season of Autumn. Melancholy I mean to those alone who never "list to nature's teachings." The song of joy is no more heard, for the minstrels have gone to some warmer clime. The woodman's toil is cheered by no happy strains; but the widowed quail, which is shivering on the fallen tree, utters her plaintive cry, causing a momentary sadness to oppress his heart. The oak rears its head above the plain, but is stript of its foliagenaked and alone-a fit emblem of man in the hour of adversity. We see the leaves floating on the bosom of the river, and we feel that such too will soon be our condition. The frosts of old age will soon wither us, and on the river of death we will be borne onward to Eternity! Dark "Autumn is dark on the mountain; gray mist rests on the hills. The whirlwind is heard on the heath. rolls the river through the narrow plain. The leaves whirl round with the wind, and strew the grave of the dead." Thus mournfully sang the aged Bard who "lived in the times of the days of old." Again-in the language of William Howitt, "The flowers are gone; the long grass stands amongst the green gorse and broom; the plants, which waved their broad, white umbels to the Summer breeze, like skeleton-trophies of death, rattle their dry and hollow hues to the Autumnal winds. Our very gardens are sad, damp, and desolate. Naked stems and decaying leaves have taken the place of verdure." The hill-sides are becoming brown. The woodland rivulet, glides more sluggishly than it did over its pebbly bed. It seems to be murmuring itself away, because its former companions, the wild rose, the columbine, the honeysuckle, the bell-flower and the violet, have departed from its borders. Will they never return? Ah yes! with the approaching Spring and Summer they will all come back, and with the rivulet laugh-and be happy once more. Golden, and crimson and purple are the colors that now rest upon the forest trees, which were lately so fresh and green. Truly hath Mrs. Hemans said, "The woods! Oh, solemn are the boundless woods, Of the great western world in their decline." Is there not a lesson taught us in this decay of nature? Does it not warn us of the unknown future? "The blossoms of our Spring, the pride of our Summer will soon fade into decay; and the pulse that now beats high with virtuous or vicious desire, will gradually sink-and then must stop forever." It may be, that before another Autumn sheds its influence upon the world, our heads will be pillowed in the dust. If we are not dead, we shall be mourners; for in compliance to the laws of nature some, or many of our friends will have gone to their homes beyond the grave. Ere the coming of another Autumn, many of our fondest hopes will have left us, like the rainbow or the morning dew. Let the aged in their reflections on the changes of the year, remember that their Autumn is passing, and that the narrow house, which has no door, will soon be their resting-place. Let the young, in the gladness of their youthful sports, pause and think of the future. They are now in the Spring-time of life, and it is uncertain whether they will ever behold the Autumn; it is therefore meet they should seek a refuge in case an untimely wind should sweep over them. That refuge is the bosom of our blessed Re Thou desolate and dying year, Thy buds are gone, thy leaves are red, * * O, thus hath life its even-tide But, beloved, reader that tomb must be approached with the firm step and placid smile of a Christian. Remember that each hour binds us nearer to our end; and if it is our lot to suffer, "let us be strong,"-and then we shall surely triumph over death and the grave. RHAPSODIA SENECIS. BY A BALTIMOREAN. Those days of hope! those days of hope! Old times! long flown! -Come home !— From the misty depths of time, The veil is lifted! Lo! the visions rise! Other his fate, whose stormy life Weeps o'er the past, and fears the morrow, Strike the lyre, a softer measure; gay Hark, from yonder thicket deep, On yon hill the cottage white, Maiden, why dost thou blush? He looks upon thee, And that thou understandest what they say thee, All now is o'er! Speaks her no more! Through yon grey portal sweeps a mournful train; No gilded monument, nor marble pile, Over the narrow house where thou dost dwell, Old England, too, good bye! thou dost contain Hail! boundless Ocean! as with ceaseless plash, A sail! a sail! on wings of driven snow, And now the flash-the smoke-the rattling peal, Then strained the arm and fell the sabre stroke- Mark yon churchyard! mark it well! Valley green and rising hill. There lies one, I once called friend,- But why despair? Earth is not made the lasting place of rest; Dominion over man, and cramp the mind, We shall not live alway! There is a home Another and a better world, shall be There shall we meet the loved! the lost! and there, Freed from each heavy load, Our everlasting notes of praise shall rise, And endless anthems peal throughout the skies, USAGES, CUSTOMS, AND SUPERSTITIONS OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE