Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/365

Rh coloured): amongst the rustics, the lads drag the lasses to the well, and pour buckets of water over them.

The servants in towns are sprinkled by the shop-keepers; and boys go from house to house sprinkling all the females, just as our street boys go about wishing all "A merry Christmas."

On Easter Tuesday the girls sprinkle the boys in some places, but this is not universal.

The boys use their hard-boiled eggs in a game which is played by one boy holding his egg in his hand, while another aims a Kreuzer at it; if the coin stick, he appropriates the egg; if not, and he misses catching his piece of money, or it falls, the owner of the egg takes the money.

Lead is cast to foretell future husband's trade.

Poppy-seeds are crushed in honey, made up like rolley-polley puddings, twisted into horse-shoes, and called so: these are sent by post, as we do Valentines. Sometimes instead of seeds there is plum jam, or walnuts pounded in honey. These are made at Christmas.

The navel cord is kept by the mother of the child in a box with the name of the child, together with the date of its birth. (When it falls off, if it fall on the floor, the child will always wet its bed. Common notion in Holderness and North Line.—W. H. J.)

Bells are rung to protect towns against lightning.

When any one is dying, a little bell is rung, thus: ⏑⏑– ⏑⏑– ⏑⏑–. In Budapest, a man watched day and night for fires from the belfry of the Hôtel de Ville : upon his seeing a fire, he gave a stated signal on the bell, and put out a red flag in the direction of the fire. At night, beginning at 7 p.m. in winter and 8 p.m. in summer, every quarter of an hour, when the clock chimed, the watcher cried in Magyar "Laudatur Jesus Xtus." It was also the custom to ring the parish church bell at 3 a.m. every morning, because that was the hour the last man died of the plague.

When any one sneezes, men say "To your good health," the Germans in Hungary, "May God help you." This is said to be in remembrance of a disease that often ended in death, and which began by sneezing.

When people sit down to a meal, some one of the company wishes