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use in the dwelling-house, stable, or other outbuildings attached ; 

 especially as made capable of suspension either by twisting into 

 a loose knot, or by the insertion of a ring into one end — also as 

 to the existence in any old fashioned house of a * witch-post ' 

 (made of the rowan-tree wood, as all these portable or suspensory 

 matters were. I am sending several matters of the kind (as 

 well as churchyard pottery, etc.), by request, to Dr, Tylor for 

 preservation, as well as illustrative purposes, in the new Oxford 

 Museum, and I should be glad to make my selection as complete 

 as I can. Have you come across anything pertinent to my 

 enquiry — also of the use of the wood of the elder (as well as 

 that of the rowan-tree) in a witch connection, whether as a 

 spell or otherwise prophylactic T 



Folk-lore specially interested him latterly, and he made it 

 to some extent available in the production of his books of Fairy 

 Tales. Referring to the former of these he says, in the cour.«e 

 of a letter dated the 2nd of March, 1892, "Scholars are digging 

 deeper than of yore into the fossiliferous strata of folk-lore, 

 and some day we may hope to know more about the nature and 

 the epoch of the conception we nickname a 'giant.'" Again 

 he writes, on the 22nd of the same month, "The 'Old Ram' 

 recitation from Richmond proves to be, as I was sure it would 

 be, one of the most interesting bits of old folk-lore I have come 

 across. It appears now the skin of the ram is not stuffed, as I 

 was told at first, but tenanted by a boy." 



The temptation to quote from Dr. Atkinson's letters has been 

 so strong that I fear I have gone beyond all fair limits. But I 

 think that many of the extracts which I have given will be 

 interesting and instructive to those intelligent persons who take 

 part in the excursions of the Cleveland Field Club, and I am 

 not without hope that some of them may offer suggestions for 

 further investigation. And much as I have quoted, I might have 

 quoted much more largely without exhausting the interesting 

 passages occurring in letters with which he favoured me. Thus 

 on March 9th, 1892, he writes, "I think it is ascertained that 

 over and above the Whitby Thingwala there were two Thinghows 

 in Cleveland, and that one of them is (most likely) localised. 

 Possibly the other may be." It may be beyond the powers of 

 the members of the Cleveland Field Club to localise this Cleve- 

 land Thinghow. But in another letter he suggests that all 

 obtainable field-names in the parish of Kirkby-in-Cleveland 

 should be collected, and specially notes the interest that might 

 result from a comparison of these with the names occurring in 

 the Hexham " Black Book." The systematic collection of the 

 field-names in the various parishes ought not to be beyond the 

 powers of members of the Field Club. 



