Correspondence. 249
with a vengeance." It's marvellous, I am told, what a bit of bluster will do to make a mango tree or a date palm mend its ways.""
I venture to suggest that we may perhaps find in such customs as these an explanation of the Gospel narrative of the Barren Fig Tree, which has sorely puzzled the commentators.^ In other passages the laying of the axe to the root of the tree and the sub- sequent exhortation, as well as the appeal of the gardener, may imply a like custom of threatening or coercing a barren tree so that it may bear fruit. Thus it seems at least possible that the incident of the Barren Fig Tree may have arisen from a mis- apprehension of a custom of this class. This theory would be considerably strengthened if I could produce a parallel to these customs from Palestine or the neighbouring countries. But this I have as yet failed to discover. Possibly it may be found in the Talmud or in early Christian literature, and I should be glad if any reader could supply it.
\V. Crooke.
Feast Days and Saints' Days.
(Vol. xxiii., p. 453.)
In the December number of Folk-Lore Miss J. B. Partridge writes of the annual Feast at Haresfield being held on the third Sunday in September, " though the church dedication is to St. Peter."
It is worth placing on record that on the other side of England in the fourteenth century, at Lynn, Norfolk, the following statute of the " gild of S. Peter, Lenne," was included in the return of 1389:
" And yis gyld schal have foure morne-spechis in ye yer. Ye frist schal bene after ye drynkyng : ye secund schal ben ye sonday nest be-fore mielmes day : ye thyrd schal be ye sonday J Census Report, Baluchistan (191 1 ), p. 68.
^ St. Matthew, cap. xxi. , v. 17-9 ; St. Mark, cap. xi., v. 12-14 ; Emyclopcedia Biblica, vol. i., p. 564, vol. ii., pp. 152 et seq.; J. Hastings, Dictionary of the Bible, vol. ii., p. 6.
^ St. Matthew, cap. iii., v. 10, cap. vii., v. 19; St. Luke, cap. xiii., v. 6-9.
R
