Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/206

 180 A child, as soon as possible after birth, is turned three times over, "In the Name, &c."

A woman cannot be delivered if there is anything in the room, such as a press, which is locked.

If the umbilical cord, when it dries on a child, fall to the ground, the child will suffer from incontinence of urine. This may be cured by boiling a shrew-mouse in milk and giving the milk to the child to drink.

(The foregoing were communicated to me by a nurse who had noticed them in the course of her work amongst the people in the parish of Kiltoghert.)

The following are contributed by Mary Carty of Drumkeeran:—

If a woman about to become a mother sees a hare, the child will have a hare-lip, unless the woman immediately tear her petticoat. If she be accompanied by a man, and he can catch the hare and cut off its "scutty" (tail) all will be well.

A cradle must be borrowed for the first child after marriage.

Marriage.

After marriage the bride seldom goes home with her husband the same day, but often remains in her father's house for a week or more. Then the groomsman goes for her, and brings her to her new home; and once there she may not return to her father's house for a whole month, or she will have bad luck.

The bride is given away by the groomsman, and not by her father; and the parents seldom go to the church or chapel.

The fortune a man gets with his wife goes to form a wedding dower for his sister (if he has one), and is not considered to be necessarily the property of the newly-married couple.