Page:Notes and Queries - Series 4 - Volume 6.djvu/504

 496

NOTES AND QUERIES.

S. VI. DEC. 10, '70.

practised ever since the family lived there. When the money is gone, the servants have full liberty to drink, dance, sing, and go to bed when they please."

Is this strange custom still observed ? C. C.

WEATHER PROPHECIES. In Sylva Si/lvarum, "by the Right Honourable Francis Lo. Verulam Viscount St. Alban," ed. 1635, I find (p. 186) : " It is an Observation amongst Country-People, that Yeares of Store of Huwcs & Hep?., c'o commonly portend Cold Winters; And they ascribe it to Guds Providence, that (as the Scripture saith) reacheth even to the Falling of a Sparrow ; And much more is like to reach to the Preservation of Birds in such Seasons."

The same observation is repeated on p. 203. It is yet current hereabouts, and the same reason the preservation of small birds assigned. ' The berries are now called l< hips and haws," but move usually in this part of Yorkshire "dogjunips" (qu. uncle deriv.?) and "cathaws," the latter oi'ten pronounced " chattoes." W. C. B.

Hull.

LOCAL CAMBRIDGESHIRE SAYINGS. I send you the following legend concerning certain vil- lages near Cambridge : " Hungry Hardwiek," "Greedy Toft," "Long Stow," "Swaggering Bourne," " Girtonhogs," "Histon crogs," " Come to lick Girton pudding-bags."

C. W. BABELET.

LANCASHIRE FUNERAL FOLK LORE. The spe- cial correspondent of the Daily Telegraph (Dec. 1, 1868), in his account of the terrible colliery dis- aster at Hindley Green, near Wigan, has the fol- lowing passage, which deserves a place in the folk-lore column of " N. & Q." :

" I find an old Lancashire custom observed in the case of this funeral. By the bedside of the dead man, the relatives, as the}' took their last look at the corpse, have formed a tray or plate, upon which lay a heap of sprigs of box. Each relative has taken one of these sprigs, and will carry it to the grave, many of them there dropping it upon the coffin. Ordinarily the tray contains sprigs of rosemary or thyme ; but these poor Hindley people not being able to obtain those more poetical plants, have, rather than give up an old custom, contented themselves with stripping several trees of boxwood ; and hence it is the mourners carry the bright green sprigs which 1 hav seen."

nusivr BEDE.

A NURSERY TALE.

The following story is very popular in Lan- caster : Once on a time there was a man who had three children Lemon, Apple, and Orange Lemon was the daughter of a former wife, anc hated accordingly by her stepmother, who out day sent her for some cream, and threatened, i she broke the jug, to kill her. On the way back with the cream, she fell, and the jug was soon a dilapidated as the " luck of Edenhall." Lemon immediately resorted to the usual feminine remedy or everything, and sat on a doorstep crying vio- lently. A lady passing inquired into the cause of her distress, and purchased her another jug. This and a successor, obtained in a similar manner, were also broken. Lemon then went home, en- reating her stepmother not to kill her. The remainder I will endeavour to give literally as narrated to me :

"Fetch the hatchet out of the cellar," said the stepmother.

" Oh ! mother, you're going to kill me ! "

" I shall, if you don't do as I tell you."

[The hatchet having been brought up, Lemon is straightway butchered in a manner highly sug- gestive of the murder of Mr. Cook.]

The stepmother buried Lemon's head under the hearthstone, made a pie of her fingers, and put the remainder of her body in the cellar. When the father came home to dinner, he wanted to know where his daughter was.

" Gone to see her aunt," was the answer. And the pie was placed on the table, and then they heard a voice singing

" My little sisters are picking my bones, While I lie under cold marble stones."

" That's our Lemon's voice," said Apple.

" These are our Lemon's fingers," said Orange.

Then the father went down into the cellar, and found his daughter's body.

Next morning Apple got up to make the fire, and, as she was doing so, a bracelet came down the chimney.

Then Orange said : " I shall make the fire to- morrow, and see if anything comes for me." She made the fire, and there came a parasol for her. So the father said : " I shall try my luck in the morning." And whilst he was lighting the fire, a fine watch flew down. Then he ran into the street, and looking up at the house, he saw his daughter Lemon all in white, like, an angel, flying away; but this he never mentioned when he showed them his watch. Then the cruel step- mother thought she would try what she could get; but as she was making the fire, a hatchet came down the chimney, killing her dead on the hearthstone. WM. E. A. Axon.

Strangewavs.

NUMERAL PROPHECIES. Some curious articles have appeared in "N. & Q." (3 rd S. x. 215, and elsewhere) on what are called " Numeral Prophecies," i. e. where the figures composing the year-data of any given event are added as units to the year-date itself, and result in the production of the year-date of some other event more or less connected with the first. Such of these prophecies or rather, I should say, these curious combinations (for they all seem remark- ably like prophecies made after the events) as