The Druinaw is a high hill skirting the sea in the east of Berwickshire. It was a bold flight of fancy to personify the rainbow, and endow him with a family of bairns; and the contrast is curious between the young Celt searching by the grey stone for the rainbow’s bairn, with “the tear-drop in his e’e,” and the Saxon boy running to catch the rainbow for the sake of the pot of gold at its foot.
The late Mr. Denham, a very careful collector of old sayings and old usages, says that he well remembers how he and his school-companions used, on the appearance of a rainbow, to place a couple of straws or twigs across on the ground, and, as they said, cross out the rainbow. The West Riding recipe for driving away a rainbow is, “Make a cross of two sticks and lay four pebbles on it, one at each end.”
The crow-charm is perhaps universal in our island:—
Crow, crow, get out of my sight,
Or else I’ll eat your liver and light;
as well as the snail-charm—
Snail, snail, put out your horn,
Or I’ll kill your father and mother the morn;
though the latter more commonly runs in the South—
Snail, snail, come out of your hole,
Or else I’ll beat you as black as a coal.
Our northern version is—
Snail, snail, put out your horn
Tell me what’s the day t’ morn.
To-day’s the morn to shear the corn
Blaw bill buck thorn.
In Devonshire they have it—
Snail, snail, shoot out your horn,
Father and mother are dead;
Brother and sister are in the back-yard,
Begging for barley bread;
and in the South of Italy,
Snail, snail, put out your horn,
Your mother is laughing you to scorn
For she has a little son just born.
