Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/272

 232 years ago had such a "fairy dart," which he kept as a safeguard against warlocks and witches. It would lose all efficacy if allowed to touch the ground, and in showing it he always held his hands below those of the person looking at it, in great anxiety lest it should fall.

The use of sulphur as an amulet for cramp is common in Fife and Aberdeenshire. In the former county I have seen it often as a "sulphur band," i.e. a piece of rock sulphur sewn into the garter and worn round the leg. I have seen a piece tied in the armpit, while a piece of it under the pillow would be expected to keep a whole family from the affliction. A homœopathic chemist in Edinburgh had, some years ago, sulphur balls which he sold for cramp.

, M.D.

(Ante, p. 95.)

I do not know whether the two following bits of children's magic are sufficiently to the point to interest Colonel Hanna.

1. My brothers and sister and myself, as children, were fond of going to see the process of brick-making at a neighbouring brickyard, and used to bring back bits of clay with which we made little sun-dried bricks, pots, and so forth. A lady who lived near was very obnoxious to us because she had the bad luck to time her visits just when we wanted my mother's company, or when we were playing in full view of the windows and were not fit to be seen. She was, moreover, we thought, very ugly. To mark our dislike, we made a little clay figure supposed to represent her, and set it up among the branches of a tree where we kept our sundried pottery. We certainly meant to hold her up to ridicule and contempt, but I do not think we expected or wished any harm to happen to her in consequence.

2. We were very fond of "make-believe plays," in which we each represented certain characters whose sayings and doings,—invented as we went on,—were as real to us as if they had been living people. If we got tired of any of these plays, or wished to do away with some character or incident in them, we went through