Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/229

Rh Festivals, Ceremonies, and Usages; of Sayings, as Prescriptions, Saws, and Forecasts; and of Poesies, as Stories, Songs, and Sagas: and, as a still further principle of Classification, it was suggested that the contents of each of these Genera might be distinguished as Cosmical, Social, and Ancestral.

1st March.—In Mid-Cornwall, people arise before the sun is up, and sweep before the door to sweep away fleas.—(T. G. Couch, W. Antiquary, September, 1883.)

5th March.—St. Piran's day is a miners' holiday. St. Piran is the patron saint of "tinners," and is popularly supposed to have died drunk. "As drunk as a Piraner" is a Cornish proverb."

The first Friday in March is another miners' holiday, "Friday in Lide." It is marked by a serio-comic custom of sending a young man on the highest "bound," or hillock, of the "works," and allowing him to sleep there as long as he can, the length of his siesta being the measure of the afternoon nap of the "tinners" throughout the ensuing twelve months.—(T. G. Couch.) Lide is an obsolete term for the month of March still preserved in old proverbs, such as "Ducks won't lay 'till they've drunk Lide water."

Holy Thursday.—On that Thursday, and the two following Thursdays, girls in the neighbourhood of Roche, in East Cornwall, repair to his holy or wishing well before sunrise. They throw in crooked pins or pebbles, and, by the bubbles that rise to the surface, seek to ascertain whether their sweethearts will be true or false. There was