Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/39

Rh and Carolina Garguillo, son and mother, the former to hard labour for life, the latter to 'seclusion' for three years. It is upwards of a year since the daughter of Carolina, one of the beauties of Sorrento, was married to a sailor, called Giuseppe Esposito. The usage of the lower classes of the country, which efforts have been made in vain to suppress, is for the bridegroom to visit his mother-in-law on the morning following the marriage, and Esposito was reminded of it. The visit was not however paid, nor was it after waiting a fortnight. The mother-in-law, then becoming furious, complained to her son, urging him to avenge the honour of his sister and of the family. Vincenzo Garguillo thereupon went to his sister's house and waited for the husband, who on his arrival welcomed him and begged him to stay and dine. The answer was that Vincenzo, drawing a knife and throwing himself on his brother-in-law, stabbed him and laid him dead at his feet. The result of the trial, after a delay of upwards of a year, was as I have narrated. I do not enter into details of the custom, the omission of which was so fatal, but they may easily be surmised. Even clerical influence cannot suppress it; the honour of a family is supposed to be connected with it."

Mermaid Tradition.—At a meeting of the Society of Manchester Scientific Students, Sept. 27, 1882, the members visited Hayfield. On leaving Hayfield railway station the party proceeded to the edge of Leygate Moor. From thence they reached the Old Oak wood near the lower house. A short walk from here is the Downfall. Near here is the Mermaid's Pool, of which the natives have a tradition that a beautiful woman lives in the side of the Scout; that she comes to bathe every day in the Mermaid's Well, and that the man who has the good luck to behold her bathing will become immortal and never die. The old people of Hayfield, moreover, tell a long story of a man who, sometime in the last century, went from Hayfield over the Scout, and was lucky enough to meet this mountain nymph, by whom he was conducted to a cavern hard by. Tradition adds that she was pleased with this humble mortal, and that he lingered there some time, when she conferred on him the precious gift of immortality.