a young girl; and the old women, who could do nothing else, used to tell them stories to keep them out of mischief.
We used sometimes to ask my grandmother, 'Are those stories you tell us really true?' Were there ever such people in the world?' She generally answered, 'I don't know, but may be there are somewhere.' I don't believe there are any of those people living; I dare say, however, they did once live; but my granny believed more in those things than we do now. She was a Christian, she worshipped God and believed in our Saviour, but still she would always respect the Hindoo temples. If she saw a red stone, or an image of Gunputti or any of the other Hindoo gods, she would kneel down and say her prayers there, for she used to say, 'May be there's something in it.'
About all things she would tell us pretty stories—about men, and animals, and trees, and flowers, and stars. There was nothing she did not know some tale about. On the bright cold-weather nights, when you can see more stars than at any other time of the year, we used to like to watch the sky, and she would show us the Hen and Chickens,[1] and the Key,[2] and the Scorpion, and the Snake, and the Three Thieves climbing up to rob the Ranee's silver bedstead, with their mother (that twinkling star far away) watching for her sons' return. Pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, you can see how her heart beats, for she is always frightened, thinking, 'Perhaps they will be caught and hanged!'
Then she would show us the Cross,[3] that reminds us of our Saviour's, and the great pathway of light[4] on which He went up to heaven. It is what you call the Milky Way. My granny usen't to call it that; she used to say that when our Lord returned up to heaven that was the way He went, and that ever since it has shone in memory of His ascension, so beautiful and bright.
She always said a star with a smoky tail (comet) meant war, and she never saw a falling star without saying, 'There's a great man died;' but the fixed stars she used to think were all really good people, burning like bright lamps before God.
As to the moon, my granny used to say she is most useful to debtors who can't pay their debts. Thus—A man who borrows money he knows he cannot pay takes the full moon for witness and surety. Then, if any man so silly as to lend him money, and go and ask him for it, he can say, 'The moon's my surety, go catch
