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 they were offerings, pure and simple, to the spirit of the well, and referred to examples in confirmation. Among other items, I have come across an account of an Irish "station," as it is called, at a sacred well, the details of which fully bear out my view as to the nature of the rags deposited at the shrine being offerings to the local deity. One of the devotees, in true Irish fashion, made his offering accompanied by the following words: "To St. Columbkill--I offer up this button, a bit o' the waistband o' my own breeches, an' a taste o' my wife's petticoat, in remimbrance of us havin' made this holy station; an' may they rise up in glory to prove it for us in the last day."[221] I shall not attempt to account for the presence of the usual Irish humour in this, to the devotee, most solemn offering; but I point out the undoubted nature of the offerings and their service in the identification of their owners--a service which implies their power to bear witness in spirit-land to the pilgrimage of those who deposited them during lifetime at the sacred well.[222] Now, in all these cases there is an original and a secondary, or derivative, form of the superstition, and it is our object to trace out which is which. Do the rags deposited at wells symbolise offerings to the local deity? If so, they bring us within measurable distance of a cult which rests upon faith in the power of natural objects to harm or render aid to human beings. Does the question of first-foot rest upon the colour of the hair or upon the sex of the person? I think, looking at all the examples I have been able to examine, that colour is really the older basis of the superstition, and, if so, ethnological considerations are doubtless the root of it. Again, if the eldest son of the deceased owner of bees appears in the earliest form of the death-telling ceremony, we have an interesting fragment of the primitive house-ritual of our ancestors.