Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/108

 88 Correspondence.

" Do not weep, my dearest Mary, Take your baby on your knee ; I'll be back to-morrow morning, And a sailor I shall be.

" I will buy you beads and ear-rings, I will buy you diamond stones, I will buy you a horse to ride on, When your baby's dead and gone."

Mary says she'll wear black ribbons,

Mary says she'll put them on, Mary says she'll wear black ribbons,

When her baby's dead and gone.

It appears that the "Jolly Jorden" of my Vancouver corre- spondent must be an accidental variant of "Johnnie Jardine," the Jardines and Johnstons being neighbour clans on the w^estern border. Meanwhile the verses about Johnnie Johnston and his true love appear to be a fragment of an old ballad otherwise unknown to, or forgotten by, me.

I have not Child's collection here, in St. Andrews, but per- haps some reader of Folk-Lore is acquainted with the ballad.^

A correspondent suggests that " Three Jolly Jordens " may be

a corruption of " Three Jolly Lordings."

A. Lang.

Burial of Suicides at Cross-roads.

The question of suicide has been elaborately discussed by Dr. Westermarck {^The Origin and Development of Moral IdeaSy vol. ii., chap. xxxv.). He incidentally considers the question why suicides were buried at cross-roads. He remarks that, from time immemorial, the cross-road " was a favourite place to divest oneself of diseases or other evil influences," and he appears to suggest that the burial of suicides in such places was connected with the cross symbol, " which is regarded as a conductor of the baneful energy emanating from the eye, dispersing it in

^ The ballad does not appear in Child's English and Scottish Ballads, edit. 1882-98.