t I . HOUSEHOLD TALES AND TKADITIONAL EEMAINS ' HOUSEHOLD TALES WITH OTHER TRADITIONAL EEMAINS Collected in the Counties of York, Lincoln, Derby, and Nottingham BY SIDNEY OLDALL ADDY, M.A. AUTHOR OP 'THE SHEFFIELD GLOSSARY " (ENGLISH DIALECT SOCIETY)," THE HALL OP WALTHEOF," ETC. LONDON DAVID NUTT IN THE STRAND SHEFFIELD PAWSON AND BRAILSFORD 1895 [All rights reserved] WESTMINSTKR riUXTED BY NICHOLS AND SONS, 25, PARLIAMENT STREET. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE INTKODUCTION ix HOUSEHOLD TALES. 1. THE SMALL-TOOTH DOG . . . . .1 \ 2. THE BAG OF NUTS ..... 4 3. THE TAILOR AND HIS APPRENTICES . . .5 "\4. THE BOY WHO FEARED NOTHING .... 6 5. THE ENCHANTED MOUNTAIN .... 6 6. JACK THE BUTTER-MILK . . . . .7 7. DATHERA DAD ...... 9 8. JACK OTTER . . . . . .10 ^ 9. THE GIRL WHO GOT UP THE TREE . . .10 10. THE LITTLE WATERCRESS GIRL . . . .11 11. THE HAWK AND THE PARROT . . . .12 \12. THE CHOICE OF A SERVANT . . . .13 13. A DREAM OF HEAVEN . . . . .14 14. THE ENDLESS TALE . . . . .15 15. THE CLEAN FAIRY AND THE DIRTY FAIRY . .16 16. THE BLACKSMITH WHO SOLD HIMSELF TO THE DEVIL . 17 "^17. THE MAN THAT STOLE THE PARSON'S SHEEP . . 18 18. THE GLASS BALL . 18 VI PAGE 19. THE HEDGE PRIEST . . . . .22 \20. THE BOY AND THE PARSON . . . .22 21. THE PYNOTS IN THE CRABTREE . . . .23 22. THE MINISTER AND THE FAIRIES . . . .23 23. THE WIGGIN STICK . . . . .24 24. THE YOUNGER BROTHER'S DUTY . . . .24 25. BYARD'S LEAP . . . . . .25 26. THE DEVIL'S DITCH . . . . .26 ^27. THE HENPECKED HUSBAND . . . .27 XL 28. THE GIRL WHO WENT THROUGH FIRE, WATER, AND THE GOLDEN GATE . . . . . .28 29. THE BROKEN PITCHER . . . . .29 -30. THE MAID WHO WANTED TO MARRY . . .30 31. THE FAIRY AND THE KING . . . .30 32. THE WOODMAN AND THE HATCHET . . .34 "~^33. THE IRISHMAN AND THE BULL . . . .35 34. THE WITCH AND HER BUTTER-MILK . . .35 35. THE WIZARD OF LINCOLN . . . .36 06. NlCORBORE AND HIS MONEY . . . .37 37. THE OLD ONE . . . . . .38 38. HOB THRUST . . . . . .39 39. THE GIRL WHO FETCHED WATER IN A RIDDLE . . 40 40. THE CARD-PLAYER AND THE DEVIL . . .41 ^41. THE SONS WHO SALTED THEIR FATHER'S CORPSE . 41 42. TALES ABOUT FAIRIES . . . . .42 43. THE GOLDEN CUP. . . . . .42 44. THE WEAVER'S WIFE AND THE WITCH . . .43 45. THE WITCH AND THE PLOUGHMAN . . .44 46. THE BEWITCHED HORSES . * . ; 45 Vll PAGE 47. THE GOOD MAGPIE . . . . .46 48. THE OLD WOMAN AND THE FAIRY . . .46 49. THE SHEEP'S HEAD AND DUMPLINGS . . .48 50. SUGAR A^D SALT . . . . . .48 51. THE HAMMER CALLED "SMILER" . . .49 52. THE LITTLE BED HAIRY MAN . . . .50 TRADITIONAL REMAINS. I. SUPERSTITIONS CONNECTED WITH THE WORLD, THE SUN, MOON, STARS, NATURAL OBJECTS, AND PLACES . 55 II. SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT TREES AND HERBS . . 62 III. SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT ANIMALS . . .64 IV. WITCHCRAFT . . . . . .70 V. MAGIC, CHARMS, AND DIVINATION . . .73 VI. LEECHCRAFT AND FOLK-MEDICINE . . .88 VII. OMENS : THINGS LUCKY AND UNLUCKY . . 93 VIII. DAYS AND SEASONS ..... 103 IX. WEATHER LORE . . . . .117 X. BIRTH, BAPTISM, MARRIAGE, DEATH, AND BURIAL . 119 XI. LOCAL AND CEREMONIAL CUSTOMS . . .126 XII. FAIRIES, GIANTS, DWARFS, AND GHOSTS . . 134 XIII. FIRST-FRUITS AND SACRIFICE .... 141 XIV. PROVERBS AND LOCAL RIMES .... 142 XV. Two PAGAN HYMNS . 148 INTRODUCTION. L HOUSEHOLD TALES. JHE fifty- two short stories printed in this volume have been got together during the lust six or seven years. A deluge of cheap literature has fallen upon us since the days when the brothers Grimm made their famous German collection, and the memory, assisted by books, is apt to forget the unwritten lore. But still the ancient stories, beautiful or highly humorous even in their decay, linger with us here and there in England, and, like rare plants, may be found by those who seek them. Though some of the stories here printed illustrate the poverty of present tradition, it is likely that others were never told at greater length, or in better form. In every case I have either written the tales down from dictation, or a written copy has been given to me. I have added nothing except the occasional formula, " Once upon a time," or a title to a story which had no title. Xor have I taken anything away. As nearly as I could manage it, the tales are given in the very words of the narrators. I have hardly attempted to reproduce dialect, but obsolete words, when used by the narrator, have been retained. And when the narrator has used such a word as " mamma," I have not hesitated to write " mother." The tales have all been obtained from oral tradition, and not from printed sources. Many more of them must be embedded in the X INTRODUCTION. memories of the people, but the collection of these things usually falls to the lot of those who are otherwise busy. A few remarks on the scope of the tales, and the lessons which they teach to the archaeologist, seem necessary. It will be seen that witchcraft is very prominent in our tales, and it will appear that gifts were made to witches to obtain their favour and assistance in the ordinary affairs of life. In one story a boy who will not give butter-milk to a witch is threatened with boiling alive. In another story we are told that a farmer and his wife have been accustomed to give butter-milk to a witch. One day the farmer's daughter refuses to give the butter-milk, and after that butter will not come in the churn. In another story a farmer tells his men never to refuse to give anything that a witch might ask of them. But one of the men refuses her request, after which his horses will not go. In another story the horses of a carter who refuses to give the witch a pipe of tobacco are bewitched, and will not move on. Here we have four tales, derived from independent sources, in which the leading idea is that gifts ought to be offered to the witch, just as bowls of cream are offered to the fairies or local deities.