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1 68 Symbolism of the East and West
in it for some hours for petty thefts or drunkenness, exposed
to the gibes and jeers of the populace.
Sir Edgar INIacCulloch, the late Bailiff of Guernsey, told
the writer that it was at one time the custom that a woman
accused of concealing the birth of her child should stand at
the bar of the Royal Court, when the Bailiff and the Jurats
were sitting, clad in a white sheet, and there acknowledge her
fault.
The natives of Guernsey also hold that one must not look
into a well on Christmas night, because the water is turned
into wine ;
neither
should one enter a cow stall, because the
cattle are then on their knees. The same idea is current
at a place called Neudorf, near Schassburg, in Transylvania,
where there is a prevalent superstition that at midnight on
New Year's night the cattle speak, but in a language which
man may not hear. Should he do so his life is the forfeit.
Another remarkable superstition survives both in India
and in Europe. The custom is cited in Panjab Notes and
Queries, Vol. I, note 219, according to which, if a married
couple have lost several male children, and a boy is once
more born to them, they call the child Natha— i.e., one having
a Nath or nose ring. They pierce the child's nose, and
introduce a nose ring (an ornament worn by girls and
women only), with the desire that the little one should be
mistaken for a girl, and so passed over by the evil spirits.
Also, if an elder brother has died, a boy is clothed very
shabbily, no doubt because it is hoped that he will thus
escape the notice of the godlings—the agents of divine mischief
in India. This idea is not unknown in Europe. Some
years ago, when spending a summer in the Engadine, we