Another Christian tradition mentioned by the same author must have a long genealogy. An old woman of ninety, at Malton, in Yorkshire, told the Rev. J. B. Dykes that spiders must not be killed, because a spider had spun a web over our blessed Lord in the manger at Bethlehem, which protected him from all danger. No doubt this is another version of the story of the spider that spun a web over the cave where Mahomet was concealed during his Hejira, and which, we think, recurs in medieval hagiology, It is to Mr. S. B. Gould's curious myths of the Middle Ages, that we must turn for the tracking of legends such as these, and the story of the Seven Sleepers, both of which are current among Christians and Mohametans alike -eastern legends no doubt that had a tendency to fasten themselves on the best known subjects.

Some such legends must have died away-here Shakespeare's 'Owl who was a baker's daughter,' points to a story like that of the Spotted Woodpecker, or Gertrude bird in Norway, who is said to have been a woman whose dough our LORD multiplied, but who grew so covetous that she refused him a morsel, whereupon she was condemned to seek her food for life between the bark and the wood. In most parts of England, it is believed that clothes washed on Good Friday become spotted with blood, and the reason of this belief is given on the authority of an old woman of the North Riding, who had been told by a Methodist girl that on our Blessed Lord's way to Calvary, a woman who was washing blirted' the thing she was washing in His face, on which He said, Cursed be every one who shall wash on this day.' Indeed, several of these most apocryphal curses seem to be floating in people's minds. The legend of the Wandering Jew is of course the typical one of all these. It is the first in Mr. S. Baring Gould's collection, and he startles us by the question, Who can say for certain that it is not true?' We had always thought the tale one of the many personified allegories of which the legends of St, Christopher, St. Margaret, and St. Alexis, are familiar specimens, and that the wanderer was the type of his fugitive and vagabond nation.

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'Salted with fire, they seem to show

How Spirits lost in endless woe,
May undecaying live.'

Mr. Baring Gould's argument is that we little know all the wonders wrought by our Lord, or can tell whether our explanation of the words, There be some standing here that shall 'not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in His 'Kingdom,' be sufficient.

A Swiss story is that he (the Wandering Jew) was seen one day standing on the Matterberg, which is below the Matterhorn, contemplating the scene with mingled sorrow and wonder. Once before he stood on that spot, and then it was the site of a flourishing city, now it is covered with gentian and wild pinks. Once again will he revisit the hill, and that will be on the eve of judgment.-S. Baring Gould, p. 25.

The point in which this legend differs from other current ones, is that they, like those in the Apocryphal Gospels, generally involve some direct personal revenge, most unsuitable to the character of Him who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered he threatened not, Whereas to the insolent shoemaker it is but a gentle prophecy, and the sight of the crucifixion tends to his conversion.

From these revengeful popular legends, we must honourably except a Cheshire carol, which we here give at length, because it is so remarkable. Has it been altered in past reformation days, or can it come down from times before the Blessed Virgin was treated as a chief Intercessor ?

It came to pass upon a day,

Upon one holy day

That JESUS asked his Mother dear,

If he might go to play.

"To play, to play," said the Virgin Mary,
"To play, to play begone,

And see there be no complaint of you

At night when you come home.”

'Then JESUS went to yonder town,

As far as the holy well,

And there he saw three as fine children

As ever the eye beheld.

‘He said, “God bless you, everyone,
By one, by two, by three,

My little children I'll play with you,
And you shall play with me."

'Nay, nay, we are lords' and ladies' sons;
Thou art meaner than us all,

Thou art nothing but a poor maid's child
Born in an oxen's stall."

'Then JESUS turned himself about,

He neither smiled nor spoke,

But tears came trickling from his eyes,
Like waters from the rock.

'Sweet JESUS ran to his mother, dear.
As fast as he could run,

"O, Mother! I saw three as fine children,
As ever were eyes set on."

"I said, God bless you, everyone,
By one, by two, by three,

And now, little children, I'll play with you,
And you shall play with me."

"Nay," "we're lords' and ladies' sons,
Thou art meaner than us all,

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For thou art but a poor maid's child,

Born in an oxen's stall."

Then the tears came trickling from his eyes,

As fast as they could fall.

"Then," said she, "go down to yonder town,

As far as the holy well,

And there take up those infant's souls

And dip them deep in hell."

"Oh no! oh no!" sweet JESUS, he said,
"Oh no! that never can be;

For there are many of those infants' souls
Crying out for the help of me."

But to return to Good Friday. Another observance was not long ago practised near Exeter, namely the breaking ‘clomb,' i.e., pottery, the meaning of which only dawned upon the reporter thereof on hearing that in Corfu potsherds are hurled from a steep rock on that day, while curses are uttered on Judas Iscariot. Lancashire infants are weaned on Good Friday. Hampshire mothers like to leave off their babies' caps and long robes on Good Friday, possibly from some lingering notion of mortification; but in some parts of Devon, peas are sown by preference, and grafts made on that day, while in the North, it is considered impious then to touch a hammer or nails -the instruments of the Passion.

