"She was pinched and pulled, she said, And he by Friar's Lanthorn led."
[140] Thorpe, "Northern Mythology," 1852, vol. iii. pp. 85, 158, 220.
[141] "Notelets on Shakespeare," pp. 64, 65.
In Brittany the "Porte-brandon" appears in the form of a child bearing a torch, which he turns like a burning wheel; and with this, we are told, he sets fire to the villages, which are suddenly, sometimes in the middle of the night, wrapped in flames.
The appearance of meteors Shakespeare ranks among omens, as in "1 Henry IV." (ii. 4), where Bardolph says: "My lord, do you see these meteors? do you behold these exhalations? What think you they portend?" And in "King John" (iii. 4), Pandulph speaks of meteors as "prodigies and signs." The Welsh captain, in "Richard II." (ii. 4), says:
"'Tis thought the king is dead; we will not stay. The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd, And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven."
_Comet._ From the earliest times comets have been superstitiously regarded, and ranked among omens. Thus Thucydides tells us that the Peloponnesian war was heralded by an abundance of earthquakes and comets; and Vergil, in speaking of the death of Cæsar, declares that at no other time did comets and other supernatural prodigies appear in greater numbers. It is probably to this latter event that Shakespeare alludes in "Julius Cæsar" (ii. 2), where he represents Calpurnia as saying:
"When beggars die, there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."
Again, in "1 Henry VI." (i. 1), the play opens with the following words, uttered by the Duke of Bedford:
"Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night! Comets, importing change of times and states, Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky, And with them scourge the bad revolting stars That have consented unto Henry's death!"
In "Taming of the Shrew" (iii. 2), too, Petruchio, when he makes his appearance on his wedding-day, says:
"Gentles, methinks you frown: And wherefore gaze this goodly company, As if they saw some wondrous monument, Some comet, or unusual prodigy?"
In "1 Henry IV." (iii. 2), the king, when telling his son how he had always avoided making himself "common-hackney'd in the eyes of men," adds: