times to look for a deeper sense in conventional phrases than they now carry on their face, or for a real meaning in what now seems nonsense. How an ethnographical record may become embodied in a popular saying, a Tamil proverb now current in South India will show perfectly. On occasions when A hits B, and C cries out at the blow, the bystanders will say, "Tis like a Koravan eating asafœtida when his wife lies in!' Now a Koravan belongs to a low race in Madras, and is defined as 'gipsy, wanderer, assdriver, thief, eater of rats, dweller in mat tents, fortuneteller, and suspected character;' and the explanation of the proverb is, that whereas native women generally eat asafœtida as strengthening medicine after childbirth, among the Koravans it is the husband who eats it to fortify himself on the occasion. This, in fact, is a variety of the worldwide custom of the 'couvade,' where at childbirth the husband undergoes medical treatment, in many cases being put to bed for days. It appears that the Koravans are among the races practising this quaint custom, and that their more civilized Tamil neighbours, struck by its oddity, but unconscious of its now-forgotten meaning, have taken it up into a proverb.1 Let us now apply the same sort of ethnographical key to dark sayings in our own modern language. The maxim, ‘a hair of the dog that bit you' was originally neither a metaphor nor a joke, but a matterof-fact recipe for curing the bite of a dog, one of the many instances of the ancient homœopathic doctrine, that what hurts will also cure: it is mentioned in the Scandinavian Edda, 'Dog's hair heals dog's bite.'2 The phrase 'raising the wind' now passes as humorous slang, but it once, in all seriousness, described one of the most dreaded of the sorcerer's arts, practised especially by the Finland wizards, of whose uncanny power over the weather our sailors have not to this day forgotten their old terror. The ancient

1 From a letter of Mr. H. J. Stokes, Negapatam, to Mr. F. M. Jennings. General details of the Couvade in 'Early History of Mankind,' p. 293. 3 Hâvamâl, 138.

ceremony or ordeal of passing through a fire or leaping over burning brands has been kept up so vigorously in the British Isles, that Jamieson's derivation of the phrase 'to haul over the coals' from this rite appears in no way farfetched. It is not long since an Irishwoman in New York was tried for killing her child; she had made it stand on burning coals to find out whether it was really her own or a changeling.1 The English nurse who says to a fretful child, 'You got out of bed wrong foot foremost this morning,' seldom or never knows the meaning of her saying; but this is still plain in the German folk-lore rule, that to get out of bed left foot first will bring a bad day,2 one of the many examples of that simple association of ideas which connects right and left with good and bad respectively. To conclude, the phrase 'cheating the devil' seems to belong to that familiar series of legends where a man makes a compact with the fiend, but at the last moment gets off scot-free by the interposition of a saint, or by some absurd evasionsuch as whistling the gospel he has bound himself not to say, or refusing to complete his bargain at the fall of the leaf, on the plea that the sculptured leaves in the church are still on their boughs. One form of the mediæval compact was for the demon, when he had taught his black art to a class of scholars, to seize one of them for his professional fee, by letting them all run for their lives and catching the last-a story obviously connected with another popular saying: 'devil take the hindmost.' But even at this game the stupid fiend may be cheated, as is told in the folk-lore of Spain and Scotland, in the legends of the Marqués de Villano and the Earl of Southesk, who attended the Devil's magic schools at Salamanca and Padua. The apt scholar only leaves the master his shadow to clutch as following hindmost in the race, and with this unsubstantial payment the demon must needs be satisfied, while the

1 Jamieson, Scottish Dictionary,' s. v. 'coals'; R. Hunt, 'Popular Romances,' 1st ser. p. 83.

2 Wuttke, 'Volksaberglaube,' p. 131.

new-made magician goes forth free, but ever after shadowless.1

It seems a fair inference to think folk-lore nearest to its source where it has its highest place and meaning. Thus, if some old rhyme or saying has in one place a solemn import in philosophy or religion, while elsewhere it lies at the level of the nursery, there is some ground for treating the serious version as the more original, and the playful one as its mere lingering survival. The argument is not safe, but yet is not to be quite overlooked. For instance, there are two poems kept in remembrance among the modern Jews, and printed at the end of their book of Passover services in Hebrew and English. One is that known as (Chad gadyâ): it begins, ‘A kid, a kid, my father bought for two pieces of money;' and it goes on to tell how a cat came and ate the kid, and a dog came and bit the cat, and so on to the end. Then came the Holy One, blessed be He! and slew the angel of death, who slew the butcher, who killed the ox, that drank the water, that quenched the fire, that burnt the stick, that beat the dog, that bit the cat, that ate the kid, that my father bought for two pieces of money, a kid, a kid.' This composition is in the 'Sepher Haggadah,' and is looked on by some Jews as a parable concerning the past and future of the Holy Land. According to one interpretation, Palestine, the kid, is devoured by Babylon the cat; Babylon is overthrown by Persia, Persia by Greece, Greece by Rome, till at last the Turks prevail in the land; but the Edomites (ie. the nations of Europe) shall drive out the Turks, the angel of death shall destroy the enemies of Israel, and his children shall be restored under the rule of Messiah. Irrespectively of any such particular interpretation, the solemnity of the ending may incline us to think that we really have the composition here in something like its first form, and that it

