Picturesque English Cottages and Their Doorway Gardens 
is usually open, and hospitably invites an en¬ 
trance. Perhaps the habit arose of keeping 
the door open from the belief in the good 
fairies who were by no means to be kept out 
of the house. They would churn the butter 
and do many other pleasant little “odd jobs.” 
Certainly, it was not an uncommon practice 
to leave a hole in the wall lor the “piskies” 
or pixies to come in and out as they pleased. 
Before you enter a house you must remem¬ 
ber that the threshold is a very sacred spot. 
with the Chinese we keep out witches and 
such beldames by hanging horseshoes, or 
burying bottles, nails or pins. When a bride 
comes to her new home, she must be lifted 
over the threshold, or ill luck will befall her. 
In England, too, we have had other 
builders besides those of human form, strange 
goblin-builders who played strange pranks 
and mightily disconcerted those w T ho were 
rearing houses and churches with ordinary 
bricks or stones and mortar. At Rochdale 
UFFINGTON 
It is not well to stumble at the threshold, 
as we have it on the authority of Shakes¬ 
peare who knew his folk-lore: 
“ For many men that stumble at the threshold 
Are well foretold that danger lurks within.” 
In olden days it was protected. There 
was a sacrifice made when the threshold- 
stone was laid. Amongst many peoples it 
was customary to sacrifice a sheep, or a hen, 
or a cock, and bury it beneath the stone, in 
order to keep out evil spirits. In common 
in the time of the Conqueror, piles of timber 
and huge stones were gathered in profusion 
by one Gamel, a Saxon thane, to build a 
chapel unto St. Chad nigh to the banks of 
the Roche. The foundations were laid, 
stakes driven in, and several courses of rubble- 
stone laid ready to receive the grouting or 
cement. In one night, the whole mass was 
conveyed, without the loss of a single stone, 
to the summit of a steep hill on the opposite 
hank. With much labor, the stones were 
216 
