Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/350

 42 A sinus in Tegulis.

Anglo-Saxons brought this custom with them to England when they came. Later, a charmed cattle-food was prepared by putting it on a roof from Christmas Eve to Twelfth-night.^ But remembering how closely healing and hurting are connected, I would not lay too much stress on this evidence of the roof's better nature. In one instance, ^ the cure was wrought by turning a tile around, presumably to let the disease-demon out ; and the Bulgarian samovila, who haunts eaves and punishes with illness those who disturb her, will on occasion cure a sick child if it is laid there (A. Strausz, Die Bidgaren, p. 149).

Plence we can understand why occasionally the victims of witchcraft make for the roof. Some Oxfordshire cattle are said to have climbed on to the barn, when a witch had maddened them, and a bewitched boy went up the chimney ; ^ a Cambridgeshire child, living in a house persecuted by a witch, got a bad fright from looking up the chimney ; ^ and passing to drolls, I learn from my colleague, Prof. Gwynn Jones, that in the Welsh version of John Grummelie, the cow, not content with "letting doon nae milk," got up on the roof. I very much doubt if John Grummelie was originally funny at all, for it deals with the once very serious subject of interference in the magical preserves of the other sex.

There are also a few scattered beliefs to the effect that under certain circumstances, an object magically potent should be thrown over the house. This is done with a pig's nose in Summercourt, Cornwall,^ with a small egg in Wales,^ else death would follow ; and in Pforzheim with a similar egg, supposed to be laid by a seven-year-old cock.' In this case the penalty for neglect was that the house

^ Grimm, op. cit. pp. 406, 407, 418. ^ Ibid. p. 464, §853.

^ Folk-Lore, vol. xiii. p. 290, 291, note.


 * -Folk-Lore, vol. xvi. p. 189.

^ Folk-Lore Journal, vol. v. p. 195. ^ Owen, op. cit. p. 298.

' Grimm, op. cit. p. 454.