elics, not
forgetting the profane names of the days of the week, names of the
months, and all sorts of idle and silly practices which their tender
consciences took an exception to. This objection to solemnize marriage
in the merry month of May, however fit a season for courtship, is also
borrowed from the Roman pagans, which, had these fanatics been aware of
it, would have been an additional reason for their anathema against the
practice. The ancients have given us as a maxim, that it is only bad
women who marry in that month.[13]

[Footnote 13: "Malae nubent Maia."]

The custom of saying God bless you, when a person in company sneezes,
is, in like manner, derived from sternutation being considered as a
crisis of the plague at Athens, and the hope that, when it was attained
the patient had a chance of recovery.

But besides these, and many other customs which the various nations of
Europe received from the classical times, and which it is not our object
to investigate, they derived from thence a shoal of superstitious
beliefs, which, blended and mingled with those which they brought with
them out of their own country, fostered and formed the materials of a
demonological creed which has descended down almost to our own times.
Nixas, or Nicksa, a river or ocean god, worshipped on the shores of the
Baltic, seems to have taken uncontested possession of the attributes of
Neptune. Amid the twilight winters and overpowering tempests of these
gloomy regions, he had been not unnaturally chosen as the power most
adverse to man, and the supernatural character with which he was
invested has descended to our time under two different aspects. The Nixa
of the Germans is one of those fascinating and lovely fays whom the
ancients termed Naiads; and unless her pride is insulted or her jealousy
awakened by an inconstant lover, her temper is generally mild and her
actions beneficent. The Old Nick known in England is an equally genuine
descendant of the northern sea-god, and possesses a larger portion of
his powers and terrors The British sailor, who fears nothing else,
confesses his terror for this terrible being, and believes him the
author of almost all the various calamities to which the precarious life
of a seaman is so continually exposed.

The Bhar-guest, or Bhar-geist, by which name it is generally
acknowledged through various country parts of England, and particularly
in Yorkshire, also called a Dobie--a local spectre which hau