Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/127

Rh the popular opinion that any one born with a caul ought to be fortunate, Mr. Moss can tell his readers that Sir John Offley, one of the ancestors of the Lords Crewe, left the caul in which he was born to his heirs male, strictly enjoining that it should never be concealed. Item, I will and devise one Jewell done all in Gold and Enamelled wherein there is a Caul that covered my face and shoulders when I first came into the world to my own right Heirs Males for ever, and so from Heir to Heir so long as it shall please God in goodness to continue any Heir male of my name, to be never concealed or sold by any of them.' The heirs male have failed, but the line exists in the Earl of Crewe, and so long as that jewelled caul is cherished as a precious heirloom the luck shall never leave the Crewes."

On page 6 is given a fresh instance of the belief that a man's health may be gravely affected because his wife is expecting a child. And in the chapter on burials are some valuable additions to the folklore connected with the idea that the luck departs from certain houses when the skulls which have been preserved in them from generation to generation are removed. "There is at Wardley Hall, near Manchester, a skull which raises storms if it be removed from its time-honoured niche in the house, and this can be testified to any time by several business-men of my acquaintance who have tested the matter. This skull is of Father Ambrose, O.S.B., a Romish priest who suffered martyrdom He was one of the Barlows of Barlow Hall He was baptised at Didsbury Church, November 30, 1585."

Mr. Moss also mentions two instances of burying horses with their owners; and when writing of family legends he describes the ancient custom of "blazing" the wheat on "blaze night," that is on January the 6th, Old Christmas Day. The object with which men and lads ran all over the wheat with lighted torches of straw, was to scare witches and other harmful things from the young corn and to ensure good crops for the coming harvest. This practice was observed at Standon Hall not long since, as was the habit of hanging a "picked" calf in chains, "that the cows might look on it and the plague might be stayed, so that the cows should not prematurely cast their calves," another picked calf being buried at the threshold of the shippon for the cows to walk over.

It is an error to imagine, as Mr. Moss seems to do, that there