_Suicides buried in Cross Roads_ (Vol. iv., pp. 116. 212. 329.).--In the fifth chapter of the most remarkable Saga of Thorfinn Karlsefne, we find some curious customs to have been prevalent in Greenland relative to the burial of the dead in unconsecrated ground. Thorstein Erikson, the second husband of Gudrida, died of a sore sickness. Many of the household had previously been carried off by the same malady, and the ghost of each corpse joined its fellows in tormenting and terrifying the survivors. The night after Thorstein's death, his corpse rose up in the bed and called for Gudrid his wife. With reluctance and terror the widow approached the body of her husband.-- "Now when Gudrid arose and went to Thorstein, it seemed to her as though he wept. And he whispered some words to her which none could hear, but these other words he spoke in a loud voice, so that all were aware thereof. 'They that keep the truth shall be saved, but many here in Greenland hold badly to this command. For it is no Christian way as here is practised, since the universal faith was brought to Greenland, to lay a corpse in unblessed earth, and to sing but little over it. It had been the custom in Greenland, after Christianity was brought in, that the dead should be buried on the lands where they died, in unhallowed earth, _and that a stake should be set up over the breast of the dead_ (_skyldi setja staur upp af brjosti hinum dauda_); and when the priest afterwards came, the stake was pulled up, and holy water was poured into the hole, and they sang over the body even though it was long after.' And Thornstein's body was carried to the church in Eriksfiord, and there it was sung over by the priests (_yfirsöngvar af Kennimönnum_.") May not this custom, which prevailed in Greenland in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, have been derived from the Scandinavian north, and there have been applied to the suicide buried in the cross road? Was the idea of burying these outcasts in such a place, the hopeful one of placing them at least under the shadow as it were of the cross, though they were denied a resting-place in consecrated ground. That the old Northerns regarded suicide with horror, we know from the "Eyrbiggia Saga," p. 530. of Mr. Blackwell's edition of Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_. EDWARD CHARLTON. Newcastle-on-Tyne. _Th' Man i' th' Almanack_ (Vol. v., p. 320.).--In old almanacks the sun is represented by a man's face inclosed in a ring, from which externally points or rays, indicating flames, appear to proceed. An Oldham recruit, billeted at the sign of the Sun, in writing home to his friends, described the sign as "_th' mon's face set a' round we skivers_.[12]" [Footnote 12: _Skivers_, skewers or pins.] ROBERT RAWLINSON.