Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/372

364 an addition to the "fret." It is more unlucky still on Saturday, and it is the one that rises first from the table that dies. Here is a "case in point" from the parish of Keith, Banffshire. Thirteen sat down on a Saturday lately to supper at a farm, after accomplishing some work in which kind neighbours were helping. The farmer who was the first to leave the table caught cold next day at church and died soon after of inflammation of the lungs.

It may be added that if one is seized by any illness when in church, it is the death-illness.

The Cornish Buccaboo.—I am inclined to think that the Cornish legends about the Buccaboo (who is usually rendered in the mediæval manner as the devil—who, in fact, is used to account for most of the pre-Christian myths of old Europe) refer to a sea-god—an old Cornu-British Poseidon, or Neptune, or Dagon, and ocean or fish deity—possibly the personification of the tempestuous Atlantic. One ground for this theory is that the Newlyn fishermen were wont, even until modern times, when they had "a good catch," to throw a fish into the sea as an offering to the Buccaboo. Hence their neighbours gave them the nickname of "Newlyn Buccas," or propitiators of the Buccaboo. Had they really believed this mysterious personage was the devil I can hardly suppose they would have so acted.

Our local legend of the Buccaboo and Tolcarn points in the same direction. The Buccaboo is said one night to have stolen some of the fishermen's nets (a myth for the storm catching the nets and sinking them, just as was the case only a few weeks ago when scores of nets were destroyed in Mounts Bay). Some of these nets belonged to certain members of Paul choir. They caught the Buccaboo as he was stealing the nets, and chased him to the top of the hill, chanting the Apostles' Creed, which greatly frightened him. When he reached to the top of the rock he flew across the ravine or coombe" to the Tolcarn rocks, where he turned the nets into stone (the veins are curiously reticulated on some of the rocks). This looks like a rude typifying of the defeat of the heathen sea-god by Christianity. The belief in the Buccaboo haunting the place is not yet extinct, and children fear the spot after dark.

I may say that no one who has seen a storm on the Cornish coast