Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/428

 1 20 The Indian Antiquary.

pages of Asiatic Societies. The main aim has been to promote and encourage research. The subjects with which the magazine has been principally concerned have been the Archaeology, Epigraphy, Ethnology, Geography, History, Folklore, Language, Literature, Numismatics, Philology, Philosophy, and Religion of the Indian Empire and to a certain extent of its surroundings. Notable contributions have been published on all these subjects, several of them having been preliminary studies of books subsequently well-known to Indian and Oriental students and even to general fame.

The Bugata in Piedmont.

The bugata, or washing, is an important business in North Italy, as it is done only once every three weeks or so, and thus disorganises the whole household for a time.

There is a curious superstition in connection with the bugata which is firmly believed by all the peasantry. Indeed, it is not at all easy to explain it away, however absurd it may seem to the incredulous English traveller. It is an article of faith with the contadini that the new moon has a prejudicial effect on the clothes on the night preceding the washing in the stream. Though the clothes are in the big vat and covered with a thick layer of wood ashes, the moon's rays — if it is a new moon — will penetrate and leave a yellow round patch right through the heap from the top to the bottom. I do not venture, of course, to give lunar influences as the cause of this remarkable pheno- menon, but I am bound to admit that I have ort one occasion distinctly seen this inexplicable stain going through all the clothes right to the bottom of the vat, and it so happened that the washing synchronised with the new moon. Further, I have never seen the wash spoilt in this manner when there did not happen to be a new moon. I can only say that the practical effect of this superstition is that no bugata woman can be persuaded knowingly to begin a bugata when there is a new moon. S. A. Reynolds Ball.

Villa Osella, Carmagnola, North Italy.