Page:Cornish feasts and folk-lore.djvu/172

 i6o Charms, etc. Rev. S. Rundle says, "It is unlucky to rock an empty cradle, as the child will die." — Cornubiana. The jingles which follow are often repeated by Cornish nurse- maids with appropriate actions to amuse their little charges. First, touching each part of the face as mentioned with the forefinger, " Brow brender,* Eye winker, Nose dropper. Mouth eater. Chin chopper. Tickle-tickle." Second — " Tap a tap shoe,+ that would I do. If I had but a little more leather. We'll sit in the sun till the leather doth come, Then we'll tap them both together." Here the two little feet are struck lightly one against the other. Several letters have lately appeared in the Western Morning News, giving different versions of the old rhymes — " Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Pray bless the bed that I ' lay ' on. Four corners to my bed. Four angels there are spread. Two ' to ' foot and two ' to ' head. And six will carry me when I'm dead." Although attributed by the correspondents to Cornwall, I have always understood that they were known all over England. Children with rickets were taken by their parents on the three first Sundays in May to be dipped at sunrise in one of the numerous Cornish holy wells, and then put to sleep in the sun, with six- pence under their heads. Small pieces torn from their clothes were left on the bushes to propitiate the pixies. For the same disease they were passed nine times through a M6n-an-tol (holed stone). A man stood on one side, and a woman on the other, of the stone. The child was passed with the sun from east to west, and from right to left ; a boy from the woman to the man, a girl + Tap a shoe, to sole.
 * Brend, to knit the brows.