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"No, I never heard of anyone belonging here doing that. He wasn't wrong in his head, though. He had understanding enough, and was sharp as need be; and he never meddled with anybody, but he was an evil-looking, wicked old man." Told to Mabel Peacock by A. R., Kirton-in-Lindsey, 1907.

NOTES FROM GREECE AND THE AEGEAN.

EVIL EYE CHARMS.

(SEE PLATE XIV.)

(1) General in Greece and islands.

Blue beads.

Key.

Cowries, on horses.

(2) Seen in Candia. Jan.-Feb., 1908.

(a) On a horse boar's tusks in form of crescent.
(b) Boar's tusks, in shop at Athens, said to be still

in use.

(3) Rhodes town. July-August, 1908.

Over harem windows carved in wood:

Hand.

Pomegranate flower.

Bird? (perhaps only ornament).

Dragon's head? (perhaps only ornament).

Crescent.

Over shops:

Blue beads. Octopus.

Aloe. Onion or garlic bulbs.

Outside the town charms are not common over houses.

(4) Badger's hair. I saw

a man with this charm in the

(5) At Monolithos (Rhodes) I heard the following tale about the small isle of Strongylo off Cape Monolithos. July-Aug., 1908: There are 100 cisterns cut in the rock on it, but you can

only count 99.

I fancy this form of tale is known elsewhere.

(6) Boys bathing at Sparta. May-June, 1908.

Some two or three tied a strap or string round their waist before diving in-after a few minutes it was usually taken off.

It may have been for "

decency," as we were present. Nearly

all cross themselves before bathing.

(7) Good Friday. 1908. Magonla, near Sparta.

Women and children of both sexes crawled beneath the bier in Magonla church to get good luck.

Flowers from the bier are thought lucky, and are distributed or torn off after the Good Friday night procession. Sparta.

(8) Thairey monastery. Rhodes. July-Aug., 1908.

The monk said it was founded by a Princess of Lindos, and white mules by themselves brought the stones to build it from Lindos to Thairey.

The question is, was there ever a princess of Lindos ? The monastery is Byzantine in style, and not, I should think, of a very early date.

M. S. THOMPSON.

CORRESPONDENCE.

EGYPTIAN BELIEFS.

LES GARENNES, WIMEREUX, PAS DE CALAIS.

Sir, I do not know if the following extracts from a letter of an officer in the Egyptian Army are of any interest. One or two of the beliefs are new to me and they may be so to other folklorists, but the remainder of them are of course familiar to everybody.

Yours faithfully,

E. P. LARKEN.

(Extract.)

"The day before yesterday D. and I went to the pyramids and an old Arab came up to beg and we made him sit down and talk to us. He told us about the ghosts that live there. One is a beautiful donkey and you get on his back and become a dog, but if you stick a knife into his shoulder you become yourself again and he has to carry you wherever you want to go. Then there is another ghost in Cairo who flies about, miles up in the air, and makes great hootings and drops thunder and lightning on people's heads. He is a very violent Afreet, and there are lots of his kind here.

"Then he said about how the Sphinx used to have a gold crown on its head which was stolen from it by the Arabs and how it used to speak and answer questions.

"The pyramids quite defeated him. He could not think how the devil they had been built.'

"Gad, my servant, says that he has seen lots of Afreets in his part of Egypt, like men and women and camels and dogs, and they are all very live indeed, and if you meet a dog on the hills in the desert here he may be a dog or he may be an Afreet. If

they are very afraid of fire and a match is quite enough to keep them off. And there was one other one, that lives in the river, which is like a large fish, with a head like 'a son of the Arabs' and legs like horse's, and it eats fire."

SACRED Wells.

Nov. 9th, 1908.

SIR,-In Miss Eva Simpson's recently published book on Lowland folk-lore of Scotland there is a reference to the old practice of lovers going to a sacred well on the first of May and cutting their names or initials in the turf near the spring. The particular well quoted by Miss Simpson (from Dr. Gregor, I think) is that of St. Fittick, near the Bay of Nigg, just to the south of Aberdeen.

It appears that the same custom was observed in this parish, when, on the first Sunday of May, large contingents of youths made their way up the hill of Craigour to Redbeard's Well, where they first drank of the waters, particularly "the cream of the well" (it is a chalybeate spring), and then cut their "letters" on the turf, at least one old lady of my acquaintance had her name so inscribed 70 years ago. She is now 86.

I fail to find much reference to this peculiar observance in the copies of "Folk-lore" accessible here. Perhaps, however, you may have it fully treated of.

Crossroad School, Durris, by Aberdeen.

A. MACDONALD.

Nov. 6, 1908.

The following extract from a lecture by Prof. Milne, F.R.S., on Earthquakes-speaking of Japanese and other Folk-Lore on Earthquakes-may interest the Society.

17 St. John's Wood Park, Finchley Road, N.W.

H. N. HUTCHINSON.

EARTHQUAKES. (EXTRACT FROM Nature, APRIL 23rd, 1908, vol. lxxvii., p. 597.)

At the time of an earthquake in Japan, the children are

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