Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/550

 5 1 2 Collectanea.

Flowers.

The Rose de Meaux was all over picks [thorns]. Anne Thomas' mother used to say to the children, — " Don't you touch that rose. It killed one lady." A young lady had the choice of three husbands to marry, and she wouldn't do as her father did wish her, so he did put the gardener to choose for her. The gardener said, — " I will choose you the violet, the lily, and the pink." (She had one in her eye besides those three.) Then she said, — " I refuse the three, but in June the red rose buds, and that is the flower for me. The willow-tree did twist and the willow-tree did twine, and I wish I was in the arms of the young man that has the heart of mine." She married him, but he wasn't good to her. She wasn't happy, and so she died.

An old carpenter named Phillips, who died in 1903, told me that old people call monkshood "mother's nightcap," and the corn blue-bottle {cetitaurea cyanus) " devil-in-the-bush " — (his body sur- rounded with scales, the scales of the old serpent, brimstone torches, plain enough too ! And his brazen face in the midst !)

Calendar Customs.

Rhymes sung at the New Year : —

New's gift, New's gift,

I wish you merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

A pocket full of money, And a cellar full of beer,

A good fat pig to last you all the year !

The roads are very muddy, My shoes are very thin,

I've got a little pocket to put a penny in.

If you've not got a penny, a ha'penny will do.

If you've not got a ha'penny, God bless you !

The cock is in the holly-bush, the hen came clucking by. Please give me a New's gift, or a Christmas pie.

May Day. — When Anne Thomas was a lump [good-sized child], the oak-boughs was by the Swan. Boughs was put up each side the door, two sprays, and above the porch. Spillman was there then. The same thing was at public-houses up the street. "Agin the First of May," old women, and Anne Thomas' mother, and even herself, ran about after whittun-tree [mountain ash] and