The Witch of the Porta alla Croce

"If any secret should sacred be,
Though it guarded the life of a family,
And any woman be there about,
She will die but what she will find it out;
And though it hurried her soul to well
That secret she must immediately tell."
--Sage Stuffing for Young Ducks. 

HERE are in Italy, as elsewhere, families to whom a fatality or tradition is attached. The following is a curious legend of the kind : 

LA FATTUCHIERA DELLA PORTA ALLA CROCE.
"There was a very old Florentine family which lived in a castle in the country. The elder or head of this family had always one room in which no one was ever allowed to enter. There he passed hours alone every day, and woe to any one who dared disturb him while there. And this had been the case for generations, and no one had ever found out what the secret was. This was, of course, a great vexation to the ladies of the family--perche la donna e sempre churiosa--women being always inquisitive.
"And most inquisitive of all was a niece of the old man, who had got it into her head that the secret was simply a great treasure which she might obtain. Therefore she resolved to consult with a certain witch, who would tell her what it was, and how she could enter the mysterious room. This sorceress lived hard by the Porta alla Croce, for there are always many witches in that quarter.
"The witch, who was a very large tall woman, made the niece go with her to an isolated small house, and thence along a path, the lady in advance. While so doing, the latter turned her head to look behind her, and at that instant heard the cry of a civetta or small owl. The witch exclaimed, 'My dear lady, what you wish for will hardly be granted ; I fear there is a great disaster awaiting you.'

 "Then they went into a field, and the fortune-teller produced a goblet of coloured glass, and called to the swallow, which is a bird of good omen, and to the small owl, which forebodes evil, and said, 'Whichever shall alight first on the edge of this cup will be a sign to you of success or failure,'
"But the first which came and sat upon the cup was the owl.

"Then the witch said, 'What there is in that room I cannot reveal, for it disturbs my soul far too much. But I know that the number of that room is thirteen, and you can infer for yourself what that portends ; and more I cannot tell you, save that you should be extremely careful and keep a cheerful heart -- otherwise there is great trouble awaiting you.'
"But the lady returned home in a great rage at her disappointment, and all the more resolved to enter the room. Then all the family finding this out, reproached her, and urged her not to be so distracted ; and she, being obstinate, only became the more determined ; for she was furious that she could not force an old man to reveal a secret which had been handed down for many generations, and which could only be confided to one, or to the eldest, when the old man should die.

"And at last her evil will or mania attained such command over her, that she resolved to kill all the family one by one, till the succession of the secret should come to her. And so, after boiling deadly herbs with care, she made a strong subtle poison. And by this means she put to death her parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and all the family, without remorse, so resolved was she to master the secret.

"The last to perish was her grandfather, and calling her to his bedside he said, 'We have all died by thy hand ; we who never did thee any harm ; and thou hast felt no remorse. This thou didst to gain a treasure, and bitterly wilt thou be disappointed. Thy punishment will begin when thou shalt learn what the thing was so long hidden ; truly there was sorrow enough therein, without the misery which thou hast added to it. That which thou wilt find in the chamber is a skull--the skull of our earliest ancestor, which must always be given to the care of the eldest descendant, and I now give it to thee. And this thou must do. Go every morning at seven o'clock into the room and close the windows. Then light four candles before the skull. In front of it there lies a great book in which is written the history of all our family, my life and thine; and see that thou do this with care, or woe be unto thee!'

"Therewith the old man died, and scarcely had he departed ere she called an old woman who was allied and devoted to the family, and in a rage told her all the secret. The old woman reproved her, saying that she would bring punishment on herself. But, without heeding this, the lady ran to the chamber, entered, and seeing the skull, gave it a kick and hurled it from the window, far below.

"But a minute after she heard a rattling sound, and looking at the window, there the skull was grinning at her. Again she threw it down, and again it returned, and was with her wherever she went; day after day, waking or sleeping, the skull was always before her eyes.
"At last fear came over her, and then horror, and she said to the old woman, 'Let us go to some place far, far away, and bury the skull. Perhaps it will rest in its grave.' The old woman tried to dissuade her, and they went to a lonely spot at a great distance, and there they dug long and deep.
"Dug till a great hole was made, and the lady standing on the edge dropped the skull into it. Then the hole spread into a great pit, flame rose from it--the edge crumbled away--the guilty woman fell into the fire, and the earth closed over it all, and there was no trace left of her.
"The skull returned to the castle and to its room ; people say it is there to this day. The old woman returned too, and being the last remote relation, entered into possession of the property."

