Читать книгу Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 - Various - Страница 3

"Snail, Snail, come out of your Hole."—In Surrey, and most probably in other counties where shell-snails abound, children amuse themselves by charming them with a chant to put forth their horns, of which I have only heard the following couplet, which is repeated until it has the desired effect, to the great amusement of the charmer.

It is pleasant to find that this charm is not peculiar to English children, but prevails in places as remote from each other as Naples and Silesia.

The Silesian rhyme is:

which may be thus paraphrased:

In that amusing Folk's-book of Neapolitan childish tales, the Pentamerone of the noble Count-Palatine Cavalier Giovan-Battista Basile, in the seventeenth tale, entitled "La Palomma," we have a similar rhyme:

of which the sense may probably be:

The Evil Eye.—This superstition is still prevalent in this neighbourhood (Launceston). I have very recently been informed of the case of a young woman, in the village of Lifton, who is lying hopelessly ill of consumption, which her neighbours attribute to her having been "overlooked" (this is the local phrase by which they designate the baleful spell of the evil eye). An old woman in this town is supposed to have the power of "ill-wishing" or bewitching her neighbours and their cattle, and is looked on with much awe in consequence.

H. G. T.

"Millery! Millery! Dousty-poll!" &c.—I am told by a neighbour of a cruel custom among the children in Somersetshire, who, when they have caught a certain kind of large white moth, which they call a miller, chant over it this uncouth ditty:—

And then, with boyish recklessness, put the poor creature to death for the imagined misdeeds of his human namesake.

H. G. T.

"Nettle in, Dock out."—Sometime since, turning over the leaves of Clarke's Chaucer, I stumbled on the following passage in "Troilus and Cressida," vol. ii. p. 104.:—

I was delighted to find the charm for a nettle sting, so familiar to my childish ear, was as old as Chaucer's time, and exceedingly surprised to stumble on the following note:—

"This appears to be a proverbial expression implying inconstancy; but the origin of the phrase is unknown to all the commentators on our poet."

If this be the case, Chaucer's commentators may as well be told that children in Northumberland use friction by a dock-leaf as the approved remedy for the sting of a nettle, or rather the approved charm; for the patient, while rubbing in the dock-juice, should keep repeating,—

The meaning is therefore obvious. Troilus is indignant at being recommended to forget this Cressida for a new love, just as a child cures a nettle-sting by a dock-leaf. I know not whether you will deem this trifle worth a corner in your valuable and amusing "Notes."