Durham County.
When I was a child, (I was born in 1863), in Durham, it was a common custom with us to “cut the rainbow,” when one appeared, by placing two bents or straws crosswise on a stone and beating them with another stone until they were cut. A charm used to be muttered. This I never learnt, as I never would perform the rite. It was confined mostly to girls.[1]
We were always told that to kill a spider was to make rain. I tried it often.
When anyone moved into a new house, or changed houses, a child was sent into every room with a bag of salt, which he was told to sprinkle on the hearths and in every corner. I have myself been told off for the job.
Small birds’ eggs were laid in a row. A blindfolded boy took a stick at several paces distant, and then marched forward and struck at the eggs. He who broke most was “lucky.”
Kent.
The following story about the mole was told me by a superior working-class woman at a hamlet near Crockham Hill:
“One of my husband’s mates told my elder children when they were little that moles were once very haughty people who thought the earth not good enough to walk upon, so God was angry with them, and changed them all into moles and made them have to go under the earth, and that is why their feet are just like our hands.”
The husband works on a farm close by, and, as the “elder children” are nearly all married now, the “mate” must have told his legend about fifteen to twenty years ago.[2]
Lincolnshire.
Yesterday (March 10, 1909) I was told that a person who has hair between the eyebrows, so that they are joined into one, will be hanged, or, as a few people say, drowned. My informant knew a woman who pulled out such hairs on a young child, because she did not want him to be drowned.
