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.