Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/376

 348 Correspondence.

" At the dispensary meeting, a few mornings ago, a woman brought a baby .... a thin, emaciated bag of skin and bones .... Some Bedaween women also present .... were asking different questions about the child ; finally one of them said to the mother : ' I will tell you of a remedy, which will not fail to make your boy fat and well .... You must take your son to the graveyard and put a basket over his head, lay him on a grave and say this : " Oh, you inhabitants of the grave, come and take your son, and give me back my son ! " Repeat this several times, then leave your son there, and you retire a little distance away from him. Do this for some days, and you will see how your son grows fat and repays you for your trouble.' "

A. Werner.

" Back-footed " Beings.

{A?ife, p. 34, and vol. xii., p. 183.)

I CAN refer Miss Hull to an instance of this curious belief in Cornwall. John Stephens of Saint Ives, a man who by skilful trading laid the foundations of what became the biggest fortune in the Duchy, lived in the eighteenth century, and made his money by selling pilchards at Mediterranean ports. He was popularly and locally known as " the old Greek with his calves in front." My History of Saint Ives ascribes this to crooked legs and foreign trade, but the story of Deirdre shews that there may be a deeper significance in the phrase.

John Hobson Matthews.

Monmouthshire Folklore. {Ante, p. 85.)

Miss Wherry's charming ]\Ionmouthshire collections are a valu- able addition to the lore of a county whose literature is all too undeveloped in this direction. " The mythical person " known as " Jack Kent," who is credited (p. 85) with so many diplomatic triumphs over the Evil One, is no other than Father John of