NOTES ON ESSEX DIALECT AND FOLK-LORE. 79 



Round our coast sea-gulls are considered ominous. The following rhx-me I 

 beard at Walton : 



" Sea gull, sea gull, sit on the sand, 

 It's never good weather when you're on land. " 



Insects. — During harvest, reapers take very great care not to 

 injure a large kind of " daddy-long-legs," known to them as " harvest 

 men," under the idea that it is unlucky to kill one. 



Crickets about a house are considered lucky, but it is believed 

 (especially in the Tendring Hundred) that they eat holes in the 

 stockings of those that kill them. The " Death's-head Moth " is ever 

 looked upon with suspicion and dread. A capture of a very fine 

 specimen was made by Mr. A. J. Furbank at Maldon, on Sept. 15th, 

 1888, on the occasion of the Essex Field Club's excursion down the 

 Blackwater (See Essex Naturalist, vol. ii., p. 188). The calamity 

 which befell the Club was that the barge was becalmed some sixteen 

 miles from Maldon. Had the members been believers in super- 

 stition the reason would not have been difficult to discover. 



There are various beliefs concerning bees. At Hyde Green, 

 [ngatestone, I inquired of some cottagers how the bees were, they 

 5aid, " They have all gone away since the death of poor Dick, as we 

 "orgot to knock at the hives to tell them he was gone dead." 



Matters referring to the household come in for a large share of 

 beliefs. 



A popular notion in Essex is that a mild winter is less healthy 

 ;han a cold one : — 



"A green Christmas makes a fat churchyard," 



but the returns of the Registrar-General prove the contrary ; the 

 mortality of the winter months being always in proportion to the 

 ntensity of the cold. 



Candles are not without their omens. A collection of tallow 

 'ising up against the wick of a candle is called in Essex a winding 

 sheet, and looked upon as an omen of death in the family. A bright 

 spark on the wick 'tells that a letter is coming to the house, and that 

 ;he person towards whom it comes will be the one to receive it. 



The belief in witchcraft has not entirely lost its hold amongst our 

 'ural population, and against it one of the best preservatives is a horse 

 shoe. 



Bodily ailments present a wide field for folk-lore, and remedies 

 or every conceivable ill that flesh is heir to are to be found in the 

 lotions of our village wise-women. Some of the prescriptions are of 



