Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/40

18 And yet another—

Or, at greater length—

In Sussex they simply say “Cut your nails on Sunday morning, and you’ll come to grief before Saturday night.” Again, the Cleveland nurses aver that it is very important for an infant to go up in the world before it goes down. Thus, if a child should be born in the top story of a house, for want of a flight of stairs, one of the gossips will take it in her arms, and mount a table, chair, or chest of drawers before she carries it down stairs. I have heard of a similar belief in the Channel Islands at the present day, and imagine it to have been formerly prevalent in every part of England.

The Wilkie MS. contains a caution against rocking a cradle when it is “toom,” or empty, and cites on the subject the following fragment:

The belief thus expressed holds its ground in the southern counties of Scotland, particularly in Selkirkshire. It crops out too in Holland, where rocking an empty cradle is affirmed to be