Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/255

 Rh attached it to a string, which he tied into the family Bible in a particular place, leaving the key hanging out. Next he read two chapters from the Bible, one of which was the history of Saul and the witch of Endor; he then directed the howdie and another person to support the key between them, on the tips of their forefingers, and in that attitude the former was told to repeat the names of all the suspected parties.

“Many persons were named, but the key still hung between the fingers, when the Wise-man cried out, ‘Why don’t you say Jock Wilson?’ This was accordingly done, and immediately the key dropped, i. e. turned off the finger-ends. So the news spread far and wide that the thief was discovered, for the key had been turned and Jock Wilson was the man! He proved, however, not to be the man to stand such imputations, and, being without doubt an honest fellow, he declared ‘he wud’na be made a thief by the deevil.’ So he went to consult a lawyer, but after many long discussions the matter died away; and my authority, the weaver, says it was believed that the lawyer was bribed, ‘for he aye likit a dram.’&thinsp;”

Now here we have something very like an old superstition, which dates at least from the time of Theocritus (B.C. 282). Potter, in his Grecian Antiquities, says that the Greeks called it coskiomancy, and practised it for the discovery of thieves and other suspected persons. They tied a thread to the sieve, by which it was upheld, or else placed under it a pair of shears, which they held up by two fingers; then they prayed to the gods for assistance, after which they repeated the names of the persons under suspicion; and he or she at whose name the sieve moved was thought to have committed the offence. Such was the rite resorted to in pagan Greece. Mr. Kelly finds the key to it in the marvellous powers with which the sieve was invested in days of yore through its connection with rainclouds. Throughout the Greek and Teutonic mythology the sieve may be seen in the hand of cloud-gods and cloud-goddesses, who employed it in watering the earth. Hence it became a sacred implement, and the Greeks, Romans, Germans, and Slavs used it alike in