Chapter C: S. P

_Wassailing Orchards in Sussex._--I am happy to be able to send you the following particulars respecting the apple-tree superstitions, as they prevail in this county; and it is as _well to preserve_ the _recollection_ of them, for I suspect they are wearing away. In this neighbourhood (Chailey) the custom of wassailing the orchards still remains. It is called apple-howling. A troop of boys visit the different orchards, and encircling the apple-trees they repeat the following words:

"Stand fast root, bear well top,
Pray the God send us a good howling crop.
Every twig, apples big,
Every bough, apples enow.
Hats full, caps full,
Full quarters, sacks full."

They then shout in chorus, one of the boys accompanying them on the cow's horn; during this ceremony they rap the trees with their sticks. This custom is alluded to in Herrick's _Hesperides_, p. 311.

"Wassail the trees that they may beare
You, many a plum, and many a peare,
For more or less fruits they will bring,
As you do give them _wassailing_."

R. W. B.

_Lucky Omens._--"The schoolmaster with his primer in his hand," to quote Lord Brougham, is unquestionably abroad, and dispelling, with surprising rapidity, the prejudices of the people; in some cases, perhaps, to make way for prejudices yet stronger and more tenacious than those they displace. You are doing good service by collecting and recording some of those that are fast disappearing. In this neighbourhood I know ladies who consider it "lucky" to find _old iron_; a horse shoe or a rusty nail is carefully conveyed home and hoarded up. It is also considered lucky if you see the _head_ of the first lamb in spring; to present his _tail_ is the certain harbinger of misfortune. It is also said that if you have money in your pocket the first time you hear the cuckoo, you will never be without all the year. The magpie is a well-known bird of omen. The following lines were familiar when I was a boy:

"One for sorrow, two for mirth,
Three for a wedding, four for death;
Five for a fiddle, six for a dance,
Seven for England, eight for France."

T. D.

_Lambs._--The Denbighshire peasantry watch with great anxiety for the position in which young lambs are seen by them the first time in the year. If their heads are towards them it is lucky; if their tails, great misfortunes will ensue.

AGMOND.

_Key Experiments_ (Vol. v., p. 152.).--Perhaps J. P. Jun. may not be aware that an experiment somewhat similar to these is practised in the Isle of Man. The operator holds a thread between the finger and thumb, with a shilling fixed horizontally to it, gradually drops the shilling into a glass, and after it has once become stationary, the shilling begins to oscillate, and, as the superstition goes, invariably strikes the hour of the day against the glass. I have frequently practised it, and consider the motive power to be the pulse, which is completely under the operator's control. This performance has been known in the Isle of Man certainly more than a century, and bears a resemblance to the experiments of Mayo and Reichenbach with the Od Force, or the vagaries of the Magnetoscope.

Perhaps some of your correspondents can instance cases and tricks of this kind of much earlier date.

AGMOND.

Minor Notes.

_Rhymes connected with Places._--There are many villages in England, the names of which have old traditionary couplets attached to them, illustrating some natural or other peculiarity; some such have already incidentally found their way into the pages of "N. & Q." Might not a complete collection be easily made, and would it not be an interesting one? I send, as a beginning, two Staffordshire villages in my immediate neighbourhood, which are very characteristically described. One is--

"Wootton under Weaver,
Where God came never,"

being very lonely, and out-of-the-way; and the other--

"Stanton on the stones,
Where the Devil broke his bones,"

which explains itself.

W. FRASER.

_French Dates._--I annex a singular connexion between the dates of some of the most important occurrences in the history of France, which was mentioned to me by a French lady, with whom I had the pleasure of travelling from Soissons to Paris the day after the melancholy death of the Duke of Orleans, in July 1842. By following out the same principle of addition, the next great national event appears to be in store for the year 1857. Of course the superstitious reader must shut his eyes on 1848.

1794 - Period of Robespierre.
1
7
9
4
----
1815 - Waterloo.
1
8
1
5
----
1830 - Revolution.
1
8
3
0
----
1842 - Death of the Duke of Orleans.

E. N.

"_Black Book of Scone._"--The _Black Book of Scone_, containing the history of Scotland from Fergus I., was in Sir Robert Spottiswood's library, and was given by Lewis Cant (a Covenanting minister) to Major-General Lambert, and by Lambert to Col. Fairfax; which book Charles I. had ransomed from Rome by a considerable sum of money: and it is certain Archbishop Spottiswood had it and the _Black Book of Paisley_, signed by three abbots, when he compiled his _History_, which, with the famous _Red Book of Pluscardine_, Buchanan says he had, and frequently cites.--Sir George Mackenzie's _Defence of the Antiquity of the Royal Line of Scotland_; and also _Lives of Scotch Writers_.

The fate of the _Black Book of Scone_ may be a clue to the inquirer after the _Black Book of Paisley_. It is not now in the library at Spottiswood; and most of Sir Robert Spottiswood's property was pillaged and ransacked during his imprisonment.