i. p. 405.), these
gifts were evidently expressions of condescension and good will by one in a
high position to another in a somewhat lower station. It is, I take it,
evident that the money-gifts, from the rank in life of the parties, and
their connection with the Countess, could have been made with no other
meaning or intention.
JAS. CROSBY.
Streatham, April 22. 1850.
* * * * *
FOLK LORE.
_Exhumation of a Body ominous to Family of the Deceased._--In the counties
of Leicester and Northampton, and I doubt not in other parts of England,
there is a superstitious idea that the removal or exhumation of a body
after interment bodes death or some terrible calamity to the surviving
members of the deceased's family. Turner, in his _History of Remarkable
Providences_, Lond. 1677, p. 77., thus alludes to this superstition:--
"Thomas Fludd of Kent, Esq., told me that it is an old
observation which was pressed earnestly to King James I., that he
should not remove the Queen of Scots' body from Northamptonshire,
where she was beheaded and interred. For that it always bodes ill
to the family when bodies are removed from their graves. For
some of the family will die shortly after, as did Prince Henry,
and, I think, Queen Anne.
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