Читать книгу Notes and Queries, Number 187, May 28, 1853 - Various - Страница 5

Weather Rules.—The interesting article on "The Shepherd of Banbury's Weather Rules" (Vol. vii., p. 373.) has reminded me of two sayings I heard in Worcestershire a few months back, and upon which my informant placed the greatest reliance. The first is, "If the moon changes on a Sunday, there will be a flood before the month is out." My authority asserted that through a number of years he has never known this fail. The month in which the change on a Sunday has occurred has been fine until the last day, when the flood came. The other saying is, "Look at the weathercock on St. Thomas's day at twelve o'clock, and see which way the wind is, and there it will stick for the next quarter," that is, three months. Can any of your readers confirm the above, and add any similar "weather rules?"

J. A., Jun.

Birmingham.

Drills presaging Death (Vol. vii., p. 353.).—Your correspondent asks if the superstition he here alludes to in Norfolk is believed in other parts. I can give him a case in point in Berkshire:—Some twenty years ago an old gentleman died there, a near relative of my own; and on going down to his place, I was told by a farm overseer of his, that he was certain some of his lordship's family would die that season, as, in the last sowing, he had missed putting the seed in one row, which he showed me! "Who could disbelieve it now?" quoth the old man. I was then taken to the bee-hives, and at the door of every one this man knocked with his knuckles, and informed the occupants that they must now work for a new master, as their old one was gone to heaven. This, I believe, has been queried in your invaluable paper some time since. I only send it by the way. I know the same superstition is still extant in Cheshire, North Wales, and in some parts of Scotland.

T. W. N.

Malta.

A friend supplies me with the information that before drills were invented, the labourers considered it unlucky to miss a "bout" in corn or seed sowing, will sometimes happened when "broadcast" was the only method. The ill-luck did not relate alone to a death in the family of the farmer or his dependents, but to losses of cattle or accidents. It is singular, however, that the superstition should have transferred itself to the drill; but it will be satisfactory to E. G. R. to learn that the process of tradition and superstition-manufacturing is not going on in the nineteenth century.

E. S. Taylor.

Superstition in Devonshire; Valentine's Day (Vol. v., pp. 55. 148.).—This, according to Forby, vol. ii. p. 403., once formed in Norfolk a part of the superstitious practices on St. Mark's Eve, not St. Valentine's, as mentioned by J. S. A., when the sheeted ghosts of those who should die that year (Mrs. Crowe would call them, I suppose, Doppelgängers) march in grisly array to the parish church.

The rhyme varies from J. S. A.'s:—

and the Norfolk spectre is seen with a scythe, instead of a rake like his Devonshire compeer.

E. S. Taylor.