of the forty days the box was opened with due formality, and was found to contain a heap of old iron, lead, and stones, on the top of which was a large cudgel, with a parchment rolled round it, on which was written the will in these terms:--“_Ego Johannes Connaxa tale condo testamentum, at qui sui curâ relictâ, alterius curam susceperit, mactetur hâc clavâ_.” [221] From Rachel Du Port. [222] “He that gives away all Before he is dead, Let ’em take this hatchet And knock him on ye head.” _Notes and Queries_, IV. Series, Vol. III., pp. 526 and 589. Vol. IV., p. 213. See _Gentleman’s Magazine Library_. Popular Superstitions. _The Holy Maul_, p. 181. Compare representation of a hammer or pickaxe, sculptured on threshold of west door of Vale Church. LE RATÉ. When the means of education were not so good or so plentiful in Guernsey as they are in the present day, it was customary, with the better class of farmers, to send their sons to school in England for a year or two, in order that they might acquire, together with a more correct knowledge of the English tongue, such acquaintance with the ways of the world as might fit them to enter upon the active duties of life on their return home. This object, we may suppose, was to a certain extent gained, but, like the monkey who had seen the world, many of these youths returned to their native isle with an inflated idea of their own consequence, and affecting to despise and ignore all that had been familiar to them from their earliest childhood. It is said of one of these young men, that, after a residence of no long duration in England, he pretended, on his return, to have completely forgotten the names of some of the most common farming implements, and, indeed, to have almost lost the use of his mother tongue. His father was in despair, for it was evident that if the boy could not converse with the labourers, he would be of little or no assistance in directing the farming operations. A lucky accident set the father’s mind at rest on this score. His son, in passing through the farmyard, put his foot on a rake that was lying on the ground, partly hidden by some straw. The handle flew up and hit him a smart blow on the forehead, upon which, forgetting his pretended ignorance, he exclaimed, in good Guernsey-French, “_Au Guyablle seit le râté_,” (“Devil take the rake.”) His father, who was standing by, congratulated him on the miraculous recovery of his memory, and begged him henceforth not to forget “_sen râté_.” The proverbial saying “_Il n’a pas roublliaï sen râté_,” (“He has not forgotten his rake,”) is still applied to a person who remembers what he learned in his youth.[223] [223] See a story precisely similar in its incidents in that curious collection MacTaggart’s _Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopædia_, under the word “Claut.” The story must be an ancient one, to be told in places so far apart as Galloway and Guernsey, and speaking totally different languages.