Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/566

 558 arch-fiend. The existence of red-haired Jews is thus accounted for in Mr. Baring-Gould's Legends of Old Testament Characters, vol. ii, p. 106: "The Egyptian enchanters also turned the water in Goshen into blood; and it is a common tradition among the Jews that the red hair which is by no means unfrequently met with in the Hebrew race is derived from this period: all those who had sinned and drank of the water lost their black hair, and it became red, and they transmitted it to their posterity." On the stained windows of cathedrals and churches in the Middle Ages, Cain and Judas Iscariot were always pictured with red- or orange-coloured beards, to which reference is made by Shakspeare and other Elizabethan dramatists. Is it not highly probable that the notion regarding red-haired men, which is common to the popular fictions of all European countries, was derived, mediately or immediately, from Hebrew sources? .

Hobby-Lanterns, i.e., Will-o'-the-Wisp.—"I see them myself many times. Some people say they are very desperate things, and, if you go to them with a lantern in your hand, they'll dash it out of your hand on to the ground; but I don't believe that. I think they are a kind of beetle What I'm now telling you is my father's story, not mine. He and my grandfather were going along a road one dark night, when they see a lantern coming along. My grandfather, he think company would be pleasant; but when the lantern get alongside of them, it give a jerk, and away it go over the hedge, in the air, across country like a beetle." (Told me by H., our old gardener.)

Arthur H. (son of the above narrator), described a hobby-lantern he had seen fly over the Park "of the brightness of two candles: and oh, I were afraid!"

Of Queen Mary.—"She was a horrid wicked woman. She commanded that every woman in the country should have their left breast cut off: and the judges of the land say yes, it could be done; they'd begin with hers first. That were how it were put a stop to. ........ They say that when she live at Framlingham (pronounced locally Franagam) Castle she were confined of—some say a serpent, some say a devil. I believe that myself, for we read of things as wonderful in the Scriptures." (Told me by H. the gardener. I have taken this down, as I thought it possible some much older legend may have been fastened on to Mary Tudor, whom he sometimes calls Queen Elizabeth. Mary was for a time at Framlingham Castle.)