I should be most grateful for list members' responses to either (or
both) of these queries.
Firstly, can anyone suggest to which text in particular the Marian
Catholic, John Christopherson, is referring, when he writes in 1554
(in the wake of Wyatt's Rebellion" in "An exhortation to all men to
take hede and beware of rebellion":
...the olde mens saying...that when Antichrist shuld come, the
rootes of the trees shulde growe upwarde..."
By 'old men's saying', does he mean the prophecies of particular
patristic authors, or just received folk-wisdom?
Secondly, the wryneck bird [Lat. iynx -- the etymon of modern
English 'jinx']: I understand it used to be bound to a wheel and
used in some occult divinatory ritual not surprisingly frowned on by
the Church . I have seen what I take to be representations of said
wheel in some c.1300 MSS of Gratian's "Decretals", but
Robert Graves -- hardly the most reliable of sources, I know --
claimed that such wheels were still to be seen in various
(unspecified) European churches -- can anyone specify?
responses much appreciated,
Malcolm Jones, Dept. Eng. Lang. & Lings., Univ. of Sheffield
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