Page:Cornish feasts and folk-lore.djvu/179

 Charms, etc. 167 marrow-bones, &c. Any great noise in this part of the county is described as being "a reg'lar shallal." In olden times (in fact the custom is not quite discontinued at the present day, for I heard a whisper of one having taken place in a small fishing- village two years ago) married people accused of immorality were in Cornwall punished by a "riding." I will give the description of one by Mr. T. Q. Couch. "A cart was got, donkeys were harnessed in, and a pair per- sonating the guilty or suspected were driven through the streets, attended by a train of men and boys. At Polperro (East Cornwall) the attendants acted as trumpeters ; the bullocks' horns used by the fishermen at sea for fog or night signals were always available for the purpose. The mummers were very cautious, by careful disguise in dress or voice, and avoiding of anything directly libellous in their rather ribald dialogue, to keep themselves out of the clutches of the law. I remember one riding when an old rusty cannon of the smuggling period was waked up from its long quiet for service for the occasion, and bursting, led to the mutilation of several and the death of one." On the borders of Devon and in that county this ceremony was known as a " mock-hunt." A lock of hair hanging down over the forehead is in Cornwall called "a widow's lock;" (and children are still here told when it falls down "to shed their hair back out of their eyes.") A foolish warning says, " Go thro' a gate when there's a stile hard by. You'll be a widow before you die." The sudden appearance of rats or mice in Cornish houses is said to be a certain forerunner of sickness and death. Many curious tales are told in confirmation of this superstition ; one I particularly remember was in connection with a young man who was killed on the West Cornwall Railway. After the accident, they vanished as quickly as they came. It is also considered to be very unlucky for a bird to perch on the window-sill of a sick person's room, farewell then to all chances of recovery ; and strange birds coming into a house (especially a robin through the