This surname is said to signify Moorish, and curiously enough our Morris neighbours—one family of them at least—were a wild, dark folk with gipsy instincts.
Irish parallel to Branwen—Mr. Whitley Stokes has kindly sent me the following parallel to an incident in the Mabinogi of Branwen. (v. Folk- Lore Record, vol. v. p. 5), extracted from a MS. in the Bodleian (Rawlinson, B 502, f. 72), which is as follows: The king of Leinster, Labraid, determines to avenge himself on Cobtbach, so he and his Leinstermen build at Dina Kig a house of twice-melted iron, the building whereof takes full a year, father concealing from son, son from mother, mother from daughter, husband from wife, and wife from husband, the purpose of the erection. Then Cobtbach and thirty other kings are invited to a banquet in the house. Cobtbach refuses to enter it unless Labraid's mother or Labraid's fool (druth) precedes him. The mother, though foreknowing her fate, goes into it for her [Jon's honour, the fool "for the blessing of the Leinstermen and for freedom to his children for ever." Cobtbach and the rest enter the house. "Fire for you," says Labraid, "and ale and food." The door is then chained by nine men, and thrice fifty smith's bellows are blown round the house—four warriors to each bellows—till the host within was hot (té). "Thy mother is there, Labraid," say the warriors.[1] "Not so, my son," saith she, "exact they atonement (erech) through me, for I shall die likewise." Thus Cobthach is destroyed with thirty overkings and seven hundred of the host on Christmas Eve.
Witchcraft in Churning.—In Folk-Lore Record, iii. 1 34, I quoted a letter (dated Aug. 2, 1732) in which it was stated that some people in Suffolk, "not being able to make the butter come, threw a hot iron into the churn, under the notion of witchcraft in the case, upon which a poore labourer cried out 'They have killed me, they have killed me,' and died upon the spot." This story, which I have here somewhat condensed, corresponds in its details with one given by Patrick Kennedy in his Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts, p. 152. Here, when the churn was bewitched, the people put "the sock and coulter of the plough" into the fire, and proceeded to churn. "Just as the plough-irons were becoming red-hot," the witch appeared, and
- ↑ Something like "save her" is omitted here.
