Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/292

254 I was attending the burial of a well-known parishioner who died at the age of eighty-eight last month. On arriving at the house I was asked to go upstairs to say a prayer in the presence of the corpse. The room upstairs was full of guests, and also the landing. The body lay in the centre of the room, the flap of the coffin-lid turned back, and the face left visible. As each guest entered the room, he or she went up to the body, and bending over it placed the thumb against the left temple, holding it so for a moment, and then retiring. Whether anything was said or not I could not tell. I was told afterwards that the ceremony was supposed to protect those who observed it from dreaming of the deceased, or it may be of the corpse.

Greenside Vicarage, Ryton, R.S.O., Newcastle-on-Tyne. January 13th, 1899.

A superstition in connection with the dead was told me some four years ago. My informant was a lady engaged in the work of a deaconess in a parish in South London. Being asked into a house to look at a dead body, she entered, and was on the point of leaving the room, when the woman who had conducted her exclaimed that she would have bad luck if she did not touch the dead; nor was she contented until the lady had laid her hand on the brow of the corpse. This took place four or five years ago.

The woman was a middle-aged person, and if not a Londoner by birth, had at least lived in London during many years.

Rose Cottage, Seaton, Devon.