Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/375

 Correspondence. 347

Whitsuntide Fate.

(Vol. xii., p. 351.)

There is a good deal of information about Whitsuntide beliefs contained in Lady Wilde's Ancient Legends of Ireland, pp. 108 and 140. She gives no references or authorities, but I know from personal experience that most of the beliefs she records still exist among the country people. Whit-Sunday does not appear to be an unlucky day, but Whit-Monday is, and so to a lesser degree are the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday following. It is most dangerous to travel or boat on Whit-Monday, and children or animals born on that day are evil-tempered and likely to take some man's life. It was customary in Louth to bury a Whit- Monday foal or calf, but this method of breaking the charm is now almost forgotten, though such animals are still distrusted. Only a few months ago a carter working near Dundalk, whose mare was trying to bite every one who approached her, explained her conduct by saying that she had been foaled on Whit-Monday. In Cavan when a cow calved on Whit-Monday a hole was dug right through a "ditch" {i.e. a bank), and the calf was passed along the tunnel thus made. A Kildare woman tells me that her grandmother invariably smothered chickens hatched on Whit- Monday. Louth people call a child born on Whit-Monday a " kingkisheen " (from Irish "cingcis," Whitsuntide), and say that a blow given by such a one is very dangerous. I have never heard of a kingkisheen being buried to avert ill luck, but it was believed in Louth and several other counties that if a live fly were placed in the child's hand soon after his birth and held there until it died, he would be freed from the curse.

Bryan J. Jones.

Mock Burial. {Ibid.)

Miss J. A. Lord (Tyre) writes as follows in Daughters of Syria, the quarterly magazine of the British Syrian Mission, for April, 1904: