Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/270

 242 Collectanea.

battle and the other young men were all killed. Then he told her "give him a drink," and that then he would die, and she could have the place then all to herself. Then he drunk her cup o' tea, and died directly after it. Well, there was a large horse-shoe found on their land about fifty-three years ago, and its circle was as big as a soup plate, and it weighed seven lbs. It was supposed to be the shoe of a terrible big horse altogether that had belonged to one o' these Fitzgerald brothers.

P. USSHER.

Jersey Folklore Notes.^

The Jersey country houses of the seventeenth century were thatched with straw, and a stone staircase was, generally, ap- proached from the outside ; these stone staircases, in some instances, continued to exist until lately. The interior of the house comprised the kitchen or hall with its big chimney, its settle, its "lit de veille," its wooden benches, and its shelf under the low rafters where the bacon was suspended, and the loaves of bread arranged. There was, too, the dresser, where were dis- played the wooden platters, crockery, and pewter plates, jugs, and dishes. The windows were not glazed, but latticed, or had a cloth stretched over them by day, and were closed by a shutter at night. The great hall of the house was called the "salle"; another apartment was added, originally, it is supposed, to monasteries ; it was a little room for the reception of visitors, and known as the " parloir " ; these rooms wtxt still in use some forty years ago.

As late as the year 1824 the old farmers were frequently met with wearing their large cocked hats and their " queue a la frangaise," and, amongst the females, the short jacket or bed gown and coarse red petticoat formed a prevalent, but declining,

^ Many items in these notes have been previously and frequently recorded for the larger British Isles and elsewhere, but they are retained here because of the lack hitherto of any substantial account of the folklore of Jersey. — Ed.