said that they always did this at a christening, but that it ought to have been threepence in silver, not in copper; it had to be given to the first person the christening party saw—man, woman, or child.[1]
An instance of a name taboo occurred a few years ago at my home in Beadnell. There, and very generally upon the Northumberland coast, the name of Graham is tabooed. This is the more strange as Graham is, of course, a common Border name. So far as I could find out, however, the prejudice against it does not extend beyond the coast, nor, in fact, beyond the fishermen. It was first brought to my notice when my father (Alfred Allhusen, Beadnell Tower) was having the house repaired and re-papered. One of the workmen, from Newcastle, was named Graham. The fishermen, who made friends with all the other men,—taking them across to the Fame Islands and out in their boats on Sundays,—refused to have anything to do with this man, and made themselves so obnoxious to him that he had to return to Newcastle. I then began to make enquiries. I was told that once, in the winter, a stranger had come to the village, asking for Mr. Graham of Lughall. He went into a cottage where the women were baiting the hooks for the haddock lines. This means the baiting of five to seven thousand hooks—a whole day's work. Upon hearing the name of Graham, they directed the man to the house, but at once unbaited, and then re-baited, all the lines. The baker at Seahouses, who supplies the fishermen out here, is called Graham, but is, or then was, referred to by all the men as "Tom Puff"; no one would call him by his proper name, Tom Graham. I spoke about this to one of the old men,—a great friend of mine in whose boat I had often been out to haul his crabpots. He said that he knew well that the men would not get fish if they met a Graham, nor if they heard the name, unless they could at once touch cold iron. He himself did not know the origin of it, nor did he believe in it. "But,"
- ↑ Cf. County Folk-Lore, vol. iv. (Northumberland), p. 91, according to which bread and cheese, or spice-cake, cheese, and salt are handed to the first person met on the road to church. Cf. also Brand, Popular Antiquities, vol. ii. (1854), p. 81.
