Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/353

 Collectanea. 321

Such methods of encountering amount almost to duelling, but there is in Chevy Chase an important modification of the duel proper. The followers on either side seemed free to act as they wished, to join the fight or to remain neutral.

" Then bespayke a squyar off Northombarlonde Richard Wytharyngton was his nam.

I wylle never se my captayne fyght on a fylde, and stande my selfe and loocke on."

The method of procedure seems to be the transition stage between the collective method of settling grievances and the method by duelling.

Joseph J. MacSweeney, Bassenhill House, Bailey Hovvth, Co. Dublin.

Sale of Wizards' Spells.

A Sorcerer's Apron of Hiimati Boftes. — A very varied selection of human and other relics came up for sale yesterday at Stevens's rooms in King Street, Covent Garden. They were perhaps more gory in association than is usual, even at Stevens's periodical sales of the weird and uncommon.

The gem of the collection, which realised ;^4o, was a Tibetan apron of carved human bones, worn by a chief Llama sorcerer in the invocation of devils, which is extremely rare, and is said to be one of the finest in existence. It was secured from a monastery by an officer in the Younghusband Expedition. A Cingalese devil worshippers' shrine, the central figure representing the prin- cipal demon of disease and the large number of small masks on each side his avatars or incarnations, sold for six guineas. A New Hebrides human skull mounted and prepared to be used for sorcery, "the only one known," went for £^1 los., and jQZ was paid for a New Guinea chief's head from the Okarivi tribe in the interior of the north-eastern area. New Guinea, Solomon Island, and skulls from other parts varied from £,2 15s. to ^4 each.

Three Mu-su or Mosso manuscript books, in the rarest of the primitive written languages of the Far East, written by the now extinct wizards of the remote tribes of the Tibet-Chinese hills,

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