Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/221

 Rh means a facetious person, one who is full of merry pranks, and the expressions, "He's a reg'lar magum," or "He's full of his magums," are often heard. But the idea intended to be conveyed in the first saying is that it is wrong to make fun of a person suffering from an infirmity, which may at any time afflict the jeerer. The puritanical notion of Sunday lingers in the belief in Cornwall that it is unlucky to use a scissors on that day, even to cut your nails; you must

Children here are pleased to see "gifts" (white spots) on their thumbnails, as

Occasionally white spots on the five fingers are named as follows: "A gift, a friend, a fee, a true lover, a journey to go." Should the little ones, when picking flowers, sting themselves with nettles, they are of course in this locality, as elsewhere in England, taught to rub the spot with dock-leaves, repeating the words, "In dock, out nettle "; but they are often told in addition to wet the place affected with their spittle, and make a cross over it with their thumbnails, pressed down as heavily as possible. School-boys and school girls often years ago practised a cruel jest on their more innocent companions. They induced them to pick a nettle by saying "Nettles won't sting this month." When the children were stung and complained the retort was, "I never said they would not sting you." The blue scabious in Cornwall is never plucked. It is called the devil's bit, and the superstition is handed down from one generation of children to another that, should they transgress and do so, the devil will appear to them in their dreams at night. But any one who wishes to dream of the devil should pin four ivy-leaves to the corners of his pillow. Flowers plucked from churchyards bring ill-luck, and and even visitations from spirits on the plucker. "Wrens and robins are sacred in the eyes of Cornish boys, for