"You wormes (my rivals), whiles she was alive, How many thousands were there that did strive To have your freedome? for theyr sakes forbeare, Unseemely holes in her soft skin to wear, But if you must (as what worme can abstaine?) Taste of her tender body, yet refraine With your disordered eatings to deface her, And feed yourselves so as you most may grace her. First through her eartippes, see you work a paire Of holes, which, as the moyst enclosed _ayre_ [_air_] Turnes into water, may the cold droppes take, And in her eares a payre of jewels make. That done, upon her bosome make your feaste, Where on a crosse carve Jesus in her brest. Have you not yet enough of that soft skinne, The touch of which, in times past, might have bin Enough to ransome many a thousande soule Captiv'd to love? then hence your bodies roule A little higher; where I would you have This epitaph upon her forehead grave; Living, she was fayre, yong, and full of witt; Dead, all her faults are in her forehead writt." If I am wrong in supposing this never to have been printed, I shall feel much obliged by one of your correspondents informing me of the fact. H. A. B. Trin. Col. Cambridge. * * * * * FOLK LORE. _The Christmas Thorn._--In my neighbourhood (near Bridgewater) the Christmas thorn blossoms on the 6th of January (Twelfth-day), and on this day only. The villagers in whose gardens it grows, and indeed many others, verily believe that this fact pronounces the truth of this being the day of Christ's birth. S. S. B. _Milk-maids in 1753._--To Folk-lore may be added the following short extract from Read's _Weekly Journal_, May 5, 1733: "On May-Day the Milk-Maids who serve the Court, danced Minuets and Rigadoons before the Royal Family, at St. James's House, with great applause." Y. S. _Diseases cured by Sheep_ (Vol. iii., p. 320.).--The attempted cure of consumption, or some {368} complaints, by walking among a flock of sheep, is not new. The present Archbishop of Dublin was recommended it, or practised it at least, when young. For pulmonary complaints the principle was perhaps the same as that of following a plough, sleeping in a room over a cowhouse, breathing the diluted smoke of a limekiln, that is, the inhaling of carbonic acid, all practised about the end of the last century, when the knowledge of the gases was the favourite branch of chemistry. A friend of mine formerly met Dr. Beddoes riding up Park Street in Bristol almost concealed by a vast bladder tied to his horse's mouth. He said he was trying an experiment with oxygen on a broken-winded horse. Afterwards, finding that oxygen did not answer, he very wisely tried the gas most opposite to it in nature. C. B.