Last year I heard of shutting windows, after death, from a Cambridge woman sixty years old. She did not know why it was done.

W. INNES Pocock.

THAR-CAKE.

At the December meeting (1905) I exhibited a so-called TharCake, a species of Parken, that a Lancashire lady had sent me. The exhibit elicited a deal of correspondence, and I now beg to communicate, what I consider to be, the most important facts I have been able to collect.

The lady (Miss Berry of Oldham, Lancashire), who sent me the cake confirms what she previously stated, viz., that the cake is generally made for, and eaten on, November 5th. According to local authorities this date coincides with an old feast in honour of the Scandinavian God Thor; for this something may be said (seq.). The same kind of cake is made in Yorkshire, but is called York Parken.

Mrs. Gomme suggested I should publish the recipe-Voila !!

Finely ground flour, 2 lbs.; granulated sugar, 2 tablespoonfuls; ground ginger, oz.; baking powder (evidently a modern innovation), 1 teaspoonful; candied peel, cut fine, 2 oz.; sweet almonds, chopped, 1 oz.; Kiel butter, 5 oz.

Rub the ingredients well together, and then mix with a teacupful of milk and as much Scotch treacle as will make it lightly stiff. Bake in greased tin in a slow oven. My correspondent says many of the ingredients are modern innovations, and the very old people in her neighbourhood say that nothing but oatmeal, butter, and treacle should be used.

Mr. H. Jewett calls my attention to the fact that it is customary in Lancashire to make and eat toffee on the 5th November, but Miss Berry says that toffee is always looked on as a sort of supernumerary adjunct, not a necessity for the day's repast. Mr. Jewitt quoting from Dr. Tille's Yule-tide and Christmas

(Nutt) says, "It (Yule-tide) originally extended from midNovember to mid-January, and amongst the Goths of the sixth century covered November and December," but that "the AngloSaxons of the seventh century celebrated December and January as the festal months." The Scandinavian Yule festival was a product of the ninth century, and circa 950 King Hakon ordered the celebration to be on the same day as the Christian Nativity festival." Mr. Jewitt thinks that the influence of the Celtic feast of the Winter nights-November eve-being strong in Lancashire and Yorkshire, may have stereotyped an earlier observance of the Yule-tide feast of the conquering northern race, although the name of Yule was transferred to the accepted date of the Nativity. I think, speaking philologically, there is some warrant for this latter theory.

Mr. S. J. Heathcote quotes Edwin Waugh, the Lancashire poet, as mentioning Thar Cake, and adds there are very many Scandinavian place-names in the County Palatine. Brand (Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 585) refers to Tharf Cake, and says it is used by Langland (Piers Plowman) to signify unleavened bread. Philologically the origin of the word is as follows:

Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic Words, 2 vols., 1865, gives: Thurd Cake, a thin circular cake of considerable size, made of unfermented dough, chiefly of rye and barley, rolled very thin and baked hard. The word appears to be a corruption of "tharf," unleavened. Thar or Thor Cake-Derby, 5th November Cake.

Parken, a cake made chiefly of treacle and oatmeal-North of England.

Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, vol. vi. p. 75, Thar-cake, short for Tharf-cake.

(1) An unleavened cake of flour or meal, mixed with milk or water, rolled out thin and baked.

(2) A kind of cake of oatmeal, butter, and treacle.

Used in West Yorkshire, Lancashire, Derby, Cumberland, and Durham.

Professor Skeat writes me: "The Middle English form is therf-cake, and thus occurs in Piers Plowman. The A.S. for therf is theorf (very common), Old Norse Pjarfr (thiarf-r), Old

seem as though the cake itself was of Anglo-Saxon or possibly Gothic origin, but, unless on the lines suggested by Dr. Tille, it is difficult to say why it should be so closely associated with the early days of November, although if there be allowed us an explanation of origins, then the practice of eating a fancy cake on one particular day in November in connection with feasting held on account of some national festival-such as the discovery of the gunpowder plot-may have developed from it. Should such a conjecture be correct, there would be nothing novel in it to folklorists, as they are constantly finding Christian festivals synchronising with older heathen observances on which they have been engrafted.

C. J. TABOR.

BEES AND WITHERED BRANCHES.

