The weekly miner. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1878-1881, 1880-08-17
Charms Against Lightning.

Science, with all its confidence, has pro-
vided no safeguards against thunder-storms.
1t can warM, but it cannot protect. Cor
duclors may happily carry off the electric
current, but ley cannot secure us from dan
ger. The timid may be told emphatically to
stand in the middle of the room, to avoid
tre-places and brass ornaments, Or to roll
themselves up in feather beds or hearth-rugs,
but these precautions will DO of little avail
if houses, as at Manchester, tumble down
and bury all alike, the terrified and the bold.
in a common rum. There have been in all
ages popular supcrstitions having for their
object TO avert the hangers of thunder and
lightning. The Thraclan soldiers took up
their bows and arrows and tiled into the
clouds to drive away the storm, and it was
cOnslucled necessary 10 erect a cross on st.
Paul's steeple, filled WI Ii the relics of saints.
in order to free the city from all danger of
destructive tempests. Constant to the belief
that an evil spirit ragged in the storm, it was
a custom i'll old times, as we'll 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 dt the
Abbey Of st. German, in Paris, or chimed
in the tower Of st. Adeion, in Malmesbury
Abbey, the faithful assisted the bell ringers
with their prayers, and helped to stay the
storm. Many more homelY charms against
thunder aud lightning exist to this day in
some parts of England. The curious herb
known as the holse-leek, growing on the
housetop of rustic cottages, is supposedt to be as
valuable a prescrvatlve rs any scientific light
ming conductor OF approved pattern. Peas
ants, true to the faith of their forctathers,
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 got beyond the super
stition that allowed a dead man killed by a
storm to lie where lie fell, in order that the
spot might be fenced about and a sheep
promptly sacrificed Oh a rude altar; but it
would be strange if country folk did not still
place a cold iron bar on the beer barrels to
prevent the liquor from turning sour during
a thunderstorm and that swans eggs are
only Matched during a loud peal of thunder
is a belief yet cherished by those who watch
this bird for signs Of ~atmospherical electricity
as closely and confidently as they
listen for the scream of the pea
cock to betoken rain. Countless expert
mentS have been tried to ascertain the
scientific cause of 4 thunderstorm, and to
determine its proper meaning, from the time
when Franklin sent up his silk kite attached
to a dry hempen cord and narrowly ESCAPED
the danger Of drawing fire from the heavens,
until the days when electric researches were
checked by the death of Prof. Richmann, of
st. Petersburg, who drew out so much cleo
TRICKY from the thunder-cloud that he was
promptly killed on the spot. 1t is c~onsoIa-
tory to reflect, however, that the chances of
being personally injured by lightning are
very much less than the risks involved in a
thousand human inventions.