554 Some Superstitions appertaining 



rated in cases of greater importance. In Cornwall, I have 

 heard a proverbial saying, of a nearly opposite tendency to 

 the superstition just mentioned: — ''If rain fall upon the 

 clothes which women hang out to dry after a wash, it is a sign 

 that their sweethearts do not love them." Let me not be 

 suspected of treason or disloyalty for narrating another absurd 

 notion : — 



" If there are no Keys (?'. e. Seed-vessels) upon the Ash Trees, 

 it is a Sign that, within a Twelvemonth, there will be no King" 

 — William the Fourth and his royal successors need be under 

 no alarm on this account. The proverb supposes two events 

 which never take place : for as, according to the genius of 

 our constitution, the king never dies ; so, no season, I believe, 

 ever occurs in which the ash trees are wholly destitute of keys. 

 The vulgar saying, that 



" When Gorse {\Tlex europcea) is out of Blossom, Kissing is 

 out of Season" I should suppose, is only a proverbial mode of 

 expressing the length of time which gorse continues in bloom. 



\_Plants of the Fennel, if we would have them grow in a Gar- 

 den, must he stolen.'] — Some of our horticultural friends may, 

 perhaps, be surprised to be told, that, " if they want fennel to 

 grow in their gardens, they must steal it; for, if it be either 

 given or bought, it will not grow." Of a like character is the 

 old distich relating to marum {Tehcrium Marum), for which 

 cats are known to have so strong a partiality [they have, too, 

 for Valeriana officinalis, and for ^epeta Cataria ; to which 

 last I have known the lines applied, perhaps by mistake] : — 



" If you set it, the cats will eat it ; 

 But if you sow it, the cats wo'n't know it." 



Formerly, it used to be considered that the Efficacy of many 

 Recipes was the more powerful and certain, where somethirig of 

 Mystery was employed in the Manner of preparing them. — An 

 old man in this village (a former parish clerk) possessed a 

 really valuable (I believe, infallible) recipe for the cure of that 

 loathsome disease the itch ; one ingredient of which was the 

 root of the common dock, I well remember to have heard, 

 as a boy, that, the better to effect a cure, it was thought (if 

 not indispensable, at least desirable) that the dock roots 

 should be gathered in the night; or, at all events, that the 

 person gathering them should not be observed while so 

 employed. The reader will at once call to mind one of the 

 ingredients of the witches' caldron : — 



" Root of hemlock, digg'd i' the dark." Macbeth. 



The present possessor of the receipt, however, I find, on 

 enquiry, knows nothing of any necessity or virtue attached to 