* And as regards the pipe of tobacco, let us not forget that offer- ings made to the fairies had by no means ceased when tobacco was first brought into England. It is not unlikely that the numerous small tobacco pipes to which the name of " fairy pipes " has been given, and which are so often found upon or near to old earthworks, were intended as gifts to the fairies, otherwise the local deities or spirits of the dead. Two or three centuries ago belief in fairies and witchcraft was very strong in the minds of the English people, and the ancient notion that the dead needed the comforts and consolations of the living may have led to pious and secret offerings to them of little pipes of tobacco. I do not know any other way of accounting for the presence of these " fairy pipes " upon old mounds. It may be said, indeed, that they came from the ash- * Amongst the Norsemen, sibyls or spae-wives, according to the popular fancy, went about the land and told men their fates. For this they received presents, INTKODUCTION. XI pit or refuse heap along with the manure which was laid on the land. But this explanation will not account for their presence on lands which are not enclosed or cultivated. " Small tobacco pipes," says Mr. Croker in his Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland , "of an ancient form, are frequently found in Ireland on digging or ploughing up the ground, particularly in the vicinity of those circular entrenchments, called Danish forts, which were more probably the villages or settlements of the native Irish. These pipes are believed by the peasantry to belong to the Cluricaunes, and when discovered are broken, or otherwise treated with indignity, as a kind of retort for the tricks which their supposed owners had played off."* The Eev. K. A. Gatty has found these pipes at Bradfield, near Sheffield. He describes them as "pigmy pipe bowls," and says that he has found them in the ploughed fields. " I have picked up," he says, " from time to time, upwards of a hundred specimens, when looking for flint implements. They vary a little in design, and sometimes makers' marks are found on the spur under the bowl."| In a letter to me Mr. Gatty says : " You never find them whole in the stem, except when behind old wainscots in very old houses I found a hundred or more on the moorside at Bradfield. Who smoked up there in those days ? The fairies are supposed to smoke, but where they get their tobacco from is a secret. Certainly the pipes are quite small enough for such small folk, and I have some specimens quite absurd in size. I am certain that the people believed in the fairies smoking. My old clerk at Bradfield who always swore by the mess, not mass used to argue the point with a friend over a glass of beer." Now there is a close resemblance between these gifts to witches and offerings made to the spirits of the dead. Accordingly the pipe of tobacco demanded by the witch in our tale resembles the offering made to the fairy or disembodied spirit inhabiting the hill or the ancient mound. And, as we shall presently see, the witch and the fairy are identical. * Quoted from Hone's Table Booli, 1827, ii., p. 771. t Gatty's A Life at One Living, 1884, p. 213. Xll INTRODUCTION. Mr. W. F. Jackson lias lent me a small pipe bowl found in a field near Bailey Hill, in Bradfield, in 1887. It is made of white pipe-clay, and might very well have been made 250 years ago. It is worn at the edges, and the stem has been broken off sharply at its junction with the bowl ; the aperture leading into the bowl remains. There is no spur, and the bowl is flattened beneath. A dotted line has been made round and near the edge of the bowl by way of ornament. The outside depth of the bowl is an inch and a quarter, the inside depth fifteen-sixteenths of an inch. The diameter of the bowl, measured from the outside, is half an inch. I found by experiment that the bowl of a modern tobacco pipe, of average size, would hold three times as much as this little bowl. I regard it as a specimen of the ordi- nary tobacco bowl once made in England, and not as having been specially made for the fairies, as bad money is manufac- tured for the gods in China.* Even in England money is offered to the gods when a shilling is put into the churn to make the butter come.t Mr. Hartland has arrived at the conclusion that no positive distinction can be made between ghosts and witches and fairies. " Whether," he says, " it be child-stealing, transformation, midnight meetings, possession and gift of enchanted objects, spell-binding, or whatever function, or habit, or power be pre- dicted of one, it will be found to be common to the three. I conclude, therefore, that they are all three of the same nature. This is what a consideration of the superstitions of savages would lead me to expect. The belief in fairies, ghosts, and witches is a survival of those superstitions." { Before Mr. Hartland had published his book my own observations had led me to a similar conclusion. Not the least forcible of the reasons which led me to entertain this view was the statement made to me by an old Derbyshire man, and recorded in a subsequent part of this volume, that u fairies are always dressed in a red mantle and * See an article in the Times of November 11, 1893, entitled "Cheating the Gods." f See p. 81. | The Science of Fairy Tales, 1891, p. 348. INTRODUCTION. Xlll hood which covers the whole body, and witches are dressed exactly in the same manner." Witches, like fairies, are the spirits of the dead. In Dead Lane, or Deadman's Lane, at Ecclesall, near Sheffield, " a headless woman, robed in white," is still believed to wander by night. Are not these " headless women," who occur so often in popular tradition, the dead wandering about in their grave clothes, and is not the hood or mantle the shroud ? A form so dressed would appear headless, and the fairy dressed in " a red mantle and hood, which covers the whole body," seems to be nothing more than a dead man in his shroud. In Eyrbyggia Saga Thorgunna's body was " swathed in linen, but not sewn up, and then laid in the coffin."* There is a Middle High German word hachel, Dutch hecksel, which means a witch, and. with this word we may compare the Old Norse hokull, meaning a priest's cope or mantle, Old English hacela, Old High German hachul. And then we have the Old Norse hekla, a cowled or hooded frock. So that the Old Norse hokull appears to have developed the following meanings : 1. A cope or hooded frock. 