Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/343

 Correspondence. 323

form of the same custom: perhaps also the practice of nailing owls, bats, &c., to the barn door ; magical properties were attri- buted to them. Can we also connect the weathercock with it ? In Kent the putting up of weathercocks seems to have been a festival custom. (Hone, Every Day Book, 188.)

We also find other animals as vanes ; near Kiel, horses are common ; they are also found in Holland ; dragons are found in Scandinavia and parts of England ; there is a fox at Reigate, a goose at Worms, a fish at Niedercleveez near Plon, at Boldre, at a place near Oswestry, &c. (MS. notes).

I should be exceedingly grateful for further information, accom- panied, if possible, by sketches, as to the species of animals thus used and the distribution of the custom I have mentioned.

May I suggest that an illustration of the horses' heads in Sussex would be of interest, together with German and, if possible, other examples for comparison. I send copies of the illustrations in Petersen, kindly made for me by Miss Braitmaier. [See plates n.-V. Ed.] It would hardly be difficult to obtain for the Society's Museum a representative collection of photographs or illustrations of gable heads and hackles, if not of the actual objects. I shall be glad to send examples from North Germany if the matter is thought worth taking up.

N. W. Thomas.

Kiel.

[The Society would be very grateful for any such examples. The matter is quite worth investigation. — E. S. H.]

Inscription on Roman Lamp.

I obtained yesterday here in Florence a very perfect and grace- ful Roman lamp of hard terra-cotta. From a label on it I learn that it was found at Castrum Novum (Giulianova), Abruzzo. On the bottom is the word vibule in distinct letters.

Am I mistaken in conjecturing that this may be an address, in the vocative, to Vibilia ? According to Arnobius, the only writer of antiquity who mentions this goddess, Vibilia was a deity of the streets and night. When a man lost his way he invoked her {Diet. Hist. Mitolog.). Arnobius says of her {Adv. Nationes, iv., 7), "Ab erroribus viarum Dea Vibilia liberat." Therefore her

Y 2