Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/245

 Collectanea. 223

In sowing a field by hand, if you miss a cast, i.e. leave a bit of the ground you have covered with no grain cast on it, a member of the family on whose land you are sowing will die within the year.

If a hen crows, she must be killed at once, or one of the family will die. This seems to be taken quite seriously, and has resulted in the death of numerous hens.

If you sleep on your face, you will die by drowning.

A dog howling at night is a sign of death, near the place where he howls and in the direction in which he looks at the time. (Cf. Mark Twain, Tom Sa7i>yer, ch. x., which gives the same belief for the Mississippi valley, with the addition that the dog must be a stray.)

When a funeral procession has left the house, the corpse must not be carried past the house again, or another of the family will die. " Many in this locality . . . will travel miles around rather than pass the house with the corpse," adds my informant.

The usual belief is prevalent about thirteen at table. In general, " thirteen is an unlucky number for anything" (C).

" Telling the bees " in the case of a death has apparently been thought superstitious for the last half-century, but seems still to continue.

The following illustrates the power of a dying man's curse : — Before the repeal of the death-penalty for theft, a certain Judge

D accused his servant, a man of about forty, of stealing his

watch. The servant, who was innocent, was convicted on circum- stantial evidence. Before being hanged he wished that none of

the D family might live beyond forty, since one of them had

unjustly caused his death at that age. The curse was fulfilled, for every member of that family has died somewhere in the fourth decade of his life.

"Green Christmas, fat graveyards."^

A red spot on a finger-nail denotes the death of a friend.

7. Fo/k-medicifie.

To cure neuralgia, wear about the neck next the skin a neck- lace of nutmegs bored lengthwise and strung together, long enough to fall some six inches below the throat.

^Cf. County Folk- Lore, vol. iv. (Aort/minberland), p. 179.