Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/254

 2 1 6 Collectanea.

Get up, guid wife, and binna sweir Tae deal yer bread to them that's puir, For the time will come that ye'll be dead, And then ye'll neither need ale nor bread.

Get up, guid wife, and shake yer feathers, And dinna think that we are beggars, For we are bairns come oot to play. Get up and gie's oor Hogmanay.

Oor feet's cauld, oor shoon's thin, Gie's oor cakes, and let's rin.

FINGER-NAMES. (P. 115, after line 16.)

A correspondent informs us that the fourth line of the version current where he was brought up, was " This is the man that tell't on a'," the rest of it being identical with the second version on page 113. This fact was turned to use in the language of signs among the school-children, who, when desirous of applying the term clype (tell-tale) to a companion when it was inadvisable to say it aloud, they folded the other fingers into the palm and held up the third finger, suggesting in some other way who was indicated. Attention was also called to the fact that " paid for a' " did not refer to a money payment but to suffering for the misdeeds of the others mentioned. Pais (it is not possible to indicate the pronunciation) is a common word for chastisement, strokes, evidently connected with the idea of recompense.

In Barra the finger names are

Ordag.

Gileabag.

Gunna fada.

Mhic an Aba.

Ludag bheag an airgeid.

Hammer/Chisel/Long gun/Of the Abbot's son/Little Silver finger.

The ordinary way of amusing an infant explains the meaning of

these finger-names. The nurse, or mother, holding the left hand

ot the infant, commencing by touching with her own forefinger the