Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/224

 212 Miscellanea.

Devonshire Folklore, collected among the People near Exeter within the Last Five or Six Years. By Lady Rosalind Northcote.

There are many beliefs still held by the old people in Devon- shire that are thought but little of by the younger generation, and of these beliefs "overlooking" and "ill-wishing" and "pixy- leading" play the most prominent parts. One hears also of white witches, but generally, alas, in the past tense.

Goblindom.— ^flr^ d tK Lantern. — One can occasionally hear tales about Jack o' th' Lantern. He seems to be dreaded as a rule, but is sometimes affable, and even gracious. A young woman, of much daring, insisted, contrary to the wishes of her friends, in going alone past a marshy place said to be haunted by Jack o' th' Lantern, for he usually haunts marshes and boggy " bottoms " on the moors. Still more rashly, she used this invocation :

Jack o' the Lantern, Jan of the I.ub, Light me home and I'll give you a crub.

(Crub is a local name for crumb.) He did appear, and what is more, alarmed her so terribly that she was ill for long afterwards. More fortunate was another witness, a certain man who had always to go home through a copse, for he said that when he was obliged to come home in the dark Jack would light him all the way, adding that Jack had been especially attentive to him in his courting days. Jack would dance from side to side, but always took the right way, and he himself would call out "Thank'ee, Jack! Thank'ee Jack!" till he was brought to his own door. This man one night refused a lantern (pressed on him by the wife of the man who told me this), saying that Jack always lighted him, and that he never carried a lantern. It is supposed that he feared that he would have hurt Jack's feelings if he had done so.

Another man was walking along a road one night when he was overtaken by Jack, who skipped up to him, showing, he described, "a face like a brandy bottle." He told the wayfarer that he was now due in a town some miles distant, and was over the hill in a twinkling.

Pixies. — Tales of people being pixy-led, even almost up to the present day, abound. If there is a fog one may hear the pixies laughing, and, as is well known, if one is hopelessly lost the great remedy is to turn out a pocket or put on one's coat inside out.