PORTENTS OF THE END.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 245, 26 January 1917, Page 2 (Supplement)

PORTENTS OF THE END.

STRANGE BELIEFS »N XORMANBY

KING ARTHUR IX THE DAWN CLOUDS.

Signs and portents are accumulating that the war is nearing its end —for those who believe in signs and portents, *ays Mr. Herbert Corey, in a remarkable Park despatch to the Montreal "Star." The little old man is dancing again in Normandy. The Black Dog howls nightly through the Brittany lanes. The clock of Nay lujs fallen.

The Red Bateau with its ghostly company lies off the Seven Isfes. Only King Arthur refuses to bring comfort to his stricken people. He rides at the point of day in Fiuisterre. his chin lowered to his breast, at the head of a vast am! silent army.

"The struggle will still be dour," the peasants say. "The king grieves." One hears these storks of unearthly visitants a little here and a little there. They do not rest upon any tangih'.e foundation. A story originates no one knows how or where, and spreads like fog across marshy land.

GOLDEN HOPE. It may be denied a thousand times. Tho men of the Seven Isles in Brittany declare they know nothing of the Red Bateau, but throughout Brittany it is believed. Not even tho old women who have seen King Arthur ride, and yet all tlfa women of Finisterre believe in the riding. Perhaps the explanation lies in the belief all France holds tliat victory is not far away. Frail humanity needs an exterior prop for such a golden hope. The little old man is the most picturesque of these messengers. He wears a long white beard and is stooped and leans on ai staff. His habit is to enter a farm on so:no distant Norman hill and dance from room to room. Each person he meets joins with him in his dance. Jigging, whirling, tossing their arms in air, leaping furiously, they follow him as he <ioes.

Thu dying riso from their beds to dance with him, and old men and women prance out of the chimney corners and babies leave their oribs. He dances through the fields, and the cows find horses dance after him. Tho chickens danco and the pigs and the peasants rush out from their roadside homes to follow in his weird train.

They dance on until he crosses running water. Then ho disappears, and the men and women wake from their dLmcing trance and put their hands to their foreheads and go home silently. "Three months before the end of a war the dancing man appears," one is told.

THE THIRD FALL. So it is with the clock of Nay. Three months before tho Crimean war ended the clock of this little village of Gascony fell from its tower. Three months before peace was signed in the war of 1870 it fell again. The other day it once more crashed to earth. It is easy to understand that the news spread everywhere. Even those who do not believe in signs seemed to place some credence in the clock of Nay. Even when the cure of Nay entered a eategojritial denial it hardly impeded the spread of tho story. To-day the cure's denial has not caught .up with the clock. Ten persons will tell tho story, hut not one will mention the denial. Brittany lias suffered by the war, but then Brittany is used to suffering. The men of her little villages go to war as they might go to the Newfoundland fishing. "The one is no more dangerous than the other,' they have said, "and in war one's body may find burial."' It is an article in the simple Breton faith that the body must lie in holy ground if the soul i- to have perfect rest. The Black Dog brings comfort to the Breton coasts. Ihe Bretons have known him for centuries, and peace has never failed to follow him. "Just at dawn one hears him." wo aro told, "always before a house from which someone has gone out to die. Often lie brings the first news of that sacrifice, but those who hoar him are not saddened. They rarely tell the story, but we who know them see that in some strange way they have been sustained and comforted." It is off the Breton coasts, too, that the Red Bateau is seen. Tower sided, round-bowed, massive, with small sails piled on clumsy niasts, it looks like no boat that hag plied the waters since the Fljing Dutchman got his first commission. Odd figures stump to and fro on its narrow decks and lean silently over its high bulwarks to watch the frightened fishermen. It has not been seen since its appearance forotold the coming end of the war of one- hundred years.

RET LBN TO THE WATERS

"We have never seen it,'' tho fishermen ot' the Seven Isles toLd Charles Le Goffic, who interested himself in this story of a phantom ship. "We know no on> who has seen it." Bet the story is none the worse for that. It is told 111 the Breton quarter of Pari- and in the camps where the Breton marines hold back the German in Flanders and in the au-berges tha4 line the Marseilles quais. Even the fishermen of the Seven l.sles do not deny it. "Who knows.' say these Breton mystics —and every Breton is a. my-ti< . "It may be." And each makes the holy sign up:in his breast. Then there is the fountain of Gonesse, at Seine-et-Oise, not m-ny kilometres from Paris. Jeanne d' Arc rode her white horse up to old stone trough once in that golden summer that ended so gloriously for Icr in Rouen's market place. Hie fountain ilt i.nl alter th.it day. The stone trough filled with du-t was forgotten. Three months Imfore peace came, in te~l. the- -water liv.\! again. Then the water failed, n it is again purling through t!i<- old spout. Thos© who knew of this hrmlv that peace is to come soon. "Has the water really com'* f,a< k ' ' asked the man who told the -t'e v and had just come back from OoT-iv. "L do not know," naid ho "i <lar *d not go and see." (hie might codeet s"ore- of - pretty and inspiring legends. .>! that. I have heard only the one oi Km if Arthur M-ems to bring no romterV At dawn one can see in the ■. 1o• <f!- that rise over the It ill-? r 'l hint '.lie colos-al figure oi a e-anifn", I in mail, riding a horse that - n ste'l. Ho marches .Jowly on, his le -i I h.e.v d ns though in meditation <e m -inew. B-hind hini eoiin*> i e-.-it c -mp'uy. silent-, grave, tie- bend> '-o•!. !'o''<-»-s par iug soberly. " ft is King Artli•:' ->v !:<'<• "hi folk of Kill ist-ei le. t<: wlena t . king is jilnifot a living fignre * ' He rides in sorrow. The v. l " ;v,I! o - long.