them their corn and hay, is a particular friend in some instances, wakes the lazy servants, upsets the furniture, and testifies his satisfaction in such wild pranks by shouts of laughter. He is almost always invisible, though sometimes he shows himself in the shape of a handsome black horse, all ready saddled and bridled. But, woe to the unlucky cavalier who ventures to mount him; he rears, plunges, runs off with his rider, and finally vanishes from under him, leaving him in a quagmire. This trick is familiar to our own Puck, especially amongst the Manx; and the Lutin also, a water-spirit, is fond of assuming the same shape, and drowning those who are simple enough to ride him. Indeed this transformation into a black horse for evil purposes is widely spread amongst the seaspirits. Loup-garou, varou, or warou. (The Were-wolf. France). -The loup-garou, the wehrwolf of the Germans is a man metamorphosed by some wizzard into a wolf. The transformation is supposed to run like a lease for a certain odd term of years, three or seven, during which the werewolf prowls about at night, and is only to be disenchanted by drawing blood from him with a key. The old Norman laws in speaking of certain crimes and their punishment, add, "let the culprit be a wolf,”wargus esto-that is to say let him be hunted down like a wolf, which is likely enough to have been the origin of the superstition of the were-wolf. This conjecture gains additional force from the term, wargus, i. e. gerulphus, warou, werewolf, being employed instead of loup. As to our own term of were-wolf, were is only a very slight corruption of the Latin vir, a man, and we * * "Vidimus enim frequenter in Anglia per lunationes homines in lupos mutari, quod hominum genus gerulphos Galli nominant." Gervasius Tilleburiensis in Oris IMPERIAL, part i. find it used in the same sense in the compound were-geld, which literally means man-money, that is to say the value of a man, or price at which his murder might be atoned and absolved. I doubt much too whether warou, varou, gerulphus, and finally loup garou, have not all come from the same simple original. However this may be, there is no doubt whatever that the word, war, was widely employed amongst the old German dialects in the sig nification of man, which became wer or were amongst the Anglo-Saxons, and in time was lost altogether except in a few compounds, themselves almost fallen into disuse. Rongeur d'Os. (The Bone-Gnawer: France).-This is a phantom in the shape of a large dog, who prowls about the streets of Bayeux in the long winter-nights,. gnawing bones, and dragging along a chain. He also is a man, who has been thus transformed by some sorcerer or by the devil. But all these superstitions bear strong marks of a northern origin, and in the oldest sagas in the Edda we find examples of men changed into wolves and dogs by the power of evil genii. La Bete Saint Loup. (France).-At the beginning of the fifteenth century a furious wolf ravaged the environs of Bayeux and penetrated into the suburbs. Saint Loup, who was then the bishop of that city, took compassion on his diocesans, and went out boldly to meet the brute. At the approach of so godly a personage the animal remained immovable, when the Saint wound his stole about his enemy's neck, and without ceremony drowned him in the river Drôme. At certain periods of the year however, the wolf returns and prowls about the church of Saint Loup. If you have the least doubt of the story, only go to Bayeux, and the good people of the place will show you the very spot where Saint Loup threw the brute into the river, and a bas-relief above the church-door, as well as a picture within, both confirmative of the fact. We have the greater reason for putting implicit faith in these testimonials, as after all they do not vouch for any very singular miracle. In the following age Saint Vigor did as much, or more; he, who was also a bishop of Bayeux, delivered the country from a serpent whose breath alone poisoned men and animals. Pluquet with his usual proneness to spoiling a good story by explanation wishes to allegorize this into an emblem of the triumph of Christianity over Paganism. Divination." When I was a boy, in North Wilts, (before the Civill Warres) the mayd-servants were wont at night, after supper, to make smoothe the ashes on the hearth, and then to make streakes on it with a stick ; such a streak signified particularly to her that made it, such an unmarried man, such a one such a mayd. The like for the men. Then the men and the mayds were to choose by this kind of way their husbands and wifes; or by this divination to know when they should marry. The maydes, I remember, were very fond of this kind of magic, which is clearly a branch of geomantie. Now the rule of geomantie is that you are not to go about your divination but with a great deal of seriousness, and also prayers; and to be performed in a very private place, or on the sea-shore. "Another remainder of geomancy, to divine whether such a one will return this night or no, is by the sheath of a knife, which one holds at the great end with his two forefingers, and says, he comes;' then slips down his upper finger under his lower, and then the lower under that, and says, he comes not' and sic deinceps till he is come to the bottome of his sheath, which gives the answer. ."* A note in the margin, with the signature of W. K., tells us, "this way of choosing Valentines by making little furrows in the ashes, and imposing such and such names on such line or furrow is practised in Kent and many other parts.-W. K.” Leeks and Ramsons.-In the West of England the following rhymes preserve a popular belief, which, without being actually a superstition, is very much akin to it. "Eate leekes in Lide, and ramsins in May, And all the yeare after physitians may play." Lide is a word used in the West for March; and ramsins, or as it is more generally written, ramsons, is a species of wild garlic. Wind. "On Malvern Hills, in Worcestershire, and thereabouts, when they fanne their corne and wante wind, they cry 'youle! youle! youle!' to invite it, which word, no doubt, is a corruption of Eolus, the God of the winds."+ Teeth.-"When children shale (i. e. shed) their teeth, the women use to wrap or put salt about the tooth, and so throw it into a good fire. The above-mentioned Cramer saith that in Germany in his native country, some women will bid their children to take the tooth which is fallen or taken out, and goe into a dark corner of the house or parlour, and cast the same into it, thereby saying these words: 'Mouse, here I give thee a tooth of bone, But give thou me an iron one.' (or iron tooth) believing that another good tooth will grow in its place.” * Aubrey's Remains of Gentilisme and Judaisme, MS. folio 111. Idem, folio 110; but I have already shown that youle has nothing at all to do with Eolus. § Idem, folio 104. Hares." If a hare crosseth the way, or one stumble at the threshold going out, it is still held ominous among the country people."* Holy Mawle.-If we may trust Aubrey, and I have no where else met with an allusion to this belief, the people at one time used to imagine that a mallet, or wooden hammer, was hung up behind the church door, with which sons might knock their fathers on the head, upon the old gentlemen's attaining the ripe age of seventy. His words are,-"The holy mawle, which they fancy hung behind the church door, which, when the father was seventie, the sonne might fetch to knock his father on the head, as effete and of no more use.”†—Mawle is the same as mall, and signifies a wooden hammer. Sieve and Shears.—" The magick of the sive and sheeres (I thinke) is in Virgil's Eclogues. The sheeres are stuck in a sieve, and two maydens hold up the sieve with the top of their fingers by the handle of the shiers; then say, 'By St. Peter or St. Paul such a one hath stoln such a thing.' The other saith, 'By St. Peter or St. Paul he hath not stoln it.' After many such adjurations the sieve will turne at the name of the thiefe." Magpie." When a magpie chatters on a tree by the house, it declares the coming of a stranger thither that night. So likewise a thiefe in the candle."§ Running Streams.—" Mol Tayler was advised by the wizard of Feversh. to leap three times over a small running streame, to prevent her being taken when she escaped out of prison."|| Hag-ridden." A receipt to cure a horse of being hagTake bitter-sweet and holly, and twist them ridden. * Aubrey's Remains of Gentilisme and Judaisme, MS. folio 109. |