2°<» S. IX May 19. '60.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



381 



my touching her forehead with my hand to pre- 

 vent me from dreaming about her. 



She also insisted on some one going in and out 

 of the room constantly until the funeral took 

 place ; and refused to shut the house door when 

 the body was placed in the hearse, under the idea 

 that she would be shutting out her old mistress. 



Ageicola. 



Bohemian Folk Lore. — 



" In Bohemia the peasantry hold it unlucky to walk 

 under a rainbow ; and they say that the rain which de- 

 scends through the bow blights all it falls upon." — 

 White's Northumbei-land, p. 348. 



E. H. A. 



Egyptian Folk-lore. — I select this curious 

 little piece of Egyptian folk-lore, because it is 

 parallel to a similar superstition already recorded 

 in the pages of " N. & Q." I have not a refer- | 

 ■ence to the particular page at which it is printed ; j 

 but there, I think, pieces of money collected from 

 different persons are required to form the charm: — 



" A ridiculous ceremony is practised for the cure of a 

 pimple on the edge of the eye-lid, or what we commonly 

 call a 'sty,' and which is termed in Egypt shahh'-hhateh ; 

 a word which literally signifies ' a female beggar.' The 

 person affected with it goes to any seven women of the 

 name of Fa't'meh, in seven different houses, and begs from 

 each of them a morsel of bread ; these seven morsels con- 

 ttitute the remedy." — Lane's Modern Egyptians, chap- 

 ter xi. 



W. Sparrow Simpson. 



Four-b.aded Clover. — There is a belief 

 among many of " the people " in my neighbour- 

 hood of a particular virtue or power given to the ; 

 possessor of a four-bladed clover. An old woman, 

 deep in the superstitions and mystic lore of the 

 " auld times " which still lingers in the far North, 

 and whom I am in the habit of consulting on 

 these superstitions, informs me that the possession 

 of this leaf gives infallible means to its possessor 

 of discovering when " glamour," or, as she ex- 

 pressed it, "anybody's practising witchcraft on 

 you." She gave the following instance, which I 

 " make a Note of" for the amusement of the rea- 

 ders of " N. & Q. :" — 



A woman returning from the field with a skeet- 

 ful of clover, passing the village green, stands 

 amid the rustic crowd to witness the performance 

 of sleight-of-hand tricks, balancing, &c, by a 

 mountebank who is astonishing the villagers by his 

 wonders. For a few minutes only had she looked 

 on when she began to cry out that the poor player 

 was deceiving the people — playing witchcraft 

 upon them, that the immense poles he was balanc- 

 ing were but straws. The crowd on hearing her 

 immediately set on the performer, who was ob- 

 liged to beat a quick retreat to save his apparatus 

 from destruction. The power given to the woman 

 was universally ascribed to the fact of her having 

 a four-bladed clover amid the heap on her back. 



Aly informant also mentioned that the virtue 



to discern the glamour would fly away if the pos- 

 sessors were conscious or remembered that they 

 had in their possession the four-bladed leaf. 



Will any of your readers say if this belief is 

 prevalent in any other quarter? Some few years 

 ago, about fifty miles from this place, walking 

 through a field I observed a herd-boy diligently 

 searching for something. On making inquiry I 

 found he was employed looking for four-bladed 

 clovers : when discovered he did not pull them, 

 but put a stone as a mark to show where they 

 lay. He gave me the same reply as the old wo- 

 man as to their peculiar virtue. J. N. 



Inverness. 



Norfolk Popular Name for the Tooth- 

 Ache. — It may be worth noting as a piece of 

 Norfolk folk-lore that the tooth-ache is commonly 

 called the " love pain," and therefore the sufferer 

 does not receive much commiseration. 



B. B. Woodward. 



Haverstock Hill. 



Plough Monday. — This day (the first Monday 

 after Epiphany) is still observed in Huntingdon- 

 shire. The mummers are called " Plough-witch- 

 ers," and their ceremony " Plough-witching." I 

 made a Note of this, as I do not meet with the 

 term in Hone, or other authorities within my 

 reach. The nearest approach that I find to the 

 term is in a quotation given by Hone {Year Book, i. 

 57.) from a Briefe Relation, &c, published in 1646, 

 wherein the writer says, that the Monday after 

 Twelfth Day is called " Plowlick Monday by the 

 husbandmen in Norfolk, because on that day they 

 doe first begin to plough." Cuthbert Bede. 



BIOGRAPHY AXD HERO-WORSHIP. 



The following passage from a Review of " Lord 

 Macaulay's Biographies" in The Saturday Review 

 for March 24, is worth making a Note of: — 



" Lord Macaulay is one of the very few biographers of 

 the present age who is absolutely free from the vice — 

 which, in these days, is sometimes justified as a merit — 

 of worshipping the subjects of his Biographies. He writes 

 about eminent men as one who is eminent himself, and 

 who accordingly does not overrate the value of the at- 

 tainments which he commemorates. Biographers often 

 seem to think that the mere fact that they have taken 

 the trouble to write a book about a man is in itself suf- 

 ficient proof that everything that relates to him is im- 

 portant and interesting, and that his character forms a 

 whole deserving both of respect and of sympathy. Lord 

 Macaulay was quite free from this weakness. He was 

 fully aware of the petty side of the characters which he 

 described, and was by no means disposed to refine away 

 serious faults into mere picturesque traits, aiding rather 

 than injuring the general effect of the whole character. 

 In describing Goldsmith, for example, he comments 

 with strong and very "plain-spoken disapproval on the 

 many vices by which his character was defaced, and 

 points out the fact that, after all, his merits lay prin- 

 cipally in his style, and that in every stage of his life he 



