Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/339

Rh and the custom prevails chiefly in the "bys" and "thorpes" of the dales. It would be interesting to know if the custom exists also in Denmark or Norway.

Charm for "Sty" on the Eye.—My nurse tells me of a remedy for a sty on the eye which she has tried frequently herself, and always found efficacious. Brush the sty well seven times with the tail of a black cat, and the sty will be gone by the next morning. It was recommended to her when a child by an old Bath inhabitant. A. B. G.

Witchcraft in Normandy.—A woman named Adèle Mathieu had been sentenced to six months' imprisonment by the tribunal at Lisieux, for obtaining money from the peasants in that part of Normandy under the false pretence of being able to cure them and their animals of every kind of disease. Adèle Mathieu urged in her defence that she had the power to exorcising evil spirits, and she explained to the Court that these were of three kinds, one of which could only be got rid of by burning toads in a cauldron. Upon one occasion she was sent for by a farmer who had seventeen of his cattle ill, and she burnt 570 toads in the presence of the villagers, several of whom declared that they saw a dog jump out from the mouth of one of the beasts and run away. Adèle Mathieu also resorted to the well-known device of larding a sheep's or bullock's heart with pins and needles and burning it in a wood-fire, and some of the witnesses who were called to prove the case against her naively declared that, though she charged more than the doctor, she had done them more good. But in spite of this and of her energetic assertion that she was gifted with supernatural powers, the tribunal sent her to prison.—Daily News, Sept. 13, 1882.

Old Rhymes and Sayings (ante, p. 62).—One of the disjointed utterance of Catherine Ann Whitehead, be she sane or insane, is a variant of an old nursery favourite which in my time ran:

Halliwell has a nearly corresponding version in his sadly imperfect collection The Nursery Rhymes of England, p. 78; he introduces it with