Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/390

382 business is only performed up to midday. It is not recognised as "lawful" to nettle afterwards. Some, who are unable to procure it, endeavour to avoid the penalty by wearing dog oak (maple), but the punishment is always more severe on the discovery of the imposition. A more unpleasant custom prevailed in the northern portion of the county about twenty years ago. Those who did not conform to the usages of the "Royal Oak day" were pelted with rotten eggs. In order to be well supplied with the "needful" for that day, the young men would hoard up hen eggs for about a couple of months before they would be brought into requisition, so that the eggs would become rotten before they were required. This custom was in time carried to such an extent that the "strong arm of the law" was often brought into requisition to suppress it, the rough young folk pelting persons indiscriminately. Smaller eggs are still used by the school-lads on "King Charles' day."

Folk-Lore Terminology.—(Ante, p. 348).—I have been prevented from completing my letter on this subject owing to pressure of work, but I hope to have it ready for the January issue.

Folklorists have for some time past been expecting from Mr. Lang an exposition of his views on folk-lore; views which, having been often expressed in essays and controversial letters in the Academy and elsewhere, have proclaimed him as the chief champion of those students who think that folk-lore is something more than mythology, and that mythology is something more than diseased language. To many this book on custom and myth will be disappointing, because Mr. Lang does something more than hint that it is to take the place, at all events for the present, of a larger book and a more comprehensive study. Recognizing, as all must, that Mr. Lang has every right to expound his theory of folk-lore and its teaching, it must also be