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Updated: May 7, 2025
Thinking people are not going to be scared out of explaining or at least trying to explain things by the shrieks of persons whose beliefs are disturbed thereby. Comets were portents to Increase Mather, President of Harvard College; "preachers of Divine wrath, heralds and messengers of evil tidings to the world." It is not so very long since Professor Winthrop was teaching at the same institution.
He had taken part in the country festivals-May Day, Plow Monday, the Sheep Shearing, the Morris Dances and Maud Marian, the Harvest Home and Twelfth Night. The rustic merrymakings, the feasts in great halls, the games on the greensward, the love of wonders and of marvelous tales, the regard for portents, the naive superstitions of the time pass before us in his pages.
Port and sherry, being beyond our reach, were despised, like our neighbour's sour grapes. But if the signs and portents of a drought in beer and stout were to be trusted, the unkindest cut of all was yet to come. And it did come.
There were various encouraging signs and portents in the political heavens and all auguries were favourable. There were, it is true, experienced politicians who shook their heads. They blessed us and wished us well. They even contributed liberally to our campaign fund; but the most experienced among them were not hopeful.
If remarkable portents and disasters occur, he will agree that there is something wrong in the behaviour of the state, and that there must be some public purification or other placation of the gods. If the state orders such a proceeding, he will perform whatever may be his share in it. So far he is loyal to the "religion of the state."
Mr Dozendale walked back to the manse with us, and we had a sober tumbler of toddy together; marvelling exceedingly where these fearful portents and changes would stop, both of us being of opinion that the end of the world was drawing nearer and nearer.
He is said to have been a worshipper of Śiva but his fury was probably inspired less by religious animosity than by love of pillage and slaughter. About 530 A.D. he was defeated by a coalition of Indian princes and died ten years later amid storms and portents which were believed to signify the descent of his wicked soul into hell.
To take this old picture of the days to come as having anything but historical interest is to live in a mist. Only the scholar can understand the allusions made and connect the ideas with the beliefs of this vanished world. It is poetry, a creation of generations of dreamers steeped in the tremendous idea of a coming destruction preceded by portents and disasters.
While the transmarine colonies had hitherto been only indirectly assailed through the greater allurements of the Italian, African hyaenas, it was now alleged, dug up the newly-placed boundary-stones of Carthage, and the Roman priests, when requested, certified that such signs and portents ought to form an express warning against rebuilding on a site accursed by the gods.
There is Hilda as silent as a mouse today, and I suppose she has been seeing more portents. I mind that a black cat did look at us out of a doorway this morning." So he growled, scoffing, and I must say that I was more than half minded to agree with him. Only the earthquake did seem more than an everyday token. "I suppose that the earthquake which we felt was sent for somewhat?" I said.
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