Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/364

 344 Miscellanea.

in vain. She then gave him three nuts, and told him to plant them on his road, and she told him if things went very wrong with him to whistle for the fawns. When he came to his country he found the gorgon had eaten everything — men, beasts, and trees. There was just one tree left, and under it was a hut. He went straight for the hut, and outside it he found the gorgon sitting. " Ah, what a nice morsel," said she ; " I have eaten everything here except a mouse that I can't catch. I will just go to the well and get water to boil you in ; and to let me know you are still here, keep on ringing this bell till I come back ; " and she put a bell- rope in his hand. The moment she had left, out of a hole crept the mouse, and said to him, " Give me the rope and run for your life." He ran for his sins, and the mouse went on ringing the bell until the gorgon came back, and then crept into its hole. When the gorgon found her prey gone, she started off to chase him, and was just at his heels when he reached the nut-trees, which had grown in the meantime from his nuts. He clambered up the first, and the gorgon began to eat the tree, and he sprang to the second, and so to the third ; and then he bethought him of the fawns, and whistled, and they came roaring, and gobbled up the gobbling gorgon. Then the mouse wanted to be rewarded for saving his life ; but he said, " No, I have saved yours." Then he went back and was married to the fairy, and I was not there tosee it, and don't you believe it.

Death and Burial Customs in Wiltshire. By Miss L. A. Law. Edited with notes by W. Crooke.

The following notes on folk-beliefs are a record of recollections in a remote Wiltshire village, of which the writer's father was Rector between thirty and forty years ago.

Death Omens.- — Numerous omens were believed to foretell death. When a tallow candle guttered over and the tallow formed the figure of a shroud, it was believed that a death would soon occur in the family. The same result follows from bringing into a house the caterpillar of the death's-head hawk-moth.

Rats and Mice Portents of Death. — Some people say that they are warned when a person who is ill is about to die by the inroad of rats and mice into the house, where they appear in great numbers.