in black cloth skirts and high bodices with silver buttons and turban-like head-dress, two, indeed, of them wearing the tokens of mourning, the hair braided with black wool and a black cloth fastened across the lower part of the face, leaving the eyes just visible.

The principal street was lined with stalls, where rosaries, sacred pictures, and charms against the evil eye, together with fruit and coloured kerchiefs were exposed for sale. At the door of the large handsome church of the Madonna della Libera stood a man selling coloured pictures of the Madonna, and a woman with fillets of white cotton with coloured flecks to be worn as charms against snake-bite.

On entering the church we found the floor covered with the recumbent figures of persons who had been there through the night, and we could only reach the High Altar and the shrine of the Madonna by slowly and carefully making our way through a side aisle where the crowd was less thick and the sleepers had begun to move away. Later on we asked two women if they had dreamt in the church, but they said it had been impossible to sleep on account of the number of folk in the church, and that they had spent the night there simply as an act of devotion.

Soon after mid-day the great procession left the church (Fig. 1). The statue of the Madonna della Libera, in magnificent robes and hung with jewels, was borne shoulder-high by four men and accompanied by clergy and officials, and was followed by long rows of women, who, rosary in hand and bearing huge candles, walked in double file through the streets (Fig. 2). Officials, carrying trays to receive the contributions of the faithful, walked beside the cortège, and the front of the Madonna's dress was nearly covered with bank-notes of five and ten lire, offered by her devotees; while close behind the statue a standard was carried on which bank-notes of higher values-50 and 100 lire1were affixed, offerings in fulfilment of vows made in some time of sickness or trouble. The procession had to make constant halts to enable the offerings to be presented and fastened to the Madonna's dress (Fig. 3), as it passed through the streets and out

of the gates to make a round beyond the walls before the Madonna of Deliverance was carried back to her shrine in the church, and the great yearly procession was over.

MARIAN C. HARRISON.

NOTE.-Since writing the above, I have been informed by Donna Maria de Nino, who has lived in that neighbourhood nearly all her life, that their Madonna is invoked not only by women in childbirth, but also in every kind of trouble or grief. M. C. H.

IRISH FOLKLORE FROM CAVAN, Meath, KERRY, AND LIMERICK.

AUTHORITIES.

Ellen M'Keever, a cook, born near the town of Cavan (E McK.).

Marianne Hodgins, a domestic servant from Ardbraccan in Meath (M. H.).

Mr. D. Lynch, formerly National teacher at Philipstown in Louth, a native of Caherciveen in Kerry (D. L.).

I am indebted to Miss M. Ferguson for the Limerick folklore, and to Mr. H. T. Radcliff for some of the Meath beliefs (H. T. R.).

FOLK MEDICINE.

MUMPS can be cured by blindfolding the patient and making him walk three times round a pigstye (E. McK., Cavan).

To remove warts take a straw having nine knots or joints in it, and rub the warts three times with each of the nine knots on three successive mornings. Another cure is to wash the warts with soda nine mornings running (E. McK.).

Heart-disease may be cured by means of a powerful charm known only to a few, which is put in practice as follows:

The patient sits on a low stool, having a cup full of dry