appear to exist in schools from generation to generation: do they exist anywhere else? and whence their origin? For instance "a boy who could not span his own wrist was a bastard;" "if you said the Lords Prayer backwards, the devil would come up," &c.

A. C.

The Nightmare.

—I recently observed a large stone, having a natural hole through it, suspended inside a Suffolk farmer's cow-house. Upon inquiry of a labourer, I was informed this was intended as a preventive of nightmare in the cattle. My informant (who evidently placed great faith in its efficacy) added that a similar stone suspended in a bed-room, or a knife or steel laid under the foot of the bed, was of equal service to the sleeper, and that he had himself frequently made use of this charm.

Is this practice common, and in what does it originate?

J. B. C.

EAST NORFOLK FOLK LORE.

1. Cure for Fits.—A similar superstition on this subject to the one mentioned by D. (Vol. i, p. 11.) is prevalent in this vicinity. Nine or eleven young men or maidens (an odd number is indispensable) contribute each a silver coin for the manufacture of the ring. A friend of the sufferer gives out that he is making a collection for the purpose, and calls on the parties expected to contribute, and the coins must be given unasked, to ensure its efficacy. A watchmaker in my parish tells me that he has made ten or a dozen such rings within as many years, and that he has full faith in their curative properties.

2. Cure for Ague.—Being afflicted two years since with a severe tertian ague, I was solicited, after the usual medical treatment had failed, by a lady to take as much of the snuff of a candle as would lie on a sixpence, made into an electuary with honey. I complied and, strange to say, a complete cure was effected. Whether the nausea consequent on such an unpleasant remedy had any effect on the spasmodic nature of the malady, I cannot say; but the fact is certain, and it is esteemed a sovereign specific by the Norfolk rustics.

E. S. TAYLOR.

Martham, Norfolk.

Extreme Ignorance and Superstition.

—In a large village in Dorsetshire, not far from the county town, an intelligent man went recently into the house of a somewhat respectable woman who keeps a general shop in the village, and who is the mother of a numerous family and seeing her with a large family Bible open before her, and several of her children collected around, while she was cutting and paring their finger nails, and so holding their hands as that their cuttings might drop on the leaves of the Bible, he asked her why she did this. Suspecting, by her manner, that she had some object in view, judge of his surprise, when she replied—"I always, when I cut the nails of my children, let the cuttings fall on the open Bible, that they may grow up to be honest. They will never steal, if the nails are cut over the Bible!!" Do we not yet require the educator to be abroad?

T. WE.

Minor Notes.

The Word "Repudiate."

—I cannot help following DR. KENNEDY'S example, and calling attention to another word in our language which is now-a-days, on many occasions, used very erroneously; I allude to the word repudiation, or rather the verb repudiate.

How frequently does one hear at public meetings such phrases as these: "I utterly repudiate the idea," "I repudiate the sentiment," "I repudiate the insinuation." A page might be filled with phrases of this description occurring in reported speeches of recent date. The word, in fact, is made by public speakers of "unadorned eloquence" and newspaper writers, to do duty for such words as to refuse, repel, reject, abandon, disown, cast off.

Now, Sir, I humbly conceive that repudiation means simply a dissolving of the marriage contract, hence of any contract or obligation and I believe I may say with safety, that in no standard classical author, ancient or modern, is the term repudiation, or the verb, repudiate, used, except in connexion with some obligation expressed, or in figurative allusion to such obligation. The term, when applied to the "drab-coloured men of Pennsylvania," is undoubtedly proper; they have indeed repudiated their debt, and perhaps brought the word and the thing into vogue; but to use such a phrase as "I repudiate the notion," is, I submit, surely to talk nonsense.

H. C. K.

—— Rectory, Hereford.

The First Panorama (Vol. iii., p. 526.).

—E. N. W. must have made some mistake in his recollection. Girton was a painter, and may have worked at the Panorama of London; but the "first Panorama" was by Mr. Robert Barker. The sketches were made by his son, Henry Aston Barker, when only a lad aged fifteen. They were taken from the top of the Albion Mills: they were also etched by H. A. Barker at the same age, and aqua-tinted by Birnie, and published in six sheets, 22 by 17, a set of which I possess, with a note of their history, as herein communicated, written in dorso, long ago, from Mr. B.'s own lips.

H. T. E.

E. N. W. is correct in saying, that a semicircular view of London from the top of the Albion Mills, near Blackfriar's bridge, preceded Barker's panoramas. It must have been painted about the year 1793. I saw it at the end of that year, or at the very beginning of 1794. But it was not exhibited in St. Martin's Lane, but in Castle Street, in a rough building—not, I believe, erected for the purpose—at the back of a small house on the eastern side of that street. Perhaps some other of your octogenarian readers may recollect its being there, as well as myself. The scene on the Thames was the water-procession on Lord Mayor's day.

W. D.

Chaucer and Gray (Vol. iii., p. 492).

—MR. THOMS suggests a very interesting parallel between a line in Chaucer, and Gray's "Even in our ashes", &c. Gray himself refers to Petrarch as his original, and the thought occurs in Shakspeare:

And Malone, in a note on the passage (Supplement to Shakspeare, 1780, vol. i. p. 640), adduces the passage in Chaucer quoted by MR. THOMS as an illustration. Steevens has mentioned the following passage in Sir P. Sidney's Arcadia "In ashes of despair, though burnt, shall make thee live." Compare, also, Antony and Cleopatra, Act V. Sc. 2.

J. O. H.

To the verse,

Gray has himself appended a note, indicating that it was suggested by Petrarch, sonnet 169.; and "I will take the poet's word for a thousand pounds." It was originally written—

which has but little to do with Chaucer.

VARRO.

Burns and Propertius.

—There is a strange inclination to attribute similarity of sentiment to plagiarism;