thrown away on this day turns to blood, and also that such suds are thrown in the Saviour's face. Others simply say it is "unlucky" to throw away suds on Good Friday.
Mr. F. J. Snell, in his Book of Exmoor, speaks of a West Country vicar who had been just long enough in his parish to form a favourable impression of the people and to hope that they had formed a favourable impression of him, when the following incident occurred, by which he was greatly mystified and disconcerted. Hitherto his ministrations had been well attended, but on entering his church on the first Good Friday he found almost all the pews empty, and nobody to listen to his discourse save a few old women, most of them deaf, or, at least, hard of hearing. He naturally concluded that he had unwittingly offended his flock, and that this was a pre-arranged demonstration. After the service he approached one of the old women, and asked her, rather nervously, what had caused the parishioners to absent themselves. The old lady first stared in astonishment, and then with a smile of pity at the parson's ignorance, informed him that, according to the usual custom, the villagers were planting their beans, that they (the beans) might appear above ground on the morning of Easter-day.
A writer on Somerset superstition in Cassell's Family Magazine for November, 1890, says: "The prophecies of Mother Shipton are nowhere more widely believed in than in the county of Somerset. Not long ago a report was in circulation that a great catastrophe had been predicted by this old sage. She had prophesied that Ham Hill, one of the great stone quarries of Somerset, would be swallowed up on Good Friday. This catastrophe was to be the consequence of a tremendous earthquake, which would be felt all over the county. Some of the inhabitants left the neighbourhood to escape the impending evil; others removed their crockery and breakable possessions to prevent their being thrown to the ground; others, again, ceased cultivating their gardens. Great alarm was felt, and Good Friday was looked forward to with universal anxiety. And yet when the day came and went without any disaster at all, even that did little to dispel the faith in Mother Shipton;
