It was the custom of the wind clan of the Omahas to flap their overalls to start a breeze, while a sorcerer of New Britain desirous of appeasing the wind god throws burnt lime into the air, and towards the point of the compass he wishes to make a prosperous journey, chanting meanwhile a song. Finnish wizards made a pretence of selling wind to land-bound sailors. A Norwegian witch once boasted of sinking a vessel by opening a wind-bag she possessed. Homer speaks of Ulysses receiving the winds as a present from Æolus, the King of Winds, in a leather bag. In the highlands of Ethiopia no storm-driven wind ever sweeps down without being stabbed at by a native to wound the evil spirit riding on the blast. In some parts of Austria a heavy gale is propitiated by the act and speech of a peasant who, as the demon wings his flight in the raging storm, opens the window and casts a handful of meal or chaff to the enraged sprite as a peace offering, at the same time shouting-- "There, that's for you; stop, stop!" A pretty romance is known in Bulgarian folk-lore. The wife of a peasant who had been mysteriously enticed away by the fairies was appealed to by her husband's mother to return. "Who is to feed the babe, and rock its cradle?" sang the grandmother, and the wind wafted back the reply-- "If it cry for food, I will feed it with copious dews; If it wish to sleep, I will rock its cradle with a gentle breeze." How devoid of all sentiment our Englished version of the same tale reads. "Hush-a-bye, baby, on a tree top, When the wind blows the cradle will rock, When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, Down comes the baby and cradle and all." No wonder this purposeless lullaby is satirised in the orthodox libretto of Punch's Opera or the Dominion of Fancy, for Punch, having sung it, throws the child out of the window. The poetic instinct of the German mother is rich in expression, her voice soothing and magnetic as she sways her babe to and fro to the melody of-- "Sleep, baby, sleep! Thy father tends the sheep, Thy mother shakes the branches small, Whence happy dreams in showers fall. Sleep, baby, sleep! "Sleep, baby, sleep! The sky is full of sheep, The stars the lambs of heaven are, For whom the shepherd moon doth care. Sleep, baby, sleep!"[F] The lullaby of the Black Guitar, told by the Grimm brothers in their German fairy tales, gives us the same thought. "Thou art sleeping, my son, and at ease, Lulled by the whisperings of the trees." Another German nurse song of a playful yet commanding tone translates-- "Baby, go to sleep! Mother has two little sheep, One is black and one is white; If you do not sleep to-night, First the black and then the white Shall give your little toe a bite." A North Holland version has degenerated into the flabby Dutch of--