FOLK LORE.
Easter Eggs (No. 25. p. 397.).—The custom recorded by Brande as being in use in the North of England in his time, still continues in Richmondshire.
A Cure for Warts is practised with the utmost faith in East Sussex. The nails are cut, the cuttings carefully wrapped in paper, and placed in the hollow of a pollard ash, concealed from the birds; when the paper decays, the warts disappear. For this I can vouch: in my own case the paper did decay, and the warts did all disappear, and, of course, the effect was produced by the cause. Does the practice exist elsewhere?
Charm for Wounds.—Boys, in his History of Sandwich, gives, (p. 690.) the following from the Corporation Records, 1568: a woman examined touching her power to charm wounds who—
"Sayesth that she can charme for fyer and skalding in forme as oulde women do, sayeng 'Owt fyer in frost, in the name of the Father, the Sonne, and the Holly Ghost;' and she hath used when the skyn of children do cleve fast, to advise the mother to annoynt them with the mother's milk and oyle olyfe; and for skalding to take oyle olyfe only."
W. DURRANT COOPER.
Fifth Son.—What is the superstition relating to a fifth son? I should be glad of any illustrations of it. There certainly are instances in which the fifth son has been the most distinguished scion of the family.
W.S.G.
Cwn Wybir, or Cwn Annwn—Curlews (No. 19. p. 294).—The late ingenious and well-informed Mr. William Weston Young, then residing in Glamorgan, gave me the following exposition of these mysterious Dogs of the Sky, or Dogs of the Abyss, whose aërial cries at first perplexed as well as startled him. He was in the habit of traversing wild tracts of country, in his profession of land surveyor and often rode by night. One intensely dark night he was crossing a desolate range of hills, when he heard a most diabolical yelping and shrieking in the air, horrible enough in such a region and at black midnight. He was not, however, a superstitious man, and, being an observant naturalist, had paid great attention to the notes of birds, and the remarkable variations between the day and night notes of the same species. He suspected these strange unearthly sounds to be made by some gregarious birds on the wing; but the darkness was impenetrable, and he gazed upwards in vain. The noises, meanwhile, were precisely those which he had heard ascribed to the Cwn Wybir, and would have been truly appalling to a superstitious imagination. His quick ear at length caught the rush of pinions, and, in a short time, a large flight of curlews came sweeping down to the heather, so near his head, that some of their wings brushed his hat. They were no sooner settled, than the Cwn Wybir ceased to be heard. Mr. Young then recollected having noticed similar nocturnal cries from the curlew, but had never before encountered such a formidable flying legion of those birds, screaming in a great variety of keys, amidst mountain echoes.
ELIJAH WARING.