"I said, God bless you, everyone,
By one, by two, by three,

And now, little children, I'll play with you,
And you shall play with me.'

"Nay," "we're lords' and ladies' sons,
Thou art meaner than us all,

For thou art but a poor maid's child,
Born in an oxen's stall."

'Then the tears came trickling from his eyes,
As fast as they could fall.

"Then," said she, "go down to yonder town,
As far as the holy well,

And there take up those infaut's souls

And dip them deep in hell."

"Oh no! oh no!" sweet JESUS, he said,
"Oh no! that never can be;

For there are many of those infants' souls
Crying out for the help of me.'

But to return to Good Friday. Another observance was not long ago practised near Exeter, namely the breaking clomb,' i.e., pottery, the meaning of which only dawned upon the reporter thereof on hearing that in Corfu potsherds are hurled from a steep rock on that day, while curses are uttered on Judas Iscariot. Lancashire infants are weaned on Good Friday. Hampshire mothers like to leave off their babies' caps and long robes on Good Friday, possibly from some lingering notion of mortification; but in some parts of Devon, peas are sown by preference, and grafts made on that day, while in the North, it is considered impious then to touch a hammer or nails -the instruments of the Passion.

"Friday, too, the day I dread "

retains nothing of its fast except the sense of unluckiness in commencing any undertaking. Old women all over England still will not let their grandchildren go to a new place on a Friday. We believe few pieces of needlework are begun on that day of the week. Friday marriages are said in the old rhyme to be for crosses,' and every one knows that no sailor ventures to put to sea on that day, but happily the involuntary voyager on the sea of life who is launched into the world is not doomed for

'Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
And Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,

And Saturday's child works hard for its living,
But the child that is born on the Sabbath day,
Is blithe and bonny, good and gay.'

In general, Sunday is the prime day to be born- on any, that is save Whitsunday, which is said to predestine its natives' to a violent death while ordinary Sundays confer the power of beholding the spiritual world.

Midlent or Refreshment Sunday, was the day when the Mother, or Cathedral Church of the Diocese was resorted to by all the neighbourhood in procession, and Easter offerings brought. The processions ceased in the thirteenth century, but the name Mothering Sunday continued, and throughout many parts of England this title has been the cause of this Sunday being the great family gathering, when all the scattered members return home and spend the day, and bring a present to their mother. Nowhere is this pretty custom so gracefully described as in The Copsley Annals' a charming book published by Seeley and Jackson. A simnel cake is the legitimate gift, made of the finest flour, tinged with saffron, and flavoured with sugar and lemon. In the book above mentioned, the best materials for the simnel cake are the mistress's testimony to her young maid-servant's good conduct. The custom is not forgotten in Gloucester, where two hundred years ago Herrick sung:

'I'll to thee a simnell bring,
'Gainst thou go'st a mothering,
So that when she blesseth thee,
Half that blessing thou'lt give me.'

The beauty of the custom is now lost by the simnel cakes being sold in shops, which are kept open on the Sunday for the purpose. The name is said to come from the latin simila, fine flour. Sweet or mulled ale, called Braget, is the legitimate accompaniment. Its name is said to be the Welch word, Bragawd, or Metheglin, and it is a curious coincidence that the northern god who enjoys the patronage at once of poetry and of the divine beverage should be named Bragi, the origin of our verb to brag.

We must not tarry over every variety of day-observance. Christmas, customs have often been fully described, but we do not remember before to have heard of the beautiful Lancashire notion that cattle go down on their knees, and bees hum the Hundredth Psalm tune on that night, keeping, however, carefully to Old Style. In Brittany cattle are said to have the power of speaking during the midnight hour of Christmas night, and one of Souvestre's collection of Breton Tales, turns upon the information they then imparted. An old Cornishman, near Launceston, in 1790, told Mr. Hunt, then a child, that he had been to look whether the cattle prayed, but

he found only the two oldest oxen on their knees, and they 'made a cruel moan like Christian creatures.'

Perhaps nothing is more remarkable than the tenacity with which through ages of neglect and dissent, the Welch have clung to the service that once was the midnight mass. Young and old all come forth to church or chapel, to the service which lacks the celebration that should give it life and meaning. What a field for restoration!

The dancing of the sun on Easter morning is a nearly universal belief; but on the borders of Dartmoor it was varied by the beautiful expectation of seeing the Lamb and banner in its disc. Girls, who are now old women, used to go out with a smoked glass to look for it, and some even thought they saw it. Indeed the spots on the sun may have at some time assumed such a shape as to originate the very beautiful idea.

Christmas customs seem to have been kept up for festivity's sake, and likewise, too, as an excuse for collecting money. This we are afraid has been the great embalmer of our old Church customs. Witness the grotto' of oyster snells that was once no doubt the shrine of S. James, the pilgrim saint of the scallop shell badge; the May-day doll, once the Blessed Virgin, with her mary buds and marygolds around her, and even the going a souling'-which is practised in Cheshire, Lancashire, &c., on All Souls' Day, and which, though now only an excuse for licensed begging for the village children, was once a collecting of alms on behalf of souls in purgatory. Indeed many of these old customs vanish when the authorities of a parish, feeling the inconvenience of the rude indiscriminate beggary thus entailed, confer their alms in a more regular fashion, and turn a deaf ear to the maintainers of the old custom, who are never a select company. Antiquarianism and good order are sadly at variance, and an attempt to unite them seldom succeeds-it only gives a sense of unwarrantable interference and it is better to let old things pass away, though there is no reason that in passing they should not leave their curious record.