There is perhaps not one well-educated person in society in England who has not had the opportunity to remark how very much any old family can succeed in being notorious if it can only once make it known that it has an hereditary secret. Novels will be written on it, every member of it will be pointed out everywhere, and people who do not know the name of a sovereign in Europe can tell you all about it and them. And the number is not small of those who consider themselves immensely greater because they have in some way mastered something which they are expected to keep concealed. I could almost believe that this " 'orrible tale" was composed as a satire on family secrets. But I believe that she who told it firmly believed it. Credo quia absurdum would not be well understood among humble folk in Italy.

"To this I may add," writes Flaxius, "that there is an English legend of a certain skull which always returned to a certain window in a tower. Apropos of which there is a poem called The Student and the Head in ' Hans Breitmann in Germany' (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1895), prefaced by a remark to the effect that the subject is so extensive as to deserve a book--instancing the head of the physician Douban in the 'Arabian Nights,' with that of Orpheus, which spoke to Cyrus, and that of the priest of Jupiter, and another described by Trallianus, and the marvellously preserved head of a saint in Olaf Tryggvason's Saga, and the Witch's Head of Rider Haggard, with many more, not to speak of the talking Teraphim heads, and Friar Bacon's bust. With which a thoroughly exhaustive list should include the caput mortuum of the alchemists
"'And the dead-heads of the Press,'"

The Imp in the Mirror

A Fable for Mary


ONCE upon a time there lived in Milan, but a few steps from the De Cristoforis Gallery, an elderly lady, the Countess X., who was very rich and very homely and found great pleasure in entertaining her friends; and since she had an excellent cook, her friends never failed her. One evening eleven guests were gathered together in her parlor: a young widow, an English lady, a judge of the Appellate Division, a portly general, a spruce young lieutenant, a longhaired composer, and a threadbare poet, all of them celebrities, and four young men of fashion, whose time was fully occupied in doing nothing at all.

The discussion having turned upon the eternal comparison between the vanity of men and the vanity of women, the majority were of the opinion that the vainer sex was the masculine. But when the hostess declared, by way of example, that there was not a man living, no matter how old or sedate, capable of passing before a mirror without giving at least one approving glance at his own seductive image, two of her distinguished guests, the judge and the portly general, protested that this was not so, and that masculine vanity revealed itself in other ways. Straightway, a short, shrill peal of laughter echoed through the room. Each of the guests thought that it was the widow who had laughed, while the widow thought that the one who had laughed was the other lady, the Englishwoman. As a matter of fact, the laughter had come from a little imp, one of the sort that are always lying in wait, to tempt people to tell lies and commit sins of vanity.
Thereupon the discussion was dropped, partly because midnight was just striking. The two ladies arose, and the hostess with great cordiality invited the entire company to dine with her on the morrow, at six o'clock.
The morrow chancing to be a joyous, balmy April day, the guests all kept their dinner engagement, the ladies arriving by carriage, the gentlemen on foot, and each by himself. The judge and the general resided in the Via Alessandro Mazzoni; of the others, one came from the Via del Monte, another from the Via San Andrea, another from the Borgo Spesso, another from the Borgo Nuovo.
 In short, the route of everyone lay through the De Cristoforis Gallery, and in spite of the fact that they all passed through there between five forty-five and six o'clock, chance willed it that none of them should encounter any of the others on his way. The De Cristoforis Gallery, you know, has two branches, forming a right angle, with a mirror fitted into the corner, which everyone must pass in turning from one branch into the other, opposite the Trenk beer hall. Behind this mirror the malicious little imp had installed himself, and lay in wait for the guests, in order to put into effect his diabolical little jest. There passed, first of all, the general; and he glanced at himself in the mirror, out of one corner of his eye, and discovered, with a violent start, an ink-stain upon his left cheek. It lacked but five minutes to six; there was no longer time to return home. The general hastened his steps, holding a handkerchief against his face, and no sooner was he within the vestibule of the countess than he asked the butler for a towel and a little water. The butler ushered him into a bedchamber and was in the act of pouring water into a basin, when again there came a ring at the front door. This time it was the judge who entered, holding a handkerchief over his left cheek.
"Quick, for goodness' sake! get me a towel and some water!"
The butler led him into another bedchamber and poured him out some water. Another ring. This time it was the lieutenant, who said, holding one hand over his face:
"I am very sorry, but I have a pair of gloves the color of which rubs off. Is there any water?"
The servant, marveling greatly, led him into a third bedchamber. The bell sounded for the fourth time. It proved to be the musician, who said brusquely:

