"And round about her tear-distained eye Blue circles stream'd, like rainbows in the sky: These water-galls in her dim element Foretell new storms to those already spent."
Horace Walpole several times makes use of the word: "False good news are always produced by true good, like the water-gall by the rainbow;" and again, "Thank heaven it is complete, and did not remain imperfect, like a water-gall."[145] In "The Dialect of Craven" we find "Water-gall, a secondary or broken rainbow. _Germ._ Wasser-galle."
[145] "Letters," vol. i. p. 310; vol. vi. pp. 1, 187.--Ed. Cunningham.
_Thunder._ According to an erroneous fancy the destruction occasioned by lightning was effected by some solid body known as the thunder-stone or thunder-bolt. Thus, in the beautiful dirge in "Cymbeline" (iv. 2):
"_Guid._ Fear no more the lightning flash,
_Arv._ Or the all-dreaded thunder-stone."
"Are there no stones in heaven But what serve for the thunder?"
And in "Julius Cæsar" (i. 3), Cassius says:
"And, thus unbraced, Casca, as you see, Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone."
The thunder-stone is the imaginary product of the thunder, which the ancients called _Brontia_, mentioned by Pliny ("Nat. Hist." xxxvii. 10) as a species of gem, and as that which, falling with the lightning, does the mischief. It is the fossil commonly called the Belemnite, or finger-stone, and now known to be a shell.
A superstitious notion prevailed among the ancients that those who were stricken with lightning were honored by Jupiter, and therefore to be accounted holy. It is probably to this idea that Shakespeare alludes in "Antony and Cleopatra" (ii. 5):
"Some innocents 'scape not the thunderbolt."[146]
[146] Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 369.
The bodies of such were supposed not to putrefy; and, after having been exhibited for a certain time to the people, were not buried in the usual manner, but interred on the spot where the lightning fell, and a monument erected over them. Some, however, held a contrary opinion. Thus Persius (sat. ii. l. 27) says:
"Triste jaces lucis evitandumque bidental."
The ground, too, that had been smitten by a thunder-bolt was accounted sacred, and afterwards enclosed; nor did any one even presume to walk on it. Such spots were, therefore, consecrated to the gods, and could not in future become the property of any one.