Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/174

166 hast thou?' (Knowed what they come for, you see, afore ever they said a word.) 'Well,' he says, 'why didstna thou come afore? thou'st like to ha' bin too late. Thou hadst ought to a come afore. Howsoever,' he says, 'I'll see what I can do.' So he wrote him a charm. I don't know what it was; but it would very likely be something the same as that you've showed me,' [the old toothache charm about St. Peter!]. And he fastened it up in a bit of green silk, and the boy was to wear it round his neck, just in the centre of his chest, and never to part with it. Every time as he changed his clothes he was to be sure and keep the charm about him—never to part with it. Well, and he got all right and quite hearty after that, only he never durst part with the charm. "Only once he'd been changing his clothes, and he slipped it off somehow. It was in the harvest, and he was leading the waggon. His father was pitching at the top end of the field, and all of a sudden he see the boy making straight for a bit of a dingle at the bottom, and he shouted to him; but he took no notice—it was like as if he was silly. And his father run, and he did but just get to him in time, and a good job as he did, else him and the waggon and horses and all would a been right over the steep side of the dingle. And they couldn't make out whatever ailed the lad; but they took him home, and put him to bed, and when they come to examine him, of course they found as he hadn't got the charm on. So they put it on him again, and he was all right after. He was grown a young man when I knew him; he worked for me twelve years, but he always wore the charm."—(Told, March 25th, 1885, by an old farmer who lived for many years in the country between Hereford and Leominster to C. S. Burne)

"A practice prevails pretty generally in Herefordshire (at least in the district between Hereford and Malvern) and parts of Monmouthshire which is plainly due to the same origin [as the Lancashire Simnels] . . . . . . . 'Mothering Sunday' (as they call it) is there, as in Lancashire, Mid-Lent Sunday; and on that day