Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/530

524 child’s skin is too black the midwife makes an incision in the back of the neck, and draws blood. This is supposed to drain off the bad blood which causes the blackness. When the midwife makes the incision, they say that she

Menstruation.—A woman during her periods may not go to the well to draw water, nor cross a running stream, nor enter the sea. Her presence in a boat is said to cause storms.

Marriage.—The house is always the wife’s. If it is supposed that other suitors have bewitched the bride and bridegroom, so as to prevent the consummation of the marriage, a knife is placed under the pillow by the female relatives or friends of the bride, but without the knowledge of the bride and bridegroom. If bewitched, they are said to be tied,. The knife is supposed to cut the charm. Grand Nowe, Aberdeen.

A “Devil’s Bridge” Legend Exploded.—A correspondent writes: “It may interest many of your readers who have doubtless heard of the famous ‘Pont du Diable’ in what is now the department of the Pyrénées Orientales, but was formerly the province of Rousillon, to learn that the precise origin and exact date of its construction have at length been discovered. The popular legend about this bridge, which spans a mountain torrent called the Tech, near the small town of Céret, was that it had been built during one night by Satan and his myrmidoms, and the fact that the particulars as to its construction had never been found in any of the local archives of course gave additional strength to this legend. But the registrar of a neighbouring town, called Prats de Mollo, close to the Spanish frontier, has just unearthed a manuscript, dated 1321, which relates how the notables of that town ‘contributed ten golden crowns of Barcelona towards the building of the bridge at Céret upon condition that the inhabitants of Prats de Mollo were exempted from paying toll’. The toll-gate has long since been done away with, and this, no doubt, was how all trace as to the origin of the ‘Devil’s Bridge’ was lost.”—Pall Mall Gazette, Feb. 18, 1890.