Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/361

 A sinus in Te^ulis. 53

particular one declared itself of ill omen by the company it kept.^

{b) Devils and the Roof. In this connection I would not lay too much stress on a delightful tale from Cornwall, ^ concerning a foul fiend who took refuge on the church tower, in the form of a black bird, to be out of the reach of the whip of that godly exorcist Parson Wood. The fact that the tower was the highest thing in sight may have been reason enough for the frightened demon. There are plenty of other instances from folk-tale. Thus in Staffordshire, at Needwood, it is very inadvisable to burn elder ; and Cheadle and Newborough agree that the result is to " bring the Old Lad on the top of the chimney," or that " the Devil will be down the chimney in a minute." ^ The West Highlands furnish a tale ^ of how the Devil was beguiled into taking the form of a coin, which was then shut up in a purse and pounded on the anvil, till it " went up the chimney in sparks of fire." At a Welsh card-party Satan was once detected, and thereupon departed up chimney in the form of a fiery wheel.^ Lesser bogies favour the same means of entrance, or a similar one ; thus in Monmouth- shire the familiar of a local " wise man," being inadver- tently summoned, was first heard, not indeed on the actual roof, but through the ceiling in an up-stairs room, before making his appearance.® Those extremely nasty and variously named creatures, the Kallikanzari, Karkanzari, etc., who infest Greece and Macedonia during the Twelve Nights, though they may come in by the door, seem to make the chimney their chief point of attack, and this, unlike the Devil, from no association with lire, because they

1 Of course it may have been a black fig, which was in itself unlucky ; see Macrob. Saturn, iii. 20, 2.


 * Folk-Lore Journal, vol. v. p. 24.

' Folk-Lore, vol. vii. p. 380. * Ibid. vol. viii. p. 234.

^ Owen, op. cit. p. 149. * Folk-Lore, vol. xv. p. 76.