"Some water! Show me into a private room."
"Excuse me, sir," replied the butler stiffly, "but there are already three gentlemen washing themselves in three different rooms, and there is not another one vacant excepting the countess' own bedchamber. With your permission, I shall bring the water and towel out here."
"Bring them," replied the composer. The butler went and returned with the water and a towel. The other scrubbed his face and then examined the towel, to see if it was soiled ; and since the towel still remained quite clean, he scrubbed and looked, scrubbed and looked, and scrubbed again, with desperate energy. Still another pull at the door-bell. It was the famous poet, who entered in time to see his friend still violently scrubbing, and he said, "Bravo! Splendid! Just what I need myself!"
"Is my face clean?" demanded the other, turning his cheek for inspection.
"Perfectly."

The composer, delighted, passed in, to greet the countess, and there found the other ladies and the general. Next the bell was rung three successive times, by three of the young men of fashion, each of whom desired water, towels, and soap besides. The butler, with a great effort, refrained from laughing, and knew not where to turn next; his supply of towels having given out, he must needs obtain some from the housekeeper, and he hurried off to find her. The housekeeper lost her temper; and meanwhile, the front door-bell rang again, and no one opened the door. The countess also rang for someone to open it. Presently she rang again, and still no one answered. At last she arose and went out herself, to call her servants. Meanwhile the fourth of the fashionable young men, who was waiting outside the entrance, absorbed in the thought of a stain upon his cheek, heard the voice of his hostess; and fearing that he should meet her in the vestibule, he moistened his handkerchief with his tongue, and making sure that there was no one to see him commit the impropriety, scrubbed his left cheek as energetically as all the others had done. At last all the guests were assembled in the parlor; and the countess, who meanwhile had gathered some of the facts from her butler, said with, a smile:
"My dear general, what have you been doing to your cheek, to make it so red?"
Immediately, all the other guests of the male sex, remembering that they also must have one red cheek, each instinctively raised a hand to his face. The countess laughed; then one of the young men laughed, then another, then a third; then followed a general burst of merriment. Now that the ice was broken, the countess laid the facts before the other two ladies, and all three wished to know the wherefore of this extraordinary epidemic.
"For my part," replied the poet, "I need only tell you that a friend of my childhood, the Duchess Y., who has been like a sister to me, must have been biting the point of her pencil to-day; for, just before I came here, I met her at the railway station, and she kissed me, precisely where the spot was, on my cheek."
"I, on the contrary," said the judge, "think that I must have been stained with the hair dye of the Cabinet Minister R. He was in Milan to-day, and sent for me on a matter of the greatest importance. We are old friends; and he, in his familiar way, pinched my cheek between his thumb and forefinger. Since he uses hair-dye, it is most likely that his fingers were soiled with it."
"As for me," said the lieutenant, quite forgetting the story that he had already told of the gloves that shed their color," I had promised an aquarelle to Sarah Bernhardt, and I worked upon it up to the last moment, because she was in a hurry for it. Of course I must have spattered my face with the India ink."
"I," said the composer in his turn, "was just setting forth, when an idea came to me for the prelude to my fourth act—a lightning flash, you know, really and truly. I may say so, because I claim no credit for it; good ideas come to me just like that, mysteriously. I ran back, to jot down half a dozen bars, and undoubtedly in the excitement of writing them out, I must have daubed my face."
"It was like this," said the general, who was past his sixtieth year, "I take a great deal of exercise every day. At five o'clock this morning, I pulled myself up to the chin a number of times on the flying rings. It is quite likely that one of those rings was not clean and that I rubbed my face against it."
"I really do not understand how such a thing could have happened to me," said one of the young men of fashion. "It was this very day, not half an hour ago, that I used Shetland soap, an English toilet novelty, imported from London expressly for me, and which probably no one else in Milan knows about."
"Oh, I say! I say!" exclaimed two of his companions, "Didn't I get a cake yesterday? Didn't I get one the day before?"
"In that case," replied the first speaker, "there must have been some impurity in the Shetland soap!"
"That couldn't be!" exclaimed the fourth, the one who had made his toilet outside the door, "because I also use Shetland soap, and I have no reason to believe that there is any stain on my face. Look and see!"
"But, gentlemen," interrupted the countess, "you have explained to me that it must have been the soap, it must have been the ink, it must have been this, it must have been that! But now I should very much like to hear how you all happened to discover those stains on your faces, and why you did not discover them until after you left home."
There followed a rather lengthy silence.
"A friend—" began the poet, with some embarrassment. But at this moment, the general made up his mind to explain frankly.
"Let us own up! For my part, countess, I confess that I looked at myself in the mirror, in the De Cristoforis Gallery!"
"Well, I never!"—"Oh, the deuce!"—"Why, by Jove!" were the involuntary exclamations of the composer, the lieutenant, and one of the young men of fashion. "Aha!" exclaimed the ladies in their turn, as the truth dawned upon them; and they compelled these three to confess that they also had looked at themselves in the mirror. Then the ladies and the four acknowledged culprits joined in a vociferous attack upon the others, to force them also to make confession; and everyone, excepting the poet, who obstinately adhered to his story of a friend, ended by owning up to that confounded mirror in the gallery.
"Say, rather, gentlemen, that blessed mirror!" observed the countess, with a laugh. "Because I understand that without it you would all have cut a pretty figure before me to-night!"
"Much too pretty!" rejoined the general, "as Frederico will bear witness."
Frederico, the butler, entered at that moment to announce dinner.
"Isn't it true, Frederico," the general asked him, "that I had my face badly smirched? And all the others, too, didn't we?"
"To tell the truth," replied Fre

