Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/387

Rh on his shoulder, he chances to meet face to face with a woman, be she even his own wife or daughter, he considers himself doomed to ill-luck. Thus, when a woman sees a man approaching her under these circumstances she at once turns her back on him. If a fisher sends his son to fetch his big sea-boots, the bearer must be careful to carry them under his arm. Should he by inadvertence place them on his shoulder his father will inevitably refuse to put out to sea that day. An egg is deemed so unlucky that the fishermen will not even use the word, but call the produce of the fowl a roundabout; and, fearless as are the fishers in their daily juggling with the dangers of the sea, yet, so fearful are they of nameless spirits and bogies, that I am assured I should be unable in the whole fishing colony of Staithes to find a volunteer who for a couple of sovereigns would walk by night to the neighbouring village of Hinderwell, a couple of miles distant."

Bee-Superstition.—An instance of carrying out the well-known superstition concerning bees occurred recently at a hamlet named Geeston, in the parish of Ketton, Rutland. After the death of an old bee-master his widow knocked at several bee-hives and said, "He's gone, he's gone." The bees hummed in reply, by which it is understood that they will remain.

The late Mr. W. J. Thoms.—The Society suffers a severe loss by the death of its venerable founder and Director. Although of late years Mr. Thoms had not, owing to his growing infirmities, been able to give much attention to the Society, and although, as he often expressed it, he was not able to keep pace with modern folk-lorists, yet he always took a deep interest in the Society's welfare and proceedings. It is not necessary to repeat here the story of Mr. Thoms's literary career, and the many endearing remembrances which he has left behind him, for every literary journal has recorded these points before the Folk-Lore Journal could be published; but if our readers will turn to the First Annual Report of the Council, where the letter in which Mr. Thoms first used the term folk-lore is reprinted from the Athenæum, and if they will remember that it was to his efforts, through the kindly pages of Notes and Queries in