BLACK MOUNTAIN. Translated from the French for the Messenger. One of the portions of France most interesting to the traveller, the naturalist, the poet and the historian, is, without dispute, that chain of mountains which stretches from the mouth of the Adour to the Mediterranean. There are heaped up with real magnificence, those immense ruins which attest the convulsions and deluges which our globe has undergone; there is seen, one while the gloomy face of nature, cold and silent as that of the countries round the north pole, or else that pomp of vegetation, that warm and bamly atmosphere, that purple or azure sky, which gives such a charm to the regions of the equator. If we pass from the view of the Pyrenees to the examination of their inhabitants, we are no less struck with that mixture, that variety of physiognomies, of costumes, of language and of manners, which appear like so many distinct creations in the same country. Occupied successively by the tribes of Africa or of Greece, by the Iberians or the Celts, the Pyreneean mountains have preserved numerous traditions of their ancient owners. The pagan theology is there united, even in our days, with the Catholic worship; and the fables of the Phonicians and the Gauls, have not ceased obtaining from the mountaineers as firm a credence as the religion of Christ. Thus, the deep caverns are places revered as they were in the times of the temples of the Troglodytes; thus, the idea of a tomb still attaches to the lofty peaks, as in the time when Alcides interred the daughter of Betrix beneath a gi gantic mass of granite; thus, the shepherd still respects the rough isolated stones of singular shape, as the goatherd of Atlas venerated a Bathel, as the Druid who slew a victim and deposited an offering at the foot of a Menhir, a Dolmen, a Router, a Lichaven, or on a Lawlmen; thus, the forests, the old trees, the lakes and the fountains, preserve their guardian or malignant genii-the same as when the Celt adored his Esus under the form of an oak or a beech, and when the Ahriman of the Gauls exercised so great an influence upon the mind. Nevertheless, this superstition is evidently tending to extinction in the Pyrenees, where the concourse of strangers, who flock to their warm springs, who spread themselves in all their vallies, who penetrate even to the most remote hamlets, produces daily a rectification in their ideas, and a new point of view in their manner of considering things. It is not thus in the Black Mountain, a kind of link in the Pyrenees which connects them with the Cevennes and the Gevaudan, and which separates the department of Ande from that of Tarn. This district, 30 interesting, so pictu resque, and so little known, is impressed above all others, by reason even of its neglected state, with the stamp of its ancient inhabitants. There the mountaineer of the forests of Lacaune, or of the vicinity of Angles, clad in his Brissent, a kind of deacon's dress, or in Lacerna, and gravely relating the great doings of the Fassilieres or of the Armacies, calls to mind as well the Gaul, who placed upon his breast some leaves of mistletoe to preserve him from witchcraft, as the Tascon deducing presages from the flight of a crow, or the cry of an owl. It is known that the Celts, who occupy the country sitaate between the Cevennes and the Pyrenees, migrated at different epochs-and particularly under the command of Brennus, with whom they went to form a settlement in Asia. After having overrun and ravaged Greece, they stopped upon the borders of the Hellespont, in Æolia and lonia ; and in Asia Minor they founded Angora, now Ancyre. The descendants of these Celts had occasion to become acquainted with their mother country: they gradually returned to the countries which had been the cradle of their ancestors, and carried thither the customs of the people whom they left. Thus the religion of the Gauls presented a medley of the primitive worship of the Celts, and of the paganism of the Greeks-a mixture which farther mingled itself, in the ead. with the polytheism of the Romans and the mysteries of the Grecian faith. In the Black Mountain, this whimsical assemblage of thoughts and deeds presents one of the most striking pictures. The evil genii perform, without question, the principal part in the superstitions of this pastoral people. The Desiens of the Gauls, the Palamnéeus of the Romans, or 14 Prostropéens of the Greeks, are found continued amongst them by the Fassilieres-a phalanx of genii which exercises its power, friendly or destructive, in every situation of the mountaineer's life. These Fassilieres have for commander a renowned being called Tambourinet; after him comes the Drac, who is ex actly the Kelpie of the Scotch; then the Saurimonde, known in Scotland under the names of Senshie and Brownie. They all serve, in every place, the host to whom they devote themselves; they introduce themselves into the most hidden recesses of his house; and they particularly love the