ON THE ETHNOGRAPHICAL SURVEY OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. 649 
setting them down make a courtesie to each.’ Drayton, in the ‘ Nymphidia,’ 
records a piece of genuine traditional folklore in the following lines :— 
‘Hence shadows, seeming idle shapes 
Of little frisking Elves and Apes, 
To earth do make their wanton scapes, 
As hope of pastime hastes them ; 
Which maids think on the hearth they see 
When fires well near consumed be, 
These dancing hayes by two and three, 
Just as their fancy casts them.’ 
The same idea is given by Reginald Scott. ‘Indeed, your grandam’s 
maids were wont to set a bowl of milk before him (Incubus) and his 
cousin Robin Goodfellow, for grinding of malt or mustard, and sweeping 
the house at midnight.’! Not above forty or fifty years ago, says Brand, 
in his ‘ Description of Orkney, Zetland, c.,’ almost every family had a 
‘ Brownie, or evil spirit, so called, who served them, to whom they gave a 
sacrifice for its service ; as when they churned their milk they took a part 
thereof, and sprinkled every corner of the house with it for Brownie’s 
use ; likewise when they brewed they had a stone, which they called 
Brownie’s stone, wherein there was a little hole into which they poured 
some wort for a sacrifice to Brownie.’? We get a glimpse of the same 
living belief in the hearth-spirit in Ireland. Among the Irish the expres- 
sion ‘the breaking of cinders’ means to charge and confirm guilt on a 
man at his own hearth, so that his fire, which represents his honour, is 
broken up into cinders. The trampling of a man’s cinders was one of the 
greatest insults which could be offered to him, as it conveyed the idea of 
guilt, and not only on the individual himself, but also on his family and 
household.* 
At Fermanagh, a peculiar manner of cursing, rapidly dying out, is 
usually fulminated by tenants who suppose themselves to be in danger of 
wrongful eviction. The ‘plaintiff’ collects from the surrounding fields as 
many small boulders as will fill the principal hearth of the holding he is 
being compelled to surrender. These he piles in the manner of turf sods 
arranged for firing, and then, kneeling down, prays that until that heap burns 
may every kind of bad luck and misfortune attend the landlord and his 
family to untold generations. Rising, he takes the stones in armfuls and 
hurls them here and there in loch, pool, boghole or stream, so that by no 
possibility could the collection be recovered.* 
From Cornwall I have obtained a note of a custom which is, to all 
intents and purposes, a hearth sacrifice. The practice of resorting to the 
hearth, and touching the cravel (the mantle-stone across the head of an 
open chimney) with the forehead, and casting into the fire a handful of 
dry grass, or anything picked up that will burn, is regarded as the most 
effectual means of averting any impending evils of a mysterious nature.° 
These are the general superstitions which indicate a peculiar set of 
beliefs attaching to the domestic hearth in places where it is no longer 
Jighted from the village-fire once a year. We now turn to the more 
1 Reginald Scott's Demonology, p. 980. See Keightley’s Fairy Mythology, ii. p. 108. 
2 Keightley’s Fairy Mythology, ii. pp. 273, 274. 
3 Sullivan’s Introduction to O’Curry’s Lectures, i. p. 278. 
_ 4 Journ. Roy. Hist. and Arch. Assoc. Ireland, 4th series, iii. p. 460. [Cf. Dr. 
Gregor’s No. 8.] 
5 Bottrell’s Stories and Folklore of West Cornwall, 3rd series, p. 17. For another 
curious chimney custom, see Folklore Record, v. p. 160. : 
