Query, Is this custom practised elsewhere; and what is the meaning and origin of the use of the bay?
_Shoes (old) thrown for luck._--Brand, in his _Popular Antiquities_, observes, that it is accounted { 197} lucky by the vulgar to throw an old shoe after a person when they wish him to succeed in what he is going about. This custom is very prevalent in Norfolk whenever servants are going in search of new places; and especially when they are going to be married, a shoe is thrown after them as they proceed to church.
Some years ago, when the vessels engaged in the Greenland whale-fishery left Whitby, in Yorkshire, I observed the wives and friends of the sailors to throw old shoes at the ships as they passed the pier-head. Query, What is the origin of this practice?
_Roasting Mice for Hooping-cough_ is also very common in Norfolk; but I am sorry to say that a more cruel superstitious practice is sometimes inflicted on the little animal; for it is not many years since I accidentally entered the kitchen in time to save a poor little mouse from being hung up by the tail and roasted alive, as the means of expelling the others of its race from the house. I trust that this barbarous practice will soon be forgotten.
_The Story of Mr. Fox._--Your correspondent F.L., who has related the story of Sir Richard, surnamed Bloody, Baker, is, doubtless, aware of a similar tale with which Mr. Blakeway furnished my late friend James Boswell, and which the latter observed "is perhaps one of the most happy illustrations of Shakspeare that has appeared."--(Malone's _Shakspeare_, vol. vii. pp. 20. 163.)
The two narratives of Bloody Baker and Mr. Fox are substantially the same. Variations will naturally creep in when a story is related by word of mouth; for instance, the admonition over the chamber in Mr. Fox's house--
"Be bold, be bold! but not too bold Lest that your heart's blood should run cold."
is altogether of a more dignified character than the similar warning given by the parrot, at p. 68. Each of these worthies, Baker and Fox, is seen bringing into his house the corpse of a murdered lady, whose hand falls into the lap of the concealed visitor; but in Fox's story the ornament on the hand is a rich bracelet, in Baker's a ring. The assassins are, in both stories, invited to the visitor's house, and upon Fox _summary_ justice is inflicted.