You take, it seems, even trivial facts of local superstitions. May I mention one which I only heard some two weeks back here in my country, Anglesey? On my showing a cottager, William Jones, a swarm of bees on a laburnum, which I wished to hive, he remarked how a swarm had on a previous year settled on the same plant, and referred to the local idea that, wherever bees settled, the branch withered, pointing out such a branch (or twig). He was speaking Welsh. In that language there is a sound similarity between gwenyn and gwywo, bees and wither, respectively.

Amlwch.

H. H. JOHNSON.

WEDDING CUSTOM.

A trained nurse, a Scotchwoman, born about five miles from Balmoral, tells me that in that part of the country when a younger sister marries before the elder, the latter is forcibly made to wear green garters at the wedding, and any young man who takes them off is destined to be her future husband. Her eldest sister was

correct for any of the maids to be older than the bride) and the "best man," whom she had never seen before, took off her green garters, and is now her husband.

C. S. BURNE.

[This note gives an interesting expansion of the custom noted in Gregor's Folk-Lore of the North-East of Scotland, p. 90. He only says that if a younger sister was married she had to give her eldest sister green garters.]

FAITH-CURES.

I enclose two newspaper cuttings which may be of interest to you.

It is popularly believed in Devon that nobody can "ill-wish” or "over-look" a first-born. Is this a universal belief, or one peculiar to the west country?

A few years ago there was a quarrel between neighbours in a village near this town. One woman declared that her health had suffered through the "ill-wishing" of a neighbour, and the rector of the parish, in attempting to make peace, asked her how it had come about. She told him that when her husband and the woman whom she accused of overlooking her were in a field weeding turnips, "her was ill-wishing of him all the time." The rector asked how it was that the husband had not suffered, and was told: "Because he was a first-born and her couldn't harm him. It had to pass over to the nearest to him, and that was myself."

(MRS.) AMY MONTAGUE.

Western Morning News, April 17th, 1906.

CURIOUS SCENE AT SUTCOMBE, NORTH DEVON.

Revival of an Old Faith Cure.

North Devon is full of strange folk-lore and beliefs (we won't call them superstitions). On Sunday the parish church of Sutcombe, a small village

old faith cure. A woman in the parish has of late been a sufferer from epileptic fits, and at the persuasion of a neighbour, who nineteen years ago had done the same thing and had not suffered from fits since, she went round the parish and got thirty married men to promise to attend the parish church at the morning service. It was a gratifying sight to see so large a congregation, drawn together out of sympathy for a neighbour and a desire to do anything she thought might help her. At the close of the service the rector desired the selected men to pass out one by one, and as they passed through the porch they found the woman seated there, accompanied by the neighbour who had done the same thing nineteen years ago (as many who were present remembered). Each man as he passed out put a penny in the woman's lap, but when the thirtieth man (the rector's churchwarden) came he took the twenty-nine pennies and put in half a crown. A silver ring is to be made out of this halfcrown, which the woman is to wear, and it is to be hoped that the result will be as satisfactory in her case as it was on the previous occasion. In a small parish (less than 300 population) it was not easy to find thirty married men, but all were willing to help-farmers, labourers, and tradesmen-and the whole incident passed off very quietly, and all was done with the utmost reverence and decorum. The woman takes her seat in the porch when the preacher begins his sermon, and from the time she leaves her house until she returns she must not speak a word. We have not heard whether she complied with this condition. Can any of your readers furnish me with the details of any similar case?

Sutcombe Rectory.

F. G. SCRIVener.

Western Morning News, April 19th, 1906.

REVIVAL OF AN OLD FAITH CURE.

Some fifteen years or more when I was rector of Bideford, a young woman suffering from epileptic fits asked me to go to the porch after preaching and hold her hand while she collected a penny from thirty (I thought it was unmarried, but it may have been married) men as they passed out of church the following Sunday evening; which thirty coppers were to be exchanged for a silver half-crown, out of which a ring was to be made which she would wear, and so be cured of her epilepsy. I fear I was not so complacent as the rector of Sutcombe, and declined to foster such superstition, as I regarded it. The woman ceased, in consequence of my refusal, to be a member of the Church of England and joined the Wesleyan body. I do not remember hearing that she was more successful, however, with them. On another occasion a young farmer from the neighbourhood of Torrington called on me and asked me to tell him what was contained in a bag which he had worn round his neck since infancy, and which a white witch had given his mother as a preventative against fits. After cutting open several outer cases, well worn and sweatstained, I came upon the original inner one, which contained a number of