Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/11

Rh VALENTINE'S DAY CUSTOM AT NORTHREPPS.

BY MR. W. B. GERISH.

Mr. R. D. Gurney has kindly forwarded me the following note, which is quite new to me, and may be to other folklorists:—

"As long as can be remembered by the old people, it has been the custom for the children, some seventy more or less, going very early in the morning of the 14th February to the chief houses, where they sing:

"The rest of the time is whiled away in School-Board songs. The custom is not known in the neighbouring villages, as far as I know."

The jot, I may say, is the tripe or intestines of the pig, and is the peculiar delicacy of the poorer class in Norfolk. I do not think the tail can be considered a bonne bouche.

BY MR. G. H. KINAHAN, M.R.I.A., ETC.

Not many years ago, but it seems to have died out now, there was a system of cursing in common vogue in Fermanagh with tenants who had been given notice to quit. This was: they collected, from all over their farms, stones. These they brought home, and having put a lighted coal in the fireplace, they heaped the stones on it as if they had been sods of turf. They then knelt down on the hearth-stone, and prayed that as long as the stones remained unburnt every conceivable curse might light on their