No. 1. is a dialogue between the Parson and the old Dame:
"P. Well, Dame Grey, I hear you have a charm to cure the toothache. Come, just let me hear it; I should be so much pleased to know it.
"Dame. Oh, your reverence, it's not worth telling."
(Here a long talkParson coaxing the Dame to tell himold lady very shy, partly suspecting he is quizzing her, partly that no charms are proper things, partly willing to know what he thinks about it.) At last it ends by her saying
"Well, your reverence, you have been very kind to me, and I'll tell you: it's just a verse from Scripture as I says over those as have the toothache:
"'And Jesus said unto Peter, What aileth thee? and Peter answered, Lord, I have toothache. And the Lord healed him.'"
"P. Well, but Dame Grey, I think I know my Bible, and I don't find any such verse in it."
"Dame. Yes, your reverence, that is just the charm. It's in the Bible, but you can't find it!"
No. 2. To avert sickness from a family, hang up a sickle, or iron implement, at the bed head.
No. 3. Should a death happen in a house at night, and there be a hive or hives of bees in the garden, go out and wake them up at once, otherwise the whole hive or swarm will die.
I hope your Folk Lore is not confined to the fading memorials of a past age. The present superstitions are really much more interesting and valuable to be gathered together; and I am sure your pages would be very well employed in recording these for a future generation. I would suggest, in all humility, that it would be really useful, for the rulers of our Church and State, to know how far such a superstition as the following prevails among the peasantry:
That, if a dying person sees "glory," or a bright light, at or near the time of their dissolution, such a vision is a sure sign of their salvation, whatever may have been their former life, or their repentance.
D. Sholbus.Superstitions in North of England.I find some curious popular superstitions prevalent in the north of England some three centuries ago recorded in the Proceedings before the Special Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes appointed by Queen Elizabeth. Thus:
"Anthony Haggen presented for medicioning children with miniting a hammer as a smythe of kynde."
Again
"John Watson presented for burying a quick dogg and a quick cowe."
And
"Agnes, the wyf of John Wyse, als Winkam John Wyse, presented to be a medicioner for the waffc of an yll wynde, and for the fayryes."
Some of your readers may perhaps explain what these were. It is clear that they were superstitious practices of sufficient prevalence and influence on the popular mind to call for the interference of the queen's commissioners.
A.B.Decking Churches with Yew on Easter Day.In the village of Berkely near Frome, Somerset, and on the borders of Wiltshire, the church is decorated on Easter Sunday with yew, evidently as an emblem of the Resurrection. Flowers in churches on that day are common, but I believe the use of yew to be unusual.
W. Durrant Cooper.Strewing Straw or Chaff.The custom mentioned by your correspondent "B." (p. 245.) as prevailing in Gloucestershire, is not peculiar to that county. In Kent, it is commonly practised by the rustics. The publican, all the world over, decorates his sign-board with a foaming can and pipes, to proclaim the entertainment to be found within. On the same principle, these rustics hang up their sign-board,as one of them, with whom I was once remonstrating, most graphically explained to me. When they knew of a house where the master deems a little wholesome discipline necessary to ensure the obedience of love, considering it a pity that the world should be ignorant of his manly virtues, they strew "well threshed" chaff or straw before his door, as an emblematical sign-board, to proclaim that the sweet fare and "good entertainment" of a "well threshed" article may be found within. The custom, at all events, has one good tendency, it shames the tyrant into restraint, when he knows that his cowardly practices are patent to the world.
Lambert B. Larking.FOLK LORE OF WALES
No. 1. Cron Annwn.When a storm sounds over the mountains, the Welsh peasant will tell you that his ear discerns the howl of the Cron Annwn mingling with that of the wind, yet as clearly distinct from it as is the atmosphere in a diving-bell from that of the surrounding waters. These dogs of Annwn, or "couriers of the air," are spirit hounds, who hunt the souls of the dead; or, as occasionally said, they foretell, by their expectant cries, the approaching death of some man of evil deeds. Few have ever pretended to see them; for few, we presume, would linger until they dawned on the sight; but they are described by Taliesin, and in the Mabinogion, as being of a clear shining white, with red ears; colouring which confirms the author of the Mythology of the Ancient Druids in the idea that these dogs were "a mystical transformation of the Druids with their white robes and red tiaras." Popular superstition, however, which must always attribute ugliness to an object of fear, deems that they are either jet black, with eyes and teeth of fire, or of a deep red, and dripping all over with gore. "The nearer," says the Rev. Edmund Jones, "they are to a man, the less their voice is, and the farther the louder, sometimes swelling like the voice of a great hound, or a blood-hound."
They are sometimes accompanied by a female fiend, called Malt y nosMathilda or Malen of the night, a somewhat ubiquitous character, with whom we meet under a complication of names and forms.
Jones of Brecon, who tells us that the cry of the Cron Annwn is as familiar to the inhabitants of Ystrad Fellte and Pont Neath-vaughan [in Glamorganshire] as the watchman's rattle in the purlieus of Covent Gardenfor he lived in the days when watchmen and their rattles were yet among the things of this worldconsiders that to these dogs, and not to a Greek myth, may be referred the hounds, Fury, Silver, Tyrant, &c., with which Prospero hunts his enemies "soundly," in the Tempest. And they must recall to the minds of our readers the wisk, wisked, or Yesk hounds of Devon, which are described in the Athenæum for March 27. 1847, as well as the Maisne Hellequin of Normandy and Bretagne.
There has been much discussion respecting the signification of the word Annwn, which has been increased by the very frequent mistake of writing it Anwn, which means, unknown, strange, and is applied to the people who dwell in the antipodes of the speaker; while Annwn is an adaptation of annwfn, a bottomless or immeasurable pit, voidlessspace, and also Hell. Thus we find, that when Pwyl, or Reason, drives these dogs off their track, the owner comes up, and, reproving him, declares that he is a crowned king, lord of Annwn and Pendaran, i.e. chief of thunder. (See Myth. Ant. Druids, p. 418.)