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(4) Mr. W. F. Kirby refers me to Barrow's Account of Travels into the interior of Southern Africa in the years 1797 and 1798, London, 1801, vol. i., pp. 312-319; on p. 313 is a figure of the head of a one-horned Antelope, copied from a Bosjeman's drawing on a cavern wall, and Mr. Kirby says: "But the figure represents the horn as over the eye, which looks as if it was either taken in profile or from an animal in which the left horn was broken off or undeveloped."

(5) I have not received any information.

(6) I should be glad to receive further detailed information.

(7) Notes and Queries for May 7, 1887, p. 370, shows that about the year 1850, whilst the new road and bridge across the Thames from Old Windsor to Datchet was in course of construction, the navvies working on the line of road unearthed one morning, a foot or two below the surface, human skeletons, etc. The writer of the note goes on to say, "I was present at the unearthing, and was more interested in a number of living and moving 'anatomies' found with the bones, all not thicker than a hair, apparently without head or tail, and each one mixed up so that each convolution could be easily traced. . . . The men who first came across them made no bones about setting them down at once as animated hairs, the theory, as far as I could understand it, being that the river often overflowing the spot, or the ground being otherwise kept moist by it, hairs ultimately developed into 'them there kind o' eels, a wery common thing about the water in these parts, guv'ner.'"

(8), (9) and (10). I should be glad to receive further detailed information.

Dudley House,

Upper Highway, King's Langley.

T. EAST LONES.

[The points on which Mr. Lones still desires information are horned snakes, the use of astragali in divination, the fish called Echeneis, and the belief that the eyes of snakes and swallows will grow again if they are blinded. ED.]

FOLKLORE OF Aristotle.

(Vol. xviii., pp. 212-215.)

In reply to queries in Folk-Lore for June, 1907, I have received the following information, much of which will be of great use

to me:

(1) Mr. G. C. Zervos, writing from Calymnos on Oct. 23rd, 1907, says: "The sponge is considered to be an animal, because the sponge fishermen say that ἐψόφησαν τὰ σφουγγάρια = the sponges have become dead. Now, this word op is used in modern Greek to denote the death of animals only." Dr. W. H. D. Rouse also says: "In modern Greece the sponge is spoken of in terms which would suit an animal, as μáva is the lower sponge."

(2) According to The Cyclades, or Life among the Insular Greeks, by Jas. Theodore Bent, 1885, p. 439: "It is deemed very unlucky to sneeze at the cheese Sunday banquet [in Lent]; anyone who does must tear his coat to avert disaster. Greeks, in common with other nationalities, regard sneezing with superstition; if you are a layman they wish you good health, if you are a priest they say 'safety'; why this distinction I could not find out."

Dr. W. H. D. Rouse says: "Sneezing is an omen,” and Mr. G. C. Zervos says: "When a person sneezes it is said that people are speaking of him."

(3) Mr. G. C. Zervos says that the same superstition still exists that "Men also, very rarely, have milk produced in their breasts."

Mr. W. F. Kirby informs me that there are, among recorded instances of lactation in males, (1) that of Thorgils, the Icelander, in Baring-Gould's book on Iceland, chap. 22; (2) that of a South American settler, in Humboldt and Bonpland's Personal Narrative, book iii. chap. 6; (3) that of a he-goat, in Hanover, recorded in the chapter just quoted; and (4) that recorded by Anna Blackwell in her "Testimony of the Ages," published some years ago in a periodical called Human Nature.

Notes and Queries, Dec. 7th, 1889, p. 442, contains a reference to the case of a young Chipewyan who suckled his own child after

(4) Mr. W. F. Kirby refers me to Barrow's Account of Travels into the interior of Southern Africa in the years 1797 and 1798, London, 1801, vol. i., pp. 312-319; on p. 313 is a figure of the head of a one-horned Antelope, copied from a Bosjeman's drawing on a cavern wall, and Mr. Kirby says: "But the figure represents the horn as over the eye, which looks as if it was either taken in profile or from an animal in which the left horn was broken off or undeveloped."

(5) I have not received any information.

(6) I should be glad to receive further detailed information.

(7) Notes and Queries for May 7, 1887, p. 370, shows that about the year 1850, whilst the new road and bridge across the Thames from Old Windsor to Datchet was in course of construction, the navvies working on the line of road unearthed one morning, a foot or two below the surface, human skeletons, etc. The writer of the note goes on to say, "I was present at the unearthing, and was more interested in a number of living and moving 'anatomies' found with the bones, all not thicker than a hair, apparently without head or tail, and each one mixed up so that each convolution could be easily traced. . . . The men who first came across them made no bones about setting them down at once as animated hairs, the theory, as far as I could understand it, being that the river often overflowing the spot, or the ground being otherwise kept moist by it, hairs ultimately developed into 'them there kind o' eels, a wery common thing about the water in these parts, guv'ner.'"

(8), (9) and (10). I should be glad to receive further detailed information.

Dudley House,

Upper Highway, King's Langley.

T. EAST LONES.

[The points on which Mr. Lones still desires information are horned snakes, the use of astragali in divination, the fish called Echeneis, and the belief that the eyes of snakes and swallows

OPENING WINDOWS TO AID THE RELEASE OF THE SOUL.

(Vol. xviii., p. 215.)

In Folk-Lore for June, 1907, Mr. H. Krebs says that he should be interested to hear of localities where this death-bed custom is, or has been, observed.

I beg to quote the following from Sir John Rhys' Celtic FolkLore, page 601:

"I well remember that when a person was dying in a house, it was the custom about Ponterwyd, in North Cardiganshire, to open the windows. And a farmer near Ystrad Meurig, more towards the south of the county, told me some years ago that he remembered his mother dying when he was a boy; a neighbour's wife who had been acting as nurse tried to open the window of the room, and as it would not open, she deliberately smashed a pane of it. This was doubtless originally meant to facilitate the escape of the soul."

May I add that it was also once a custom in West Wales to open the door of the death-chamber, so that the spirits which were supposed to be present might leave the room.

JONATHAN CEREDIG-DAVIES.

Dyffryn Villa, Llanilar, Aberystwyth.

FISHERS' FOLKLORE.

The fishermen of both North and South Cornwall believe that saffron brings bad luck, and that saffron-cake carried in a boat spoils the chance of a catch. Can any reader suggest a probable explanation of these ideas?

D. TOWNSHend.

OBITUARY.

FREDERICK THOMAS ELWORTHY.

We regret to have to record the death at his residence, Foxdown, Wellington, Somerset, 13th December, 1907, of Mr. Frederick Thomas Elworthy, formerly and for a considerable time a member of the Council of the Folk-lore Society. He made his reputation first as a linguist, by a work of great authority on the dialects of Somersetshire, and afterwards devoted himself to the systematic study of matters more closely connected with folk-lore. His book on the Evil Eye, published in 1895, contains a critical investigation of the evidence relating to the superstitions based on the supposed malignant influence of the earnest gaze of one person on another. His subsequent work, Horns of Honour, published in 1900, dealt with certain species of charms, amulets, and other prophylactics against the influence of the Evil Eye. His studies for these subjects led him into several by-ways of learning. In 1898 he exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries, and later to the Folk-lore Society, a large number of casts of terra cotta stamps or moulds found at Taranto, Italy, known as dischi sacri. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1900, and in 1905 he read before it a paper on the Mano Pantea or so-called Votive Hand, which he maintained was by no means technically votive, but, on the contrary, distinctly prophylactic and propitiatory, appealing for protection to powerful divinities against ever-threatening danger. This paper, like the previous one, was illustrated by many examples

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