M.A.D.

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FOLK LORE.

St. Thomas’s Day.—­A Guernsey charm pour ve ki ke sera son amant—­

“Into a golden pippin stick eighteen new pins, nine in the eye, and nine in the stem, tie round it the left {510} garter, and place it under the pillow.  Get into bed backwards, saying,

    “Le jour de St. Thomas,
     Le plus court, le plus bas,
     Je prie Dieu journellement,
     Qu’il me fasse voir, en dormant,
     Celui qui sera mon amant;
     Et le pays et la contree
     Ou il fera sa demeuree,
     Tel qu’il sera je l’aimerai,
                Ainsi soit-il.”

VIATOR.

NOV. 6. 1850.

Black Doll at Old Store-shops (Vol. i., p. 27.).—­Is it not probable that the black doll was an image of the Virgin, sold at the Reformation with a lot of church vestments, and other “rags of Popery,” as the Puritans called the surplice, and first hung up by some Puritan or Hebrew dealer.

Images of the black Virgin are not uncommon in Roman Catholic churches. 
Has the colour an Egyptian origin, or whence is it?

A. HOLT WHITE.

Gladwins, Harlow.

Snake Charming.—­Two or three summers ago, I was told a curious story of snake charming by a lady of undoubted veracity, in whose neighbourhood (about a dozen miles from Totnes) the occurrence had taken place.  Two coast-guard men in crossing a field fell in with a snake:  one of them, an Irishman, threw his jacket over the animal, and immediately uttered or muttered a charm over it.  On taking up the garment, after a few seconds had passed, the snake was dead.

When I heard this story, and understood that the operator was an Irishman, I bethought me of how Rosalind says, “I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras’ time, that I was an Irish rat,” and accounted satisfactorily for the fact that, “as touching snakes, there are no snakes in Ireland:”  for, as the song voucheth, “the snakes committed suicide to save themselves from slaughter,” i.e. they were charmed to death by St. Patrick.

I fear it would now be impossible to recover the charm made use of by the coast-guard man; but I will have inquiry made, and if I can obtain any further particulars, I will forward them to you.

J.M.B.

Mice as a Medicine (Vol. ii., pp. 397. 435.).—­The remedy of the roast mouse recommended in The Pathway to Health (which I find is in the British Museum), is also prescribed in Most Excellent and Approved Remedies, 1652:—­“Make it in powder,” says the author, “and drink it off at one draught, and it will presently help you, especially if you use it three mornings together.”  The following is “an excellent remedy to stanch bleeding:”—­