2. A dead body habited in a long robe. 3. A witch or fairy so habited. Again, we have the Old Norse grima, a hood, and Grimr, a name of Odin. All this is easy to understand when we bear in mind that the gods are themselves spirits, or dead men's ghosts. According to the beliefs once held it would seem quite natural that the dead should wander about in their grave clothes. We also learn from the present collection that they carried bags or provision bags with them. This is apparent from the bag of nuts buried under the dead woman's head,f coupled with the tale in which a witch or disembodied spirit threatens to put " Jack " into her bag.J The Old Lad or Devil is also said to carry a nutting- bag with him. In the tale of " The Little Watercress Girl " the witch has a white bag. Now just as * Chapter 51. f ** 4 - % P. 7- XIV INTRODUCTION. Hachel meant both mantle and fairy for witches and fairies are identical so Puck or Poake* (poke) meant both bag and fairy. We learn, then, that it was once a common practice to bury bags containing provisions, such as nuts, for the dead. And this is consistent with the well-known discoveries of food and " food-vessels " in English barrows. In the Edda Thialfi carries Thor's bag (kyl) or provision bag (iiest-baggi), and, in the Tale of Thridrandi, Thorhall says, " I laugh because many hills open, and every soul, both small and big, packs up his bag (byr sinn baggci) and makes flitting-day of it." Here the dead are coming out of their howes, each with his bag. In our tales trees and animals speak. u The Wizard of Lincoln " changes himself into a blackbird and speaks as such. In one tale a hawk, a parrot, and a ploughman talk to each other as though they were all human. t In another very remarkable story t a girl asks an old apple-tree to hide her from a witch whose bag of money she has stolen, and the witch asks every tree in the orchard if it has seen the girl. In a third tale a girl talks to two robins, or robinets, as they are called in Derby- shire, who advise her to stuff her sieve with moss and daub it with clay when she fetches water therein from a well. In the tale of " The Glass Ball " a horse, a cow, and other animals are made to speak. From such tales we may infer that our ancestors, like savages, once regarded all things trees, birds, stones, in short, everything animate and inanimate as equally conscious with themselves and possessed of some power of reason- ing. If we compare these traditional remains with similar remains in countries far beyond the British seas, and if we also compare our English folk-lore with the beliefs of modern savages, we shall be forced to the conclusion that Great Britain was once inhabited by men whose condition can only be described as a condition of savagery. * Keightley's Fairy Mythology, 1889, p. 317. f " The Hawk and the Parrot," No. 11. J " The Little "Watercress Girl," No. 10. The Girl who fetched Water in a Riddle," No. 39. INTRODUCTION. XV Iii four of our tales the fairies appear as the friends and guides of mankind. They help the distressed and needy, and by gentle reprimand point out error and wrong, and show the better way. The children of a poor widower are washed and dressed, and his bread is baked by them. When a brother abandons his dead sister's child the fairies pull the clothes off his bed every night until he takes the child into his care. Even so venial an offence as gossiping meets with their rebuke, for when a grandmother having the care of her dead daughter's child goes out gossiping, the fairies, to show their sense of the danger in which the child might be, take it out of bed, though the door is locked, and dress it in its mother's clothes. A younger brother who has disagreed with his elder brother is admonished by the fairies amidst sounds of music to leave his elder brother's house and build a house elsewhere. In these last-mentioned tales the voice of the fairy is as the voice of conscience a power which is stronger than all the courts of law and equity. The law will not compel a man to maintain his dead sister's children, and will not punish a woman who goes gossiping and neglects her house. But the fairies sit in the high court of conscience, and provide a remedy for wrongs which are beyond the reach of human law. They lead the wrong-doer to do right by mild persuasion. Men who are not amenable to human judgments dare not disobey the gentle voice of the spirit. In the tale of " The Minister and the Fairies " the good priest who appears in the modern guise of a Methodist minister is invited to a supper prepared for " beautiful men and women/' who represent fairies, or spirits of the dead. The point of the story consists in the minister's refusal of the food of the dead. He had entered the place of the dead, and had he tasted their food he could never have returned to the land of the living. " The Nuts and the Sheep," as I have observed in a footnote to that story, occurs in "A Hundred Merry Tales " and in other ancient books. It was evidently very popular in the Middle Ages, not only in England but in other parts of Europe. XVI INTRODUCTION. This tale was told to me by a poor workman who could barely read, who could not write at all, and who possessed neither books nor access to books. I am certain that it had come down to him, without any help from books, from a distant antiquity. The tale is highly ludicrous, and the joke is at the expense of a parson and his sexton. My informant has preserved the inci- dent of the "bag of nuts." In the version given in "A Hundred Merry Tales " a rich husbandman makes his executor promise to bury a bag of nuts in his grave, and a miller goes the night after to fetch them out. In our version a young man goes to fetch a bag of nuts which lies beneath his dead mother's head in the churchyard. Did he want to show how brave he could be, and what little fear he had of ghosts, or is the bag of nuts intro- duced to make the tale as horrible and ludicrous as possible ? Or is it an accidental survival of some long-forgotten custom, such as the burying of nuts with a dead man to provide food for him in the next world ? We shall see that in Derbyshire food is still placed beside the dead.