Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/12

4, his children, and their children to all generations. To prevent the stones by any possibility being burnt, as soon as they had finished cursing, they took the stones and scattered them far and wide over the whole country. Many of the former families of the county are said now to have disappeared on account of being thus cursed.

Near Black Lion, at the extreme north of the co. Cavan, there is a cursing-stone. It is a large horizontal slab, with twelve or thirteen bullâns or basins cut in it, and in each bullân, save one, there is a large round stone. The cursor takes up one of the stones and places it in the empty basin—and so on, one after another, till all have been gone over. During the movement he is cursing his enemy, and if he removes all the stones without letting any one of them slip (no easy operation, on account of their form), his curses will have effect, but not otherwise. If he lets one slip, the curses will return on his own head. In South-West Donegal (I forget the name of the place) there is a somewhat similar cursing-stone, except that it has only five bullâns. In Castle Forward deer-park it is said that there was another cursing-stone of this type, but some years ago it was dismantled, and half the horizontal slab carried away. Castle Forward is on the road from Newtown Cunningham to Londonderry, near the eastern mearing of the co. Donegal.

RELIGIOUS TABLEAUX IN ITALIAN CHURCHES,

WITH SOME NOTES ON VOTIVE OFFERINGS.

One of the chief points which distinguished mediaeval religion from modern was its intensely dramatic character. In an age when there were few books, teaching was largely conveyed through the eye. One can hardly now imagine what a city must have looked like when all the people kept holiday to see the Miracle-Plays—the chief streets lined from end to end; stands and scaffoldings erected in the