Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/196

180 just the same thing." He said he did not know what the "Dog" or the "Lawrence" meant. The latter, he told me, was meant for the proper name.

I should explain that I was most careful to ask no leading questions and to mention no other form of the saying to him than the one which he had at first on the spur of the moment thought to be the right one (viz. "he has lost that Little White Dog"), so that it may be taken as certain that the form which he gave afterwards, "He's got the Little White Dog," is the correct one, and that it could not have been suggested by what I said. There seems no reason to doubt then that we have here a true parallel to the French examples given in the Golden Bough, although they are used at harvest time, whereas in the Oxfordshire case the use is more general.

3, Tackley Place, Oxford.

The following particulars were told me in the June of 1898, in Oxfordshire, by our landlady, who was then just over 70 years of age. When a little girl, there was in her village (Ducklington, near Witney) an old farmer who was, she thought, the last in the parish to observe the ceremony. On the last night of harvest, when the last load was to be carted, it was the custom to send down to the field a number of band-boxes containing women's dresses and a good deal of finery for the men and horses. Four young men then dressed themselves up, two to represent women, and they sat in couples on the four horses that drew the load. Some of the village children sat on the top of the load (my informant said that she and her sisters had often done so), and on reaching the house were treated to cakes, &c. The old farmer himself was bedridden, and lay on the ground floor of the house. On these occasions his bed was drawn up to the window, and the wagon stopped in front of it for the old man to see, but as the window was small they had to stop three times for him to see both pairs of horses and the wagon. After this I believe the men had a supper.