"Where are my sons, that they too may drink of the cup of blessing?" "They will not be afar off," she said, and placed food before him, that he might eat. He was in a gladsome and genial mood; and when he had said grace after the meal, she thus addressed him : "Rabbi, with thy permission, I would fain propose to thee one question."" "Ask it, then, my love," he replied. "A few days ago, a person entrusted some jewels into my custody, and now he demands them again; should I give them back again?" "This is a question," said Rabbi Meir, "which my wife should not have thought it necessary to ask. What! wouldst thou hesitate or be reluctant to restore to every one his own?" "No," she replied; "but yet I thought it best not to restore them without acquainting you therewith." She then led him to the chamber, and stepping to the bed, took the white covering from the dead bodies. "Ah! my sons, my sons!" thus loudly lamented the father; "my sons! the light of my eyes, and the light of my understanding! I was your father, but ye were my teachers in the law." The mother turned away, and wept bitterly. At length she took her husband by the hand, and said,— 66 Rabbi, didst thou not teach me that we must not be reluctant to restore that which was entrusted to our keeping? See, the Lord gave, the Lord has taken away, and blessed be the name of the Lord !" "Blessed be the name of the Lord!" echoed Rabbi Meir; "and blessed be His name for thy sake too, for well it is written, 'Whoso hath found a virtuous wife, hath a greater treasure than costly pearls ; she openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness.""-Translated by Coleridge. FRODI'S MILL: A NORSE LEGEND. Of all beliefs, that in which man has, at all times of his history, been most prone to set faith, is that of a golden age of peace and plenty, which has passed away, but which might be expected to return. Such a period of peace and plenty, such a golden time, the Norseman could tell of in his mythic Frodi's reign, when gold, or Frodi's meal, as it was called, was so plentiful that golden armlets lay untouched from year's end to year's end on the king's highway, and the fields bore crops unsown. In Frodi's house were two maidens of that old giant race, Fenja and Menja. These daughters of the giant he had bought as slaves, and he made them grind his quern or handmill, Grotti, out of which he used to grind peace and gold. Even in that golden age one sees there were slaves, and Frodi, however bountiful to his thanes and people, was a hard task-master to his giant handmaidens. He kept them to the mill, nor gave them longer rest than the cuckoo's note lasted, or they could sing a song. But that quern was such that it ground anything that the grinder chose, though until then it had ground nothing but gold and peace. So the maidens ground and ground, and one sang their piteous tale in a strain worthy of Eschylus as the other rested. They prayed for rest and pity, but Frodi was deaf. Then they turned in giant mood, and ground no longer peace and plenty, but fire and war. Then the quern went fast and furious, and that very night came Mysing the sea-rover, and slew Frodi and all his men, and carried off the quern; and so Frodi's peace ended, The maidens the sea-rover took with him, and when he got on the high seas he bade them grind salt. So they ground; and at midnight they asked if he had not salt enough, but he bade them still grind on. So they ground till the ship was full, and sank,-Mysing, maids, and mill, and all,—and that's why the sea is salt.-Dr. Dasent's Popular Tales from the Norse. SNEEZING. RABBINICAL writers tell us that "sneezing was a mortal sign, even from the first man, until it was taken off by the special supplication of Jacob. From whence, as a thankful acknowledgment, this salutation first began, and was after continued by the expression of Tobim Chaüm, or vita bona, by standers-by, upon all occasions of sneezing" (see Buxtorf, Lex. Chald.). Aristotle mentions the omen, "why sneezing from noon to midnight was good, but from night to noon unlucky." And the ancients, says St. Austin, "were wont to go to bed again if they sneezed while they put on their shoe." Ross, in his "Arcana Microcosmi," says:- Prometheus was the first that wisht well to the sneezer, when the man, which he had made of clay, fell into a fit of sternutation upon the approach of that celestial fire which he stole from the sun. This gave original to that custome among the Gentiles in saluting the sneezer. They used also to worship the head in sternutation, as being a divine part and seat of the senses and cogitation." 66 A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine (April, 1777) informs us that "the year 750 is commonly reckoned the era of the custom of saying 'God bless you' to one who happens to sneeze. It is said that, in the time of the pontificate of St. Gregory the Great, the air was filled with such a deleterious influence that they who sneezed immediately expired." Pliny inferred that to sneeze to the right was considered fortunate; to the left, and near a burial place, the reverse. Creech, in his translation of the eighteenth Idyllium of Theocritus, mentions the custom :— "O happy bridegroom! Thee a lucky sneeze To Sparta welcomed." Again, in another Idyllium : "The Loves sneezed on Smichid." It is said that when the king of Mesopotamia sneezed, loud acclamations were made in all parts of his dominions. The Persians looked F upon the custom as being a very happy one; and the Siamese wished long life to all sneezers. There was, says Langley in his abridgment of Polydore Vergil, "A plague whereby many as they neezed dyed sodeynly, werof it grew into a custome that they that were present when any man neezed should say God helpe you.' A like deadly plage was sometyme in yawning, wherfore menne used to fence themselves with the sign of the crosse bothe which customes we reteyne styl at this day.” One finds a little relief sometimes in a good hearty sneeze; as an old writer observes, "two or three neses be holsom;" but some persons are so often taken with such violent fits of sneezing that they find it necessary to go out in the street to do it, in order to give full scope to their feelings. A writer in the "Schoole of Slovenrie” recommends his readers to perform the act in a very impolite manner :"When you would sneeze, strait turne yourself into your neibour's face: As for my part, wherein to sneeze, I know no fitter place; It is an order, when you sneeze good men will pray for you; Marke him that doth so, for I thinke he is your friend most true. And that your friend may know who sneezes, and may for you pray, Be sure you not forget to sneeze full in his face alway. But when thou hear'st another sneeze, although he be thy father, Say not God bless him, but Choak up, or some such matter rather." Howel says (1659), " He that hath sneezed thrice turn him out of the hospital." Bishop Hall alludes to the custom when speaking of a superstitious person:-"When he neeseth, thinks them not his friends that uncover not."