Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/386

 362 Collectanea.

Tacking-threads in clothes indicate that they are not yet paid for.

If anyone is very sick during a sea-voyage, but recovers quickly on landing, his health will always be good.

E. H. and H. J. Rose.

PlEDMONTESE FOLKLORE, II.

Charms. — If seven frogs are killed during the duration of a rain- bow, and pulverized, the resulting powder will cure fever.

To make a woman go mad, horse hoofs and ox horns should be ground to powder, mixed, and hung in a small bag in the doorway so that the woman will touch it in passing.

Witches and Witchcraft. — The three following stories were told to me by the priest and an old peasant at Cogne, in the Val d'Aosta : —

At Moncuc there was an alpe (mountain hut) in which lived a cheesemaker. One day he gave an old woman who begged from door to door some boiling whey in spite. "Thou shalt make no more cheese," said the old woman. The following night a landslip came down and destroyed the hut, and on its site there is now a big boulder {cianet), in the middle of which is a hole. If you throw stones down the hole, you will hear metallic sounds from the cauldron of the cheesemaker. The old peasant who told me the tale said he remembered, when a young shepherd, having thrown stones in the hole and heard the sound of the cauldron.

An old woman belonging to the village of Cartaselle used to walk every evening to Lilla, spinning all the way, and returning home at midnight. Some peasants of Lilla became very curious about her, and decided one evening to stop her and ask for her conocchia (distaff). She thanked them; disappeared, and was not seen again.

In the Mogne castle used to be seen, between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m., great lights and people dancing to the sound of musical instruments. But one day all this ceased.