Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/233

 Collectanea. 209

It is not good to burn two lights on one table, or some one in the house will die.

Never take an old broom from one house to another, for ill luck will attend you if you do so.

If any one steals an egg he will keep on stealing until he dies.

Never cut down a silk cotton tree except you throw a quantity of rum and rice around the root, otherwise the duppies who live in the trunk will injure you.

Do not spit or throw water through a window at night, for if you do, and happen to wet a duppy, it will box you.

Do not look through a window or crevice at a dead body, or it will be angry and hurt you.

If you are making a shroud do not bite the thread with your teeth, or they will drop out.

If you go to a wake, when leaving do not bid any one good- bye, or the duppy will follow you.

If you are perspiring do not wipe it off with your hand, or you will wipe away your luck.

Never comb your hair at night, or you will lose your friends.

B.

III.

The following collection of signs and omens are obtained only from Kingston, and that also from only a part of Kingston. It is unnecessary to state that the collection forms but an inadequate conception of the superstitions and beliefs of our middle and lower classes ; but every sign or omen of good or evil or of coming events in the collection has been gathered from authentic sources ; even the boys and girls, though the fact of their genuine belief in them is questionable, use them freely. We give the collection under classes.

Those relating to the Body.

If a person, especially a man, has a widower's peak, that is, if there is a projection of the hair down the forehead ending in a sort of a peak or point, it is a sign that he is going to marry more than once.

VOL. XV. p