Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/306

 288 Collectanea.

cook admitted the justice of his claim and began to divide the meat into three portions.

" Why are you cutting that meat into three ? " asked the Touareg.

" Because there are three of us — you, I, and my brother."

" No, there are only two. Your brother is dead."

" No, he is only asleep."

" I tell you he is dead."

" He is not, you fool ; he is asleep." And they began to quarrel about it.

At last the cook, becoming enraged at the insults heaped upon him by the dead Touareg, snatched up his gun and fired point blank into him. The Touareg with a triumphant laugh sprang to his feet and, closely followed by the Arab, ran to his grave, where he immediately disappeared. The Arab, immensely pleased with himself for having got the better of a ghost, returned to the camp, stooped down and shook his brother to awaken him, but found to his horror that he was quite dead, having been killed by the shot which he had fired at his shadowy guest.

W. J. Harding King.

Stray Notes on Oxfordshire Folklore.

Compiled by Percy Manning, M.A., F.S.A.

The following notes, which were in part read at the meeting of March 26, 1902 (see p. 114), are largely based on the collections of my old friend Thomas James Carter, who was born at Baldon-on- the-Green, Oxon., on June 11, 1832. His parents moved in 1836 to St. Clement's, Oxford, where he has lived ever since. In early Ufe he worked for some years in the old St. Clement's brick- fields, now long since built over. Here he began in his spare moments to hunt for fossils, and by degrees he acquired a con- siderable practical knowledge of the subject. At length he was disabled by rheumatism from hard work, and took to the collec- tion of fossils for his living. For many years he ranged the country round Oxford, going from quarry to brickyard, until he attained a very intimate acquaintance with the geology of the