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National Geographic : 1894 Apr 25
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46 M. W. Harrington- Weather making. The association of weather making with the witches in Fin land is familiar. Steele, in his " Medieval Lore," from Bartholo mew Anglicus (about 1260), referring to the people in Finland, says: The men * * * occupy themselves with witchcraft, and so to men that sail by their coasts, and also to men that abide with them for default of wind; they prefer wind to sailing, and so they sell wind. They used to make a clue [skein] of thread, and they make divers knots to be knit therein, and then they command to draw out of the clue to three knots, more or less, as they will have the wind more soft or strong; and for their misbelief fiends move the air and arise strong tempests, or soft, as they draweth of the clue more or less knots; and sometimes they move the wind so strongly that the wretches that believe in such doings are drowned by the rightful doom of God. The elder bush is especially associated with weather making. The witches were thought to make bad weather by stirring water with branches of the elder. Still another remnant of ancient superstition is, according to Aubrey (1696), to the effect that " On Malvern hills, in Wor cestershire, and thereabouts, when they farm their corn and want wind they cry ' Youle! youle! youle!' to invite it, which word, no doubt, is a corruption of 1Eolus, the god of the winds " (Dr R. Fletcher). III. PHYSICAL METHODS. WEATHER MAKERS. What precedes relates to purely psychic methods of control ling the weather or the elements. The collection which it pre sents has been made in no spirit of disrespect, but solely in that of the collection and scientific comparison of facts. 1 have great respect for all sincere religious belief and great interest in folk lore remnants-fragments of what have once been great psychic structures-ruins about the tombs of the ancients. What fol lows is intensely fin-de-siecle and treats of the paradoxer in a well-developed stage. The paradoxer deserves a respect to be measured by the sufficiency of his information and the correct ness of his logic. He is a possible benefactor of the world, a potential great man. Galileo was a paradoxer-very unwel come to the Aristotelians of his time. Kepler was a rank para doxer to his contemporaries, and Newton was a paradoxer to the Cartesians of his day.
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