" said he; "Nation hard docks!" His blunted
scythe soon brings him to a stand still, and as, in such cases, it is not
allowed for one to sharpen without the other, he turns to his antagonist,
now far ahead, and inquires, in a tone of despair, "When d'ye wiffle-waffle
(whet), mate?" "Waffle!" said the farmer, with a well-feigned stare of
amazement, "O, about noon mebby." "Then," said the despairing spirit, "That
thief of a Christian has done me;" and so saying, he disappeared and was
never heard of more.

Under _Nurse-tales_, I include the extremely puerile stories of the
nursery, often (as in the German ones) interlaced with rhymes. The
following, from the banks of the Avon, sounds like an echo from a German
story-book.

_Little Elly._

In the old time, a certain good king laid all the ghosts, and hanged all
the witches and wizards save one, who fell into a bad way, and kept a
school in a small village. One day Little Elly looked through a chink-hole,
and saw him eating man's flesh and drinking man's blood; but Little Elly
kept it all to herself, and went to school as before. And when school was
over the Ogee fixed his eyes upon her, and said--

"All go home but Elly,
And Elly come to me."

And when they were gone he said, "What did you see me eat, Elly?"

"O something did I see,
But nothing will I tell,
Unto my dying day."

And so he pulled off her shoes, and whipped her till she bled (this
repeated three days); and the third day he took her up, and put her into a
rose-bush, where the rain rained, and the snow snowed, and the hail hailed,
and the wind blew upon her all night. Quickly her tiny spirit crept out of
her tiny body and hovered round the bed of her parents, where it sung in
mournful voice for evermore--

"Dark, weary, and cold am I,
Little knoweth Gammie where am I."

Of the Humorous stories I have already given a specimen in Vol. v., p. 363.

Any notes of legends, or suggestions of any kind, forwarded to my address
as below, will be thankfully received and acknowledged.

VINCENT T. STERNBERG.

15. Store Street, Bedford Square.

* * * * *

SHAKSPEARE CORRESPONDENCE.

_The old Corrector on "The Winter's Tale."_--I am glad to find that you
have another correspondent, and a very able one too, under the signature of
A. E. B., who takes the same view of "Aristotle's checks" as I have done;
though I think he might have paid me the compliment of _just_ n