I
am sure I cannot tell what to make of them. I have seen several such
accounts in recent papers, but here is one published in the seventeenth
century, which is as striking as any of the more modern ones:
"Mr. Herbert Tones of Monmouth, when he was a little Boy, was used to eat
his Milk in a Garden in the Morning, and was no sooner there, but a large
Snake always came, and eat out of the Dish with him, and did so for a
considerable time, till one Morning, he striking the Snake on the Head,
it hissed at him. Upon which he told his Mother that the Baby (for so he
call'd it) cry'd Hiss at him. His Mother had it kill'd, which occasioned
him a great Fit of Sickness, and 'twas thought would have dy'd, but did
recover."
There was likewise one "William Writtle, condemned at Maidston Assizes
for a double murder, told a Minister that was with him after he was
condemned, that his mother told him, that when he was a Child, there
crept always to him a Snake, wherever she laid him. Sometimes she would
convey him up Stairs, and leave him never so little, she should be sure
to find a Snake in the Cradle with him, but never perceived it did him
any harm.
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