* Vessels containing the remains of food for the dead are found in ancient burial mounds on the Yorkshire w r olds.t Mr. Hartland thinks that "the food buried with the dead by uncivilised tribes may be meant to provide them against the contingency of having to partake of the hospi- tality of the Shades, and so afford them a chance of escaping back to the upper air.";]; It was an old belief that unless a man refused the food of the dead, he would remain with them for ever. We are told in Gill's Myths and Songs of the South Pacific how a man " directed that, as soon as the breath was out of his body, a cocoa-nut should be cracked, and its kernel disengaged from the shell and placed upon his stomach under the grave clothes." By stealthily eating the cocoa-nut instead of the disgusting food offered to him in Hades he managed to return to the upper world. Doubtless the nuts under the dead mother's head in our tale, like the peas and wheat found in Egyptian mummy cases, were put there for a similar purpose, * P. 123. t Green-well's British Barrows, passim. % Science of Fairy Tales, 1891, p. 47. Quoted by Mr. Hartland, ut supra, p, 45. INTRODUCTION. XV11 and the son who ate them would take away her only chance of returning to life. The belief that giants, or other supernatural beings, were the makers and builders of great earthworks or stoneworks, such as ancient walls or roads, and the dikes about which so little is known, is apparent in one of our tales,* and also in another part of this book.f We have already seen how the fairies help man in his troubles and difficulties, and one of our tales will show how Hob Thurst, the friend of peasants, is ever ready at need. The invisible being who mowed the farmer's hay for him in the night, or made an incredible number of shoes for the cobbler, could accomplish greater works than these. In the tale called " The Devil's Ditch " a road is made by a name- less invisible being, who tells a horseman to ride in the direction that he would have the road to go, and the road is made behind the horseman as he rides. But, just as in the case of Lot's wife, or Orpheus, his desire to do the forbidden thing overcomes him, and he looks back. Then the road stops, and in the place where the horseman turned round may be seen not a pillar of salt but a great ditch called " the Devil's Ditch," which can never be filled up to this day. A similar account is given of a road near Crowle, in Lincolnshire, which was made by the fairies and never can be finished, because a farmer could not resist the desire to turn round and see how the road-making was done, t It is very likely that folk-tales were distributed in England by wandering pedlars, tinkers, and merchants, many of whom came from foreign lands. I have dealt with this subject in another place, but I might here refer to the Old Norse um- renningr, the land-louper who went from house to house dis- tributing news and tales, and in short performing the office of a walking newspaper and story book. || A little story in this collection, called " The Endless Tale," which mentions locusts, has all the extravagance of Oriental imagination. * No. 26. f P. 135. J P. 135. Hall of Waltheof, 1893, p. 215, seq. || See Vigfusson and Powell's Icelandic Reader, pp. 218, 409. XVill JNTKODUCTION. The " Jack Otter" of our tale"* is plainly Hottr or Odin, and had not the Old Norse word been here preserved he would have been called " Jack Hood." The mention of this name has led me to look into the ballads about Robin Hood, and to enquire whether he and his companions are not the gods Odin, Loki, and Honir, including, perhaps, Thor. I would suggest that 1. Robin Hood = Hottr, Hood, or Deep Hood, i.e. Odin. 2. Scathelocke = Loki. 3. Little John = Honir. 4. Much the miller's son t = Thor ? In Yolsunga Saga, Odin, Loki, and Honir are represented as going about in the world, like men in search of adventure ; and in the Eddie legend these same three gods go from home, over the hills, and across the wilderness. They come down into a dale where a herd of oxen are feeding, and, like freebooters, take an ox and seethe it. The name Scathelocke may stand for an Old Norse word Scacfa-loki, like skada-madr, killer, slayer, and as regards the compound we may compare IJtgarcta-loki. In the Edda we are told that Loki cut Sif 's hair off, for which Thor threatens to break every bone in his body. And hence we find him described as harskadi Sifjar. And then Scada-loki would suit his well- known character as the foe of the gods, although he was their companion, and especially would it be suitable to him in his character of the destroyer of Balder. Negative evidence in favour of this opinion would be found in the non-existence of such a surname as Scathelocke, and I have not been able to find it. Moreover, the names of Robin Hood's companions, such as Reynold Greenleaf, are all fanciful or mythical. The name Loki seems to occur in Loxley, near Sheffield, for Lock or Lok may be inferred from Scathe-lock. Locs-ledh would be a very appropriate name for a rocky, untilled place such as Loxley was till late years, and, like Canon Atkinson's Moorland Parish * No. 8. f Much may be used in the old sense of " tall." Miller's son = mellu-sonr, son of the giantess, i,e. Earth ? INTRODUCTION. XIX u the devil of a country." For who but a fiend could have made it ? With regard to Little John, the evidence is of less weight, on account of the prefix " Little." But it is remarkable that we should have traditions about his tall stature. He is said to have been "seven foot high" in a late ballad printed by Ritspn.* At Hathersage, in Derbyshire, the people still point out his grave in the village churchyard, and say that he was a very tall man. In the last century, Wilson, the Sheffield antiquary, wrote : " His grave is distinguished by two small stones set up at each end, and is four yards ten inches long betwixt stone and stone. "t Now, according to Vigfusson and Powell, the god Honir or Hoene is described in phrases taken from lost poems as langifdtr, or the long-legged one ; and as aur- konungr, the lord of the ooze. " Strange epithets," they say, " are these, but easily explainable when one gets at the etymology of Hoene = hohni = Skt. sakunas = Gk. cucnos = the white bird, swan, or stork, that stalks along in the mud, lord of the marish and it is now easy to see that this bird is the Creator walking in Chaos, brooding over the primitive mish-mash or tohu-bolm, and finally hatching the egg of the world." J There is one thing in a ballad about llobin Hood which, to me at least, is puzzling, viz. the place called " the Sayles." Thus in the " fourth fytte " we have : Take thy bowe in hande, sayd Robyn, Let Moch wende with, the, And so shall Wyllyam Scathelock, And no man abide with me, And walke up into the Sayles And to Watlynge-strfite, And wayte after some ' unketh gest, Up-chaunce ye may them mete * ii. 21. t In Bateman's Ten Years' Diggings, p. 251. t Corpus Poeticum Borealc, y i. p. cii. And see Edda (SUaldsliaparmo,l~}^ Egilsson's ed., p. 56. 