stables, where they suck the milk of the cows. val called Halloween-during which there is, say the helievers, a kind of truce between man and the genii, which affords to the commonest understandings the means of knowing the future. One may easily conceive, that weak minds, upon which the Fassilieres act, would also feel the influence of sorcerers. In the Black Mountain, they call him Armacies who is born the day after All-Saints'-Day-and whom they supThe Drac is the drollest and merriest of the Fassilieres; pose to be also gifted with the faculty of second sight. He he never does any serious harm; and his roguish pranks is the Taishatr of the Scotch. Among this last people, are entirely those of a scholar or a page. If a hard-working they celebrate, in the night before All-Saints'-Day, a festistable-boy has twisted the hair of a mule, the Drac immediately tangles what has been done; if one has put hay in the manger, he scatters it upon the ground, and replaces it by dung; if one has saddled the horse upon which he is about to travel, he malignantly turns the saddle, so that the crupper encloses the ears, and the bridle tangles the tail. After that he metamorphoses himself into a ribbon, or into a skein of thread, to torment the young girls, who cannot accomplish tying that ribbon upon their heads, or make a single stitch without the thread's breaking. He is a terrible persecutor, that Mr. Drac! Nevertheless, one may catch him in his turn. Thus, for example, they place a little millet on a board in the stable, the demon never fails to upset that grain, and he always also tries to gather it; but as his hands are bored through like a sieve, he cannot succeed in gathering the millet by the handful, which puts him in such a rage that he flies from the stable and does not return thither for a long time. In the neighborhood of Angles, the sorcerer is called Pary. They consult him, especially, to drive away the fox from the farms, which he procures by making conjurations in the four corners of the house. The chickens are then in safety. Nevertheless, the master of the house must be careful not to give eggs to people who ask for them, after having killed a fox; for, in this event, the conjuration would lose all its effect. The old women play a great part in the sorcery; but when one finds them in a stable working witchcraft, one may, with the aid of some blows of a stick, oblige them to remedy, themselves, the evil which they have committed. Thus, when these miserable creatures cause blood to flow from a cow instead of milk, it is easy, if they are caught in the very act, to restore things to their right condition. The sorceresses are compelled to pronounce some words of their conjuring book, and immediately little streams of milk are seen to enter at the door of the stable, which go to resume their place in the cow's belly. That the sorceresses may remain without power over the cows, quicksilver should be fastened to the necks of the latter, or a toad should be well fattened in a pitcher, which should be kept constantly in the stable. One should be very careful not to touch the hand of a dying sorcerer, for one would become a sorcerer like him. Woe also to the children who are born on the day of a battle! Their soul will go out of their body, or return, at pleasure. They will torment many persons during sleep; and they will finally become sorcerers themselves, under the name of Masques. The Saurimonde is, on the contrary, the model of the most atrocious perfidy. It appears as a beautiful child, with white and curling hair, blue eyes and rosy mouth, abandoned beside a fountain, or in the cross-roads of a wood, calling with a soft voice, and with sobs, for some charitable soul to adopt it. A charitable soul! where is it wanting? The human race is so compassionate, enlarged hearts are not wanting, especially amongst the shepherds and sheperdesses. Sometimes it is a brave boy who carries the child under his riding-hood, and goes to place it on his old mother's knees, begging her to bring up this poor orphan; at other times it is a worthy young girl, who swears upon the little cross, which hangs from her neck, that she will never leave the handsome brother which Providence has given her. By both is the promise religiously kept. The child grows. Then, almost always, it becomes the wife of the shepherd, who finds himself to have contracted with A sorceress of this kind was one day among reapers, the devil; or so well he teaches the virgin who has adopted where she slept towards noon. As she had been long sushim, that he alike obliges her to devote her futurity to hell. pected of having correspondence with the devil, they had The nocturnal phantoms, which the Romans called Le- no doubt that her soul had chosen this moment to go promemures or Lares, and which the Scotch call at the present nading. To make sure of it, they carried her body a cerday Goblins, are also the subject of a lively fear in the Black tain distance and put a great pitcher in its place. When