io6 Correspondence,
hot poker \ and she impHes that the virtue of this act resides iri the iron.
I have known midvvives in Lancashire for a Uke purpose heat water by casting into it red-hot cinders. It is an accepted fact that amongst those people whose culinary vessels could not withstand the action of fire, the water in them was heated by " pot-boilers," i.e. by putting into them hot stones. Perhaps it is a survival of this custom rather than the magical properties of iron that supplies an explanation of these practices.
Miss Peacock also seems to suggest that a fully conscious person could only with extreme difficulty be killed by knocking nails into his skull, though such a process might certainly be fatal were the victim asleep when the deed was done. It may be true that Sisera was " fast asleep and weary," and that one nail was enough ; but that was in the age of miracle. Cannot the Lincolnshire case and others be re-examined ; and may they not be aUied, in motive, to the transfixion of a suicide's body with a stake ?
I remember attending in her last illness a woman whose son, of low mental type, was the only person to wait upon her, and he was altogether neglecting his duty. One day I found matters much improved, and inquired the reason.
" Oh," she said, " he is all right now. I told him if he did not do better 1 ivould come back."
Now, we can imagine such a man's going to his dead mother with a hammer and some nails, and saying, " I'll take very good care she doesn^t come back."
H. CoLLEY March.
The Little Red Hen.
(Vol. X., pp. ii6, 361.)
K version attributed to " an English lady " appears in the Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. xii., p. 291.
E. S. H.
