Home › Curiosities Respecting Customs › Modes of Salutation. the Maiden

Modes of Salutation. the Maiden

salutations consisted in the most ridiculous contortions. When two negro monarchs visit, they salute by snapping three times the middle finger. Barbarous nations frequently imprint on their salutations their character. When the inhabitants of Carmena (says Athenæus) would shew a peculiar mark of esteem, they breathed a vein, and presented for the beverage of their friend the blood as it issued. The Franks tore hair from their head, and presented it to the person whom they saluted. The slave cut his hair, and offered it to his master. The Chinese are singularly affected in their personal civilities: they even calculate the number of their reverences. The men move their hands in an affectionate manner, while they are joined together on their breast, and bow their head a little. If two persons meet after a long separation, they both fall on their knees and bend their faces to the earth, and this they repeat two or three times. They substitute artificial ceremonies for natural actions. Their expressions mean as little as their ceremonies. If a Chinese is asked how he finds himself in health? He answers, " Very well, thanks to your abundant felicity." If they would tell a man that he looks well, they say, "Prosperity is painted on your face;" or, "Your air announces your happiness." All these and many other answers are prescribed by the Chinese academy of compliments. There are determined the number of bows, the expressions to be employed, the genuflections, and the inclinations to be made to the right or left hand, the salutations of the master before the chair, where the stranger is to be seated, for he salutes it most profoundly, and wipes the dust away with the skirts of his robe. The lower class of people are equally nice in these punctilios; and ambassadors pass forty days in practising them before they can appear at court. A tribunal of ceremonies has been erected, and everv day very odd decrees are issued, to which the Chinese most religiously submit. The marks of honour are frequently arbitrary : to be seated, with us, is a mark of repose and familiarity; to stand up, that of respect. There are countries, however, in which princes will only be addressed by persons who are seated, and it is considered as a favour to be permitted to stand in their presence. This custom prevails in despotic countries: a despot cannot suffer, without disgust, the elevated figure of his subjects; he is pleased to bend their bodies with their genius; his presence must lay those who behold him prostrate on the earth; he desires no eagerness, no attention; he would only inspire terror.

We shall next give an account of THE MAIDEN. This term is applied to an ancient English custom, or, more properly, to an instrument for beheading criminals; of the use and form of which Mr. Pennant gives the following account: "It seems to have been confined to the limits of the forest of Hardwick, or the eighteen towns and hamlets within its precincts. The time when this custom took place is unknown; whether Earl Warren, lord of this forest, might have established it among the sanguinary laws then in use against the invaders of the hunting rights, or whether it might not take place after the woollen manufactures at Halifax began to gain strength, is uncertain. The last is very probable, for the wild country around the town was inhabited by a lawless set, whose depredations on the cloth-tenters might soon stifle the efforts of infant industry. For the protection of trade, and for the greater terror of offenders by speedy execution, this custom seems to be established, so as at last to receive the force of law, which was 'That if a felon be taken within the liberty of the forest of Hardwick, with goods stolen out, or within the said precincts, either handhaband, backberand, or confessioned, to the value of thirteen-pence-halfpenny, he shall, after three market days, or meeting days, within the town of Halifax, next after such his apprehension, and being condemned, be taken to the gibbet, and there have his head cut from his body.' The offender had always a fair trial; for as soon as he was taken, he was brought to the lord's bailiff, at Halifax : he was then exposed to the three markets, (which here were held thrice in a week,) placed in the stocks, with the goods stolen on his back, or, if the theft was of the cattle kind, they were placed by him; and this was done both to strike terror into others, and to produce new informations against him. The bailiff then summoned four freeholders of each town within the forest, to form a jury. The felon and prosecutors were brought face to face; and the goods, the cow, or horse, or whatsoever was stolen, produced. If he was found guilty, he was remanded to prison, had a week's time allowed for preparation, and then was conveyed to this spot, where his head was struck off with this machine. I should have premised, that if the criminal, either on apprehension, or in the way of execution, should escape out of the limits of the forest, (part being close to the town,) the bailiff had no further power over him, but if he should be caught within the precincts at any time after, he was immediately executed on his former sentence. "This privilege was very freely used during the reign of Elizabeth; the records before that time are lost. Twentyfive suffered in her reign, and at least twelve from 1623 to 1650; after which, I believe, the privilege was no more exerted. "This machine of leath is now destroyed; but I saw one of the same kind in a room under the parliament-house at