Mountain, where they seek to free themselves by a multi- the soul returned from its excursion, it went in fact to take tude of means from their pretended pursuit. In the canton lodgings in the pitcher-and rolled it about from side to of Labrugiere for instance, on the eve of the Kings, the in-side, until, drawing near to the body, it established itself habitants run about the lanes with bells, kettles, and, in in it. short, with all the utensils which compose the harmony of a What is here remarkable is, that this legend, firmly becharivari; then, by the light of torches and of burning fire-lieved in the Black Mountain, seems also to have been borbrands, they give themselves up to an infernal uproar and to noises of all kinds, hoping by this means to drive away the ghosts and the evil spirits. This custom is precisely that which the Romans practised in the Lemuries-festivals which they celebrated on the ninth day of May-and which had for their object the same expulsion of the shades and phantoms which appeared by night. This festival lasted three nights, with an interval of one night. Beans were cast upon the fire which burnt upon the altar; and he who sacrificed, putting at first some beans in his mouth, afterwards cast them behind him, saying, I free myself and mine. This ceremony was accompanied by a charivari, with frying-pans and other iron vessels, which they beat; praying the hobgoblins to take themselves off, and repeating to them nine times that they should go in peace, without farther troubling the repose of the living. During the Lemuries, the temples were shut and no marriage was performed. rowed from the ancients. Hermotine-a citizen of Clazomene-a city of lonia, in Asia Minor-had a soul which often separated itself from his body to go and walk in different places. One day he ordered his wife not to touch his body when they saw it immovable; but she did not pay regard to it-she spoke of it to her neighbors, who came forthwith to burn the body: which prevented the soul's returning into it, and compelled it to seek refuge in a vase which it rolled hither and thither. BIRTH. In the commune of Dourgne, they never carry the new-born to church by the road which they use for the dead. In almost all the Black Mountain they do not cut the nails of little children which are still sucking, because they think that this operation would create in them a decided inclination for theft. MARRIAGE. The Romans considered the month of May as an unlucky time for marriage: Malum mense maio nubere. They therefore avoided marrying their daughters during this month but they had not the same scruple as to widows; and Plutarch gives as the motive for it, that second marriages being little esteemed amongst the Latins, they managed to contract them at an epoch when few people would be drawn together in the temples by the ceremony. The month of May is also in the Black Mountain a month altogether rejected by the young girls who are betrothed; and they frankly say upon the subject, that it is not suitable to marry at a period when the asses are amorous. land call coronach; and the Irish Catholics, ululos. These public and chanted mournings are also in use in some parts of the Black Mountain, but the women follow the collin instead of preceding it. On the platform of the Prade, the persons invited stop ca their return from a funeral before the house of the deceased; then, his two nearest relations take, the one a pitcher of water, the other a napkin; and each bystander, commencing with the relatives, proceeds to wash and wipe his hands. When this ceremony is ended, they throw away the towel If one wishes children nothing more is necessary than to which they have used, and it is almost always left upon the house-top. marry on a Friday. The ancient ceremony of placing a yoke on the neck of those who betroth each other, whence marriage has taken the Latin name of conjugium, is perpetuated in some communes of Castrais on the wedding-day. At Angles, on the same day, and when they lead the woman to her husband's house, his mother delivers to her daughter-in-law a broom and a pitcher. This takes place of the invocation which the Latins made to the god Domitius, that the new-married woman might take care of the house. Then the bride sets herself to sprinkle and brush the chamber; then she goes out with the broom and the pitcher and seats herself before the house, having fastened to her girdle on one side a cushion covered with pins, and on the other a wide purse. The guests place an offering in the purse; this is called paying the bride's pins. The groom, among the Romans, cast nuts to children: Spargite, marite, nuces, says Virgil. It was to show, that he renounced the sports of children. At Gaillac, nuts also figure during the marriage ceremony. When the married couple are kneeling at the foot of the altar, the bystanders pour a shower of them upon their backs; and the first who turns towards the aggressors, will be the one, as the good women say, who will occasion the