-Notes and Queries. LOVE-TOKENS. BETWEEN two and three centuries ago, it was the custom, as stated in the old chronicles, for "enamoured maydes and gentilwomen" to give to their favourite swains, as tokens of their love, little handkerchiefs, about three or four inches square, wrought round about often in embroidery, with a button or tassel at each corner, and a little one in the centre. The finest of these favours were edged with gold lace, or twist; and then, being folded in four cross folds, so that the middle might be seen, they were worn by the accepted lovers in their hats, or on their breast. Tokens were also given by the gentlemen and accepted by their fair mistresses. They are thus described in one of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays : Given earrings we will wear, Bracelets of our lovers' hair, Which they on our arms shall twist, (With our names carved) on our wrist." THE LADYBIRD. THE goddess Holda is only another form of Freyja or Fria, the wife of Adin and sister of Freyr or Fro, the god of the sun and of love, in whose attributes she participates. The Ladybird has many names, all of them mythic, and it is sacred to both goddesses. Its home is in heaven or in the sun, and German children tell it in rhyme to fly up thither, mount the chair (Freyja's throne), and bring back sunshine and fine weather. They believe that were they to kill the insect the sun would not shine the next day. The English rhyme "Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home, Your house is on fire, your children will burn," seems to have some reference to the insect's ministrations with fire, the more so as the ladybird is very commonly addressed in Germany to the same purpose, and the children in Westphalia have a rhyme which plainly implies that the burning house is in heaven, for it states that the angels are crying about it. Lastly, this important little creature is appealed to in the same country as a child-bringer, and asked to fly up to heaven, and bring down a golden dish and in it a golden bantling. The ladybird, which is so intimate with the goddess of love and with Frau Holda, must know a great many things. Its services in affairs of love were known to Gay "This ladyfly I take from off the grass, Whose spotted back might scarlet red surpass. Little girls in Westphalia set the ladybird on the point of their forefinger, and invoke it in rhyme to say when they will be married: in one year? two years? three years? etc.; and they grow very impatient if the insect lets them count too high before it flies away. Sometimes it is asked, as it sits on the finger, how the questioner will fare in the next world. If it fly upwards, the questioner will go to heaven; if downwards, to the opposite place; if horizontally, to purgatory. In Sweden, if the black spots on the wing-covers of the ladybird exceed seven, the usual number, it is thought to be a sign that corn will be dear; if they are fewer, a plentiful harvest is expected.-Kelly's IndoEuropean Tradition and Folk-Lore. CHARMS FOR THE CURE OF AILMENTS. DOCTORS are said to be at best but the assistants of nature, and if this be so even in these pre-eminently scientific days, assuredly Dame Nature must have been both doctor and nurse in those days when the practice of surgery and medicine had not yet developed into a science; when ignorance, with its concomitant superstition and credulity, enabled blundering "leeches" to kill where nature could not cure. Perhaps the least harmful of the useless and (as they now seem to us) ridiculous practices employed in former times for the cure of disease was that of mumbling a certain formula of words, believed to constitute original meaning. The word wretch, for example, was not formerly employed to denote a miserable or extremely vicious person, but was used as a term of soft endearment,-as will be seen from the following passage from Pepys' Diary, under date February 23, 1668 :-"This evening my wife did with great pleasure show me her stock of jewels, increased by the ring she hath made lately as my valentine's gift this year, a Turkey stone set with diamonds; and with this, and what she had, she reckons that she hath above £150 worth of jewels of one kind or other, and I am glad of it, for it is fit the wretch should have something to content herself with." Shakspeare makes Othello speak fondly of Desdemona as "excellent wretch." The word knave did not originally signify anything disreputable, as a scoundrel or blackguard, but was merely the common term for a man-servant. In this sense it is employed in an early translation of the New Testament, where we read," Paul, the knave of Jesus Christ ;" and in the fine old ballad of "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne" "But now I have slain the master, he says, Let me go strike the knave." The word companion, on the other hand, had formerly the meaning which we now attach to the term fellow, in its abusive sense;—thus, in the play of Othello, we find Emilia, on discovering that some scoundrel had secretly aspersed the character of Desdemona, bitterly exclaims "O Heaven! that such companions thou'dst unfold; And put in every honest hand a whip, To lash the rascal naked through the world." The term wench had not originally its modern low and vulgar signification, but was the appellation of young women, as damsel was of young ladies of quality." CURIOSITIES OF LEGEND AND CATS. THE question why the chariot of Freyja was drawn by cats, and why Holda was attended by maidens riding on cats, or themselves disguised in feline form, is easily solved. Like the lynx, and the owl of Pallas Athene, the cat owes its celestial honours above all to its eyes, that gleam in the dark like fire; but the belief in its supernatural powers may very probably have been corroborated by the common observation that the cat, like the stormy boar, is a weatherwise animal. Pigs, as |