Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/97

 Rh cause of the rain, and therefore rolled it over the cliff. The staff, or longstone, was discovered in the position in which it remains; it is about twelve feet high, and tapering toward the top, and is said to have been so fashioned by the giant that he might grasp it with ease."—Murray's Guide.

There is another longstone in the parish of St Cleer, about two miles north of Liskeard, which bears an inscription to Doniert (Dungerth), a traditional king of Cornwall, who was drowned in 872. In fact these "menhirs," supposed to be sepulchral monuments, are to be found scattered all over the county.

The following curious bit of folk-lore appeared in the Daily News of March 8th, 1883, communicated by the Rev. J. Hoskyns Abrahall, Coombe Vicarage, near Woodstock:—"A friend of mine, who is vicar of St. Cleer, in East Cornwall, has told me that at least one housemaid of his—I think his servants in general—very anxiously avoided killing a spider, because Parson Jupp, my friend's predecessor (whom he succeeded in 1844), was, it was believed, somewhere in the vicarage in some spider—no one knew in which of the vicarage spiders." Spiders are often not destroyed because of the tradition that one spun a web over Christ in the manger and hid him from Herod.

There are other superstitions current in Cornwall somewhat similar to the above. Maidens who die of broken hearts, after they have been deceived by unfaithful lovers, are said to haunt their betrayers as white hares. The souls of old sea-captains never sleep; they are turned into gulls and albatrosses. The knockers (a tribe of little people), who live underground in the tin-mines, are the spirits of the Jews who crucified our Saviour, and are for that sin compelled on Christmas morning to sing carols in his honour. "Jew" is a name also given to a black field-beetle (why, I know not). It exudes a reddish froth: country children hold it on their hands and say, "Jew! Jew! spit blood!" "A ghost at Pengelly, in the parish of Wendron, was compelled by a parson of that village after various changes of form to seek refuge in a pigeon-hole, where it is confined to this day."—Through Rev. S. Rundle.