he said, "there was a queer thing happened. My daughter married Jack Graham of North Sunderland. I had been fishing that season with an Eyemouth boat. I hadn't been into Seahouses for six weeks. But I had heard that Jack had broken his leg and been kept a-bed. Well, one day, as we were going to Shields, I passed a Sunderland boat. I leant over and shouted as we passed her,—"Did ye hear how Jack Graharn was?" And no sooner had I said the words than there was a crash, and the mast went over the side! "By God! will ye not believe us now?" said the skipper." The prejudice is well known, and a local antiquarian suggested to me that Graham might be connected with the Grim Dykes, i.e. with the Devil. But the fishermen are not afraid to talk of the Devil, or swear by him.
Nottinghamshire.
Elder wood is not burnt. "It is wicked wood, and won't burn," they say. I told our gardener at Basford to burn an old tree which had been blown down, but he refused, giving as his reason that it was "wicked wood." He did not know why elder wood was "wicked."[2]
Game feathers were always thrown away in our house, and when I wanted them to be kept our cook said they were of no use, and, indeed, did a great deal of harm if used. "You would not be able to die if there were game feathers in your pillow," she said.[3]
Oxfordshire.
If a kettle takes long to boil it has a stone in it.
It is good luck to drop a letter before you post it.
- ↑ 2
- ↑ Cf. vol. xx., p. 343 (Worcestershire); vol. vii., p. 380 (Staffordshire); N. and Q., 1st S., vol. vii., p. 177 (no locality named); County Folk-Lore, vol. i. (Gloucester), p. 54.
- ↑ Cf. Henderson, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties etc., p. 60; County Folk-Lore, vol. i. (Suffolk), p. 136; W. Gregor, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the N.-E. of Scotland, p. 206; Folk-Lore Record, vol. i., p. 59 (West Sussex); N. and Q., 1st S., vol. v., pp. 341, 412 (Sussex and Surrey); Brand, Popular Antiquities, vol. ii. (1854), p. 230 (Cumberland, Derbyshire, Wales, Sligo, Mayo).
