Dorset

FELIX.

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RECONCILIATION.

At Lynn Regis, Norfolk, on every first Monday of the month, the mayor, aldermen, magistrates, and preachers, meet to hear and determine controversies between the inhabitants in an amicable manner, to prevent lawsuits.  This custom was first established in 1583, and is called the Feast of Reconciliation.

HALBERT H.

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ANCIENT SUPERSTITION RESPECTING FELLING OAKS.

In the Magna Britannia, the author in his Account of the Hundred of Croydon, says, “Our historians take notice of two things in this parish, which may not be convenient to us to omit, viz. a great wood called Norwood, belonging to the archbishops, wherein was anciently a tree called the vicar’s oak, where four parishes met, as it were in a point.  It is said to have consisted wholly of oaks, and among them was one that bore mistletoe, which some persons were so hardy as to cut for the gain of selling it to the apothecaries of London, leaving a branch of it to sprout out; but they proved unfortunate after it, for one of them fell lame, and others lost an eye.  At length in the year 1678, a certain man, notwithstanding he was warned against it, upon the account of what the others had suffered, adventured to cut the tree down, and he soon after broke his leg.  To fell oaks hath long been counted fatal, and such as believe it produce the instance of the Earl of Winchelsea, who having felled a curious grove of oaks, soon after found his countess dead in her bed suddenly, and his eldest son, the Lord Maidstone, was killed at sea by a cannon ball.”

P.T.W.

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THE MODERN GREEKS

Have preserved dances in honour of Flora.  The wives and maidens of the village gather and scatter flowers, and bedeck themselves from head to foot.  She who leads the dance, more ornamented than the others, represents Flora and the Spring, whose return the hymn they sing announces; one of them sings—­

  “Welcome sweet nymph,
  Goddess of the month of May.”

In the Grecian villages, and among the Bulgarians, they still observe the feast of Ceres.  When harvest is almost ripe, they go dancing to the sound of the lyre, and visit the fields, whence they return with their heads ornamented with wheat ears, interwoven with the hair.  Embroidering is the occupation of the Grecian women; to the Greeks we owe this art, which is exceedingly ancient among them, and has been carried to the highest degree of perfection.  Enter the chamber of a Grecian girl, and you will see blinds at the window, and no other furniture than a sofa, and a chest inlaid with ivory, in which are kept silk, needles, and articles for embroidery.