two lampes or cresset lightes--one on the toppe
of a maste, the other on the stemme or foreshippe." He adds that if the
first light appears in the stem or foreship and ascends upwards, it is a
sign of good luck; if "either lights begin at the topmast, bowsprit," or
foreship, and descends towards the sea, it is a sign of a tempest. In
taking, therefore, the latter position, Ariel had fulfilled the commands
of Prospero, and raised a storm.[130] Mr. Swainson, in his
"Weather-Lore" (1873, p. 193), quotes the following, which is to the
same purport:

"Last night I saw Saint Elmo's stars,
With their glittering lanterns all at play,
On the tops of the masts and the tips of the spars,
And I knew we should have foul weather that day."

[129] Ibid. p. 3.

[130] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 400.

Capell, in his "School of Shakespeare" (1779, iii. 7), has pointed out a
passage in Hakluyt's "Voyages" (1598, iii. 450), which strikingly
illustrates the speech of Ariel quoted above: "I do remember that in the
great and boysterous storme of this foule weather, in the night, there
came vpon the toppe of our maine yarde and maine maste, a certaine
little light, much like unto the light of a little candle, which the
Spaniards called the Cuerpo-Santo, and said it was St. Elmo, whom they
take to bee the aduocate of sailers.... This light continued aboord our
ship about three houres, flying from maste to maste, and from top to
top; and sometimes it would be in two or three places at once." This
meteor was by some supposed to be a spirit; and by others "an exhalation
of moyst vapours, that are ingendered by foul and tempestuous
weather."[131] Mr. Thoms, in his "Notelets on Shakespeare" (1865, p. 59),
says that, no doubt, Shakespeare had in mind the will-o'-the-wisp.[132]

[131] Purchas, "His Pilgrimes" (1625, pt. i. lib. iii. p. 133),
quoted by Mr. Aldis Wright in his "Notes to The Tempest," 1875,
p. 86.

[132] See Puck as Will-o'-the-Wisp; chapter on "Fairy-Lore."

_Fire-Drake_, which is jocularly used in "Henry VIII." (v. 4) for a
man with a red face, was one of the popular terms for the
will-o'-the-wisp,[133] and Burton, in his "Anatomy of Melancholy," says:
"Fiery spirits or devils are such as commonly work by fire-drakes, or
ignes fatui, which lead men often in flumina et praecipitia." In
Bullokar's "English Expositor" (1616), we have a quaint account of this
phenomenon: "