Many curious charms are still practised to ward off that unpleasant sensation popularly known as nightmare, which both in this and other countries has given rise to a variety of superstitions. According to one old notion, this disagreeable feeling was produced by some fairy, under a disguised form, visiting the person, and worrying him while asleep by certain mischievous pranks. Thus, in Germany, the nightmare is said to appear at times in the shape of a mouse, a weasel, or a toad, and occasionally, too, in the form of a cat. One German story relates how a joiner was, night by night, much plagued with the nightmare, when he at last saw it steal into his room about midnight in the form of a cat. Having at once stopped up the hole through which the cat had entered, he lost no time in seizing the animal and nailing it by one paw to the ground. Next morning, however, much to his horror and surprise, he discovered a handsome young lady with a nail driven through her hand. He accordingly married her, but one day he uncovered the hole which he had stopped up, whereupon she instantly escaped through it in the shape of a cat, and never returned. There are numerous stories of a similar kind, in most cases the sequel being the same. Among the charms still in use as a preservative against nightmare may be mentioned a stone with a natural hole in it hung over the sleeper, or a knife laid under the foot of the bedstead, both being considered of equal efficacy. In Lancashire the peasantry believe that nightmare appears in the form of a dog, and they try to counteract its influence by placing their shoes under the bed with the toe upwards, on retiring to rest. Not very long ago, too, at the West Riding Court at Bradford, in a case of a husband and wife who had quarrelled, the woman stated that the reason why she kept a coal-rake in her bedroom was that she suffered from nightmare, and had been informed that the rake would keep it away. The best charm after all, however, for this common disorder is to be careful that one's digestive organs are not upset by incautious suppers eaten just before retiring to rest. It only remains for us, in conclusion, to add once more that the preceding pages are not intended to be by any means exhaustive, our object having been to give a brief and general survey of that extensive folk-lore which has, in the course of years, woven itself around the affairs of home-life. However much this may be ridiculed on the plea of its being the outcome of credulous belief, yet it constitutes an important element in our social life, which the historian in years to come will doubtless use when he studies the character of the English people in this and bygone centuries. INDEX. Abgarus, Letter of Christ to, 7 Ague, Charms against, 149 Apes, Leading, 43 Apple-peel as a love-test, 30 Apple-tree blooming twice, a sign of Death, 52 Apron, Superstitions about, 84 Articles of Dress, 81