Notes and Queries, Number 19, March 9, 1850 | Page 6

and Peter answered, Lord, I have toothache. And the Lord healed him.'"
"_P._ Well, but Dame Grey, I think I know my Bible, and I don't find any such verse in it."
"Dame. Yes, your reverence, that is just the charm. _It's in the Bible_, but _you can't find it_!"
No. 2. To avert sickness from a family, hang up a sickle, or iron implement, at the bed head.
No. 3. Should a death happen in a house at night, and there be a hive or hives of bees in the garden, go out and wake them up at once, otherwise the whole hive or swarm will die.
I hope your Folk Lore is not confined to the fading memorials of a past age. The present superstitions are really much more interesting and valuable to be gathered together; and I am sure your pages would be very well employed in recording these for a future generation. I would {294} suggest, in all humility, that it would be really useful, for the rulers of our Church and State, to know how far such a superstition as the following prevails among the peasantry:
That, if a dying person sees "glory," or a bright light, at or near the time of their dissolution, such a vision is a sure sign of their salvation, whatever may have been their former life, or their repentance.
D. Sholbus.
_Superstitions in North of England._--I find some curious popular superstitions prevalent in the north of England some three centuries ago recorded in the Proceedings before the Special Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes appointed by Queen Elizabeth. Thus:
"Anthony Haggen presented for medicioning children with miniting a hammer as a smythe of kynde."
Again
"John Watson presented for burying a quick dogg and a quick cowe."
And
"Agnes, the wyf of John Wyse, als Winkam John Wyse, presented to be a medicioner for the waffc of an yll wynde, and for the fayryes."
Some of your readers may perhaps explain what these were. It is clear that they were superstitious practices of sufficient prevalence and influence on the popular mind to call for the interference of the queen's commissioners.
A.B.
_Decking Churches with Yew on Easter Day._--In the village of Berkely near Frome, Somerset, and on the borders of Wiltshire, the church is decorated on Easter Sunday with yew, evidently as an emblem of the Resurrection. Flowers in churches on that day are common, but I believe the use of yew to be unusual.
W. Durrant Cooper.
_Strewing Straw or Chaff._--The custom mentioned by your correspondent "B." (p. 245.) as prevailing in Gloucestershire, is not peculiar to that county. In Kent, it is commonly practised by the rustics. The publican, all the world over, decorates his sign-board with a foaming can and pipes, to proclaim the entertainment to be found within. On the same principle, these rustics hang up their sign-board,--as one of them, with whom I was once remonstrating, most graphically explained to me. When they knew of a house where the master deems a little wholesome discipline necessary to ensure the obedience of love, considering it a pity that the world should be ignorant of his manly virtues, they strew "well threshed" chaff or straw before his door, as an emblematical sign-board, to proclaim that the sweet fare and "good entertainment" of a "well threshed" article may be found within. The custom, at all events, has one good tendency, it shames the tyrant into restraint, when he knows that his cowardly practices are patent to the world.
Lambert B. Larking.
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FOLK LORE OF WALES.
No. 1. Cron Annwn.--When a storm sounds over the mountains, the Welsh peasant will tell you that his ear discerns the howl of the Cron Annwn mingling with that of the wind, yet as clearly distinct from it as is the atmosphere in a diving-bell from that of the surrounding waters. These dogs of Annwn, or "couriers of the air," are spirit hounds, who hunt the souls of the dead; or, as occasionally said, they foretell, by their expectant cries, the approaching death of some man of evil deeds. Few have ever pretended to see them; for few, we presume, would linger until they dawned on the sight; but they are described by Taliesin, and in the _Mabinogion_, as being of a clear shining white, with red ears; colouring which confirms the author of the Mythology of the Ancient Druids in the idea that these dogs were "a mystical transformation of the Druids with their white robes and red tiaras." Popular superstition, however, which must always attribute ugliness to an object of fear, deems that they are either jet black, with eyes and teeth of fire, or of a deep red, and dripping all over with gore. "The nearer," says the Rev. Edmund Jones, "they are to a man, the less their voice is, and the farther the louder, sometimes swelling