Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/460

 432 to go, all they had to do was to get into the big cocoa-nut root basket. Trustfully the maids of heaven crept into this aquatic carriage, which the provident Bajikole carefully weighted with stones. Then, with a heave and a splash, away they sailed to the bottom of the sea, whilst Bajikole returned to land. And at the bottom of the sea they would have remained had not the great god Tangaloa at length interposed on their behalf.

It is said that this irreverent conduct of Bajikole was responsible for both Niua and Samoa being long held in disfavour by the whole Polynesian pantheon.

, D.D.

(See Vol. xix. p. 379; and xx. 89, 227.)

The following letter from Professor F. W. Tilden of the University, Indiana, has been kindly sent by Sir James Frazer:

"On August 10th, 1911, I drove out from Edinburgh to the small town at the end of the Firth of Forth Bridge, and there saw a boy dressed entirely in a suit of burs, being led about by other youths, collecting pennies. I was told by a bystander that the custom had been observed there for four hundred years, and that originally the person was called the Borough Man, and later the Bur Man."

A correspondent of Country Life of 25th November, 1916, describes the door of a farm-house cupboard marked with the shape of a heart. At the base of the heart was a diamond-shaped figure. He was informed that recently at a betrothal party each guest was asked to bore a hole in the cupboard door, the number of holes representing the number of guests. The diamond-shaped figure represented hearts' blood, and it was made some time afterwards to show that one of the betrothed pair died before marriage. Further accounts of similar betrothal customs would be interesting.

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