Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/269

 Rh in at seven, and nothing can induce them to get out after that hour. I hear that the Moorman assaulted at Kayman's Gate has died. The fact seems to be that the Moorman was a quiet shop-keeper who bought some things in the market and asked a cooly boy to carry them home. The boy, whose mind was rather unsettled by the recent rumours, suspecting something, refused. The Moorman who wanted somebody to carry his purchases gave the boy a gentle tap on the back and pressed the boy to help him, who, thinking that he had encountered a real kidnapper, set up a frightful howl which induced the people in the neighbourhood to rush in and give the surprised Moorman a sound thrashing. Two hundred human beings are required, says rumour, to propitiate the deity, who is responsible for the crack in the Maligakanda Reservoir."

The Evil Eye and the Evil Tongue.—The influence of the evil eye is as well known in Shetland as in other parts of the world. But to rank an evil tongue in the same category of malefic potency is a refinement of superstition unknown to the folk-lore of the majority of people. "Nobody must praise a child or anything they set a value on, for if anything evil afterwards befals it," this will be attributed to the tongue that spoke of it. This was called "forespeaking," and persons so forespoken could only be loosed from their enchantment by being washed in a water of which the concoction is kept a profound secret. —"Shetland and its People," by Sheriff Rampini, in Good Words for 1884, p. 748. See also Gregor, Folk-Lore of the North-east of Scotland, under "Forespeaking."

In Ceylon, both Sinhalese and Tamil cultivators believe in the evil influence on their crops of the tongue as well as in that of the eye.

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Laying a Ghost.—A Newhaven despatch to a New York paper says:—In the Roman Catholic Cemetery in Birmingham early on the morning of the 18th ult., four middle-aged women and two men, the latter armed with spades and picks, entered by the side gate and halted in front of a newly-made grave. The men set to work, while the women wept, and opened the grave and hauled a coffin up. The