Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/290

 262 So7Jic Characteristics of Irish Folklore.

year at May and November ^^ (the "dead month"), and the importance of the Eves. To make a rough order of merit, based on the number and variety of observances, May Eve and Day in my note-book come easily first. There are herbs and dew to be gathered for charms, boughs and branches for protection — in the South they are placed not only on houses and sheds but on the railway engines, chestnut boughs for choice ; flowers, especially primroses, or sometimes marsh marigolds — yellow, as best befits a butter festival — to be sprinkled on doorsteps and window- ledges, as offerings to the Good People, whose magic music can be heard on this day by mortal man. Shee {Sid/ie) power predominates on May Day, at Whitsuntide, Mid- summer, and Hallowtide. Fairies have no power on Fridays — according to some ; it would hardly be Irish if all were in agreement ! There are spells to be wrought, and divinations. The druktheen has been described by Lady Wilde and others. I myself know of a compara- tively recent case in Co. Cork, where the little slug was hunted for and found early on May morning, placed on a plate sprinkled with flour, and baked alive in the oven that its writhings might trace in the flour the initials of the future lucky man.

I have mentioned May as a " butter festival." Precau- tions must be taken to protect the milk and butter at all times, but especially on May Day. " There be in many places in the south and in the midlands people who will take the butter, so you may churn the milk for a week and no butter will come," said my Queen's County informant. This power is independent of May Day pilfering or im- portunacy, and is also common to the fairies. The belief in this is so general as to give many opportunities for the dishonest. An old friend of mine when living near Newport, Co. Tipperary, found the milk disappeared mys-

^^ See for half-yearly hirings, Hall, iii. 124; Shaw Mason, i. 125, iii. 176; Charleton, iv. 330-1 ; Young, etc.