derico, "as for their excellencies, the general, the judge, and the lieutenant, I cannot say, since they kept their faces covered. But as for the other gentlemen, I saw quite plainly that they had not a spot upon them!"
All the men protested, but the butler adhered to his statement, and let it be plainly seen that he suspected the same to be true of the general and the lieutenant.
"Why, how is this?" exclaimed the countess. "There is magic at work! We shall not go in to dinner until we have solved this mystery!"
"The planchette, countess!" said the English lady, who was a spiritualist, and had often made experiments, together with her hostess. "We must question the planchette!"
No sooner said than done. The little board was brought in, and straightway started in to spin around, scratching and squeaking as though shaking with laughter; and upon being questioned as to the when, the how, and the wherefore of those enigmatic stains, it gave answer in due form:

Behind each mirror I may dwell;

Those stains,—the sort of lies I tell.

But all the lies you've heard since then

Were uttered by these gentlemen.

The Imp of the Gallery.

The gentlemen scarcely waited for the planchette to finish, before they broke forth in a hilarious uproar. "Come to dinner! Come to dinner! Hurry up! Hurry up! Fiddlesticks! Stuff and nonsense! Come to dinner! Come to dinner!" And bearing off with them the ladies, who were convulsed with laughter at their expense, and chiefly at the poet, his duchess, and his friend, they flung themselves into the dining-room like a hurricane.

The Dead Man in the Oak-Tree

THERE was a parcel of young fellows once who were a nuisance to everybody in Rome, for they were always at some mischievous tricks when it was nothing worse. But there was one of them who was not altogether so bad as the rest. For one thing, there was one practice of devotion he had never forgotten from the days when his mother taught him, and that was, to say a De Profundis whenever he saw a dead body carried past to burial. But what concerned his companions, was the fear lest he should some day perhaps take it into his head to reform, and in that case it was not impossible he might be led to give information against them.
At last they agreed that the best thing they could do was to put him out of the way. Quietly as their conspiracy was conducted, he saw there was something plotting, and determined to be out of reach of their murderous intentions; so he got up early one morning, and rode out of Rome.
On, on, on,² he went till he had left Rome many miles behind, and then he saw hanging in an oak-tree the body of a man all in pieces, among the branches.
For a moment he was overcome with horror at the sight; but, nevertheless, he did not forget his good practice of saying a De Profundis.
No sooner had he completed the psalm, than one by one the pieces came down from the tree and put themselves together, till a dead man stood before him, all complete. Gladly would he have spurred his horse on and got away from the horrible sight, but he was riveted to the spot, and durst not move, or scarcely take breath. But worse was in store, for now the dreadful apparition took hold of his bridle.

