Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/351

 Collectanea. 3 1 9

women to secure safety in childbirth. See for example Folk-Lore Record^ vol. i. p. 24. (Sussex); Folk-Lore, vol. xiii. p. 418 (Berks); E. M. Leather, Folk-Lore of Herefordshire, p. 112; Henderson, Norther7i Counties, p. 194 (Devon); Gent. Mag., 1867, part ii. p. 786 (Lincolnshire) ; cf. also Hone, The Apocryphal Neiv Testament, ff.

An American correspondent, Mr. Alfred Ela, of Salem, New Hampshire, U.S.A., writes that " Similar letters may be found from Massachusetts to the Malabar coast. They are rare in New England, and appear to be more frequent among Germans than elsewhere." He gives the following references : A. Dieterich, Kleifie Schriften, 234-242, 243-251; Bittner, in Dinkschriften, of the Imperial Academy of Sciences at Vienna, 1906, li. pp. i ; Lukach, The Fringe of the AVz^/ (London, 1913), pp. 244-6; and Fogel, "The Himmelsbrief " in German Atnerican Annals, vi. 296- 310; and finally Father Delahaye, "Note sur la Legende de la Lettre du Christ tombee du Ciel," in Bulletin de PAcademie royale de Belgique, 1899, pp. 17 1-2 13, which traces the Letter, with many examples, from the end of the sixth century.

" In general," adds Mr. Ela, " the letter is written by Christ Himself, in letters of gold, or with His blood. It is carried to earth by the archangel Michael, or falls from Heaven, at Rome on the tomb of St. Peter, at Jerusalem, at Bethlehem, or in other celebrated places (p. 174)." See R. Priebsch in the Modern Languages Revieiv, 1907, ii. 138-154, for an essay on such a letter at Jerusalem brought by pilgrims to Ireland. The Anglo-Saxon text is said (Delahaye, p. 189) to have been long known, but an allusion to such a letter, and especially to its magical power, was overlooked by so learned a commentator as Professor G. I>. Kittredge in editing the English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Cambridge, 1904). On page 52 he says that the allusion in the following passage from the ballad of King Arthur and King Cornwall, is " probably to a book of Evangiles."

" But now is the knight left without any weapons,

And alacke ! it was the more pitty ; But a surer weapon than he had one

Had never lord in Christentye ; And all was but one little booke,

He found it by the side of the sea.