Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/357

Rh programme of the coming year, for the announcement of harvest prospects, as well as of prophecies of a general kind, is a feature of the festival. The confederacy of the five gods exercises jurisdiction in a subdivision of the Bashahr State, one of the Simla Hill States in the Punjab. Their worshippers belong to the Kuran subdivision of the Kanet tribe. The five gods are sometimes known as the Pānch Nāg, or five serpent deities; four of them are certainly serpent deities; the fifth is uncertain. Much information on the Nāga cult in this region will be found in The Sun and the Serpent, by C. F. Oldham, London, 1905.

belief that hedgehogs suck the milk of cows is common in Lincolnshire. Probably it occurs in all English counties.

Is it mere folk-lore, or not?

It is difficult to see how the muzzle of a hedgehog can draw milk from a cow, yet the following incident shows that some cows do object to hedgehogs.

Twenty years ago, or rather more, when I happened to be visiting my brother, the vicar of Cadney, Lincolnshire, I went into a field in which several cows were grazing quietly enough. They paid little attention to me as I passed by, but when I returned, carrying a hedgehog, to show to my little nephew, the formerly placid animals rushed wildly to and fro. Evidently the sight of "Master Prickles" upset their nerves.

So far as I remember, I have not met anyone who had come on hedgehogs sucking, but one or two of my acquaintances have seen them under suspicious circumstances, and many people assert that they have friends who have observed "the prickly otchin" drawing milk. There is a story here, in Kirton-in-Lindsey, of a certain farmer who noticing that his cows did not yield enough milk watched for the culprit, or culprits, and convicted hedgehogs of