Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/193

 io*s.n.Auo.2o,i9o*.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

157

1892: 'The Lancashire Witches' p. 280, ike. A farmer's servant in the neighbourhood of Sheffield, upon being well stared at by his master, who kept one eye shut, fainted, When he came to his senses, he was asked why he had fainted. He replied that his master had "got the evil eye" (S. O. Addy, 4 Sheffield Gloss.,' p. 308).

Numerous instances given in ' County Folk- Lore,' collected in Yorkshire by Mrs. Gutch, show that it is still very prevalent in that county (1901, vol. ii. pp. 162-8). The Yorkshire dalesman dreads the evil eye. In one case the daughter of the house pined away to a skeleton. The wise woman declared that she was overlooked, and that the father must take his loaded gun at midnight to a lonely spot, and shoot that which would appear, when the girl would recover. He went, and to his horror saw plainly the apparition of Jiis own mother, who was sound asleep in ibed. He took aim, but his heart failed him. Within the week his child died, and for the rest of his life the father believed the sacrifice of his mother would have saved her. This story was narrated in 1896. Miss Jackson, in her 'Shropshire Folk-Lore,' 1883, says that about a generation ago a farmer at Childs Ercall, in North-East Salop, was noted for having the evil eye. He could, it was believed, make people who displeased him go in a direction exactly contrary to that they them- selves wished or intended (p. 154 ; see also p. 270). The folk-lore collections of the Lady Eveline Gurdon (' County Folk-Lore,' 1893, p. 202) show that the superstition prevails in Suffolk ; and those of Mr. C. J. Billson for Leicester and Itutland, 1895, and of Mr. E. Sidney Hartland for Gloucestershire, 1895, p. 53, testify to its existence in those counties also. Accounts of Manx folk-lore teem with instances. (See the Antiquary, Oct. 1895,

E. 294-5.) It appears in Sunderland (' Folk- re of the Northern Counties,' by William Henderson, 1879, pp. 188 and 194) ; and jBrand, in his * Antiquities,' narrates how he went once to visit the remains of Brinkburne Abbey, in Northumberland, and found a reputed witch in a lonely cottage by the side of a wood, where the parish had placed her to save expenses and keep her out of the way. On inquiry it was found that everybody was afraid of her cat, and that she herself was thought to have an evil eye, and that it was accounted dangerous to meet her on a tnorn- ing " black -fasting." I think many instances (English) will be found also in Mr. F. T. El worthy's valuable work entitled * The Kvil Eye,' 1895. Two years before this appeared I had myself prepared a paper on

the same subject, which was advertised to be read at a meeting of the British Archaeo- logical Association ; but an interesting paper and hot subsequent discussion on * Stone- henge' absorbed the time that might other- wise have been given to it. My paper did not, however, concern the English phase of the popular belief, but its universality in regard to the solar myth.

The neuric influence which is believed by many learned authorities to emanate from the eyes and from the body has, of course, an important bearing upon the subject ; but that is another matter.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL. 161, Hamersniith Road.

FIRST OCEAN NEWSPAPER (10 th S. i. 404 ; ii. 96). I have a copy of the Bull Dozer, published on board the steamship Bolivia (of the Anchor line between Glasgow and New- York) at sea, 22 September, 1883. It consists of four pages of foolscap, eight columns MS. K. BARCLAY-ALLARDICE.

Lostwithiel.

" WAS YOU ? " AND " YOU WAS " (10 th S. i. 509; ii. 72). The following extract from 'A Short Introduction to English Grammar : with Critical Notes,' published anonymously in 1762, but composed, as we learn from Dr. S. Pegge's * Anonymiana,' by Dr. Robert Lowth, shows how this locution has arisen and how indefensible it is. The judgment is given in a note on pp. 48-9, and runs thus :

" Thou, in the Polite, and even in the Familiar Style, is disused, and the Plural you is employed instead of it : we say you hare, not thou hast. T ho' in this case we apply you to a single Person, yet the verb too must agree with it in the Plural Number : it must necessarily be you have, not you haxt. You j/;as, the Second Person Plural of the Pronoun placed in agreement with the First or Third Person Singular of the Verb, is an enormous Solecism : and yet Authors of the first rank have inadvertently fallen into it. ' Knowing that you ?'-a,s my old master's good friend.' Addisqn, Spect., No. 517, ' Would to God yon /m.s within her reach.' Lord Bolingbroke to Swift, Letter 46, ' If you was here.' Ditto, Letter 47. 'I am just now as well, as when you wan here.' Pope to Swift, P.S. to Letter 56. On the contrary the Solemn Style admits not of you for a Single Person. This hath led Mr. Pope into a great impropriety in the beginning of his 'Messiah':

Thou my voice inspire Who louck'd Isaiah's hallow'd lips with fire ! The Solemnity of the Style would not admit of You for Thou in the Pronoun : nor the measure of the verse touchedst, or didtst touch, in the verb : as it indispensably ought to be, in the one, or the other of these two forms : You who touched ; or Thou who toucln'dxt, or <liilt t<mrh. Again : Just of thy word, in every thought sincere, Who knew no wish but what the world might hear.

Pope, ' Epitaph.'