Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/269

Rh with a somewhat aquiline nose, and a complexion rather less blond than I should expect in the case of a Teutonic Aryan. He has a landed estate or traditions about one that ought to be his, and he boasts a long pedigree.

This talk of mine about races threatens to put wholly out of sight the question à propos of which it began, namely, that of the superstition about flat feet. So I return to the Manx qualtagh, and my suggestion of his being to some extent a race representative, and I may mention that, one day last term, I read my remarks on the difference between Welsh and English feet, as shown in the matter of shoes, at a meeting of about a dozen Welsh undergraduates. They all agreed with me that English shoes did not, as a rule, fit Welsh feet, and this because they are made too low in the instep: I ought to have said that they all agreed except one undergraduate, who held his peace. He is a tall man of no dark complexion, and I have never dared to look in the direction of his feet since, lest he should detect me cruelly carrying my comparisons to extremes. In the Manx paper referred to, I suggested that perhaps the flatness of the feet of the one race was not to be emphasized so much as the height of the instep in those of the other. I find this way of looking at the question somewhat countenanced in an appreciative article which appeared on the 29th March in the Liverpool Post, in reference to my remarks and the discussion elicited by them. The writer refers to Henderson's notes on the Folk-lore of the Northern Counties, and quotes a passage referring more particularly to Northumberland, as follows: "In some districts, however, special weight is attached to the 'first-foot' being that of a person with a high-arched instep, a foot that 'water runs under'. A flat-footed person would bring great ill-luck for the coming year." Before leaving this, there is another point I wish to mention: the writer of the article considers that Dr. Karl Blind's experience as a South German, that an English shoemaker does not make his shoes high enough in the instep, and his admission that North Germans "have,