uncertain. This custom is said to have been introduced into the country by the Scotch settlers. G. H. Kinahan.
Proverbial Rhymes from the North of Fife:—
"A reeky house,
An' a girnin man,
Are sure to mak'
A puir thing wan."
The next was uttered, in the end of the last century, by a co-heiress when urged to sell her patrimonial property:—
"Bawbees are round,
And rin away.
A grip o' the grand
Is gude to hae."
The following, which was told me by one still alive, embodies a proverb which I never heard before. "I met ———. He came up smiling. As he usually passes without recognition I saw that 'he had an axe to grind.' An operation that requires two. He had a favour to ask." Alex. Laing.
Newburgh-on-Tay.
Changelings in Ireland.—I think the following extract from the Irish Fireside for January 7, 1884 (p. 464), is worth preserving in the Folk-Lore Journal:—"On page 374, column 3, paragraph 8, of the Fireside for December 10, it is stated that the poor, dreadful banshee, to the philosophical mind, is a fraud. Are not the fairies some of the fallen angels, who, for consenting to take part with the rebel archangel, were cast out of heaven; but not sent to hell as the more guilty of the rebel hosts were, but were permitted to alight and remain on earth? Is it not they that sometimes seized and carried off, and detained for years, persons, sometimes children, sometimes adults? I will narrate a case in point—a case which occurred about fifteen years ago in the parish of ———. A boy was taken away by the invisible beings, and one of themselves left instead. The late P. P. of ——— (Father ———) came forward, and by the exercise of that power which Christ left to his apostles and their successors when He said, 'Those who believe in Me, those signs follow in My name. They shall speak with new tongues, they shall cast out devils, they shall lay hands upon the sick, and they shall be whole;' not-
