430 G. Waldron, _Description of the Isle of Man_ (reprinted for the Manx Society, Douglas, 1865), p. 49 _sqq._; J. Train, _Account of the Isle of Man_, ii. 124 _sqq._ 141. 431 Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, iii. 195; Swainson, _Folk-lore of British Birds_, p. 36 _sq._; Rolland, _Faune populaire de la France_, ii. 297; Professor W. Ridgeway in _Academy_, 10th May 1884, p. 332; Dyer, _British Popular Customs_, p. 497. 432 Henderson, _Folk-lore of the Northern Counties_, p. 125. 433 Swainson, _op. cit._ p. 40 _sq._ 434 Rolland, _op. cit._ ii. 295 _sq._; J. W. Wolf, _Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie_, ii. 437 _sq._ 435 Rolland, _op. cit._ ii. 296 _sq._ 436 Brand’s _Popular Antiquities_, iii. 198. The “hunting of the wren” may be compared with a Swedish custom. On the 1st of May children rob the magpies’ nests of both eggs and young. These they carry in a basket from house to house in the village and show them to the housewives, while one of the children sings some doggerel lines containing a threat that, if a present is not given, the hens, chickens, and eggs will fall a prey to the magpie. They receive bacon, eggs, milk, etc., upon which they afterwards feast. L. Lloyd, _Peasant Life in Sweden_, p. 237 _sq._ The resemblance of such customs to the “swallow song” and “crow song” of the ancient Greeks (on which see Athenaeus, pp. 359, 360) is obvious and has been remarked before now. Probably the Greek swallow-singers and crow-singers carried about dead swallows and crows or effigies of them. In modern Greece it is said to be still customary for children on 1st March to go about the streets singing spring songs and carrying a wooden swallow, which is kept turning on a cylinder. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_,4 ii. 636. 437 John Ramsay, _Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century_, ii. 438 sq.; cp. Chambers, _Popular Rhymes of Scotland_, p. 166 _sq_.; Samuel Johnson, _Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland_, p. 228 _sq._ (first American edition, 1810). The custom is clearly referred to in the “Penitential of Theodore,” quoted by Kemble, _Saxons in England_, i. 525; Elton, Origins of English History, p. 411; “_Si quis in Kal. Januar. in cervulo vel vitula vadit, id est in ferarum habitus se communicant, et vestiuntur pellibus pecudum et assumunt capita bestiarum_,” etc. 438 Chambers, _l.c._