,
wanting in all the folklore on the subject collected by others; it is the
manifest trace of Cainism, of sympathy with the first murder, and in its
heresy. This opens for us a far wider field of research and valuable
historical information than the rather trivial fact that Cain is simply
the Man in the Moon.

Merk in _Die Sitten und Gebrauche der Deutschen_, gives (p. 644), from
Wolf, a strange legend which is nearly allied to Moon worship by witches,
and the mirror:

"There was a man in Kortryk who was called Klare Mone (bright moon),
and he got his name from this. One night when sleeping on his
balcony he heard many women's voices sweetly singing. They held
goblets [there is some confusion here with _glaserne Pfannen_ or
glass panes in the roof from which the man looked; I infer that the
witches drank from "glass pans," _i.e._, metallic mirrors], and as
they drank they sang:

"'We are drinking the sweetest of earthly wine,
For we drink of the clear and bright moonshine.'

"But as the man approached them, 'with a club to beat or kill them,
all vanished.'"

"Which fable teaches," as the wise Flaxius notes, "what indeed this whole
book tends to show--that few people know or heed what witches ever really
were. Now, that this boor wished to slay the sorceresses with a club,
for drinking moonshine, is only what the whole world is doing to all who
have _different ideas from ours_ as to what constitutes enjoyment. So in
all history, under all creeds, even unto this day, people have been
clubbed, hung, tortured, and baked alive, or sent to Coventry for the
crime of drinking _moonshine_!"

And so this volume ends, oh reader mine!

"So the visions flee,
So the dreams depart;
And the sad reality,
Now must act its part."
_Ite_, _lector benevole_,
_Ite_, _missa est_.

* * * * *

_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
_Edinburgh and London_

Footnotes:

{3a} _Nel miglio salotto di recevimento_. This is all an accurate
picture of old Florentine customs.

{3b} _Necessita fa la vecchia trottare_. On which proverb Matteo
Villani comments as follows: "And thus he truly verified the saying of
Valerius Maximus, that 'the wants caused by human weakness are a common
bond of security,' all of which is briefly expressed in the French
proverb, 'Need makes the old wom