Notes and Queries. 291
As my mother, who was born in 1808, recalls this incident of her childhood, the image was eight or ten inches in height, and was inserted, not in the foundations of the chimney, but on the first floor, at about the level of a person's head. Inquiries made of the antiquarians of Salem and New- buryport have failed to elicit information of any other case of the survival of foundation sacrifice in either of those towns.
N. D. C. Hodges. Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass.
Folk-Names of Animals. — In Vol. VII. of the Memoirs of this So- ciety, " Animal and Plant-Lore," there is an exceedingly brief chapter on folk-names of animals. Since the book went to press, two additional names have come to me. A young naturalist friend, in collecting mam- mals in northern New Hampshire, encountered the name wo?its for shrew- mice. His provisional theory in regard to the meaning of the name was, that it might have been given because of the well-known fact that cats won't eat these little animals. It seems to me, however, that I have seen the name, in the form oont, among animal-names from the north of England.
A common pest in dwelling-houses is the Lepisma saccharina, commonly known as slick-fish and silver-fish. These common names are not found in most of the larger dictionaries.
If any of the readers of the Journal can give me folk-names of animals which are not recognized in books, but are more or less local in their application, I shall be very glad to receive and use them.
Fanny D. Bergen.
Cambridge, Mass.
Rhyme relating to the Battle of New Orleans. — Can any one furnish information in regard to the following rhyme, apparently connected with the battle of New Orleans ?
Cotton-bags are in the way, Fire, Allalingo, fire away ; General Jackson's gained the day, Fire, Mallingo, fire away.
Charles Welsh. Boston, Mass.
A Nursery Rhyme. — The following version of a nursery rhyme, which in variant form appears in books for children, was communicated to me many years ago by an English lady, who reached the age of ninety- six years, and who had learned the rhyme in her childhood : —
THE MOUSE, THE GROUSE, AND THE LITTLE RED HEN.
One day, the little red hen was pecking about, and she found a grain of wheat. " Oh ! see here, see here," she said, " I have found some wheat : who will carry it to the mill to be ground, and we can have a cake ? "
" Who '11 carry it to the mill ? " " Not I," said the mouse,
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