Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/485

 Collectanea. 451

Goat and Cows.

The following has been sent by a correspondent from Dorset : " I had often read and heard of the old superstition that a goat turned in with the cows that are in calf would prevent them from slipping calf, and I actually saw this in a field — a goat running with a lot of calves, and was told this was the usual practice to ward off the evil eye ! "

J. J. Foster.

Notes on English Folk-lore.

Derbyshire. — The Bedfordshire Nursery Rhymes, published in Vol. xxvi., p. 413 et seq., bring to my mind one that is obviously a variant of it, which I heard as a child in the small village of Turnditch in Derbyshire. We used to sing it to a simple tune :

1. This old man, he went one,

He went nick-nack on my thumb.

RefraiJi — Tommy nick-nack, nick-nack, sing a song. And this old man came toddling along.

2. This old man, he went two. He went nick-nack on my shoe.

3. This old man he went three. He went nick-nack on my knee.

4. This old man, he went four, He went nick-nack on my door.

5. This old man, he went five.

He went nick-nack on my beehive.

6. This old man, he went six.

He went nick-nack on my sticks.

7. This old man, he went seven,

He went nick-nack up to Heaven.

Presumably that was the end of him, for I don't remember that the rhyme went any further.