Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/409

 Co rrespondence. 355

human psychology, then whatever has become explicit in the latter was potential in the former. What terminology may best express this is matter for future agreement.

Edward Clodd.

Staffordshire Folklore. {Ante, p. 220.)

When I was a boy, at Dudley, it was generally known that it would be dangerous to pass in the vicinity of the church at Darlaston and to pretend to throw down corn to entice the cock down from the steeple, as this would be very violently resented by the inhabitants. I do not think the taunt is now so well known, nor, if remembered, would it be so dangerous, as fighting is much less prevalent in the district. The tale told in explanation I do not now remember, and I have only been able to recover it recently in an incomplete form from a narrator who derived it from his grandfather, who died at a great age in the fifties of last century. I should be glad to obtain a full version of it. As given to me, it runs : — " It is said that a man was going through Darlaston with corn in bags on a cart. The string round the mouth of one of the bags became untied, and a quantity of corn fell into the roadway. If the cock on the steeple had been alive, he would probably have seen the corn." . ..

The charge of " putting a pig on the wall to see the band go by " is still bandied about between the towns of the district.

The story about raking for the moon is still told against Tipton and, I believe, some other places in the locality.

T. E. LoNES.