Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/351

 Asmas in Tegulis. 43

would be struck by lightning. In the Welsh case the egg is to be thrown over the operator's head also. Possibly this, and not simply the impossibility of seeing where the missile falls, has had a share in the production of the half- proverbial references to shooting or throwing over the house. In some parts of France, to say that a girl has thrown her bonnet over the house is to make a grave allegation against her moral character ; Shakespere has [Ham. V. ii. 246) :

" That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house, And hurt my brother." Corresponding to the rite of throwing something over, not upon, the roof, it is noteworthy that here and there it is sufficient for a bird of ill omen to fly over the house without perching on it, to bode death. ^

At this point I wish to mention a curious Roman belief of which I have never seen a satisfactory explanation. There are two or three deities who have an aversion to roofs. Varro [de ling. Lai. v. 66, and ap. Nom. 494,23) states that Dius Fidius should not be sworn by except in the open air. Plutarch [Q.R. 28) makes the same state- ment regarding Hercules and Bacchus. Medius fidius and mehercule are common oaths, but Bacchus is rather a puzzle, as wc know of no common Latin oath by him, though It., corpo di Bacco, suggests that there may have been one. Setting him aside, we have a third deity hinted at by Pliny, N.H. xviii. 8 : Seiamque a serendo, Segestam a segetibus appellabaiit, quarum simulacra in circo uidemus : tertiam ex his nominare sub tecto religio est. Who the third goddess is we do not know ; I do not believe she was Segesta,^ though that interpretation is just possible, as she is the third goddess mentioned in that passage, but I hold that ex his means " of this group," sc. of deities in the Circus. By the company she keeps she should be an

1 Owen, op. cit. p. 304.

^ Pliny was- probably indoors as he wrote and kept the tabu.