Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/193

Rh Adder's Tongue.—"Rambling through part of Worcestershire last summer, a nice-looking old woman to whom I was talking, evidently a labourer's wife, said: 'Yes, we've had twelve children, and they're all alive and doing well, thank the Lord and the adder's tongue.' In evident good faith, and earnest belief in its efficacy as a charm to bring luck and prosperity, the old lady proceeded to tell me that her father, who lived in Montgomeryshire, was walking one day amongst the lines when he noticed an adder gliding round him. He seized it by the neck with one hand, and with the other, armed with a leaf, plucked out its tongue. This tongue he kept until his daughter married, when he gave it her. She passed it on to her husband, and, in succession, each member of their family possessed it for a time; but no one knew who had it, and avoided asking. Whenever the tongue withered it had merely to be wrapped in a fresh cabbage, or other leaf, to revive and keep it sweet and right. She advised me strongly to get a tongue, said it was easily done, by holding a leaf in the hand when plucking it out, and would surely bring me the comfort and well-being which it had brought to her. Asked if I could not have hers, she said, rather solemnly, 'No; it must not be found out where it was.—K. K. C.

This is a welcome book to the student of folk-lore, as supplying him with the best and most complete version in existence of one of the most famous and oldest collections of folk-stories known. It is, indeed, to be regretted that Mr. Falconer should not rather have chosen for translation the Arabic text of Kalilah and Dimnah, both more complete and more satisfactory in form and style than the Syriac version of which the book under notice is an English render-