Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/402

394 [I have still some more titles to fill in under this letter. The first editions of Sir George Cox's Tales of the Gods and Heroes, Tales of Ancient Greece, and Tales of Thebes and Argos, are unfortunately mislaid at the British Museum, and I should be glad of the transcripts of the titles and contents of these volumes. There are still the Celtic Magazine, Contemporary Review, Cornhill Magazine, the Crypt, and other journals to finish, and some of the chapbooks, such as Cinderella. These will be given later on.]

The Cuckoo and the Swift.—A labouring man from Hampshire tells me that in his part of the country it is considered very unlucky to kill either of these birds. A farmer who made light of popular superstition went out one day and, by way of bravado, shot seventeen swifts. He was the owner of seventeen fine cows; but before seven weeks were over every one of his cows died. My informant seemed to look upon the swift as an uncanny bird, and called it by a name I had never heard before, devil-screecher.

Stang Riding (ante, p. 302).—I send you the words used in a "stang riding" thirty years ago here. An effigy was paraded in a cart round the town at night, drawn by young men, the spokesman recited the lines at each stopping-place, and finally the figure was burnt, opposite the dwelling of the delinquent if possible:—

Ran-a-dan Dang, It's for neither my cause nor your cause that I ride the stang; But it is for yan (one) Dobbin the people all knaw, For he's banged his wife, an it's again our law. And gentlemen all, as you will have hard, All this happened in Tommy Dodd yard. He banged her, he banged her, he banged her indeed, He banged this poor woman afore she stead need. Upstairs aback out bed, There he broyed her 'till she bled;