Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/322

 316 counties are still more stimulating to curiosity. For instance, amongst the hills in the far west of Shropshire I found three instances, and three only, of well-dressing, a custom claimed as “peculiar to” Derbyshire and North Staffordshire.

I do not attempt to form any theory about these boundaries. I only say that if they, and such as they, were mapped out over the whole of England, and compared with other evidence, they would almost certainly yield valuable historical and ethnological results. Especially, would this be the case where it is known from other evidence that there has been a definite settlement of one tribe or nation within the country occupied by another tribe or nation: as, for instance, the settlement of the Jutes in the Meon Valley in Hampshire, of the Normans and Flemings in “Little England beyond Wales”, and of the Dutchmen in the Fenland, in almost modern times.

It is comparatively easy to pick out the boundaries of a custom, but very difficult to discover those of a superstitious opinion. Some ideas, of course, are really general and visibly acted on, in a given district; but curious bits of superstition and “luck” may be carried about the country in so many ways, to so many unexpected places, in a manner that would be impossible to a popular custom. You, perhaps, come across some old woman who strongly objects to your bringing, it may be, snowdrops or catkins, or perhaps hawthorn, into her house, while her neighbours are not in the least offended by it. Now she may be the sole surviving depositary of a genuine piece of local folklore, or she may be following the instructions of a grandmother who came from the other end of England, and she may be quite unable to tell you how she acquired her views on the subject. The bits of superstitious observance in the matter of cuckoos, magpies, the new moon, and so on, in which my own family have grown up, have come to us, some from our Lancashire mother, some from our Staffordshire father and his family, some from our Shropshire neighbours; but we cannot trace every item to its