Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/409

 Revieivs. 385

every cross-road, and was carried sunwise round the church- yard, as in Wales (p. 123). But the whole county lies within the area of the Welsh custom of hiring servants annually in May (p. 101); and, instead of a Maypole as in England, we find a young birch-tree (bedwen) set up or carried about on the 1st of May, as in Wales. Again, at the New Year the decorated apple or calenig (gift) is carried from house to house, and the "cream of the well "is drawn directly after midnight and is thought to give beauty and good fortune (pp. 90, 91).

For all this, the folklore of Herefordshire is not in the main Welsh. There are no "biddings" or "penny weddings," and though funeral dirges have been customary in some places there is no collection at the grave. We have no legends of the Welsh night-hags (gwraig-y-rhibyn), and water-horses (ceffyl-dwr), nor are the springs and pools and ruins haunted by "weird ladies" in many-coloured clothing as in Mrs. Trevelyan's delightful Folklore and Folk-Stories of Wales. Mrs. Leather claims the spectral black dogs which haunt several places in the north-west of the county as Welsh, but ghostly hounds are not peculiar to Celtic countries, and the Herefordshire "dog-fiends" lack the characteristic variety of colour of the Cwm Annwn of Wales. Nor are they described as chasing lost souls, like the Cwm Annwn.

Comparatively small though the county is, its folklore can boast several special features. Mrs. Leather has found corroboration of Aubrey's often-quoted account of the Sin-eater at Ross and Hereford, in the burial-custom observed along the Welsh border of drinking wine with the accompaniment of finger-biscuits, in the presence of the corpse. "You must drink, sir," said the old brother of the deceased to one of Mrs. Leather's informants. "It is like the Sacrament. It is to kill the sins of my sister" (p. 121). In quite another category, morris-dancing, for which Hereford- shire was famous in 1609, still flourished there in living memory. Only one troop survives now, but Mrs. Leather has recovered many details of the airs and figures. The Christmas customs show marked individuality. A correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine in 1791 noted the practice of wassailing on the eve of Twelfth Day (Old Christmas Day), and exactly the same particulars were given to Mrs. Leather by various persons still living