The interleaving, of a little work in my possession, published by Kearsley in 1787, intitled Account of the several Wards, Precincts, and Parishes in the City of London, contains MS. notes of the commencement of the registers of fifty of the London parishes, and of four of Southwark, the annexed list1 of which may be of use to some of the readers of "Notes and Queries." The book formerly belonged to Sir George Nayler, whose signature it bears on a fly-leaf.

2 Note in the Book—There are registers before this in the hands of Mr. Pridden.

Rob. Cole.

FOLK LORE

Divination by Bible and Key seems not merely confined to this country, but to prevail in Asia. The following passage from Pérégrinations en Orient, par Eusèbe de Salle, vol. i. p. 167., Paris, 1840, may throw some additional light on this superstition. The author is speaking of his sojourn at Antioch, in the house of the English consul.

"En rentrant dans le salon, je trouvai Mistriss B. assise sur son divan, près d'un natif Syrien Chrétien. Ils tenaient à eux deux une Bible, suspendue à une grosse clé par un mouchoir fin. Mistriss B. ne se rappelait pas avoir reçu un bijou qu'un Aleppin affirmait lui avoir remis. Le Syrien disait une prière, puis prononçait alternativement les noms de la dame et de l'Aleppin. La Bible pivota au nom de la dame déclarée par-là en erreur. Elle se leva à l'instant, et ayant fait des recherches plus exactes, finit par trouver le bijou."

I hardly think that this would be an English superstition transplanted to the East; it is more probable that it was originally derived frown Syria.

E.C.

Newcastle-on-Tyne, May 19. 1850.

Charm for Warts.—Count most carefully the number of warts; take a corresponding number of nodules or knots from the stalks of any of the cerealia (wheat, oats, barley); wrap these in a cloth, and deposit the packet in the earth; all the steps of the operation being done secretly. As the nodules decay the warts will disappear. Some artists think it necessary that each wart should be touched by a separate nodule.

This practice was very rife in the north of Scotland some fifty years since, and no doubt is so still. It was regarded as very effective, and certainly had plenty of evidence of the post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc order in its favour.

Is this practice prevalent in England?

It will be remarked that this belongs to the category of Vicarious Charms, which have in all times and in all ages, in great things and in small things, been one of the favourite resources of poor mortals in their difficulties. Such charms (for all analogous practices may be so called) are, in point of fact, sacrifices made on the principle so widely adopted,—qui facit per alium facit per se. The common witch-charm of melting an image of wax stuck full of pins before a slow fire, is a familiar instance. Everybody knows that the party imaged by the wax continues to suffer all the tortures of pin-pricking until he or she finally melts away (colliquescit), or dies in utter emaciation.

Emdee.

Boy or Girl.—The following mode was adopted a few years ago in a branch of my family residing in Denbighshire, with the view of discovering the sex of an infant previous to its birth. As I do not remember to have met with it in other localities, it may, perhaps, be an interesting addition to your "Folk Lore." An old woman of the village, strongly attached to the family, asked permission to use a harmless charm to learn if the expected infant would be male or female. Accordingly she joined the servants at their supper, where she assisted in clearing a shoulder of mutton of every particle of meat. She then held the blade-bone to the fire until it was scorched, so as to permit her to force her thumbs through the thin part. Through the holes thus made she passed a string, and having knotted the ends together, she drove in a nail over the back door and left the house, giving strict injunctions to the servants to hang the bone up in that place the last thing at night. Then they were carefully to observe who should first enter that door on the following morning, exclusive of the members of the household, and the sex of the child would be that of the first comer. This rather vexed some of the servants, who wished for a boy, as two or three women came regularly each morning to the house, and a man was scarcely ever seen there; but to their delight the first comer on this occasion proved to be a man, and in a few weeks the old woman's reputation was established throughout the neighbourhood by the birth of a boy.

M.E.F.

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