parish seems destined to be the scene of
some great and glorious events.) May the blessing prove true!

We here close our extracts from Mrs. Lubbock's Norfolk sayings, and now
go back to superstitions of earlier date, that are so connected with
Kett's rebellion as to make them peculiarly interesting as matters of
history. During the wars of the Roses, predictions of wars and
rebellions, not unfrequently proclaiming hostility towards the privileged
classes, were very common. Both persons and places were often designated
by strange hieroglyphical symbols, frequently taken from heraldic badges
and bearings, or analogies extremely puzzling to explain. They are
alluded to in Shakespeare's "Henry the Fourth," among the incitements
that urged Hotspur to anger, and Owen Glendower to rebellion, and
recorded by Hall, who says in his Chrouicle, "that a certain writer
writeth that the Earl of March, the Lord Percy, and Owen Glendower, were
made believe, by a Welsh prophecier, that King Henry was the _moldewarpe_
(mole) _cursed of God's own mouth_, and that they three were the dragon,
the lion, and the wolf which should divide the realm between them." This
prophecy was doubtless identical with that published in 1652, under the
title of "Strange Prophecies of Merlin," where it is said, "Then shall
the proudest prince in all Christendom go through Shropham Dale to Lopham
Ward, where the White Lion shall meet with him, and fight in a field
under Ives Minster, at South Lopham, where the prince aforesaid shall be
slain under the minster wall, _to the great grief of the priests all_;
then there shall come out of Denmark a Duke, and he shall bring with him
the King of Denmark and sixteen great lords in his company, by whose
consent he shall be crowned king in a town of Northumberland, and he
shall reign three months and odd days. They shall land at _Waborne
Stone_; they shall be met by the Red Deere, the Heath Cock, the Hound,
and the Harrow: between _Waborne_ and _Branksbrim_, a forest and a church
gate, there shall be fought so mortal a battle, that from Branksbrim to
Cromer Bridge it shall run blood; then shall the King of Denmark be
slain, and all the perilous fishes in his company. Then shall the duke
come forth manfully to Clare Hall, where the _bare_ and the _headlesse
men_ shall meet him and slay all his lords, and take him prisoner, and
send him to _Blanchflower_, and chase his men to the sea, where twenty
thousand of them