Plautus, Bacchis, Act iii Sc. 1.

  “Per me si va nella citta dolente

  Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che intrate.”

  Dante, Inferno, iii. 1-9.

W.B.D.

* * * * *

FOLK LORE.

Power of Prophecy.—­MR. AUG.  GUEST (Vol. ii., p. 116.) will perhaps accept—­as a small tribute to his interesting communication on the subject of that “power of prophecy” which I apprehend to be still believed by many to exist during certain lucid intervals before death—­a reference to Sir Henry Halford’s Essay on the [Greek:  Kausos] of Aretaeus. (See Sir H. Halford’s Essays and Orations read and delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, Lond. 1831, pp. 93. et seq.)

J. Sansom.

Bay Leaves at Funerals.—­In some parts of Wales it is customary for funerals to be preceded by a female carrying bays, the leaves of which she sprinkles at intervals in the road which the corpse will traverse.

Query, Is this custom practised elsewhere; and what is the meaning and origin of the use of the bay?

N.P.

Shoes (old) thrown for luck.—­Brand, in his Popular Antiquities, observes, that it is accounted {197} lucky by the vulgar to throw an old shoe after a person when they wish him to succeed in what he is going about.  This custom is very prevalent in Norfolk whenever servants are going in search of new places; and especially when they are going to be married, a shoe is thrown after them as they proceed to church.

C.P.R.M.

Some years ago, when the vessels engaged in the Greenland whale-fishery left Whitby, in Yorkshire, I observed the wives and friends of the sailors to throw old shoes at the ships as they passed the pier-head.  Query, What is the origin of this practice?

[Hebrew:  T.A.]

Roasting Mice for Hooping-cough is also very common in Norfolk; but I am sorry to say that a more cruel superstitious practice is sometimes inflicted on the little animal; for it is not many years since I accidentally entered the kitchen in time to save a poor little mouse from being hung up by the tail and roasted alive, as the means of expelling the others of its race from the house.  I trust that this barbarous practice will soon be forgotten.

R.G.P.M.

The Story of Mr. Fox.—­Your correspondent F.L., who has related the story of Sir Richard, surnamed Bloody, Baker, is, doubtless, aware of a similar tale with which Mr. Blakeway furnished my late friend James Boswell, and which the latter observed “is perhaps one of the most happy illustrations of Shakspeare that has appeared.”—­(Malone’s Shakspeare, vol. vii. pp. 20. 163.)

The two narratives of Bloody Baker and Mr. Fox are substantially the same.  Variations will naturally creep in when a story is related by word of mouth; for instance, the admonition over the chamber in Mr. Fox’s house—­