"Friday, too, the day I dread "

retains nothing of its fast except the sense of unluckiness in commencing any undertaking. Old women all over England still will not let their grandchildren go to a new place on a Friday. We believe few pieces of needlework are begun on that day of the week. Friday marriages are said in the old rhyme to be for crosses,' and every one knows that no sailor ventures to put to sea on that day, but happily the involuntary voyager on the sea of life who is launched into the world is not doomed for

'Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
And Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,

And Saturday's child works hard for its living,
But the child that is born on the Sabbath day,
Is blithe and bonny, good and gay.'

In general, Sunday is the prime day to be born--on any, that is save Whitsunday, which is said to predestine its natives' to a violent death-while ordinary Sundays confer the power of beholding the spiritual world.

Midlent or Refreshment Sunday, was the day when the Mother, or Cathedral Church of the Diocese was resorted to by all the neighbourhood in procession, and Easter offerings brought. The processions ceased in the thirteenth century, but the name Mothering Sunday continued, and throughout many parts of England this title has been the cause of this Sunday being the great family gathering, when all the scattered members return home and spend the day, and bring a present to their mother. Nowhere is this pretty custom so gracefully described as in The Copsley Annals' a charming book published by Seeley and Jackson. A simnel cake is the legitimate gift, made of the finest flour, tinged with saffron, and flavoured with sugar and lemon. In the book above mentioned, the best materials for the simnel cake are the mistress's testimony to her young maid-servant's good conduct. The custom is not forgotten in Gloucester, where two hundred years ago Herrick sung:

I'll to thee a simnell bring,
'Gainst thou go'st a mothering,
So that when she blesseth thee,

Half that blessing thou'lt give me.'

The beauty of the custom is now lost by the simnel cakes being sold in shops, which are kept open on the Sunday for the purpose. The name is said to come from the latin simila, fine flour. Sweet or mulled ale, called Braget, is the legitimate accompaniment. Its name is said to be the Welch word, Bragawd, or Metheglin, and it is a curious coincidence that the northern god who enjoys the patronage at once of poetry and of the divine beverage should be named Bragi, the origin of our verb to brag.

We must not tarry over every variety of day-observance. Christmas customs have often been fully described, but we do not remember before to have heard of the beautiful Lancashire notion that cattle go down on their knees, and bees hum the Hundredth Psalm tune on that night, keeping, however, carefully to Old Style. In Brittany cattle are said to have the power of speaking during the midnight hour of Christmas night, and one of Souvestre's collection of Breton Tales, turns upon the information they then imparted. An old Cornishman, near Launceston, in 1790, told Mr. Hunt, then a child, that he had been to look whether the cattle prayed, but

he found only the two oldest oxen on their knees, and they 'made a cruel moan like Christian creatures.'

Perhaps nothing is more remarkable than the tenacity with which through ages of neglect and dissent, the Welch have clung to the service that once was the midnight mass. Young and old all come forth to church or chapel, to the service which lacks the celebration that should give it life and meaning. What a field for restoration !

The dancing of the sun on Easter morning is a nearly universal belief; but on the borders of Dartmoor it was varied by the beautiful expectation of seeing the Lamb and banner in its disc. Girls, who are now old women, used to go out with a smoked glass to look for it, and some even thought they saw it. Indeed the spots on the sun may have at some time assumed such a shape as to originate the very beautiful idea.

Christmas customs seem to have been kept up for festivity's sake, and likewise, too, as an excuse for collecting money. This we are afraid has been the great embalmer of our old Church customs.. Witness the grotto' of oyster snells that was once no doubt the shrine of S. James, the pilgrim saint of the scallop shell badge; the May-day doll, once the Blessed Virgin, with her mary buds and marygolds around her, and even the 'going a souling'-which is practised in Cheshire, Lancashire, &c., on All Souls' Day, and which, though now only an excuse for licensed begging for the village children, was once a collecting of alms on behalf of souls in purgatory. Indeed many of these old customs vanish when the authorities of a parish, feeling the inconvenience of the rude indiscriminate beggary thus entailed, confer their alms in a more regular fashion, and turn a deaf ear to the maintainers of the old custom, who are never a select company. Antiquarianism and good order are sadly at variance, and an attempt to unite them seldom succeeds-it only gives a sense of unwarrantable interference and it is better to let old things pass away, though there is no reason that in passing they should not leave their curious record.

Next to money-getting, marriage divination has been the great preservative of old days; S. Agnes', Eve and All Saints' Day being the prime occasions for these. S. Agnes' Day is chosen on the lucus a non lucendo principle, because her purity and contempt of marriage made her the patron of maidens, but the cause for the universal notions of the divining capacity of All Hallow E'en, it is impossible to guess at. S. John's Eve owes its peculiar powers to that much more distant tradition before mentioned, which rendered the summer solstice sacred to the whole Indo-European world.