62 XX INTRODUCTION. They went up to the Sayles, These yemen all thre ; They loked est, they looked west, They myght no man se. As to the word " Sayles ""^ in this poem, is it not possibly the same place as the Lith-shelf of Northern mythology, the place from which the gods looked clown on the world? "On a day," says the Edda, u Freyr had gone to Lith-shelf, and beheld therefrom all the world. As he searched in the northern region he saw a great and fair house, and to the house went a woman/' &c.f And of the place called Himinbjorg, or the Heavenly Mountains, the Edda says, " There is a mighty abode called Wala- shelf ; that place Odin has, and the gods made it, and thatched it with shining silver, and there in that hall is Lith-shelf, the high seat which is so called, and when the Father of All sits in that seat he beholds all the world."J The mention of Watling Street immediately after " the Sayles" makes this inference more probable, a heavenly, and not an earthly, way being intended. " The starry street in the night sky is known as the spirit-path to many savage tribes, and perhaps even to our forefathers (as the Editor's countryman, Mr. Grisli Brynjulfsson, has suggested) l Vsettlinga strset.' " Amongst the earliest recollections of my childhood is the performance of the " Derby Ram," or, as we used to call it, the Old Tup. With the eye of memory I can see a number of young men standing one winter's evening in the deep porch of an old country house, and singing the ballad of the Old Tup. In the midst of the company was a young man with a sheep's skin, horns and all, on his back, and standing on all fours. What it all meant I could not make out, and the thing that most impressed me was the roar of the voices in that vault-like * Is it not the 0. N. salr, hall, as in Svolnis salr, Walhall, 6$ins salr, Odin's hall, &c. ? In Old Norse poetry there are many figures and metaphors for the sky compounded with this word, as for instance rtf&la-salr, star hall, or heavenly vault, berg-salr, mountain hall or sky. f Egilsson's ed., Keykjavik, 1848, p. 22. I Ibid., p. 12. Vigfusson and Powell's C. B. P., i. 420. INTRODUCTION. XX] porch. The sheep and tiie men were evidently too harmless to frighten any child, and a play in which the only act was the pretended slaughter of an old tup was not in itself attractive. I remember the following lines : As I was going to Darby, all on a market day, I met the finest tup, sir, that ever was fed with hay. Fay lay, fay lay, folderol, older, I day. This tup was fat behind, sir, this tup was fat before, This tup was ten miles high, sir, indeed he was no more. Fay lay, &c. The wool that grew on his back, sir, it was so mighty high, The eagles built their nesses * in't, for I heard the young ones cry. Fay lay, &c. The butcher that stuck this tup, sir, was up to the eyes in blood, And all the old women in Darby were washed away by the flood. Fay lay, &c. Then the ballad went on to tell how and for what purpose people begged for his bones, eyes, teeth, hide, &c., but I cannot remember more of it. However, in a version printed by Jewitt,! they beg for his horns to make milking pails, and for his eyes to make footballs. And a tanner begs for his hide, f O which is big enough " to cover all Sinfin Moor." Here we have a ballad describing the slaughter of a being of monstrous size, and the uses to which his body was put. Now when I first read the Edda, and came to the passage which tells how the sons of Bor slew the giant Ymir, and how, when he fell, so much blood ran out of his wounds that all the race of frost-giants was drowned in it, I said to myself, " Why, that's the Old Tup " ! and when I read farther on and found how they made the sea from his blood, the earth from his flesh, the rocks from his teeth, the heaven from his skull, it seemed to me that I had guessed rightly. The Old Tup was the giant Ymir, and the mummers of my childhood were acting the drama of the Creation. * Nests. t Derbyshire Ballads, 1867, p. 115. XXll INTRODUCTION. II. TRADITIONAL REMAINS. JT is not pretended that every superstitious belief or practice included under this heading in the fol- lowing pages is of great antiquity. For example, the belief that it is unlucky for a clock to stand opposite a fire cannot be older than the invention of clocks. Great as is the age of many of these superstitious beliefs, it must not be forgotten that the formation of such beliefs still goes on in the untaught or undeveloped mind. But whether these conceptions be of primitive origin, or of more recent growth, they form part of a barbarous philosophy. In the main they are the long-descended survivals of ideas which the ancestors of the English people held in common with races, now inhabiting the earth, whose evolution from barbarism has progressed more slowly than our own. They may be included under the modern word folk-lore, which a writer in the Quarterly Review has defined as " the geology of the human race." It may be well to examine briefly a few of the superstitious beliefs and practices recorded in this volume, mainly in the hope of learning something about the early condition of man in Great Britain. When an English peasant is told by a friend that his ill luck is owing to his having forgotten to bow to the new moon, we have evidence not only of a belief in the efficacy of the moon in influencing human destiny, but also of the existence of moon-worship. I have not met with any instance of actual sun-worship, though the luminary whose name appears in Sun-day must ones have claimed a higher attention than any other object of worship. People are, however, buried with their faces towards the rising sun. The belief that the sun dances at his rising on Easter Sunday mav be found in several collections of English folk-lore as well as here. Some have attempted to explain this belief by pretending that the popular notion is that the sun