Fayette County herald. [volume] (Washington [Washington Court House], Fayette County, O. [Ohio]) 1860-1???, 1880-11-04
Charms Against lightning.

7 SCIENCE, with all its confidence, hai
provided no safeguards against thunder
storms. It can warn, but it can no
protect. Conductors may happily carry
off the electric current, but they can moi
secure us from danger. The timid may
be told emphatically to stand in the
middle of the room, to avoid fre-places
and brass ornaments, or to roll them
selves up in feather-bed or hearth-rugs
but these precautions will be of little
avail, if houses, as at Manchester, tum-
BILE down and bury all alike, the terri
fed and the bold, in a common ruin.
There have been in all ages popular
superstitions having for their object to
avert the dangers of thunder and light
ming. The Thracian soldiers took up
their bows and arrows and fired into the
clouds to drive away the storm, and it
was considered necessary to erect a
cross on St. Paul's steeple, filed with
the relics of saints, in order to free the
city from all danger of destructive tenn
pests. Constant to the belief that an
evil spirit ragged in the storm, it was
custom in old times, as well in England
as in France and Germany, to ring
church bells in order to protect the
frightened inhabitants When they rang
out the great bell at the abbey of St.
German, in Paris, or chimed in the
tower of St. Adelon, in Malmesbury ab-
bey, the faithful assisted the bell-ringers
with their prayers, and helped to stay
the storm. Many more homely charms
against thunder and lightning exist to
this day in some parts of England. The
curious herb known as the hOuse-leek,
growing on the house top of rustic cot
tages, is supposed to be as valua-
BILE a preservative as any scien-
tific lightning-conductor of approved
pattern. Peasants, true to the faith of
their forefathers, still carry beneath
their waistcoats scraps of bay leaf or
laurel as an amulet--a custom as old as,
If not older than, the days of Tiberius
Caesar. We may have gone beyond the
superstition that allowed dead man
killed by a storm to lie where he fell, in
order that the spot might be fenced |
about and sheep promptly sacrificed |
on a rude altar; but it would be strange
if country folks did not still place a
cold iron bar on the beer barrels to pre-
vent the liquor from turning sour during
a thunder storm; and that swans eggs
are only Matched during a loud peal of
thunder is belief yet cherished by
those who watch this bird for signs Of
electricity as closely and
as they listen to the scream
of the peacock to betoken rain. Count
less experiments have been tried to as
certain the scientific causes of a thun-
derstorm, and to determine its proper
from the time when Franklin
Sentup his silk kite attached to q dry
hempen cord, narrowly escaping the
danger OF drawing fire from the heav-
ems, until the days when electric
were checked by the death of
Professor Richmann, of St. Petersburg,
who drew out so much electricity from
5he thunder cloud that he was killed on
The spot. It is consolatory to reflect,
however, that the chances of being
personally injured by lightning are
very much less than the risks involved
n thousand human inventions. Eng
GSb Paper.