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'Fear nothing, young man!' said the corpse, in a tone, which though meant to be kind, was so sepulchral that it thrilled the ear. 'Only change places with me for a little space; you get up in the oak-tree, and lend your horse to me.'
The youth mechanically got off his horse, and climbed up into the tree, while the mangled corpse got on to the horse, and rode away back towards Rome. He had not been gone five minutes when he heard four shots³ fired.
Looking from his elevation in the direction of the sound, he saw his four evil companions, who had just fired their pieces into the corpse which rode his horse, without making it sit a bit less erect than before. Then he saw them go stealthily up to the figure and look at it, and then run away, wild with terror,
As soon as they had turned their backs, the corpse turned the horse's head round, and trotted back to the oak-tree.
'Now, my son,' said the corpse, alighting from the horse, 'I have done you this good turn because you said a De Profundis for me; but such interpositions don't befall a man every day. Turn over a new leaf, before a worse thing happens.'
Having said this, the dead body, piece by piece, replaced itself amid the branches of the oak-tree, where it had hung before.
The young man got on his horse again, penitent and thoughtful, and rode to a friary,⁴ where, after spending an edifying life, he died a holy death.
¹ 'II Morto della Quercia.'
² 'Camminò, camminò, camminò'
³ 'Quattro arquebuzate.'
⁴ 'Frateria,' a popular word for a monastery.

The Apparition of Dante

 
"Musa profonda dei Toscani, il Dante,
II nobil cittadin, nostro Alighieri,
Alia filosofia ricco e brillante
Purgò il linguaggio e corredò i pensieri ;
E nell' opera sua fatto gigante
A Campaldino nei primi guerrieri ;
Lui il Purgatorio, Paradise e Inferno
Fenomeno terren, poeta eterno!"
-I.e Statue disotto gli Ufizi in Firemzc. Ottave
improvisate da Giuseppe Moroni detto Il
Nicchieri (Illiterato), Florence, 1892.

IT has been boldly asserted by writers who should know better, that there are no ghosts in Italy, possibly because the two only words in the language for such beings are the equivocal ones of spirito or spirit, and spettro or spectre-or specter, as the Websterians write it-which is of itself appalling as a terrific spell. But the truth is that there is no kind of spuk, goblin, elf, fairy, gnome, or ouphe known to all the North of Europe which was not at home in Italy since old Etruscan days, and ghosts, though they do not make themselves common, are by no means as rare as eclipses. For, as may be read in my "Etruscan Roman Legends," people who will look through a stone with a hole in it can behold no end of revenants, or returners, in any churchyard, and on fine nights the seer can see them swarming in the streets of Florence. Giotto is in the campanile as a gentle ghost with the fairy lamb, and Dante, ever benevolent, is all about town, as appears from the following, which was unexpectedly bestowed on me :

Lo SPIRITO DI DANTE ALIGHIERI.
"When any one is passionately fond of poetry, he should sit by night on the panchina¹ in the piazza or square of Santa Croce or in other places (i.e., those haunted by Dante), and having read his poetry, pronounce the following :

¹ Raised footway, high curbstone, causeway, bench.
"'Dante, che eri
La gran poeta,
Siei morto, ma vero,
II tuo spirito
E sempre rimasto,
Sempre per nostro
Nostro aiuto.
"'Ti chiamo, ti prego !
E ti scongiuro !
A voler aiutarmi.
Questa poesia
Voglio imparare ;
Di più ancora,
Non voglio soltanto
Imparar la a cantare,
Ma voglio imparare
Di mia testa
Foter le scrivere,
E cosi venire
Un bravo poeta !'
-----------------------------------------------
"'Thou Dante, who wert
Such a great poet,
Art dead, but thy spirit
Is truly yet with us,
Here and to aid us.
"'I call thee, I pray thee,
And I conjure thee !
Give me assistance !
I would learn perfectly
All of this poetry.
And yet, moreover,
I would not only
Learn it to sing it,
But I would learn too
How I may truly
From my head write it,
And become really
An excellent poet !'

"And then a form of a man will approach from around the statue (da canto), advancing gently-piano-piano-to the causeway, and will sit on it like any ordinary person, and begin to read the book, and the young man who has invoked the poet will not fail to obtain his wish. And the one who has come from the statue is no other indeed than Dante himself.
"And it is said that if in any public place of resort or inn (bettola) any poet sings the poems of Dante, he is always present among those who listen, appearing as a gentleman or poor man-secondo il locale-according to the place.

