Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/439

 Collectanea. 419

Two girls were walking together one night. One of them counted the stars, and was struck dead instantly. The other, who did not count them, got home safely.

Two men were going through a field of wheat in spring. One said to the other, " This is a fine field of wheat." The other said, " Yes, if God Almighty ull let it bide." And in the harvest time the field of wheat was still standing in the same state as on that day in spring.

A man was throwing ashes in a field when some of them were blown into his eyes. He cursed with anger, and was struck dead instantly. They could not move him from the spot, even with horses, so he had to be bricked over where he lay.

A man called Hawkins used to say that there was no Heaven, or Hell, or Devil, but that only your conscience made them. When he was dying he changed his mind, and kept on crying out that his room was full of devils. He could not die until they had fetched a sheepskin and wrapped him in it.

A girl was combing her hair one day and it was tangled. She cursed the hair, and Him that made it, and she was struck dead instantly. When they went to bury her the cofifin seemed extra- ordinarily light. They opened it to see the reason, and found it was full of smoke.

Old Matthews has done every kind of work in his day, every kind of agricultural work that is to say. He talks proudly of his sowing capacities. "They don't know how to sow nowadays," he says, " certainly not with small grain ; the larger is easier to manage." He could sow a field of ten acres with a gallon of " turmut " seed, and this by the initiated appears to have been considered a tremendous feat. He has only had a fortnight's schooling all his life, but he has a natural shrewdness and intelli- gence which has been brightened perhaps by travel, for when he was younger he would go to London occasionally to stay with a married daughter. He has been to the National Gallery, his son-in-law being one of the officials of the place. " There wur some pictures there," was his comment upon the subject. One of the experiences of his life is an unusual and particularly in- teresting one. When he was a very small child he was an inha- bitant of the Fleet Prison. He cannot remember it himself, but has heard all about it from his father, and will give you some interesting details. The father, who was really a Berkshire man,

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