Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/34

12 to the baptism are invited to partake of it. In Sweden the cake and cheese are got ready in good time; they are placed beside the bride in the bridal bed, in preparation for her first confinement. In Oxfordshire the cake used to be cut first in the middle and gradually shaped to a ring, through which the child was passed on its christening-day. The Durham nurse reserves some cake and cheese, and when the infant is taken out to its christening she bestows them on the first person she meets of opposite sex to that of the child. I remember the perplexed face of a young undergraduate when at the baptism of one of my daughters the dole of cake and cheese was bestowed on him, and the late Canon Humble wrote thus on the subject: “I was once fortunate enough when a boy to receive the cake and cheese from a christening party going to St. Giles’s church. I did not at once perceive what was meant when a great ‘hunch’ of cake and some cheese were thrust in my hand, so I drew back. The nurse, however, insisted on my taking them, and I did so, bestowing them afterwards on the first poor boy I met.” A similar custom has I know but just died out in the Devonshire villages round Dartmoor, and in Choice Notes, Folk-Lore, we read of such a gift of bread and cheese in Somersetshire, and of a cake in Cornwall (page 147).

It is said in Yorkshire that a new-born infant should be laid first in the arms of a maiden before any one else touches it. Is this an outgrowth of the medieval belief that the Blessed Virgin was present at the birth of St. John the Baptist, and received him first in her arms?

It is thought unlucky on the Borders to tread on the graves of unbaptlzed children, or “unchristened ground” as they term it. The Wilkie MS. informs us of the special risk that is run. He who steps on the grave of a stillborn or unbaptized child, or of one who has been overlaid by its nurse, subjects himself to the fatal disease of the grave-merels, or grave-scab. This complaint comes on with trembling of the limbs and hard breathing, and at last the skin burns as if touched with hot iron. The following old verses elucidate this superstition:—