Mat 17. 1851.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



387 



investigation of this last and greatest difficulty to 

 my next comuiunication. A. E. B. 



Leeds, April 29. 



DUTCH FOLK-LORB. 



1. A baby laughing in its dreams is conversing 

 with the angels. 



2. Rocking the cradle when the babe is not in 

 it, is considered injurious to the infant, and a 

 prognostic of its speedy death. 



3. A strange dog following you is a sign of good 

 luck. 



4. A stork settling on a house is a harbinger of 

 happiness. To kill such a bird would be sacrilege. 



5. If you see a shooting stai', the wish you form 

 before its disappearance will be fulfilled. 



6. A person born with a caul is considered 

 fortunate. 



7. Four-leaved clover brings luck to the person 

 wlio finds it iniawares. 



8. An overturned salt-cellar is a ship wrecked. 

 If a person take salt and spill it on the table, it 

 betokens a strife between hiui and the person next 

 to whom it fell. To avert the omen, he must lift 

 up the shed grains with a knife, and throw them 

 behind his back. 



9. After eating eggs in Holland, you must break 

 the shells, or tiie witches would sail over in them 

 to England. The English don't know under what 

 obligations they are to the Dutch for this custom. 

 Please to tell them. 



10. If you make a present of a knife or scissors, 

 the person receiving must pay something for it ; 

 otherwise the friendship between you would be 

 cut off. 



11. A tingling ear denotes there is somebody 

 speaking of you behind your back. If you hear 

 the noise in the right one, he praises you; if on 

 the left side, he is calling you a scoundrel, or some- 

 thing like that. But, never mind! for if, in the 

 latter case, you bite your little finger, the evil 

 speaker's tongue will be in the same predicament. 

 By all means, don't spare your little finger ! 



12. If at a dinner, a person yet unmarried be 

 placed inadvertently between a married coujile, 

 be sure he or she will get a partner within the 

 year. It's a pity it must be inadvertently. 



13. If a person when rising throw down his 

 chair, he is considered guilty of untruth. 



14. A potato begged or stolen is a preservative 

 against rheumatism. Chestnuts have the same 

 efficacy. 



15. The Nymphrca, or water-liiy, whose broad 

 leave.% and clear wiiite or yellow cups, flout upon 

 the water, was esteemed by (he old Frisians to 

 have a magical power. "I remember, when a 

 boy," says Dr. Ilalbertsnia, "that we were ex- 

 tremely careful in plucking and handling them ; 



for if any one fell with siich a flower in his pos- 

 session, he became immediately subject to fits." 



16. One of my friends cut himself. A man- 

 servant being present secured the knife hastily, 

 anointed it with oil, and putting it into the drawer, 

 besought the patient not to touch it for some days. 

 AVhether the cure was efftcted by this sympathetic 

 means, I can't affirm ; but cured it was : so, don't 

 be alarmed. 



17. If you feel on a sudden a sliivering sensa- 

 tion in your back, there is somebody walking over 

 your future grave. 



18. A. person speaking by himself will die a 

 violent death. 



19. Don't go under a ladder, for if you do you 

 will be hanged. * a ? 



Amsterdam. 



Minor ^atcjJ. 



Verses in Pope — " Bug " oi- " Bee." — Pope, in 

 the Dunciad, speaking of the purloining propensi- 

 ties of Bays, has the lines : 



" Next o'er liis books his eyes began to roll, 

 In pleasing memory of all he stole; 

 How here he sipji'd, how there ho plunder'd snug, 

 And suck'd all o'er, like an industrious bug." 



In reading these lines, some time ago, I was 

 forcibly struck with the incongruity of the terms 

 " sipp'd" and "industrious" as applied to 

 "bug;" and it occurred to me that Pope may 

 have originally written the passage with the 

 words " free " and " bee," as the rhymes of the 

 two last lines. My reasons for this conjecture 

 ai'e these: 1st. Because Pope is known to have 

 been very fastidious on the score of coarse or vulgar 

 expressions ; and his better judgment would have 

 recoiled from the use of so offensive a word as 

 " bug." 2ndly. Because, as already stated, the 

 terras " sipp'd" and "industrious" are inapplicable 

 to a bug. Of the bug it may be said, that it 

 " sucks " an<l " plunders ; " but it cannot, with 

 any propriety, be predicated of it, as of the bee, 

 that it "sips" and is "industrious." My im- 

 pression is, that when Pope found he was doing 

 too much honour to Tibbald by comparing him to 

 a bee, he substituted the word " bug " and its 

 corresponding rhyme, without reflecting that some 

 of the epithet-!, already applied to the one, are 

 wholly inapplicable to the other. 



Henet II. Breen. 



St. Lucia, March, 18J1. 



Tlnh-a-duh. — This word is put forward as an in- 

 stance of how new words ai'c still formed with a 

 view to similarity of soiuid with the sound of what 

 they are intended to express, by Di'. Francis 

 Iviebcr, in a " Paper on the Vocal Sounds of 

 Laura Bridgcman compared with the Elements of 

 Phonetic Language," and its authoi'ship is assigned 