"Thus the spirit of Dante enters everywhere without being seen.
"If his poems be in the house of any person who takes no pleasure in them, the spirit of the poet torments him in his bed (in dreams) until the works are taken away."
There is a simplicity and directness in this tradition, as here told, which proves the faith of the narrator. Washington Irving found that the good people of East Cheap had become so familiar with Shakespearian comedy as to verily believe that Falstaff and Prince Hal and Dame Quickly had all lived, and still haunted the scenes of their former revels ; and in like manner the Florentine has followed the traditions of olden time so closely and lovingly, that all the magnates of the olden time live for him literally at the present day. This is in a great measure due to the fact that statues of all the celebrities of the past are in the most public places, and that there are many common traditions to the effect that all statues at certain times walk about or are animated.

One of the commonest halfpenny or soldo pamphlets to be found on the stand of all open-air dealers in ballads-as, for instance, in the Uffizzi-is a collection of poems on the statues around that building, which of itself indicates the interest in the past, and the knowledge of poets and artists possessed by the common people. For the poorest of them are not only familiar with the names, and more or less with the works, of Orcagna, Buonarotti, Dante, Giotto, Da Vinci, Raffaelle, Galileo, Machiavelli, and many more, but these by their counterfeit presentments have entered into their lives and live. Men who are so impressioned make but one bold step over the border into the fairyland of faith while the more cultured are discussing it.
I do not, with some writers, believe that a familiarity with a few names of men whose statues are always before them, and from whose works the town half lives, indicates an indescribably high culture or more refined nature in a man, but I think it is very natural for him to make legends on them. There are three other incantations given in another chapter, the object of which, like this to Dante, is to become a poet.
"From which we learn that in the fairy faith," writes Flaxius, with ever-ready pen, "that poets risen to spirits still inspire, even in person, neophytes to song.
"'Life is a state of action, and the store
Of all events is aggregated there
That variegate the eternal universe ;
Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom,
That leads to azure isles and beaming skies . . .
Therefore, O spirit, fearlessly bear on.'"

Cold words: Jack Frost, hoar and rime…

Cold words: Jack Frost, hoar and rime…

November 22, 2010 by squirrelbasket

This rather handsome young Jack Frost by ArmadaRyu obviously doesn't feel the cold...

We have now had a couple of light frosts this autumn, and there’s an “Arctic blast” on the way this week, so I thought I would look into the words frost, hoar and rime, which I always thought meant the same thing, but apparently not…

Frost on a car windscreen a few days ago...

According to my Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary (1980), frost means: a state of freezing; temperature at or below the freezing point of water. It comes from the Old English frost, forst – from freosan (to freeze). There are various sorts of frost (air, ground, radiation, fern, window, etc, about which more below).

Hoar frost on speedwell one morning a few days ago

The dictionary says hoary means white or greyish-white, especially with age or frost; it also used to mean mouldy. Hoar frost is defined as white frost, the white particles formed by the freezing of the dew. The word comes again from Old English, from har, meaning hoary.

Evernia prunastri is known as hoary lichen because of its pale grey colour and frosty shape - I took this picture in winter at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in Llanelli...

According to Wikipedia, hoar frost means the same as radiation frost and refers to the little white ice crystals, loosely deposited on the ground or on objects, that form from condensation on cold clear nights when heat losses into the open skies cause objects to become colder than the surrounding air.
Meanwhile rime is defined in the dictionary as frozen dew; meteorologically it is defined as ice deposited by freezing or supercooled fog. Yet again the word comes from the Old English, from hrim.
According to Wikipedia rime is a type of frost that happens quickly, often under conditions of heavily saturated air and windy conditions. Ships travelling through Arctic seas may accumulate rime on the rigging.

Severe rime on the NOAA ship Oscar Dyson...

While hoar frost is feathery, rime is generally smooth and icy and hard. In hoar frost the water vapour condenses slowly and directly into icy feathers, while rime usually goes through a liquid phase where the surface is wet by condensation before freezing.

A cool blue Jack Frost by Tavis Harts

Hard rime is a white ice that forms when the water droplets in fog freeze to the outer surfaces of objects. Hard rime is difficult to shake off; it has a comb-like appearance, unlike soft rime, which looks feathery or spiky, or clear ice, which looks homogeneous and transparent.
When I was a child in a cottage with no central heating, we often had the window frost that forms when a glass pane is exposed to very cold air on the outside and moderately moist air on the inside. If the pane is not a good insulator (such as a single pane), water vapour condenses on the glass forming wonderful patterns.

Fern frost on a car window a few days ago...