INTRODUCTION. XX111 dances for joy because of the resurrection of Christ from the dead. The belief may be connected with the worship of Eastre, the dawn-goddess, but it has certainly not arisen from the Christian Resurrection. The man who gets up early on Easter morning to see the sun dance cannot tell why he does so. But his forefathers may have believed that the sun dances for joy at the resurrection of Spring from her wintry tomb. Christian festivals, like pagan, follow the course of the seasons. Christ, at the season of Yule tide, represents the birth of the year, and his rising from the dead is celebrated upon the return of spring. The old feasts are kept, and the old rites are fol- lowed, under new names, and even the name may remain, as it does in Easter. Though we may not find any actual survival of sun-worship, there are many survivals in England of the use of a well-known sun symbol. The sign of the cross, as found in the following pages, does not derive its origin from the instrument of the passion of Jesus. The laying of two straws across each other to make the rain cease, the making of this sign on the hand when a solitary crow crosses one's path, or on water in which another person has washed, the crossing of wort in the brewing vat to " keep out the witch," the fixing of a cross behind one's bedroom door to keep evil spirits away, the stitching of a twig into the dress in the form of a cross, the carrying about upon the person of a cross of " witch-wiggin " as a protection against witchcraft, the " putting out " of a rain- bow by laying two twigs or straws across each other these and similar practices are neither borrowed nor derived from the cross of Calvary. In China a mother dips her finger in the ashes of dried banana-skin and paints a cross on the fore- head of her sleeping babe u to avert the calamity of nursing a demon." * In our English churches the priest dips his finger in the water of the font and crosses the child's forehead, and we shall see hereafter that mothers in Derbyshire take a plate of salt into church at baptism, showing that in former times salt and water, like the ashes of the banana-skin, were regarded in * F. L. Journal, quoted by Mr. Hartland in The Science of Fairy Talcs, p. 97, XXIV INTRODUCTION. England as a protection against evil spirits and changelings. In all these cases the cross was the " wheel cross " or " ring cross/' the sign for the sun-god, which may be seen figured on many heathen remains of northern Europe, and particularly 011 the famous bronze trumpet or horn found at Wismar in Mecklen- burg.* We may as ourselves, How did people begin to enter- tain the notion that the crossing of two straws would cause the rain to cease or the rainbow to go out ? To answer this question we must try to bring ourselves down to the mental state of uncivilised or savage races who knew nothing of natural laws, and who attempted to account for natural phenomena in a way which seemed right to them. A savage would not fail to observe that the rain ceases when the sun shines brightly, and he would, in his way of reasoning, regard the sun as a being or power which, amongst other powers, had the power to make the rain cease. He would also consider that similar appearances produce similar effects, and therefore he would consider that if the sun can make the rain cease and the rainbow vanish, an image made in the likeness of the sun might have the same effect. Now the sun was regarded as a chariot drawn by horses, and hence the primitive man would make use of the sun-sigh the spokes of the sun-wheel by laying two straws across or other- wise making the sign of the cross. The churches and church- yards of England still contain old stone monuments whereon the sun-wheel is carved, either as a separate emblem standing by the side of the Christian cross, or as forming part of or inter- woven with the Christian cross. And s v o the cross on the tomb, like the cross on the child's forehead made as a protection against evil, would, in savage reasoning, protect the body beneath from the powers of darkness. Again, the cocks on our church steeples seem to have been originally placed there in the hope that they would induce fine weather. I have recorded the belief that " if a cock crows on a high building the weather will be fine."| Early reasoning may have taken this form : when * Worsaae's Industrial Arts of Denmark, 1882, p. 66. f Post, p. 66. Compare the " cock-crowing stones " mentioned on a subse- quent page. INTRODUCTION. XXV cocks crow on a high place it will be fine ; therefore, if we put a cock (or image of a cock) on the church steeple we shall attract fine weather. Our ancestors associated light and dawn with cock-crowing, and, in their barbarous reasoning, believed that cock-crowing brought the day. A similar method of reasoning might be shown in a hundred examples, and a considerable number of such examples is given in the following pages. Amongst them may be mentioned the belief that a man can be tortured by injuring an image made to resemble him, or the belief that warts can be removed by bury- ing green peas in the ground in the expectation that as the peas decay the warts will decay also, or in burning an effigy, or in sticking pins into the body of a live frog, or into the heart of a pigeon, for the purpose of causing pain or even death to an inconstant lover or to an enemy. Consciously or unconsciously, those who made the sign of the oross were attempting, by the magical influence of a rude image of the sun, as seen in the spokes of the " sun-wheel " (), to do things which, in primitive or savage belief, the sun has the power to do, as, for instance, to make the rain cease. We may follow this strange reasoning to the seasons of the year, and we may expect a priori that a similar kind of reason- ing would be applied to the calendar. And we have the clearest evidence that it was so. Before we consider the evidence let me first of all give an illustration of the method of reasoning employed. In one of Mr. Du Maurier's drawings in Punch a child is represented as wagging a big dog's tail to make the dog happy. It is quite possible that a child might reason from his own observation in this way : dogs are happy when they wag their tails ; therefore if I wag a dog's tail I shall make him