Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/126

114 In Japan, deeds, notes of hand, certificates, and other documents to be used as proofs were formerly sealed in this way, a practice to which the word tegata (hand-shape) still used of such papers, remains to testify.

Documents are in existence in which Mikados have authenticated their signatures by an impression of their hand in red ink.

I do not know if it has been recorded that in the south of Ireland, when children are playing together, if a boy hurts a little girl so as to draw blood, his nurse says to the boy, "Now you'll have to marry her." I am afraid that in my very young days I was thus betrothed more than once, but unhappily I never carried. out the contract, and have now even forgotten the names of my betrothed ones. I see there is a reference to such betrothals in The Legend of Perseus, II., 342.