Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/198

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190
NOTES AND QUERIES.

Here is a variant of "countings out":—

"Yen tane, tether me, leather me, dick.
Ceaser, lazy cat, or a horn, or a tick.
Yen a tick, tane a tick, tether tick, mether tick, bub.
Yen a bub, tane a bub, tether bub, mether bub, jiggett."

This was stated to be the way in which a Highlander counted a score of sheep.

On page 58 the story of working out tailors is told. Fifty years ago the perambulating tailor was in great request, and to see three or four of them marching out of Stanhope to some distant farmhouse was of common occurrence; their work might extend over several days, during which time they lived with the family. The following lines addressed to an applicant tells its own story:—

"The twenty-ninth of last September,
Your letter came to hand as I remember,
Desiring that I'd lend my aid,
To make and mend as is my trade,
All which I'll do without a failure
Or else I am not Page the tailor.
Anne Emmerson you will kindly tell,
Shall have her coat made soon and well;
And compliments to Master Beadle,
Whom I will serve with my best needle."

Fixing the day on which his working party would begin their work, he finished thus:—

And when that Monday does come in,
We'll cut and stitch through thick and thin.
Till all the jobs are duly mended.
Then to return I must engage.

I am your servant,
Corbet Page."

The newest fashions in dress and factory-made clothing have I expect extinguished the itinerating tailor. J. G. Fenwick.

Moorlands, Newcastle-on-Tyne.

Superstition in Ireland.—Ellen Cushion and Anastatia Rourke were arrested at Clonmel on Saturday charged with cruelly illtreating a child three years old, named Philip Dillon. The prisoners were taken before the Mayor, when evidence was given showing that the neighbours fancied that the boy, who had not the use of his limbs, was a changeling left by the fairies in exchange for the original child.