Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/107

 Rh you would have no luck for seven years. If you laughed before breakfast, you would cry before night. If you shuddered suddenly, it was a sign that someone was walking over your grave. To mend your clothes on your back, meant that you would have lies told about you. A hot coal flying from the fire in your direction, was a sign that you had an enemy. A tea-stalk, (called a stranger), floating in your tea was a sign that a stranger was coming; and to stir up the tea-leaves in the tea-pot was to stir up strife. A spark in the candle meant that you would shortly receive a letter. To sneeze signified "once a wish, twice a kiss, three times a disappointment."

Dreams also had their significance. If you dreamt of clear water, it was a good sign, but, if of muddy water, a bad sign.

Although I have written in the past tense, because I have not been in the district for some years, I do not wish it to be supposed that these old customs and sayings are no longer in use. Of course some of them may now have become obsolete, but, as the habits of the people are still very much the same, it is likely that the old superstitions and omens will continue to be believed, and the old sayings to be spoken, for many years to come.

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Alongside the monkish literature which in mediaeval times enlarged in dispraise of woman almost as a professional duty, there flourished a mass of popular ballad, jest, and proverb which more or less seriously adopted the same tone, and this abuse of