Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/154

146 told that it was deemed unlucky that a sick person should see their face in a glass—a custom which appears more reasonable than that the looking-glass should be turned round or covered as a corpse is in the house—though this would seem perhaps to indicate that the survivors are too absorbed in their grief to think of plaiting of hair or of adorning themselves.

In Naples, in Spain, and in the island of Corfu, the church clocks and the time-pieces in the houses are stopped during Passion Week, or at least during the latter portion of it. In Spain, wooden clappers on the summit of the church towers are used instead of bells to summon the worshippers, and in Naples a small machine like the old watchman's rattle is adopted at that period to assemble the family to meals in place of the ordinary dinner-bell.

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Bees.—Mr. B. recently bought a straw skep of bees of Mr. D., whose wife died lately, and a few days afterwards, when his other bees were at work, he observed that those he had bought were not at work, so he turned the skep up to see the cause, and found the bees were dead. Upon telling this to several old people they all said they died because the master of the house did not go and tap three times at the hive and tell them the mistress was dead. One who is a bee-keeper said they died of starvation, but we find that that was not the cause, as there was between five and six pounds of honey in the hive.—Hertfordshire Mercury, 11th Feb. 1888.

NOTICES AND NEWS.

On February 12, Mr. Jeremiah Curtin read, before the Anthropological Society of Washington, U.S.A., a paper of some interest on the folk-lore of Ireland. Last year Mr. Curtin went to Ireland for the express purpose of finding out how far the old "myths and tales"