Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/387

 Collectanea. '^'^"]

III. Sympathy.

The following extract from a private letter appears to me worthy of a place in Folk-Lore. The writer is manager of a large farm near Cambridge.

J. G. Frazer.

"A cowman (a Suffolk man), lately said to me that the only cure for cows when there was an epidemic of abortion was to bury one of the premature calves in a gateway through which the herd passed daily.^

"Another curious idea, prevalent among Cambridgeshire labourers, is that if a horse runs a nail or hook into its foot, as soon as the nail or hook is extracted, it is necessary to grease it with lard or oil, and put it away in some safe place, or the horse will not recover. A veterinary surgeon told me only last year that he was sent for to attend a horse that had ripped its side open on the hinge of a farm gatepost, and on arriving at the farm, nothing had been done to the horse, but a man was busy trying to pry the hinge out of the gatepost, so that it couid be greased and put away, and thus ensure the recovery of the horse."

F. N. Webb.

14th April, 1905.

A Fisher-Story and Other Notes from South Wales.

Communicated through Mr. E. Sidney Ilartland.

The following is the only well-defined transformation-story which I have gathered in regard to fish and water. It was obtained near Carmarthen, but does not seem well-known. It was recited by my informant, a well-to-do farmer's son near Llanelly, with great clearness and, indeed, dramatic force, half in Welsh, half in English, and nearly in the following words : —

' Upon the Towy floated a fisher-lad. He was in the very dew of his youth. He sat in a coracle with his paddle stuck under his

^ Cf. Gutch, County Folklore ( Yorkshire)^ p. 68. Y