happy. And, as we have already seen, it is certain that primi- tive man did reason in this way. So when a Derbyshire man puts a coin into the spout on New Year's Eve and brings it into the house the minute after the clock has struck twelve at mid- night, what is his object in so doing? Clearly to make the coming year prosperous. Just as the child in Punch wags the dog's tail to make him happv, so the Derbyshire man brings a XXVI INTRODUCTION. coin into the house to make the new year prosperous. It may be that when he does this he is quite unconscious of what the ceremony means, and that he is merely repeating a formality whose meaning has long been forgotten. Still there once was a time when his ancestors practised the ceremony with a real and earnest purpose. A similar rude process of reasoning goes on, or at least once went on, when a piece of money is put into the pocket of a new coat " for luck," the idea being that the coin will have a magical influence over the coat, and that the pro- sperity thus begun will be continued. A year or two ago a great disturbance arose amongst the cattle-drovers and butchers of Nottinghamshire about what they called " luck money." It seems that when a butcher bought a cow or other animal it was customary for the cattle-drover to return a small portion of the purchase money u for luck," and this custom the cattle-drovers sought to break down on the ground that it was an unfair tax on them. The matter was agitated with great vehemence, and many stormy meetings were held. But everybody had forgotten what the " luck money " really meant. To one portion of these agitators it seemed but a mere tax or unfair imposition, though it once had a serious and real significance, for the giving of a coin to the purchaser was intended to bring good luck to him or to the purchased animal itself, just as the taking of a coin into the house on New Year's Eve, or the putting of a coin into the pocket of a new coat, was intended to bring good luck to the house and coat respectively. Arising in the beginning from rude and erroneous notions of cause and effect, this " luck money " came to be regarded as a magical means of inducing good fortune, and finally as an unfair tax which ought to be removed by organised resistance. To return to the calendar, from which we have digressed, we have seen that the bringing of a coin into the house at the dawn of the New Year was believed to be a means of ensuring the possession of money during that year. But important as it was- that the household should be possessed of money, it was more important that it should have enough of food and fire. It was therefore desirable that as the year came in some means INTKODUCTION. XXV11 should be devised whereby the possession of these good things would be secured. Now as regards food, it happens that amongst the superstitious beliefs recorded in this collection is one which declares that " if you refuse a mince pie at Christ- mas you will be unlucky during the following year." We learn therefore that the partaking of a mixed dish or cake as the new year conies in was believed to induce a sufficiency of food, and thus our Christmas mince pie must be regarded in the light of a charm or instrument of magic. The very number of ingredients of which mince pie is made, such as meat, fruit, flour, and so forth, shows its original purpose, all these things being regarded as necessities of life. It will be seen on a subsequent page that in Derbyshire a species of cake called " wassil cake," compounded in the same way as another cake well known in magic as "the speechless cake," is made on New Year's Day. Though we cannot be certain that our Christmas mince pie is a degenerate form of the " wassil cake/' we arc at least sure that it was believed to induce " luck," or a sufficiency of food, and it would be strange if the older " wassil cake," so wonderfully compounded,, were not intended for the same purpose. There is nothing in the present collection more interesting than the too brief description of the Christmas feast once held in the farmhouses of South Yorkshire. Though we ma}* smile at its rudeness, that simple feast at Penistone* has all the solemnity of a sacred rite. It shows us the house-father and his family sitting round their table at the hour when, according to ancient belief, the spirits of dead men so filled the air that men feared to be alone, and partaking each in his turn of the food and drink which were to bless the coming year by a sufficiency of those good things. Just as the Christmas cake and the piece of money were intended as harbingers of food and wealth, so the Yule log and the big Christmas candle were intended to have a magic influence in securing warmth and light during the coming year. And can it not be said that the sprigs of evergreen brought into the * P. 103. XXV111 INTKODUCTION. house at the dawn of the opening year were intended as har- bingers of good crops and plenteous harvests ? The origin of the festival customs which usher in Christmas or the New Year must not be sought in the desire to express joy at the birth of a Saviour, or even to express joy at the birth of the New Year. We must look for that origin in the magical effect .which the presence of food, warmth, light, and money in the house on New Year's morning was supposed to have upon the year which was to come. But how can we explain the dark-haired " lucky bird," or the dark-haired man or boy who must be the first to enter the house on Christmas morning ? It is just possible that we may find the explanation in the fact that the aboriginal and conquered race which once occupied these islands was dark-skinned and black-haired. If it be objected that such an inference would be vitiated by the fact that the incomer must always be of the male sex, and that we have therefore a mixed magical omen, the answer is that a woman must not enter the house on Christmas Day at all,* probably because she, being " the weaker vessel," would bring weakness and not strength into the household. But, of course, a contrary belief that the man must be light- haired, as recorded by Mr. Henderson, would, if the belief were at all general, be a fatal objection to this supposition. t How- ever, Mr. Henderson has told us that in the north of England the first person to enter