were carefully to observe who should first enter that door on the following morning, exclusive of the members of the household, and the sex of the child would be that of the first-comer. This rather vexed some of the servants, who wished for a boy, as two or three women came regularly each morning to the house, and a man was scarcely ever seen there; but to their great delight the first-comer on this occasion proved to be a man, and in a few weeks the old woman's reputation was established throughout the neighbourhood by the birth of a boy."
Blade-bone divination however, as Mr. Thoms has shown, is practised by other than "Dutch-made" folk. A dark spot in that bone was formerly regarded by Irish seers as a prognostic of a funeral from the house in which they saw it.[1] To this day brigands in Macedonia have implicit faith in the prophetic power of the shoulder-blade of the sheep or goat on which they have dined. They carefully examine it, and says one who has knowledge of their method with a captive,[2] "should there be a small hole, it represents the grave of the prisoner and signifies that the ransom will not be paid; if there appear small lines running in the direction of the leg bone, it denotes that everything will go satisfactorily and the money be paid; but should the lines run at right angles, then pursuit and perhaps capture will be the result of their enterprise." In 1867 I heard of osteomancy, though not by means of the blade-bone, being resorted to in Lincolnshire. There was a person near Sleaford who could give in autumn information concerning the weather of the following spring, from observation of the breast-bones of geese, which if light prognosticated a genial season, and if dark the contrary. "Bar Point" told the readers of Notes and Queries,[3] that in the country about Philadelphia the same breast-bones are thought to indicate the temperature of the coming winter. Dark-coloured marks portend cold. "Sometimes the breast-bone is divided into thirteen equal parts by perpendicular lines to point out the weather for each week."
(To be continued.)
- ↑ Irish Folk-Lore, by "Lageniensis," p. 248.
- ↑ "Brigandage in Macedonia," Cornhill Magazine, September, 1881, p. 358; see also Henderson's Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties, p. 175 (F.L.S.)
- ↑ 4th S. vol. i. p. 234.