most jealousy in the house. At Castrais, on a wedding day, the young people steal cabbages to make a soup-which is served up to the married couple during the night. If the cabbages were not stolen, this would break through the obligations imposed by custom. When a young man takes a girl from another commune than that in which he resides, the young people of the girl's commune collect before the church and hinder the couple from entering, until the groom has paid a certain sum. When a widower remarries, not only has he to undergo in the Black Mountain a charivari as is usual in other countries, but they also make him ride upon an ass, and afterwards compel him to enter a chicken-coop; where they make him drink out of a horn-a vessel, which, in passing from hand to hand, does not reach him until it has been greatly defiled. INTERMENT.-At Dourgne, the dead are never drawn to the grave-yard by horses or oxen: for they are convinced that these animals would not be alive the day after such a task. As to the men who occupy the post of bearers, they are, according to belief, sometimes eased of their load, sometimes overcome with its weight, according as the invisible power which accompanies them takes upon itself to assist or annoy them. At Escoupens, some women cover their heads with a great cloth, and place upon a closed basket a loaf and a bottle of wine. Arrived at the church, they place this loaf and wine upon the altar, and after the funeral ceremony the clerk proceeds to carry this offering to the poorest person of the parish. The funeral repast, which is found more or less conse crated in all times and among all people, generally takes place in the Black Mountain. At Escoupens, it is the invariable custom to serve a dish of French beans at this repast. In some other communes, it is improper to tipple at this festival. At Labruguiere, when some one in the house dies, they affix a piece of black stuff to the hives of the domain. At Lacaune, if it be the head of the family who is dead, and if he leaves bees, they bury one of his old garments in the garden where the bees are, in order to make them partake in the obsequies of the master. At Berlatz, when a family has lost one of its members, they immediately cut off all the flowers in the garden, and they suffer no more of them to blow while the mourning lasts. This touching custom prevailed among the Greeks. MEDICINE. It is needless to mention here how much power empiricism has over the minds of the inhabitants of the Black Mountain, and with what confidence they employ the remedies prescribed by the sorcerers and sorceresses, or by the quacks who perform the feats at the fairs. Among them, the people who make a business of healing are called Rhabilleurs. The most part are wretches, who ensnare their dupes by means of mystical practices; but experience bas, nevertheless, given some of them a wonderful skill in the operations rendered necessary by fractures. When the inhabitants of the canton of Labruyere have an animal sick of any wound infested by worms, they place themselves in the country at the foot of the dwarf cider, Cambucus Ebulus; and twisting a handful of that plant in their hands, they make a profound bow to it, and address it in the following words, in the country dialect: "Adiu sies, mousu l'aoussier, se ne trases par lous vers de moun ber benier, vous coupi la cambo, maï lou pey," which is in English-" Good day, Mr. Dwarf Elder; if you do not drive out the worms from the place where they are, I will cut your leg and foot." This threat finished, the cure is certam or nearly so.. The mountaineers are so convinced that the houseleek, Sempervivum tectorum, is a preservative against the maladies which enter their houses, that it is a sacrilege to carry of When, in the neighborhood of Soreze, the death has to be from them this plant, when it grows upon their walls of announced at the priest's house, two men join for that pur-house-tops. When it is in flower, they cut stalks of it and pose and walk with slow steps, carrying their sticks in the air as if they were holding wax candles. They preserve their gravity, and the direction of the stick, until their return to the house of the deceased. The Greeks and Romans had mourners who marched before the procession, led by another woman who regulated the proper tone for weeping. The Romans called them Præfice, Reputarices and Lamentatrices. They wore a black dress called pulla; and their songs were called nanie and ululatus. It is the song which the mountaineers of Scot place them in crosses on the stable-doors. At Lacarne, the mistletoe is called Besq, in the country dialect; and the country folks believe still, as the Dra and the Gauls believed, that this parasitic plant, taken a drink or placed upon the stomach, is an effectual remely against poison of any kind. In the commune of Escoupens, they are persuaded that the swellings of the spleen can be cured by applying to the side a branch of the broom, to which the proper shape las been given. |