The glass surface influences the shape of crystals, so imperfections, scratches or dust can modify the way ice nucleates. If the indoor air is very humid, rather than moderately so, water first condenses in small droplets and then freezes into clear ice.
The leafy window frost is also called fern frost, for obvious reasons. I always think of this as the work of Jack Frost, a rather goblin-like character in British mythology, who goes around painting patterns of ice.
Wikipedia believes the legends are German in origin – not surprising when all the frost words seem to come from Old English, a Germanic language.

A mean-looking Jack Frost by HaitisWorst

The character’s name features in a couple of very different Hollywood movies as well as a cartoon and a manga animation.

Two Jack Frost movies - the feel-good version of 1998 and the horror version of 1996

Jack Frost also appeared in a stop-motion animation for TV in 1979 and a manga version by Go Jin Ho in 2009

There is a distinct difference between air frost and ground frost, terms you may have heard in weather reports.
Air frost happens when the temperature of air falls below the freezing point of water (0 °C, 32 °F). This is usually measured at a height of 1.2 m above the ground (about waist height).
When the temperature at ground level falls below 0 °C, it is called a ground frost. Interestingly, meteorological office weather stations have thermometers set over both grass and concrete, as the difference between temperature over the two can be great: on still, clear nights, with air of a low humidity content, there may be a difference of five degrees Celsius.
For this reason, you may hear the unofficial term grass frost in weather forecasts – this is to try to avoid panic by road, railway and airport operators but alert gardeners and growers to the risk of damage.
Sometimes, often in early autumn, the soil still keeps some of its summer warmth but there is still an air frost. Equally, in winter there can be a ground frost without an air frost, with air temperatures as high as 3°C or 4°C.
There are various degrees of frost, from mild (0°C to -3.5°C), to moderate (-.5°C to -6.6°C), to severe (-6.5°C to -11.5°C) and very severe (below -11.5°C).
Wind speed (wind-chill factor) has an effect, too. A strong wind can prevent a frost by slowing down the night-time cooling, but once the temperature has fallen below 0°C a strong wind can make it very penetrating and damaging.
Brrrr..! We’ve got it to come.
Finally, to warm the cockles, here’s a picture named after a jolly song by Jethro Tull. Listen to Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow here or read the lyrics here…

Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow by Crystal Fish

Jack Frost

According to a popular Scandinavian legend, Jack is an elf whom the Norse Vikings named Jokul Frosti, which means Icicle Frost. Believed to possess artistic virtuosity, Jack is said to sneak into towns late at night and make elegant frost designs on the windows and over the winter leaves and grass. Even though the legend of Jack Frost has not been associated with Christianity, yet he is seen to make special appearances in modern day secular Christmas entertainment programs, often as one of the members of Santa Claus's entourage. Jack Frost also appears quite frequently in literature, films, television, songs and video games, portraying a sinister mischief maker. It has also made several appearances in the modern day comic books as one of the Christmas protagonists. Jack Frost, though unrelated to Christmas, has so many characteristics that make him perfect for Christmas, that people have now wholeheartedly accepted him as a Yuletide figure. If you wish to explore more about this mythological character, keep reading.

Jack Frost Viking

In Norse Folklore
Jack Frost, an elf in Norse mythology, embodies crisp, cold, winter weather and was the son of the winds. He has been a popular figure in Anglo-Saxon and Norse winter customs. However, in the Viking lore, he is referred to as Jokul Frosti or the "icicle frost". It is believed that he is the one responsible for the frosty, fernlike crystal patterns on windows on cold mornings (window frost or fern frost). He is often portrayed as an invisible spirit whom nobody can touch or hear. Though basically friendly and jolly, Jack Frost, if provoked, can kill his victims by covering them with snow.

In Modern Literature
In 'The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus', written by L. Frank Baum's in 1902, Jack Frost was depicted as the son of the unnamed Frost King who draws pleasure from nipping "scores of noses and ears and toes". But though Santa Claus likes Jack, he considers him a "Jolly Rogue", hardly trusts him and asks Jack to spare the children. Jack says he will if he can resist the temptation. The character of Jack re-appears in one of the short stories of Baum, "Runaway Shadows". Here, he is depicted as the one, who owns the power to freeze shadows and splits them from their owners, making them their own living entities. Jack Frost also appears in a poem by Elizabeth Bishop titled, "First Death in Nova Scotia". In Rainbow Magic books by Daisy Meadows, Jack Frost has been portrayed as an antagonist who strives to freeze the Fairyland.