490 Collectanea.
Oxfordshire.
At Culham, in the early eighties, — certainly not later than 1886, — I was told by a man that the playing of a German band brought rain.^
It was also a saying at Culhara that "when an old woman runs it is going to rain."
E. H. BiNNEY.
Somersetshire. The Rev. R. Dyke Acland tells me that, when he was a boy at Luccombe, Somerset, an old man-servant always provided the family with an ashen faggot for Christmas Eve. The faggot should be bound with as many " binds " as there are persons in the company. Each chooses one, and the order in which they are burnt through foretells the order in which the party will be married. (Mrs. Hewett, in Devonshire Nummits and Crnmmifs, p. 92, adds to this that a quart of cider should be consumed at the bursting of each " bind " !) An Exeter man tells him that the whole of one bough of a tree should be cut up for each faggot.
Charlotte S. Burne.
Staffordshire.
Never burn the Christmas evergreens. It brings bad luck. Throw them away. In a town, you would put them in the dust- bin, and let somebody else burn them, and get the bad luck instead of you. A. O. (Tutbury), 1909.
Charlotte S. Burne.
Surrey.
The following was obtained from L B , a girl of 25,
a native of Hascombe :
" Mrs. P at Hascombe, who died about seven years ago,
was a witch. She use to go in and see her neighbour Mrs.
S , and they use not to get on very well together ; and when
she come away, Mrs. S use to see her out to the gate, and,
if the old woman wasn't pleased with anything, she use to make
^ Cf. ante, p. 348.
