HARRY LEROY TEMPLE.
FOLK LORE.
Death Omen by Bees.
—It is not wonderful that the remarkable instincts and intelligence of the honey-bee, its domesticity, and the strong affinity of its social habits to human institutions, should make it the object of many superstitious observances, and I think it probable that if enquiry be made of that class of people amongst whom such branches of folk-lore are most frequently found lingering, other prejudices respecting bees than those lately noticed by some of your correspondents might be discovered.
If the practice of making the bees acquainted with the mortuary events of the family ever prevailed in that part of Sussex from whence I write, I think it must be worn out, for I have not heard of it. But there is another superstition, also appertaining to mortality, which is very generally received, and which is probably only one of a series of such, and amongst which it is probable the practice before-mentioned might once be reckoned. Some years since the wife of a respectable cottager in my neighbourhood died in childbed. Calling on the widower soon after, I found that although deeply deploring a loss which left him several motherless children, he spoke calmly of the fatal termination of the poor woman's illness, as an inevitable and foregone conclusion. On being pressed for an explanation of these sentiments, I discovered that both him and his poor wife had been "warned" of the coming event by her going into the garden a fortnight before her confinement, and discovering that their bees, in the act of swarming, had made choice of a dead hedge stake for their settling-place. This is generally considered as an infallible sign of a death in the family, and in her situation it is no wonder that the poor woman should take the warning to herself; affording, too, another example of how a prediction may assist in working out its own fulfilment.
Seeing that another P-urveyor to your useful P-ages has assumed the same signature as myself, for the future permit me, for contradistinction, to be—
"J. P. P.," but not "CLERK OF THIS PARISH."
THE CAXTON COFFER.
Did Caxton ever print his name CAUSTON or CAWSTON, or is it ever found so spelt? He tells us, in the preface or prologue to his Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, "that I was born and learned mine English in Kent, in the Weald." The only locality in Kent which I can discover at all approximating in its name to Caxton, is Causton, a manor in the parish of Hadlow, in the Weald of Kent, held of the honor of Clare. This manor was, in the fourteenth century, possessed by the family of "De Causton;" how and when it passed from them I have been unable to ascertain with certainty, possibly not long before the birth of William Caxton. In 1436, Beatrice Bettenham entails it on the right heirs of her son, Thomas Towne, by which entail it came into the family of Watton of Addington Place, who owned it in 1446. The honor of Clare, and the forest, &c. of South Frith, closely adjoining Causton, descended through one of the co-heiresses of Gilbert de Clare to Richard Duke of York, father of the Duchess of Burgundy and Edward IV., whose widow, Cicely, continued in possession till her death. I name the owners of the manor of Causton, and the chief lords of whom it was held, as affording, perhaps, some clue to identification, should any of your correspondents be inclined to take up the inquiry. I need hardly add that the difference between the two names of Causton and Caxton is of little moment should other circumstances favour the chances that Causton in Hadlow may claim the honour of having given birth to our illustrious printer, or that he was descended from the owners of that manor.
L. B. L.