The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-01-11
DOOR LEGENDS.

have been associated with doorways
 gates, and thresholds. A modern tray
 eller in Italy describes the curious an
 cient porte de mortuccio (doors of the
 dead), which still exist in many of the
 chief houses at Perugia, side by side by
 the principal door of the house. These
 porte de mortuccio, tall, narrow, anc pointed at the top, just wide enough
 for a coffin to pass through" are now
 mostly disused, blocked up, and easily i overlooked by any but observant trav-
 ellers; but these small openings were
 originally made for the exclusive use oi l the dead, and are mementoes of SUI perstition handed down from Etruscar
 times, a belief that where death had | once passed out, death could the more
 easily pass in.'' Opened only on the oc-
 casion of a death in the household, the old Perugian porte de mortuccio was
 heedfully bolted and barred again after the corpse had been passed out through it, and no coffin was ever carried over the threshold of the ordinary house l door. Tn many places in Holland at the present day, the principal door of the mansion is only opened on the occasion of a funeral or a marriage.
 Blessing the threshold of a dewlling house was a common practice in the Middle Ages, and pious notices were frequently graven over the house doors. Perugia presents many examples of this kind of inscription: "Oro ut vivus, ct Dec vives," "Janu coeli'' Cover a church), "Pulchra januae ubi honesta- domus." Specimens of this kind of door inscription are found all over Europe. Gods providence Is mine inheritance" is written over a seventeenth century house at Chester; and over how many an English cottage do we still see "the horseshoe nailed, the threshold s guard" Inscriptions (often descriptive of the character of the house itself) are found over some doorways at Pompeii, and when Dante described the awful gateway of the Inferno" as bearing a motto ('All hope abandon, ye who enter here'D, he was probably recalling the contemporary custom of placing appro- priate inscription over doors and gate ways. The old houses at Spa formerly preserved mementoes of the various celebrities who had once occupied them Marguerite of Navarro, Peter. the
 
 of Parma, all once visited this bright little health resort) in the shape of the of the armorial bearings of the former illustrious visitors carved above the house door. The Canongate of Edin- burgh had formerly many specimens of similarly ancient house inscriptions. Herrick has sung of the superstitious rites practised at a wedding in connec- ton with the house doorway:
 ''Ye that be her (bride's) nearest kin
 Der the threshold force her in;
 But ot avert the worst
 Let her her fillets first
 Knit to the posts, this point
 Remembering-to anoint
 The sides, for 'tis charm
 Strong against future harm."
 Witches were credited with burying noXious ingredients under house threshold, and these rites at the door were supposed to avert an evil spell if such had been attempted. There are many legends of enchanted doorways. Lady Fanshawe, writing in the seven teenth century from the court of Ma drid (to which her husband was then ambassador, gives long account of such a door at Granada. "There is, at this place, an iron grate, fixed into the side of the hill, which Is rock. I laid my head to the keyhole, and hear sounds like the clashing of arms, but could not distinguish other shrill sounds heard with that. Tradition says that this door could never be opened since the Moors left; several persons have tried to wrench it open, but perlshed in the attempt. Regarding the truth of this I can only say that there is such door and that I have seen it." Probably this tradition was a legendary accretion to the true narrative of how the de- feated Moorish King Boabdil In resign ing his capital to the Spanish conquer ors, had made it his last request that the door by which he quilted the city might be walled up and never used again, request compiled with by Fer dinand and Isabela. Lady Fanshawe has another story regarding a doorway at Granada relating that one of the gates of the Alhambra was adorned, other carved ornaments, with the representation of Ia bunch of keys, cut in stone, with this motto, that until a hand should those keys, the C0TlSIldllS SnOulu never pOSSeSS LIllS This prophecy served to greatly animate the Moors," as Lady Fanshawe records; but adds, "See how true 1t is that there is a time for all things. It happened that, when the Moors were besieged in this place by Don Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, ! that the King, with an arrow shot out | of bow, cut that part of the stone i which held the keys (which was in the fashion of a chain), and so the keys | fell upon the carving of a hand be- heath. This strange occurrence happen ed but a day or two before the con- quest of Granada Many are the le- gends regarding enchanted doors in hillsdes which opened once, or on few and then could never be found again There is the story of the oomplaisant fairies, who upon a cer- tain invocation being made were wont to unclose q hitherto concealed gate | way, and pass out all manner of use full household utensils, only exactlng that these should be duly returned at he promised dates. But one day care-