3. Calendar customs, etc. The mother of the last informant says that in her mother's childhood, i.e. some sixty years ago, old people held that no woman should be allowed to enter a house on Christmas Day.
To fail to get something (sixpence, thimble, etc.) out of the Christmas pudding is a sign of early death (Aberystwyth, Dec. 1919; the informant was a Welsh maid, but she had also seen service in England).
4. Boots. Left on the stairs, boots or shoes foretell illness, generally of their owner (same informant as the last belief). On a table, they signify a quarrel (Essex).
5. Folk-medicine. To cure whooping-cough, make a black dog swallow one of its own hairs (Hornsea, E. Yorks, about 1885). A roast mouse was considered specific in Essex; but this belief, though still remembered, appears to be no longer acted upon.
6. Fertility-charm. The first house a newly-delivered woman enters will shortly have a child (Oxford, 1915; the informant was a maternity nurse some sixty years old).
7. Leprechaun. If pursued, a leprechaun will run down a hole; if the pursuer thrusts his hand after it, the hand will be filled with cow-dung (informant, an Irish sergeant in a Canadian regiment; I do not know what part of Ireland he came from).
8. Wedding custom. Lifting the bride over the threshold is still practised in Yorkshire, at least in some parts.
9. Action-song. While convalescing at Walmer, Kent, in the summer of 1916, I heard a child recite the following in a sort of half-chant. At each pause in the verse, indicated by a dash, she threw a ball up to the sloping roof of a shelter and caught it again.
"Mademoiselle—went to the well—
Don't forget—soap and towel—
Wash your hands—wipe them dry—
Say your prayers—look in the sky."
A variant of the last half-line was "jump up high."
University College, Aberystwyth.
