Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/150

142 poems taken from vivâ voce recitation with the printed copy; and, strange as it may seem, they were found to agree together word for word, with the exception however of a few lines in Deirdri and four entire stanzas in Tailc, which the written record has evidently lost and tradition preserved.

The manner of preserving the accuracy of tradition is singular and worthy of notice. In the winter evenings a number of Senachies frequently meet together and recite alternately their traditionary stories. If any one repeats a passage which appears to another to be incorrect he is immediately stopped, when each gives a reason for his way of reciting the passage. The dispute is then referred to a vote of the meeting, and the decision of the majority becomes imperative on the subject for the future.—(Vol. i. pp. 317-318.)

N annotating Aubrey's Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, Dr. White Kennett bore testimony to the existence of the practice of wearing the willow in his time: "The young man, whose late sweetheart is married to some other person, does often in a frolique literally wear a willow garland, as I have seen in some parts of Oxfordshire." Centuries earlier the Jews of the Babylonish Captivity had hung their silenced harps on—if our translators were right—the willows, which were by the rivers of their land of exile: may be because the bowed down or weeping