250
NOTES AND QUERIES. &* s. i. MA*. 26, =98.
of a dweller in the northern hemisphere, and
the origin of the belief is not difficult to
surmise. FRANK REDE FOWKE.
24, Victoria Grove, Chelsea.
The Manx name for the first person met with on New Year's Day is qualtagh) and it is of the utmost importance that the qualtagh should have dark hair the darker the better. Only yesterday a man in my parish told me that, on account of his black hair, he was in great demand on these occasions, and he said that he visited quite a dozen families this last New Year's Day as soon as he could after the clock had struck midnight, and there were quite a dozen more who wished to see him as their qualtagh, but he was too tired to go. Prof. Rhys puts forth the theory that the superstition goes very far back, to the time when the dark-haired aboriginal race looked on the Aryans of fair complexion as their natural enemies, therefore as unlucky. It would take too much space to discuss the question in ' N. & Q.,' and it is scarcely necessary, as it has been very fully treated in Folk-lore (1892), vol. iii. : 'Manx Folk-lore and Superstitions,' by Prof. Rhys, pp. 74-91, and ' " First-foot" in the British Isles,' pp. 253- 264 of the same volume.
EENEST B. SAVAGE, F.S.A.
St. Thomas's, Douglas.
"The dark man" superstition is noted among the many omens chronicled by Horace Wellby (John Timbs) in his work ' Predictions Realized in Modern Times ' (1862). Writing of the new year, he says :
' ' There is an omen called ' Letting the new year in,' that if the kindly office is performed by some one with dark hair, good fortune will smile on the household; while it augurs ill if a light-haired person is the first to enter the house in the new year."
C. P. HALE.
"Bringing in the New Year" has been noticed in each of the Series of 'N. & Q.' From the various communications it certainly appears the general idea is that anything fair or feminine portends evil.
The Illustrated London Neivs of 2 May, 1857, says that in Lancashire and the north of England it is extremely unlucky if a fair- complexioned person first crosses your thres- holof on the morning of New Year's Day. There is, however, an exception to every rule, for a correspondent in ' N. & Q.' asserts that in the North Riding of Yorkshire a fair-haired person brings good luck. Another states that in Yorkshire the good or bad luck for the ensuing year depends only on the first-comer being a man or a woman. This belief also exists at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, where
so recently as 1890 a young girl, in her
evidence before the magistrates in a case of
assault, stated that she had attended the
midnight services, and returned home a few
minutes past twelve o'clock. Her mother,
believing it to be unlucky to admit a female
on New Year's Day before a man, told her
daughter that neither her father nor her
brother had returned home, and on six
occasions refused her admission, and kept
the door locked.
EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.
EPITAPH (8 th S. xii. 487). The third and
fourth lines of this epitaph are a mixture of
English and Welsh. The fourth line is not,
I think, rightly given. I would suggest the
following as the interpretation : " Under
this stone lies William and Joan y wraig
(the wife or woman) of Wiltshire. A'i gwr hi
(and her husband) of Fon." Fon is Anglesey.
JEANNIE S. POPHAM.
Plas Maenan, Llanrwst, North Wales.
I regret I cannot help MR. FERET much. " Wraig " is clearly the Welsh for wife, and "F6n" is just as certainly the Welsh for Anglesey. Thus it is quite plain that Joan the wife was a Welshwoman, a native of Anglesey. If the " ...i... " is a word of itself, and is Welsh, it is the preposition to.
D. M. R.
Part of the tombstone inscription appears
to be in Welsh. " Y wraig o Fon" would
mean "The wife of Anglesey."
JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS.
Town Hall, Cardiff.
I think that the epitaph quoted by MR. FERET is a request to the passers-by to " remember " the dead persons. To " remember " in this connexion means to pray for the souls of the departed. Scott, in 'Rob Roy,' de- scribing Glasgow Cathedral, says :
"In those waste regions of oblivion, dusky banners and tattered escutcheons indicated the graves of those who were once, doubtless, ' Princes m Israel.' Inscriptions, which could only be read by the painful antiquary, in language as obsolete as the act of devotional charity which they implored, invited the passengers to pray for the souls of those whose bodies rested beneath."
THOS. WHITE.
Liverpool.
OLNEY (8 th S. xi. 5, 135, 217, 292, 415). Under the heading 'How to pronounce "Olney,'" the following signed article, by Mr. Wright, of Cowper School, in that town, appeared in the issue (No. 34) for 22 January of the Olney Advertiser :
