Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/347

 Miscellanea. ' 339

and baby dressed to receive visitors, and the lady should put on all her jewels, in order that the visitor may be first attracted by the jewels, and so her first remark may not be a personal one, as " How well you are looking", etc., as such a remark brings the evil eye. For the same reason a brush is hung over the bed, and small coins, sequins, or a piece of garlic, are attached to the baby's cap, and a visitor's first greeting to the baby is to spit upon it. During the first forty days, the lady is not allowed to talk aloud after sunset until the following morning, and no one is allowed to enter the room of the mother, if the person or persons in attendance upon her leaves the room for any purpose she may not re-enter it. When anyone has small-pox, the patient is not isolated, but every visitor brings small pieces of pink sugar stuff, which they place under the pillow of the sick person, saying, ' yXu j3[ag !' " {Commutiicated by Miss Ntitt.)

Folk-lore Jottings from the Western Counties. — (i) While living as a child at Binder, in Somersetshire, between the years 1866 and 1867, I remember hearing it said by a woman-servant, who came, I think, from no great distance, that (perhaps with the preface, "they say") if you go up Masboro' Castle (the highest point of the Mendips) on Easter Viioxmxv^^ you will see a lamb in the sun.

(2) At East Knoyle, in Wiltshire, where I lived from 1869 to 1872, there is, or w^as, in a field at the foot of the chalk downs, a large irregular stone or rock, of which it was said that there was as much below ground as above, and that many horses had been employed in a vain attempt to remove it. A labourer working in the garden of Knoyle House, once told me, " they do say as Old Nick dropped it there, when he was carrying it to build Stonehenge."

(3) I recollect, when a child, hearing two maid-servants speaking of Gloucester Cathedral, and one of them telling the other that it had never been finished, and never would be, or it would go to the Roman Catholics. A servant in the house where I am now living, an intelli- gent and trustworthy Yorkshirewoman, tells me that the same thing is said of York Minster. "It was once in the hands of the Roman Catholics, and when it was finished, if all the scaffolding was ever taken out of it, they would get hold of it. That was the under- standing."

(4) In the interests of science, as of justice, it is sometimes neces- sary to repeat impolite remarks. In August 1888, I was lodging at Church Stretton, in Shropshire, accompanied by an intimate friend who was in the habit of resorting for a morning bathe to a small sheet of water beside an unfrequented foot-path leading to the hills of the Longmynd. One morning, as my friend was standing in naked

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