Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/38

16 old christening cap, the heirloom of a friend, which she could show me, of a very different make. Accordingly I examined the cap, which was evidently very old, and made with reference to affusion in baptism. It excluded forehead, ears, and chin, and apparently never had strings. I said that if a mother would bring her baby in such a cap I would undertake not to wet it.”

In the North as in the South of England, nurses think it lucky for the child to cry at its baptism; they say that otherwise the baby shows that it is too good to live. Some, however, declare that this cry betokens the pangs of the new birth; some that it is the voice of the evil spirit as he is driven out by the baptismal water. As to the mother’s churching, it is very “uncannie” for her to enter any other house before she goes to church; to do so would be to carry ill-luck with her. It is believed also that if she appears out-of-doors under these circumstances, and receives any insult or blows from her neighbours, she has no remedy at law. I am informed that old custom enjoins Irish women to stay at home till after their churching as rigidly as their English sisters. They have, however, their own way of evading it. They will pull a little thatch from their roof, or take a splinter of slate or tile off it, fasten this at the top of the bonnet, and go where they please, stoutly averring afterwards to the priest, or anyone else, that they had not gone from under their own roof.

A pleasant little custom is mentioned in the Wilkie MS.: the first child baptized by a minister after his appointment to a parish is to receive his Christian name. Through the North of England, if a boy and girl are brought together to the font, care must be taken that the former be christened first; else he is condemned to bear through life a smooth and beardless face, and, still worse, the young lady will surely be endowed with the ornament he lacks. This belief holds its ground in Durham, and extends as far north as the Orkney Islands.

One curious nursery practice exists both in the North and in the extreme West of England, that of leaving an infant’s right hand unwashed; and the reason alleged is the same that he may gather riches. The baby’s nails must not be cut till he is a year old, for fear that he should grow up a thief, or, as they quaintly express it in Cleveland, “light-fingered.” The mother