1 Rochholz, 'Deutscher Glaube und Brauch,' vol. i. p. 120; R. Chambers, 'Popular Rhymes of Scotland,' Miscellaneous; Grimm, pp. 969, 976; Wuttke, p. 115.

was written to convey a mystic meaning. If so, then it follows that our familiar nursery tale of the old woman who couldn't get her kid (or pig) over the stile, and wouldn't get home till midnight, must be considered a broken-down adaptation of this old Jewish poem. The other composition is a counting-poem, and begins thus:

'Who knoweth one? I (saith Israel) know One: One is God, who is over heaven and earth. Who knoweth two? I (saith Israel) know two :

Two tables of the covenant; but One is our God who is over the heavens and the earth.'

(And so forth, accumulating up to the last verse, which is-)

'Who knoweth thirteen? I (saith Israel) know thirteen: Thirteen divine attributes, twelve tribes, eleven stars, ten commandments, nine months preceding childbirth, eight days preceding circumcision, seven days of the week, six books of the Mishnah, five books of the Law, four matrons, three patriarchs, two tables of the covenant; but One is our God who is over the heavens and the earth.'

This is one of a family of counting-poems, apparently held in much favour in medieval Christian times, for they are not yet quite forgotten in country places. An old Latin version runs: 'Unus est Deus,' &c., and one of the stillsurviving English forms begins, 'One's One all alone, and evermore shall be so,' thence reckoning on as far as 'Twelve the twelve apostles.' Here both the Jewish and Christian forms are or have been serious, so it is possible that the Jew may have imitated the Christian, but the nobler form of the Hebrew poem here again gives it a claim to be thought the earlier.1

The old proverbs brought down by long inheritance into our modern talk are far from being insignificant in themselves, for their wit is often as fresh, and their wisdom as

1 Mendes, 'Service for the First Nights of Passover,' London, 1862 (in the Jewish interpretation the word shunra,-'cat,' is compared with shinâr). Halliwell, 'Nursery Rhymes,' p. 288; 'Popular Rhymes,' p. 6.

pertinent, as it ever was. Beyond these practical qualities, proverbs are instructive for the place in ethnography which they occupy. Their range in civilization is limited; they seem scarcely to belong to the lowest tribes, but appear first in a settled form among some of the higher savages. The Fijians, who were found a few years since living in what archæologists might call the upper Stone Age, have some well-marked proverbs. They laugh at want of forethought by the saying that 'The Nakondo people cut the mast first' (i.e. before they had built the canoe); and when a poor man looks wistfully at what he cannot buy, they say, 'Becalmed, and looking at the fish.' Among the list of the New Zealanders' 'whakatauki,' or proverbs, one describes a lazy glutton: 'Deep throat, but shallow sinews;' another says that the lazy often profit by the work of the industrious: The large chips made by Hardwood fall to the share of Sit-still;' a third moralizes that 'A crooked part of a stem of toetoe can be seen; but a crooked part in the heart cannot be seen.'2 Among the Basutos of South Africa, 'Water never gets tired of running' is a reproach to chatterers; 'Lions growl while they are eating,' means that there are people who never will enjoy anything; ‘The sowing-month is the headache-month,' describes those lazy folks who make excuses when work is to be done; The thief eats thunderbolts,' means that he will bring down vengeance from heaven on himself. West African nations are especially strong in proverbial philosophy; so much so that Captain Burton amused himself through the rainy season at Fernando Po in compiling a volume of native proverbs, among which there are hundreds at about as high an intellectual level as those of Europe. 'He fled from the sword and hid in the scabbard,' is as good as our

1 Williams, 'Fiji,' vol. i. p. 110.

2 Shortland, Traditions of N. Z.' p. 196.

3 Casalis, 'Etudes sur la langue Séchuana.'

4 R. F. Burton, Wit and Wisdom from West Africa.' See also Waitz, vol. ii. p. 245.