Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/486

 462 Collectanea.

they approach one in use, but this appears to be only from fear of the many accidents due to buUroarers coming off their strings.

Law customs. — The following palaver illustrates some points in native law. A pig belonging to the people of Lumweno, a town near Wathen, was killed by a Mansangi man on a farm belonging to the Mansangi people. The Lumweno folk demanded payment for the pig, but this was refused on the ground that any pigs found digging up cassava roots on a farm can be killed. After a time the Mansangi women went to work on the particular farm again, but their hoes were taken away by the Lumweno women, who were more numerous, and claimed the land on the ground that a Lumweno pig had been killed on it and no compensation paid. The same evening the Mansangi chief sent a letter to the Lumweno chief. The messenger carried a gun, which was against native custom, and so the Lumweno people took the gun away from him, on the plea that " the messenger was bringing force into their town." The chiefs of the district settled the palaver by fining the Lumweno people one pig because they claimed land which did not belong to them, as the killing of their pig gave them no rights over the land on which it was killed ; they also fined the Mansangi people one goat because the messenger had no right to carry a gun when he went to deliver a letter.

J. H. Weeks.

Quebec Folklore Notes, IL^

If your nose itches, you have kissed, or been kissed by, a fool. (? Influenced by English-Canadian beliefs. This omen is also reported from Ontario.)

To spill sugar is decidedly unlucky.

If troubled with cramp in the legs and feet at night, put your shoes on the floor with the soles upwards when you go to bed. This is a sure preventive.-

A child born on Friday will be either exceedingly lucky or the reverse.

^ Cf. supra, p. 345. The fresh notes are from the same habitant girl as the former items.

^In Yorkshire shoes are crossed to keep off the cramp. Cf. vol. xx., p. 348.