Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/45

Rh me. You may suppose this foolishness, but then the question arises, why did you covet and take it? Trusting you will give this document your serious consideration, and that I may hear from you soon enclosing my demand, I remain, —————.

Brand quotes from Willis’s Mount Tabor (A.D. 1639) an account concerning “an extraordinary veile that covered my body at my coming into the world,” which veil the author considered a sign of exceeding good fortune, “there being,” he proudly adds, “not one child among many hundreds that are so born.”

One other instance has however come to my own knowledge, and here, too, the happy mortal prided herself not a little on the distinction accorded to her. Within the last five years, in one of our northern cities, a servant was found by her mistress in a state of dejection, for which at first there seemed no assignable cause. After much questioning the lady elicited that her servant had been born with a veil over her head, which was now pre-saging evil to her. The veil, she said, had been carefully preserved by her mother, who had entrusted it to her on coming to woman’s estate. It had been stretched and dried, and so had remained for many years. The girl kept it locked in her chest of drawers, and regularly consulted it as her oracle and adviser. If danger threatened her, the veil shrivelled up; if sickness, the veil became damp. When good fortune was at hand, the veil laid itself smoothly out; and if people at a distance were telling lies about her, the veil would rustle in its paper. Again the veil did not like her to cut her hair. If she did so it changed colour and became uneasy. The owner firmly believed that when she died the veil would disappear. She regarded it with mysterious awe, and only allowed her most intimate friends to know of its existence.

I am not aware that in the North of England popular superstition concerns itself with the birth of animals. In Sussex, however, it certainly does. Mr. T. C. Thompson, of East Grinstead, in that county, informs me that on hearing lately from one of his farm labourers that a favourite sow had just brought into the world a litter of stillborn pigs, the man added it was only what he had looked for. “Why so?” inquired the master. “Well, Sir,” said the man, “you see this be the year