the house must have " a high-arched instep, a foot that ' water runs under.' "J With regard to the high instep, Dr. Tylor of Oxford tells me that his impression is that it is the Spaniards who pride themselves on it, and I have heard this from other sources. The old Northern poem Rigsmal, believed by its editors to have been written by a Dane living in the British Isles about the eleventh century, describes the thrall as of swarthy skin, as having long heels, and a snub nose (nidr-biugt nef), that is a short or stumpy nose with the end cut off The negro is said to have long heels, * P. 106, post. f Folk-lore of the Northern Counties, 1879. p. 73; and see post, p. 106. J Henderson, p. 74. Corpus Poet. Boreale, i. 236, 515. INTKODUCTION. XXIX but in a letter to me Dr. Tylor says, " I once looked into the alleged peculiarity of the negro as to projecting heel, but did not find it well borne out by facts, and should not assert it with- out a good deal more proof than I have seen." In discussing the question of the secluded Lincolnshire u Yellow Bellies," Dr. Morton of Sheffield, who was born in a Lincolnshire village, tells me that he never thought that the Yellow Bellies " were of the colour we now call yellow, but something of a bronze shade, and never, I believe, in company with light hair and eyes." And he says, " In Alford, my native town, there is a part occu- pied by a set who have a bad name, and with whom the ordinary farm labourer will have nothing to do. They are poachers, hawkers, and tinkers, rarely regular labourers, and they are sometimes ignorantly supposed to be gypsies." It is interesting to observe that in Wyclif's translation of the Bible, yellow trans- lates furvus in the Vulgate, i.e., dusky, swarthy. And then we must remember that the gypsies are feared, and that the people believe in their magical powers.* If more evidence of this kind could be got together it might be inferred that the dark-haired " lucky bird " or " first foot" who must "let in" Christmas was originally a member of a dark-skinned subject race, and a very important conclusion might also be drawn as to the nationality of the long-heeled, snub-nosed thrall in Kigsmal. And let us not forget the well-known tendency of conquering races to ascribe magical powers to the conquered. In the chapter recording " Local and Ceremonial Customs " it is said that a woman must bind at least one sheaf at harvest, and that she must also assist in the planting of seeds, such as potatoes, the belief being that a crop will not flourish unless a woman has had a hand either in the sowing or the harvesting. It seems most reasonable to explain this custom, or rather the belief which gave rise to the custom, by reference to a savage process of reasoning which may be formulated thus : women are fertile, for they bring forth children ; therefore a crop will be fertile if a woman take part in the sowing. By an analogous * Post, pp. 93, 94. XXX INTEODUCTION. process of barbarous reasoning the whole course of the crop, from sowing to harvesting, would be rendered more prosperous by association with a woman. The belief may, however, be a survival from a time when women cultivated the soil, as modern Africans do now. One of the most interesting relics of paganism which I have had the good luck to discover is that which relates to the three Fates or Korns. In the section entitled " Two Pagan Hymns " mention will be found of three maids known as " the threble Timbers," two of whom are " lily white," and the third is dressed in green. These maids are described as living for evermore, and they are plainly the three Fates. The same beings are also twice mentioned elsewhere in this collection. The girls who set the table on New Year's Eve with knives, forks, plates, and chairs for three guests, whom they expect to appear at the hour of midnight, are, without knowing it, spreading the table for the three Fates, though in the charm which they practise they expect their future husbands to appear.* In the collection of superstitions condemned by Burchard, Bishop of Worms, who died in 1024, we are told that the German women of his time had the custom, at certain times of the year, of spreading tables in their houses with meat and drink, and laying three knives, that if the three sisters should come (whom Burchard interprets as being equivalent to the Koman Parcae) they might partake of their hospitality, f Thus, in a Derbyshire village, at the end of the nineteenth century, we find this old superstition in full vigour, the only difference being that the future husbands of the women, instead of the Fates, are expected to appear. In the Nornagests Sa^a we are told that there travelled about in the land volvur, who are called spdkonur, who foretold to men their fate. People invited them to their houses and gave * P. 84. f Wright's Celt, Roman, and Saxon, 4th ed., p. 340. Burchard's words are : " Fecisti ut quaedam mulieies in quibusdam temporibus anni facere solent, ut in dorao sua mensam pi-aeparares et tuos cibos et potum cum tribus cultellis supra mensatn poneres, ut si venissent tres illae sorores, quas antiqua posteritas et antiqua stultida Purcas nominavit, ibi reficerentur." INTEODUCTION. XXXI them good cheer and gifts. These beings are identical with the Norns. * A very striking account was given to me of the appearance of tho Fates on the common at Cold- Aston, in the parish of Dronfield. The narrator spoke of " three tall, thin women standing in a line with three hour glasses in their hands," of " a tall man three yards high with an oak tree over his shoulder," and of " a man with a scythe over his shoulder." He said that " the appearance of the women with the hour glasses meant that such or such a person had not more than three hours to live," that the giant with the oak tree came to tell that person's age, the tree being a young tree if the person were young, and an old tree if he were old. The man with the scythe came to cut the person down. The u three tall, thin women standing in a line " are the Norns, and if I had found an old marble statue of the Matres Deae buried on the common I could not have been more astonished than I was when I heard these words. This popular remembrance, handed down in England through so many ages, of the awful divinities aire /Bporolcnv