Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/266

 226 Correspondence.

similarity of type and ornament in objects made by rustic peasants in Italy and savages in New Guinea and the South Sea Islands, the persistence of the type of rustic lamps through many centuries, though now made of tin instead of terra-cotta, and some very charming statuettes of peasants, showing details of costume. An eloquent address by Sig. Pasquale Villari, delivered in Septem- ber, 1907, forms an appropriate introduction. The project will have the heartiest good wishes of all British students of folklore.

E. Sidney Hartland.

Burial of Amputated Limbs. (Vol. xi., p. 346; xviii., pp. 32, 216; xix,, p. 234.)

In the parish of Washfield, in North Devon, a i^^' miles from Tiverton, John Venner lost his hand in June, 1908, as the result of a gun accident followed by blood-poisoning. The hand was wrapped up and given to a neighbour whose cottage abuts on the churchyard. This man, Snell, buried it that evening in the ground alongside the grave of Venner's uncle, where Venner wishes to be buried, and urgently desired that his hand should be also.

Beauchamp. D. H. Moutray Read.

Matthew Charlton, the clerk of Humshaugh Church (Northum- berland), tells me that about thirty years ago he buried a hand in the churchyard. Sarah Latimer was helping to thrash corn, and her hand was caught and cut off by the machine. Matthew says " The poor thing herself would never have thought of it. Mr. Crawford gave me the hand in a little box, and told me to bury it in the churchyard." The woman is dead now, and is buried with the other Latimers in the churchyard, but not in the same place as where her hand is buried. The farm where the accident happened belonged at that time to Mr. Crawford.

E. B. Pitman.