FOLK LORE.

Unlucky to sell eggs after Sunset.—The following paragraph is extracted from the Stamford Mercury of October 29, 1852:

"There exists a species of superstition in north Nottinghamshire against letting eggs go out of a house after sunset. The other day a person in want of some eggs called at a farm-house in East Markham, and inquired of the good woman of the house whether she had any eggs to sell, to which she replied that she had a few scores to dispose of. 'Then I'll take them home with me in the cart,' was his answer; to which she somewhat indignantly replied, 'That you'll not; don't you know the sun has gone down? You are welcome to the eggs at a proper hour of the day; but I would not let them go out of the house after the sun is set on any consideration whatever!'"

Draufield.

Old Song.—

My father gave me an acre of land,

Sing ivy, sing ivy.

My father gave me an acre of land,

Sing green bush, holly, and ivy.

I plough'd it with a ram's horn,

Sing ivy, &c.

I harrow'd it with a bramble,

Sing ivy, &c.

I sow'd it with a peppercorn,

Sing ivy, &c.

I reap'd it with my penknife,

Sing ivy, &c.

I carried it to the mill upon the cat's back,

Sing ivy, &c.

Then follows some more which I forget, but I think it ends thus:

I made a cake for all the king's men,

Sing ivy, sing ivy.

I made a cake for all the king's men,

Sing green bush, holly, and ivy.

Nursery Tale.— I saddled my sow with a sieve full of buttermilk, put my foot into the stirrup, and leaped nine miles beyond the moon into the land of temperance, where there was nothing but hammers and hatchets and candlesticks, and there lay bleeding Old Noles. I let him lie, and sent for Old Hippernoles, and asked him if he could grind green steel nine times finer than wheat flour. He said he could not. Gregory's wife was up in the pear-tree gathering nine corns of buttered peas to pay Saint James' rent. Saint James was in the meadow mowing oat cakes; he heard a noise, hung his scythe at his heels, stumbled at the battledore, tumbled over the barn-door ridge, and broke his shins against a bag of moonshine that stood behind the stairsfoot door, and if that isn't true you know as well as I.

Legend of Change.—In one of the Magazines for November, a legend, stated to be of oriental origin, is given, in which an immortal, visiting at distant intervals the same spot, finds it occupied by a city, an ocean, a forest, and a city again: the mortals whom he found there, on each occasion, believing that the present state had existed for ever. I have seen in the newspapers, at different times, a poem (or I rather think two poems) founded on this legend; and I should like to know the author or authors, and whether it, or either of them, is to be found in any collection of poems.

D. X.