Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/102

 86 Collectanea.

an' straw, an' the Devil got the roots, which of course wasn't much good.

" Then they went to threshing. Jack was to have Bottoms this time, so he got the barn floor, and the Devil went on top ; so he put up a hurdle for the Devil to thresh on, and as he battered away Jack had all the corn on the floor.

" Then they made a bargain that Jack was to build a bridge over Trothy Weir, Grosmont, before the cock crowed in the morning, but Jack did not before the cock crowed, and there the stones lie to this day, many a ton.

" Jack did some wonderful things in his time. Why ! one day he jumped off" the Sugar Loaf Mountain on to the Skyrrid (and there's his heel-mark in the Skyrrid to this day). An' when he got there he began playing quoits, he pecked (threw) three stones as far as Trelleck, great, big ones, as tall as three men (and there they still stand in a field), and he threw another, but that didn't go quite far enough, and it lay on the Trelleck Road, just behind the five trees, till a little while ago, when it was moved so as the field might be ploughed ; and this stone, in memory of Jack, was always called the Pecked Stone.

" The Devil swore he'd have Jack's soul whether he were buried inside or outside the church ; but when Jack died he was buried just under the wall of Grosmont Church, with his head inside and his legs outside, and a great stone (which has since been moved) was put to mark the place. So the Devil never got him."

In Monmouthshire there is a curious custom called " New Year's Gifts." On New Year's Eve the village children bring round apples, with three sticks for legs, and surmounted by a sprig of box adorned with hazel-nuts, fastened on by slitting the nut at the top and inserting a leaf of the sprig. I have heard, too, that in the spring, when the crops are just beginning to sprout, the men go into the field, taking cider with them, light a a fire, and " say something " over the corn. On Good Friday it is right to bake a small loaf, which is to be kept till the same date next year ; it will not go bad. Some of this loaf ground up is a certain cure for various illnesses.

Mrs. Briton says that if you kill an adder, and before sundown hold it over a flame of fire, its four legs will come out. She has seen it !

Beatrix Albinia Wherry.