Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/338

330 5. Perhaps the commonest custom of all is to make a pilgrimage to some shrine, which enjoys a reputation for virtue in such cases, and to implore the aid of the tutelary saint.

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Bengal Chaplain.

NOTES, QUERIES, NOTICES, AND NEWS.

 Jottings from the South-West of Iceland.—At Castletown, upon telling the landlady's daughter I was leaving on the morrow, she laughingly threatened to put the cat under the pot to bring bad weather and force me to stay. She assured me it was a common practice among the sailors' wives. From John Shea, boatman, Killarney, I had a good version (the hero of which was a namesake of his) of the widely- spread story in which a mortal wins a mermaid to his bride by retaining a talisman—in this case the mermaid's cap. She escaped of course in the end, and would seem to have kept a grudge against her captor and all of his name. Every Shea who should venture out to sea, at the particular spot in Dingle Bay where his ancestor met the mermaid, would surely be drowned. My informant would not venture there "not for Dinish if it turned into gold; for," as he justly said, "life is shweeter than money."

Riding the Stang.—I am informed that the custom of "Riding the Stang" is not uncommon in the remoter dales of Yorkshire, being appropriated as the punishment of a man supposed to have been guilty of wife-beating or adultery. The words of the doggrel rhyme narrate the circumstances of the particular case; the name of the offender, his residence, or his occupation being usually introduced as a sort of refrain. To print the words used in any special case would probably render the Editor of the Folk-Lore Journal liable to a criminal prosecution for libel. The word stang shows that the present custom is a mere survival, a cart being substituted for the "pole" or "stake" on which the effigy, and probably at one time the offender himself, was originally carried round the town. Stang is a Scandinavian word,