Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/391

 Folk-lore Miscellanea. 383

but it is a standing expression applied to an unlucky person or a good-for-nothing kind of fellow — ma fe fel tae llyg ivedi mind drorts fe ("he has just been run over by a ll}'g") — and my wife knows the same saying in Gwynedd. Per- haps some member of the Society will enlighten me on the origin of the unluckiness attaching to the l/yg. I am not well up in field-life, but I notice that Pugh explains llyg as " a mouse ; the shrew, or field-mouse" ; and Davies, in his Welsh-Latin Dictionary, gives it as inus araneus. But one thing is certain : it never now means the domestic mouse, which is known by the name of llygoden. Thus the llyg or shrew-mouse (if it be the shrew) takes the first place, and the house-mouse is known only by a name derived from that of the llyg. What is the significance of that sequence ?

Some time ago I had the pleasure of taking Sir John Evans over the Pitt-Rivers Museum, a unique feature of modern Oxford, as those folk-lorists can testify who made a visit to it in the course of last year's Congress. There I called his attention to some " mythological totem- sculptures from British Columbia". One of these is labelled an " Ancestral Totem of the Bear Tribe", and further described as " Hoorts the Bear killing Towats the Hunter". A second, and more intelligible one to me, is described as representing the demon Scana residing within the killer-whale {orca ater). The whole piece of timber is rather longer than that of Hoorts, and measures, as Mr. Balfour thinks, from 9 to 10 feet by about 2 broad. The two ends are fashioned into two mouths, each partially open, and showing two formidable rows of teeth. In the belly of the whale sits Scana, across in a squatting posture, with his broad mouth close to his knees. I had found upon a previous occasion, what I regard as a miniature of the same sort of savage Jonah from the same part of the world. It is labelled an " Ivory Fetish for containing dis- embodied Spirits (Haidah)". The ivory is about 6 inches long, and a portion of the middle is occupied by a demon