n different places. Thus Sir John Rhys in his
examination of Manx folklore stopped short in his explanation of the
superstition of the first-foot, because he had heard that, while in
the Isle of Man it was attached to a dark man, elsewhere it was
attached to a fair man. Of the examples where, on New Year's morning,
it is held to be unlucky to meet a dark person, I may mention
Lincolnshire, Durham, Yorkshire, and Northumberland. It is, on the
contrary, _lucky_ to meet, as first-foot, a dark-haired man in
Lancashire, the Isle of Man, and Aberdeenshire.[218] In these cases we
get the element of "dark" or "fair" as the varying factor of the
superstition; but instances occur in Sutherlandshire, the West of
Scotland, and in Durham, where the varying factor rests upon sex--a
man being lucky and a woman being unlucky.

Similarly of the well-known superstition about telling the bees of the
death of their owner, in Berkshire, Bucks, Cheshire, Cornwall,
Cumberland, Lincolnshire, Lancashire, Monmouthshire, Notts,
Northumberland, Shropshire, Somersetshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex,
Wilts, Worcestershire, it appears that a relative may perform the
ceremony, or sometimes a servant merely, while in Derbyshire, Hants,
Northants, Rutland, and Yorkshire it must be the heir or successor of
the deceased owner. Again, while in the above places the death of the
owner is told to the bees, in other places it is told to the cattle,
and in Cornwall to the trees;[219] and, in other places, marriages as
well as death are told to the bees.[220]

In some cases the transfer from one object to another of a particular
superstition is a matter of absolute observation. Thus, the labourers
in Norfolk considered it a presage of death to miss a "bout" in corn
or seed sowing. The superstition is now transferred to the drill,
which has only been invented for a century. Again, in Ireland, it is
now considered unlucky to give any one a light for his pipe on
May-day--a very modern superstition, apparently. But the pipe in this
case has been the means of preserving the old superstition found in
many places of not giving a light from the homestead fire.

I will just refer to one other example, the well-known custom of
offering rags at sacred wells. Sir John Rhys thought that the object
of these scraps of clothing being placed at the well was for
transferring the disease from the sick person to some one else. But I
ventured to oppose this idea, and considered that