5. For hooping-cough, pass the child nine times over the back and under the belly of an ass. (This ceremony I once witnessed, but cannot vouch for its having had the desired effect.)
6. For warts, rub them with a cinder, and this tied up in paper and dropped where four roads meet, will transfer the warts to whoever opens the packet.
J. EASTWOOD.
Ecclesfield.
Lancashire Customs.
—The curfew is continued in many of the villages, and until the last ten or fifteen years it was usual at a Roman Catholic funeral to ring a merry peal on the bells as soon as the interment was over. The Roman Catholics seem now to have discontinued this practice.
Carol singing and hand-bell ringing prevail at Christmas, and troops of men and children calling themselves pace eggers, go about in Passion Week, and especially Good Friday, as mummers in the south of England do at Christmas. Large tallow candles may often be seen decorated with evergreens, hanging up in the houses of the poor at Christmas time.
P. P.
Od.
—One of the experiments by which the existence of this agency is tested, consists in attaching a horsehair to the first joint of the forefinger, and suspending to it a smooth gold ring. When the elbow is rested on the table, and the finger held in a horizontal position, the ring begins to oscillate in the plane of the direction of the finger; but if a female takes hold of the left hand of the person thus experimenting, the ring begins forthwith to oscillate in a plane at right angles to that of its former direction. I have never tried the experiment, for the simple reason that I have not been able to prevail upon any married lady of my acquaintance to lend me her wedding-ring for the purpose; and even if I had found it come true, I should still doubt whether the motion were not owing to the pulsations of the finger veins; but whatever be the cause, the fact is not new. My father recently told me, that in his boyhood he had often seen it tried as a charm. For this purpose it is essential, as may be supposed, that the ring be a wedding-ring, and of course the lady towards whom it oscillates is set down as the future spouse of the gentleman experimenting.