or his honourable conduct--fell under
an imprecation which he in no way deserved. In his official capacity,
it seems, he had given offence to a shepherd who had by some means
acquired considerable influence over the peasantry, under the
impression that he possessed some supernatural powers. This man, for
some offence, had been imprisoned by Sir John Arundell, and on his
release would constantly waylay the magistrate, always looking at him
with the same menacing eye, at the same time slowly muttering these
words:

"When upon the yellow sand,
Thou shalt die by human hand."

Notwithstanding Sir John Arundell's education and position, he was not
wholly free from the superstition of the period, and might have
thought, too, that this man intended to murder him. Hence he left his
home at Efford and retired to the wood-clad hills of Trevice, where he
lived for some years without the annoyance of meeting his old enemy.
But in the tenth year of Edward IV., Richard de Vere, Earl of Oxford,
seized St. Michael's Mount; on hearing of which news, Sir John
Arundell, then Sheriff of Cornwall--led an attack on St. Michael's
Mount, in the course of which he received his death wound in a
skirmish on the sands near Marazion. Although he had broken up his
home at Efford "to counteract the will of fate," the shepherd's
prophecy was accomplished; and tradition even says that, in his dying
moments, his old enemy appeared, singing in joyous tones:

"When upon the yellow sand,
Thou shalt die by human hand."

The misappropriation of property, in addition to causing many a family
complication, has occasionally been attended with a far more serious
result. There is a strange curse, for instance, in the family of Mar,
which can boast of great antiquity, there being, perhaps, no title in
Europe so ancient as that of the Earl of Mar. This curse has been
attributed by some to Thomas the Rhymer, by others to the Abbot of
Cambuskenneth, and by others to the Bard of the House at that epoch.
But, whoever its author, the curse was delivered prior to the
elevation of the Earl, in the year 1571, to be the Regent of Scotland,
and runs thus:

"Proud Chief of Mar, thou shalt be raised still higher, until thou
sittest in the place of the King. Thou shalt rule and destroy, and thy
work shall be after thy name, but thy work shall be the emblem of thy
house, and shall teach mankind that he who cruelly and haughtily
raiseth himself upon the rui