Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/219

 Corf'espondence. 203

top and bottom were connected by bow-shaped bars bending in- wards to a central point equidistant from the two circles. When the evergreens used to cover it had been secured to the frame- work various ornaments were added ; for instance, coloured tapers in tinsel holders, little gutta-percha negroes ^ and other dolls hanging from elastic strings, bags of sugar-plums, oranges, nuts, and apples bristling with oats. Each nut, I remember, had to be pierced, and a box-leaf was then deftly inserted into the hole till the box- twigs were laden with strange fruit. The apples used to look like miniature hedgehogs, they were so closely set with oaten spines. On the chimney-piece of the kitchen stood a row of coloured candles in sockets cut out of potatoes, and the walls were " bushed " in the usual way with evergreens.

It is many years since I saw a Christmas-bough, but a Kirton- in-Lindsey woman, whom I have just consulted, says that they are still made here, and that " the children are wild to buy things to put on them," but she never saw the apples stuck with oats. " Old Mrs. W., when she was younger, used to hang all the middle of her house-top (ceiling) with evergreens covered with ornaments, and we used to go to see it because it looked so beautiful."

Mabel Peacock.

[The nuts decorating the box-sprigs stuck into the apple in the " gift " exhibited by Miss Eyre (see reference above) were fixed exactly as described by Miss Peacock. — Ed.]

London Folk-Etymology.

In the Westminsfer Gazette for March 21st last, the following story was told. Two giantesses were each building a church on opposite sides of the Thames. Between them they could only muster one hammer, so when the Surrey giantess wished to drive a nail in, she called to her friend, " Put it nigh" and when the Middlesex giantess next dealt with a nail she shouted, " Send it full home." Thus the churches and then the districts came to be known as Fulham and Putney. I communicated with the writer

' The slavery-war was going on, or only just over, in America^