singing, and saw a coffin, surrounded by torches, all carried byBut I know you won't believe me if I tell you!"
His friend eagerly begged him to go on, and laid down his pipe to listen. The dogs were sleeping quietly, but the cat was sitting up apparently listening as attentively as the man, and both young men involuntarily turned their eyes towards him. "Yes," proceeded the absentee, "it is perfectly true. The coffin and the torches were both borne by cats, and upon the coffin were marked a crown and sceptre!" He got no further; the cat started up shrieking, "By Jove! old Peter's dead! and I'm the King o' the Cats!" rushed up the chimney and was seen no more.[1]
NOTES AND QUERIES.
All Hallow Een.— In Dugdale's Diary, p. 104, 1658 (at end of book), is the following:—"On All Hallow Even the master of the family antiently used to carry a bunch of straw, fired, about his corne, saying,—
'Fire and red low
Light on my teen low.'"
Why the Cliffs of England are White.—"Once upon a time a great ship from Norway came down into these seas, and she was so big that she could not get through the Straits, but stuck quite fast. The captain then said to the crew, 'Soap her sides, my men!' and they soaped, and soaped, until she could slip through quite easily; but she left the soap upon the cliffs, and ever since they have been white as snow."—I quote this from Her Majesty's Bem, by Elizabeth Harcourt Mitchell, 1884 (1883). Is it a genuine piece of folk-lore?
New England Superstitions.—Superstitions die slowly, and even after they have lost all real vitality they linger like haunting shades
- ↑ References to parallel stories in Shropshire Folk-Lore, p. 52, note.
