names suggests folly.

"Leer" is a curious word still heard in Dorset and Devon. It is used to express the sense of craving produced by weakness and long fasting. Perhaps Shakespeare used Lear in a metaphorical sense. I remember once hearing a Sussex labourer speak of taking his "coager" (cold cheer?), a meal of cold victuals taken at noon, but I am told the mouthful of bread and cheese taken at starting in the morning by the Dorset rustic rejoices in the still more delightful name of "dew-bit."

"Crowder" (a fiddler) is a genuine British word, used up to a few years ago, but I was unable to trace anyone using it in Dorset this year. In Cornwall the proverb, "If I can't crowdy, they won't dance" (meaning, "They will pass me by when I have no money to feast and entertain my friends"), was commonly quoted fifty years ago.

Another tale regarding unconscious humour is told of by a Dorset rector who was holding a Confirmation class. He was one of the old-fashioned parsons and made it his solemn duty to call at the village inn and drink a pint of ale with his flock every evening. One of the candidates for Confirmation was the buxom daughter of the innkeeper, and when he came to ask her the usual fixed question, "What is your name?" the girl, holding her head on one side, glanced at him roguishly, and said:

"Now dawntee tell me you don't know. As if you diddent come into our place every night and say, 'Now, Rubina, my dear, give me a half-pint of your best ale in a pint pewter!'"

The story of village sports and the way in which the rustic was wont to enjoy himself is always interesting. One of the most singular forms of contest once in common practice in the west of England was whiplegs. The procedure of this pastime consisted of the men standing a yard or so apart and lashing each other's legs with long cart whips till one cried "Holt!" The one who begged for quarter of course paid for the ale. The rude leather gaiters worn by tranters or carters fifty years ago would, of course, take much of the sting out of the whip cuts.

Thatch survives in nearly every village, and one of the favoured building materials is stone from the Dorset quarries. At Corfe the houses are built of stone from foundation to roof, and stone slabs of immense size are made to take the place of tiles and slates. We find "cob" cottages here and there, and this perhaps is the most ancient of all materials, being a mixture of clay or mud and chopped straw. It is piled into walls of immense thickness and strength, and then plastered and white-washed. The natives in Egypt and Palestine construct their village homes with the same materials, and the result is not only wonderfully picturesque, but satisfactory in the more important respect of utility. But now the Dorset people seldom build their walls of "cob" as of yore, and yet such work is very enduring. As an old Devonshire proverb has it: "Good cob, a good hat, and a good heart last for ever."

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The beautiful tract of coast-line between Seaton on the west and West Bay on the east is a region of great charm; for here will be found all the most pleasing features of the sister counties, Dorset and Devon. The gracious greenery and combes of Devon trespass over the border at Lyme Regis and so bestow on this nook the wooded charm of the true West Country, which is lacking on the chalky grass hills of other parts of Dorset. If the coast is followed from Lyme Regis we soon thread our way into the wild tangles of Devon. Things have changed somewhat in these days, but still the true son of Devon carries his country with him wherever he goes; he does not forget that every little boy and girl born in the West is breathed over by the "piskies." But modern education has just about killed the "piskies," and there are no more ghosts in the old churchyards. There is a reason for the non-appearance of spirits at the present day. They have ceased to come out of their graves, said an old rustic, "ever since there was some alteration made in the burial service." A firm belief in "the very old 'un" is still, however, a most distinctive article of the rustic creed. "There was never a good hand at cards if the four of clubs was in it," said a rooted son of the soil to me. "Why?" I asked. "Because it's an unlucky card; it's the devil's own card." "In what way?" I urged. "It's the old 'un's four-post bedstead," was the reply.

Another rustic remarked in all seriousness that he did think wizards "ought to be encouraged, for they could tell a man many things he didn't know as would be useful to 'un." The belief in witchcraft is almost dead, but it is not so many years ago that it was firmly held. Thomas Hardy's tale, The Withered Arm, it will be recalled, is a story of witchcraft. Farmer Lodge brought home a young wife, Gertrude. A woman who worked on Lodge's farm, Rhoda Brook by name, had a son of which the farmer was the father. Rhoda naturally resented the marriage, and had a remarkable dream in which Gertrude, wrinkled and old, had sat on her chest and mocked her. She seized the apparition by the left arm and hurled it away from her. So life-like was the phantom of her brain that it was difficult for her to believe that she had not actually struggled with Gertrude Lodge in the flesh. Some time afterwards the farmer's wife complained that her left arm pained her, and the doctors were unable to give her any relief. In the end someone suggested that she had been "overlooked," and that it was the result of a witch's evil influence. She was told to ask the advice of a wise man named Conjurer Trendle who lived on Egdon Heath. In the days of our forefathers the conjurer was an important character in the village. He was resorted to by despairing lovers; he helped those who were under the evil eye to throw off the curse, and disclosed the whereabouts of stolen goods. His answers, too, were given with a somewhat mystic ambiguity. "Own horn eat own corn" would be the kind of reply a person would receive on consulting him about the disappearance of, say, a few little household articles. Well, to continue the story, Rhoda Brook accompanied Gertrude to the hut of Conjurer Trendle, who informed the farmer's wife that Rhoda had "overlooked" her. Trendle told her that the evil spell might be dissolved and a cure effected by laying the diseased arm on the neck of a newly hanged man. During the absence of her husband she arranged with the Casterbridge hangman to try this remedy. On the appointed day she arrived at the gaol, and the hangman placed her hand upon the neck of the body after the execution, and she drew away half fainting with the shock. As she turned she saw her husband and Rhoda Brook. The dead man was their son, who had been hanged for stealing sheep, and they harshly accused her of coming to gloat over their misfortune. At this the farmer's wife entirely collapsed, and only lived for a week or so after.

Thomas Q. Couch, writing in Notes and Queries, 26th May 1855, gives a pleasant and light-hearted article on the prevailing belief in the existence of the piskies in the West Country:

"Our piskies are little beings standing midway between the purely spiritual, and the material, suffering a few at least of the ills incident to humanity. They have the power of making themselves seen, heard, and felt. They interest themselves in man's affairs, now doing him a good turn, and anon taking offence at a trifle, and leading him into all manner of mischief. The rude gratitude of the husbandman is construed into an insult, and the capricious sprites mislead him on the first opportunity, and laugh heartily at his misadventures. They are great enemies of sluttery,