"Ad viscum Druidæ: Druidæ clamare solebant,"
is frequently quoted from Ovid, sometimes, and that recently, specifying the Fasti. I need not tell you that it is not to be found there, and I wish to inquire if any of the numerous readers of your valuable publication can say where I can meet with it; if classical, it is another remarkable evidence of the endurance of popular customs to the present day. In the following quotation from Keyssler's Treatise de Visco, the Anklopferleinstag would be also a noisy demonstration dating from druidical times, at a period of the year not far removed from the beginning of November.
"In superiori Germaniæ parte, Marchionatu Onolsbacensi comprehensa, cujus inolæ plurimas Gentilismi reliquias retinent, regio ipsa multis Druidum vestigiis abundat, tempore adventus Christi, sive media Hyeme (am Anklopferleinstag), vulgus per vias et pagos currit malleisque pulsat fores et fenestras indesinenter clamans Gutheyl! Gutheyl! Quod quidem non salutem per Christi adventum partam indicat, quasi diceres: Gut Heyl; bona salus; multo minus fictitam Sanctam Günthildem, quam rustici illius tractus miris fabulis ac nugis celebrant, sed nomen ipsum visci est."
The present popular and only German name of the mistletoe, the parent of our English denomination, is Mistel, which is evidently only Meist-heyl (most heal, or healing), the superlative of the above Gut-heyl, and both wonderfully agreeing with the name which Pliny says it bore in his time, Omnia sanans.
William Bell, Ph.D.
FOLK LORE.
Folk Lore of South Northamptonshire.—No. 2.
Mice.—A sudden influx of mice into a house, hitherto free from their ravages, denotes approaching mortality among its inhabitants. A mouse running over a person is considered to be an infallible sign of death, as is also the squeaking of one behind the bed of an invalid, or the appearance or apparition of a white mouse running across the room. To meet with a shrew-mouse, in going a journey, is reckoned ominous of evil. The country people have an idea that the harvest-mouse is unable to cross a path which has been trod by man. Whenever they attempt, they are immediately, as my informant expressed it, "struck dead." This, they say, accounts for the numbers which on a summer's evening may be found lying dead on the verge of the field footpaths, without any external wound or apparent cause for their demise.