Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/142

134 "Liver-rhyme" in Denmark.—A century or so ago it has been customary in Denmark, for instance at the marriage table, and certainly on other festivals, that a liver taken from a hen or another fowl or animal was passed from hand to hand on a plate. The person to whom the liver was handed had to pronounce a rhyme—"liver-rhyme". Most part of those were senseless—for instance, "This liver is not from a fish; may God give us all His Holy Ghost!" Many of them are still remembered by old people. In Norway and Sweden a spoonful of boiled rice was passed; on the Faroë islands a cowtail trimmed up with coloured ribbons, quite for the same purpose. I take the liberty of asking, May any such custom be recorded from Brittany? From North Germany I know the same, but from nowhere else.

Italian Peeping Toms.—Bearing on the facts given in the article, "Peeping Tom and Lady Godiva", in, vol, i, p. 207, seq. seems to be the following from Roma Antiqua et Recens; or, The Conformity of Ancient and Modern Ceremonies, a republication by Elliot Stock of a last-century book:—

"I will, moreover, affirm this, that as, in the procession of the sacrament, the streets through which that is to pass are hung with tapestry, pursuant to an order of the Roman ritual, so did the pagans also. 'All the places through which the pomp was to pass were hung as is practised by us,' says Blondus and Polidore Virgil. This last acquaints us that in Italy boys and girls are forbidden to see the procession from windows—that is, from on high downwards. The pagans forbade the same, for which Verrius Flaccus assigns this reason: That when the plague was at Rome, the oracles answered that it was because the gods were gazed at from on high downwards. The Latin word despicere, made use of in the oracle, having a double meaning, and signifying 'to look down', as well as to contemn or despise, the whole city was uneasy to know the true meaning of the oracle; whereupon it happened that, on the day of the procession of Diana, a lad, who had seen the show from the highest story of the house, and told his mother that he had seen in what order the mysteries, which were carried in a chariot, were disposed; the Senate being informed of this, it was ordered that all places hereafter through which the procession was to pass should be blinded with tapestry. The lad having cleared up the ambiguity of the oracle, the plague presently ceased. And thus it was discovered that the gods complained they were gazed at from on high, which was a matter, it seems, that polluted the sacred ceremonies. 'From thence,' saith Polidore Virgil, 'it is that boys and girls are forbidden to look upon the procession from windows. (P. 63.)