Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/283

 10* 8. I. MABCH 19, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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the ball be "hailed" over the park wall, the winners go to the Hall and receive a sovereign. The event is the occasion of much drunkenness, hence the growing dis- favour with which the annual gathering is regarded by orderly people ; but, judging by the experience of the past, the " fuitba' " will be continued so long as there is any of the Cloffocks left on which to play.

DANIEL SCOTT.

6, Victoria Road, Penrith.

RUE AND TUSCAN PAWNBROKERS (10 th S. i. 148). Rue, as well as scarlet thread, is still in Italy a protective from the evil eye, but an additional reason why the Tuscan pawnbrokers use it is that, like the use of lavender by the old English pawnbrokers to protect their pledges from the moth, it was employed, on account of its strong and dis- agreeable odour, as a prophylactic against such infectious diseases as were likely to be associated with pledges received at the Italian monti di pieta. Tusser, in his ' Five Hundred Points of Husband rie,' says :

What savour is better, if physicke be true, For places infected, than Wormwood and Rue ?

And Robert Turner, in his 'British Physician,' 1687, p. 280, says : "It is an excellent anti- dote against poisons, and infections. The very smell thereof is a preservation against the Plague, in the time of infection" (see also his ' Enchiridion Medicum,' 1657, p. 63). There is an admirable "turnover" on rue, entitled ' Herby -grass,' in the Globe of some date in the latter half of last year, where it is observed that in the old days before prison reform had been heard of, when strong- smelling herbs were always placed profusely before prisoners brought into the dock at the Old Bailey and elsewhere, bunches of rue usually figured prominently among these herbal defences.

Rue entered into the composition of the once noted " vinegar of the four thieves." It is said that four thieves, during the plague of Marseilles, invented this anti - pestilential vinegar, by means of which they entered infected houses without danger, and stole all property worth removing. In Venice rue is kept as a charm in a house to maintain its good fortune (see Folkard's 'Plant -lore,' 1884, p. 531).

As to the amuletic virtues of scarlet thread, the author of 'In a Tuscan Garden' was evidently unaware, when he wrote derisively of the possibility of the Eskdale shepherd tying up the tails of his yearlings with a red ribbon, that the Scotch farmer does still, in some parts, fasten a small twig cross of

rowan-wood, wound about with red thread, to the tails of his cattle, as a defence from the evil eye. This is in accordance with the old adage :

Rowan-tree and red threed Put the witches to their speed.

Having given the subject some little attention, I am convinced that the universal belief in the sanguine colour's protective qualities is a survival of solar worship, and that it is consanguinity the consan- guinity of colour to the sun that has obtained for red objects the world over such superstitious regard. When, in the Isle of Man, coughs were believed to be cured by the use of red flannel, the virtue lay in the colour, not in the flannel (' Notes on Manx Folk-lore,' Antiquary, November, 1875, p. 346). The red gelatine exuded from a prickly shrub (Spina egyptia) was worn as an amulet to prevent blindness or other malignant influence of female demons (And. Crichton's 'Arabia,' 1852, p. 152; see also p. 72 ibid.). In the sculptured reliefs of the great rock- hewn temple of Ipsam-bul is a battle scene similar to those on the temple of Thebes, in which the hero and his attendants are painted red, while the vanquished are yellow (Gau's 'Antiquite's de la Nubie,' I think, plate 61). The ancient British antiquities in the British Museum have been since re- arranged, I believe ; but I remember seeing among them a beautifully ornamented shield (possibly Romano-British) in the centre of which was some design in red enamel. A red pencil is used for dots over the mystic words on ancestral tablets of wood set up in the houses of the Chinese (see the Fortnightly Review, February, 1895, ' Ancestor Worship in China,' by R. S. Gundry). Other instances, too numerous for 'N. & Q.,' might be given from every corner of the world. See also Comhill Magazine, January, 1876, p. 50, 'Comparative Mythology,' by J. A. Farrer. J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL.

Is it not probable that the alleged popu- larity of rue with Tuscan pawnbrokers is a survival of the superstition which imputed to that herb the power of warding oft pestilence or neutralizing poison, for both of which Italy once had an unenviable notoriety, and to the former of which such repositories would be at all times particularly exposed 1 And on the other hand, among the people its common use against epidemic disease might reasonably gain for it a sinister reputation, from its presence being indicative of danger.

As for the connexion between St. Peter's Day and green figs, if the coincident ripeness