FOLK LORE.
St. Thomas's Day.—A Guernsey charm pour ve ki ke sera son amant—
"Into a golden pippin stick eighteen new pins, nine in the eye, and nine in the stem, tie round it the left garter, and place it under the pillow. Get into bed backwards, saying,
"Le jour de St. Thomas,
Le plus court, le plus bas,
Je prie Dieu journellement,
Qu'il me fasse voir, en dormant,
Celui qui sera mon amant;
Et le pays et la contrée
Où il fera sa demeurée,
Tel qu'il sera je l'aimerai,
Ainsi soit-il."
Viator.
NOV. 6. 1850.
Black Doll at Old Store-shops (Vol. i., p. 27.).—Is it not probable that the black doll was an image of the Virgin, sold at the Reformation with a lot of church vestments, and other "rags of Popery," as the Puritans called the surplice, and first hung up by some Puritan or Hebrew dealer.
Images of the black Virgin are not uncommon in Roman Catholic churches. Has the colour an Egyptian origin, or whence is it?
A. Holt White.
Gladwins, Harlow.
Snake Charming.—Two or three summers ago, I was told a curious story of snake charming by a lady of undoubted veracity, in whose neighbourhood (about a dozen miles from Totnes) the occurrence had taken place. Two coast-guard men in crossing a field fell in with a snake: one of them, an Irishman, threw his jacket over the animal, and immediately uttered or muttered a charm over it. On taking up the garment, after a few seconds had passed, the snake was dead.
When I heard this story, and understood that the operator was an Irishman, I bethought me of how Rosalind says, "I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat," and accounted satisfactorily for the fact that, "as touching snakes, there are no snakes in Ireland:" for, as the song voucheth, "the snakes committed suicide to save themselves from slaughter," i.e. they were charmed to death by St. Patrick.
I fear it would now be impossible to recover the charm made use of by the coast-guard man; but I will have inquiry made, and if I can obtain any further particulars, I will forward them to you.
J.M.B.
Mice as a Medicine (Vol. ii., pp. 397. 435.).—The remedy of the roast mouse recommended in The Pathway to Health (which I find is in the British Museum), is also prescribed in Most Excellent and Approved Remedies, 1652:—"Make it in powder," says the author, "and drink it off at one draught, and it will presently help you, especially if you use it three mornings together." The following is "an excellent remedy to stanch bleeding:"—
"Take a toad and dry him very well in the sun, then put him in a linen bag, and hang him with a string about the neck of the party that bleedeth, and let it hang so low that it may touch the breast on the left side near unto the heart; and this will certainly stay all manner of bleeding at the mouth, nose," &c.
Sage leaves, yarrow, and ale, are recommended for a "gnawing at the heart;" which I think should be "made a note of" for the benefit of poor poets and disappointed authors.
Wedsecnarf.
Mice as a Medicine (Vol. ii., pp. 397. 435.).—I was stopping about three years ago in the house of a gentleman whose cook had been in the service of a quondam Canon of Ch. Ch., who averred that she roasted mice to cure her master's children of the hooping cough. She said it had the effect of so doing.
Chas. Paslam.
"Many Nits, [nuts]
Many Pits."
A common saying hereabouts, meaning that if hazel-nuts, haws, hips, &c., are plentiful, many deaths will occur. But whether the deaths are to be occasioned by nut-devouring or by seasonal influence, I cannot ascertain. In many places, an abundant crop of hips and haws is supposed to betoken a severe winter.
Chas. Paslam.
Swans hatched during Thunder.—The fable of the singing of swans at death is well known; but I recently heard a bit of "folk lore" as to the birth of swans quite as poetical, and probably equally true. It is this: that swans are always hatched during a thunderstorm. I was told this by an old man in Hampshire, who had been connected with the care of swans all his life. He, however, knew nothing about their singing at death.
Is this opinion as to the birth of swans common? If so, probably some of your numerous correspondents will detail the form in which such belief is expressed.
Robert Rawlinson.
Snakes (Vol. ii., p. 164.).—Several years ago, in returning from an excursion from Clevedon, in Somerset, to Cadbury Camp, I saw a viper on the down, which I pointed out to the old woman in charge of the donkeys, who assailed it with a stout stick, and nearly killed it. I expressed surprise at her leaving it with some remains of life; but she said that, whatever she did to it, it would "live till sun-down, and as soon as the sun was set it would die." The same superstition prevails in Cornwall, and also in Devon.
H.G.T.
Pixies or Piskies.—At Chudleigh Rocks I was told, a few weeks ago, by the old man who acts as guide to the caves, of a recent instance of a man's being pixy-led. In going home, full of strong drink, across the hill above the cavern called the "Pixies' Hole," on a moonlit night, he heard sweet music, and was led into the whirling dance by the "good folk," who kept on spinning him without mercy, till he fell down "in a swoon."
On "coming to himself," he got up and found his way home, where he "took to his bed, and never left it again, but died a little while after," the victim (I suppose) of delirium tremens, or some such disorder, the incipient symptoms of which his haunted fancy turned into the sweet music in the night wind and the fairy revel on the heath. In the tale I have above given he persisted (said the old man), when the medical attendant who was called in inquired of him the symptoms of his illness. This occurrence happened, I understood, very recently, and was told to me in perfect good faith.
I have just been told of a man who several years ago lost his way on Whitchurch Down, near Tavistock. The farther he went the farther he had to go; but happily calling to mind the antidote "in such case made and provided," he turned his coat inside out, after which he had no difficulty in finding his way. "He was supposed," adds my informant, "to be pisky-led."
About ten miles from Launceston, on the Bodmin road (or at least in that direction) is a large piece of water called Dosmere (pronounced Dosmery) Pool. A tradition of the neighbourhood says that on the shores of this lonely mere the ghosts of bad men are ever employed in binding the sand "in bundles with beams of the same" (a local word meaning bands, in Devonshire called beans; as hay-beans, and in this neighbourhood hay-beams, for hay-bands). These ghosts, or some of them, were driven out (they say "horsewhipped out," at any rate exorcised in some sort) "by the parson" from Launceston.
H.G.T.
Launceston.
Straw Necklaces (Vol. i., p. 104).—Perhaps these straw necklaces were anciently worn to preserve their possessors against witchcraft; for, till the thirteenth century, straw was spread on the floors to defend a house from the same evil agencies. Cf. Le Grand d'Aussi Vie des Anciens Francs, tom. iii. pp. 132. 134; "Notes AND Queries" pp. 245. 294.
Janus Dousa.
Breaking Judas' Bones.—On Good Friday eve the children at Boppart, on the Rhine, in Germany, have the custom of making a most horrid noise with rattles. They call it breaking the bones of Judas. Cf. "Notes AND Queries," Vol. i., p. 357.
Janus Dousa.