Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/562

 r 2 4 Correspondence.

SiLBURY Hill.

It is, I believe, a generally accepted fact that Silbury Hill, in Wilts, not far distant from Avebury, is an artificial mound. But the following account of its origin may be new to many of the readers of Folk-Lore. It was told me by a native of jNIelksham, whose family has been settled thereabouts for at least three centuries, and has handed on the tradition from generation to generation :

" When Stonehenge was builded, a goodish bit after Avebury, the devil was in a rare taking. " There's getting a vast deal too much religion in these here parts," he says, "summat must be done." So he picks up his shovel, and cuts a slice out of Salis- bury Plain, and sets off for to smother up Avebury. But the priests saw him coming and set to work with their charms and incusstations, and they fixed him while he was yet a nice way off, till at last he flings down his shovelful just where he was stood. And that's Silbury."

Only those who have seen Silbury can appreciate the size of that shovelful.

RoBT. M. Heanley.

Vehicle Mascots.

The hundreds of volumes of specifications of patents for inven- tions seem such an unpromising field of search for folklore, even in its twentieth-century forms, that two inventions for vehicle mascots, of which specifications were printed in 1910 and 1912 respectively, are probably worthy of record in Folk-Lore.

Specification No. 29301 of 1909 describes mascots consisting of lay figures or articles, (such as figures of policemen, soldiers, eagles, dragons, and lighthouses), in which the eyes or other parts are illuminated by electric light and may .change colour, while the heads, arms, or other parts may be adapted to move.

Specification No. 980 of 191 2 describes means whereby mechanical action is imparted to movable members of mascots representing policemen, soldiers, etc.

A. R. Wright.