Next to money-getting, marriage divination has been the great preservative of old days; S. Agnes', Eve and All Saints' Day being the prime occasions for these. S. Agnes' Day is chosen on the lucus a non lucendo principle, because her purity and contempt of marriage made her the patron of maidens, but the cause for the universal notions of the divining capacity of All Hallow E'en, it is impossible to guess at. S. John's Eve owes its peculiar powers to that much more distant tradition before mentioned, which rendered the summer solstice sacred to the whole Indo-European world.

All our authors have some terrible recent persecutions, and witchcraft is only too certainly still believed in almost everywhere among the ignorant. How far it was once a real power, and whether there be any connexion between it and magnetism, it is not for us to say. It is a subject to need deeper examination than would chime in here. But of this at least we are sure, that those who deal with a power they cannot understand, submit themselves to the peril of the strong delusion that they should believe a lie,' and it is more than probable that it is to the same power that inspired the wizards that peep and mutter,' or the oracles that Christian truth silenced. Every now and then some trial brings to light a whole tissue of strange dealings with cunning men or women for the discovery of stolen goods, or for the recovery of health. Nay, only last year, we knew of a poor woman who had fallen into a state of morbid melancholy from the reproaches of her own conscience, she having been persuaded to ill-wish a neighbour who had illwished her. The neighbour remained undamaged, but the remorse for the evil-wish took effect on the poor woman's mind, and threw her into an illness.

The ordeal of the Bible and key is not entirely forgotten, as the following paragraph, from a newspaper of January 1867, testifies:

:

'SUPERSTITION.-At Southampton, on Monday, a boy working on board a collier, was charged with theft, the only evidence against him being such as was afforded by the ancient ordeal of Bible and key. The mate and some others swung a Bible attached to a key with a piece of yarn, the key being placed on the first chapter of Ruth. While the Bible was turning, several suspected names were repeated, and on the mention of the prisoner's name, the book fell to the floor. The bench of course discharged the prisoner.'

Here comes again the question-is it faith, is it conscience, is it magnetism, that has even made these ordeals effective? Never, never to be answered questions, only growing deeper and more mysterious as we learn more of the effects of spirit upon matter, and of the influence of the unseen world upon spirit—an inquiry deeply connected with the credibility of those constantly wrought, or expected, cures by the shrines of saints or by healing wells.

Cornwall has a peculiar species of Folk Lore in its Giantswho bear the credit of many of the wonders of a granitic country-and are plainly related to the Irish Giants, springing from the same Keltic fancy exercised on the huge boulders and mighty fissures of their rugged western coast. Spenser and Milton have brought two at least of these giants into literary fame, and with great correctness; and strangely enough these giants have more Irish than Breton, affinities.

While names of places and persons are almost identical in Brittany and Cornwall, the legends given by MM. Souvestre and Villemarqué, do not so decidedly resemble the Cornish ones as might have been expected, since the similar ones are more universal than Keltic. We would cite as instances, the expulsion of the changeling elf, which is indeed Breton, Cornish, Irish and Scottish, but also so German that Martin Luther himself wished to put an unfortunate child in the Moldau, and this not being possible, recommended constant prayers-Paternosters-to which he ascribed its death; also the repining maiden punished by being carried off by the ghost of the dead lover. The Cornish form is the story of Nancy Penwarne, who was saved at the last moment before daybreak by a smith, who burnt her clothes out of the ghostly grasp, and brought her home to die in peace. The Breton version has lately been made known by Mr. Tom Taylor's paraphrases of M. Villemarqué's translations. Everybody knows Bürger's Lenore, and the magnificent Scottish ballad of the Demon Lover, where the victim's guilt is enhanced by her having become a wife, and she is carried off by sea till the deadly discovery:

whaten a mountain is yon, she said,
All so dreary with frost and snow?"
"O yon is the mountain of hell," he said,
"Where you and I shall go.""

Sea tales of submerged cities are found in the Kelt maritime countries, such as Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, and Ireland, in all of which there are charming legends of bells ringing beneath the waters, and lands drowned for some great sin. The Morfa, or Mermaid, is another fair Cornish and Irish vision, and there is a very sad story in Cornwall, where Selina Penna Morfa comes exactly like Undine to her parents as a chang ling for their own drowned babe. Her lover betrays her, and she dies and is buried; then he endures the fate of Huldbrand, but not from her, but the bereaved Mermaid Mother, by whom, in revenge, he is kissed to death, while closed in the watery embrace.

We pass to the region where early childhood disports itself, in myth, fairy tale or nursery story, the pleasantest and best worked field that Folk Lore has to offer, dear to us for old love's sake, of well thumbed book, or of kind narrator, and valuable for the connexion of kindred thought and origin thus traced from land to land.

The tendency of the last two or three centuries to dress up everything in the conventional costume of literary dignity, is one of the chief obstacles to all researches. The same was always