Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/382

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io- s. in. APRIL 22, 1905.

side channel, fed from higher up the stream, to act as a reservoir for irrigating the meadows. No little care and ingenuity are required in preserving the edges of and exits from the high-level conduits so as to ensure -an equable distribution of water over the grass. This work and the manipulation of the sluices are entrusted to a functionary called "the drownder," to whom the farmer looks to be afforded two mowings and two . grazings in the year. In the extract drowned = flooded. H. P. L.

The name Haswell at one time was quite common in our town. In the deed of sale of the ground on which was built the church for the Rev. Thomas Boston, in the .year 1757, James Haswell is mentioned as being one of the bailies of the town. After- wards he occupied the position of Provost. 'One of the lanes leading from one street to the other is still known as Haswell's Close. J. LINDSAY HILSON. Jedburgh Public Library.

HORSESHOES FOR LUCK (10 th S. iii. 9, 90, .214). MR. MAcMiCHAEL i at the last reference is wrong if he is describing the gesture made against the evil eye, as I fancy he must be, when he says, "The Italian makes the gesture of projecting the little finger and thumb with the remaining three fingers closed " (the italics are mine). The gesture he describes means tignusu, the Sicilian for a person suffering from ringworm. The gesture which he probably wishes to describe is made with the little finger and first finger, never with the thumb. The gesture against the evil eye is so often wrongly described that it is worth while correcting such errors when they ap-
 * pear in print. F. VV. GREEN.

In jewellery, horseshoes appear mostly with the two points downwards. I posses's two lockets, one with a pearl and tur- quoise horseshoe, and the other with a diamond horseshoe, given to me about thirty- eight years ago. I also have a coral horse- shoe brooch, bought at the first Italian Ex- hibition in London all three have the points turned down. I always understood they were symbols of good luck.

If MR. MAcMiCHAEL means the gettatura, or protecting from the evil eye, when he men- tions the Italians as projecting the little finger and thumb and turning them upwards, I can only say that, having lived till seven- teen years old at Como and Milan, I have often seen the act of warding off the evil -eye, but the thumb was not used ; it was 'the first and little finger that made the horns,

and they made darts in the direction of the person with the evil eye, towards them and even pointing downwards, but I never saw the horns pointing upwards-. My son, who came home from Nice via, Avignon and Paris in a motor-car last month, says that quite six or seven times people made horns at the car and its occupants more frequently in the southern parts of France. F. S. V.-W.

"FEBRUARY FILL DYKE" (10 th S. iii. 248). In Sussex they say :

February fill the click Every day white or black.

The husbandman has an old couplet : All the months in the year, Curse a fair Februeer.

And: "When the cat lies in the sun in February, she will creep behind the stove in March." A German proverb says that " one would rather see a wolf than a peasant in his shirt-sleeves in February," while the French- man says, "A warm February makes the usurer merry." Ray has, " The hind had as lief see his wife on the bier, as that Candlemas Day should be pleasant and clear." So "February fill dyke" is not meant vitupera- tively, but approvingly, as seasonable : February fill dyke, be it black or white ; But if it be white, 'tis the better to like. '' Snow," says Ray,

"brings a double advantage : it not only preserves the corn from the bitterness of the frost and cold, but enriches the ground by reason of the nitrous salt (?) which it is supposed to contain. The Alps and other high mountains, when covered all the winter with snow, he had observed, became, soon after the melting of the snow, like a garden, full of luxuriant plants, and variety of flowers." February makes a bridge, and March breaks it. J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

I supposed that the fill -dyke rime was known to every one. In West Yorkshire it was rendered :

Febuary fill the dyke,

Whether it be black or white ;

If it be black, it's the better to like.

February was always pronounced as a quadrisyllable, with the first r omitted.

H. SNOWDEN WARD. Hadlow, Kent.

MR. E. P. WOLFERSTAN put the same ques- tion five years ago, when you furnished a reply. His question elicited seven refer- ences to works treating on the subject, which were in addition to three which had already appeared in 7 th S. xi. 254.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

BATTLE-AXE GUARD (10 th S. iii. 247). The following, extracted from 'The Present State