Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/201

 Rh this as in other counties, were formerly whispered to them, that the bees might not think themselves neglected, and leave the place in anger. At a recent meeting of the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society a gentleman mentioned that when a boy he had seen thirty hives belonging to Mr. Joshua Fox, of Tregedna, tied up in crape (an universal practice) because of a death in the Fox family. Another at the same time said that when, some years since, the land-lady of the First and Last Inn, at the Land's End, died, the bird-cages and flower-pots were also tied with crape, to prevent the birds and plants from dying. Snails as well as bees are thought here to bring luck, for "the house is blest where snails do rest," and children on meeting theln in their path, for some reason stamp their feet and say,

Another Cornish farmer's superstition is that "ducks won't lay until they have drunk 'Lide' (March) water;" and the wife of one in 1880 declared "that if a goose saw a Lent lily (daffodil) before hatching its goslings it would, when they came forth, destroy them." Some witty thieves, many years ago, having stolen twelve geese from a clergyman in the eastern part of the county, tied twelve pennies and this doggrel around the gander's neck,

Moles in this county are known as "wants," and once in the Land's End district I overtook an old man and asked him what had made so many hillocks in a field through which we were passing. His answer was, "What you rich people never have in your houses, 'wants.'"

To this day in Cornwall, when anything unforeseen happens to our small farmers or they have the misfortune to lose by sickness some of their stock, they still think that they are "ill-wished," and start off (often on long journeys) to consult a "pellar," or wise man, sometimes called "a white witch" (which term is here used indiscriminately for persons of both sexes). The following I had from a