Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/141

 Rh "A child near two years old fell into the River Kennet and was drowned. After diligent search had been made in the river, but to no purpose, a twopenny loaf, with a quantity of quicksilver put into it, was set floating from the place where the child had fallen in, which steered its course down the river upwards of half a mile, before a great number of spectators, when the body hap- pening to lay on the contrary side of the river, and gradually sunk near the child, when both the child and loaf were immediately brought up, with grabbers ready for that purpose."

We cannot find this passage in the volumes hitherto published of the Gentleman's Magazine Library. The superstition is well known, but it is interesting to record so modern a case as that at Everdon.

.

A few days ago my sister was told by a Lincolnshire peasant woman that "a midnight child" has peculiar gifts: "it can see everything"—that is spirits and other supernatural beings. My sister has also lately been told that the old nurse of a young man who is a clever amateur actor attributes his powers to the fact that he was born at midnight.

It is a common belief that people born on the midnight which links together Christmas Eve and Christmas Day have wonderful gifts; but it is new to us that all midnight children are endowed beyond others.

.

.

In the Mayer Collection at Liverpool is a Latin Psalter of the latter part of the thirteenth century, the front and back fly-leaves of which are formed of portions of a manuscript of the Parcifal by Wolfram von Eschenbach. This manuscript of the Parcifal must have been cut up and destroyed by the monks in order to