Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/166

 158

NOTES AND QUERIES. [* s. VIL FEB. 23, 1901.

in Connecticut it was a general custom to administer doses of urine to new-born tfebies, partly to "clear out the system," but in part with a vague idea of communicating the traits of the voider of the urine to the small victim, as is shown by always selecting another child's urine, and that a specially vigorous or promising child. I myself furnished some for this purpose when a boy of eight or nine, on the express ground (as explained by my mother) that I was the intellectual prodigy of the town. I regret to say that on this basis, judging from the outcome, the poor infant cannot have been much benefited. Of course professional nurses were unknown in this country village, neighbour women fulfilling the function. So the old women, those stubborn conservators of misty superstition, had unchecked power of perpetuating the traditional idea. F. M. Hartford, Connecticut.

Dr. Owen, in his ' Sanctorale Catholicum,' speaking of St. Ivo, after whom St. Ives in Huntingdonshire is named, remarks : " Bale gloats over the scandal that ' Saint Ive's water was in these rlayes [about 1012] very wholsom for the femynyne gender.'" Many plasterers, all the world through, wash their hands regularly in urine to keep them from cracking. Urine into which a hot cinder has been dropped is commonly believed to be a sure cure for obstinate cases of ringworm.

HARRY HEMS. [This subject will now be dropped.]

RALEGH'S SIGNATURE (9 th S. vii. 7). Although Sir Walter- wrote Ralegh, his descendants soon changed the mode of spelling their name to Raleigh. The title- page of a book in my possession reads :

" An Abridgment of Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World, his Premonition to Princes, also some Genuine Remains of that Learned Knight. Published by Philip Raleigh, Esquire, the only Grand-Son to Sir Walter. To which is added An Account of the Author's Life, Tryal, and Death London Printed by W. Onley, for Ralph Smith at the Bible under the Pia/.xa of the Royal Ex change in Cornhill, MDCCII."

Facing the title-page is a half-length portrait of Sir Walter in an oval, the border of which reads, "The Effigies of the Honorable and Learned Knight S r Walter Ralegh." In all other places in the book the name is given Raleigh. B B.

FLOGGING AT THE CART TAIL (9 th S. vii. 28). The following note from the Essex Weekly Times of 20 August, 1897, maybe interesting:

" It is stated that the death has occurred in Essex of a man named Cowell, who ' the last individual to be

,ail of a cart. This abominable and common punishment was abolished somewhere about the year 1820, and since that time none have been flogged save those who richly deserved it." Much information regarding this cruel custom s contained in 'Bygone Punishments,' by William Andrews. CHAS. H. CROUCH.

Nightingale Lane, Wanstead.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

Celtic Folk-lore : Welsh and Manx. By John Rhys, M.A., D.Litt., &c. 2 vols. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.)

AMONG the Western and Northern Celts, naturally the latest to come under the influence of Latin civilization, traditions and superstition linger long. How much the folk-lore of Wales and Ireland, the Scottish islands, Brittany, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man has in common is well known to the student. One of the most indefatigable and en- lightened of folk-lorists, the Principal of Jesus, who is also the Professor of Celtic in the University of Oxford and the author of numerous books on W T elsh subjects, which have won much recognition and provoked some hostility, has collected during the past thirty years so much of Welsh folk-lore as the people possessed and were willing to impart. His ambition was to produce, if possible, a work analogous to Campbell's ' Popular Tales of the West Highlands.' The execution of the scheme has been tedious and difficult. From the mouths of his fellow-countrymen he could extract plenty of scraps of stories, but very few single stories of any length, and years were occupied in fitting his acquisitions into their proper context. His researches were undertaken later than was desirable, and it is only in the more distinctly Welsh counties, such as Carnarvon, that they have been productive. When a schoolmaster in Anglesey he had himself oppor- tunities for noting things of interest ; he grew up under the influences around him without " having acquired the habit of observing anything, except the Sabbath," and he can only hope that, now that " the baleful influence of Robert Lowe has given \yay to a more enlightened system of public instruc- tion," his successors will do better. Such stories as he has collected are, however, of distinct value, and by their aid, and that of his own comments, we are able to link Welsh superstitions concerning fairy-lore with those prevalent in other Celtic countries. Fairies in Wales, it must be remem- bered, are almost invariably lake - dwellers, and have something in common with mermaids. Their homes are generally near streams or the lakes with which Wales is abundantly provided. It is from the lake that the hardly won bride not insensible to human wooing, but more anxious, it appears, to remain as a handmaiden than as a mistress draws the flocks and herds of marvellous worth that make her spouse a sort of pastoral millionaire; and it is to the lake she retreats when, by misadventure and not by design, he hits her with iron, a circum- stance which, she has always told him, will drive her away with her herds and their descendants constituting his wealth. It is almost always in the

a horse that the bit strikes his wife. She does not invariably bear malice, and sometimes looks after