Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/568

 560 go upstairs one day to the landing, and the door of the best bedroom open, and an old lady in a full-bodied cap, such as they used to wear in the olden time, looked out; and the girl she scream, and fal backwards in a fainting-fit." (Mrs. H.)

The Rev. Arthur Maude, Rector of Burgh, tells me that a particular place underneath the Burgh Road, where a stream has made a deep hole, is supposed to be haunted. In or after wet weather, when there is much noise caused by the gurgling of the water in this spot, children are afraid to pass the place; an old woman below is washing her skellets, and it is called the Skellet Hole. Our gardener says his mother had a skellet—a brass tripod pot—the "bale" or handle of which had a crook or twist in it, by which it could be hung upon the iron bar that always, in those days, went across the cottage chimneys. Skellets are never seen now, and the name has died out; but the place is still said to be haunted, and a young man told me it was called "Skeleton Hole"—a curious corruption. Colonel Barlow can remember being afraid, as a child, of passing the Skellet Hole when the old woman was busy washing her skellets. Mr. Maude also tells me that a lane in Burgh is called White-foot Lane because a ghost with white feet walks up it. A man (spademan) told me he knew many young fellows who would not go by the lane at night.

Miscellaneous.—Mrs. L. (mother of the baker) said to Miss Crisp (of Playford Hall): "My deafness is a great affliction; but if the Lord Almighty choose, He can take my deafness off me, and put it on someone else. My brother David, he were a soldier, and he went to those places the Bible tell of. He went to Solomon-Gomorrah (you know all about that if you read your Bible), and there he see Lot's wife—her that was turned into salt; and he broke off a karnel from her: and, as fast as he break one karnel off, another come. He and the soldiers were making a road from Tyrèe to Sidon. I often heard brother David tell it." (Told me by Mrs. F., a labourer's widow.)

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