Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/342

 3o6 Hampshire Folklore.

about^® He considered the " cancer doctress " a fraud. But in the Hursley neighbourhood Miss Yonge noted the current superstition that to pick up an evvet (newt) caused abscesses to break out on the arm. These two cases are, to me, rather suggestive of a possible similarity of idea with the still existent belief in the snake-bite cure above quoted.

I recently came across a story, in a book published about a year ago, connected with toads at Horwell. On a house in the village is said to be a weather vane that once was on the church. It is a cockatrice, the story being that a toad sat on a duck's q^^ and hatched out a cockatrice, for which reason ducks' eggs were never eaten in the village, for fear a toad might have sat on them. [But the accuracy of the writer in other matters is not above suspicion.]

Among other things the Hampshire folk say that : — If you catch an owl you will have bad luck. It is unlucky to shoot turtle doves; and it is also unlucky to shoot cuckoos.

Both cuckoos' and turtle doves' flesh is poison. (Dewar.) Woodcocks live by sucking the ground. (Dewar.) The fern-owl, or night-jar, injures calves. (White, Observations on Birds.)

The ravens ceased to nest in Tangley Clump because in 1862 the curate had the young birds taken. Nestlings had often been stolen before, but that does not seem to have had any prejudicial effect on the parents' choice of a nest.

///. Earthivorks, the Devil, and Witchcraft.

So far I have dealt roughly with what may be considered native influences. Now I would like to take more par- ticularly some of the works of man, — in fact to leave the high wood for the open country.

^' The Natural Hisioiy of Sclborne, Leltey xviii.