principle, these rustics hang up _their_ sign-board,--as one of them,
with whom I was once remonstrating, most graphically explained to me.
When they knew of a house where the master deems a little wholesome
discipline necessary to ensure the obedience of love, considering it a
pity that the world should be ignorant of his manly virtues, they strew
"well threshed" chaff or straw before his door, as an emblematical
sign-board, to proclaim that the sweet fare and "good entertainment" of
a "well threshed" article may be found within. The custom, at all
events, has one good tendency, it shames the tyrant into restraint, when
he knows that his cowardly practices are patent to the world.

Lambert B. Larking.

* * * * *

FOLK LORE OF WALES.

No. 1. _Cron Annwn_.--When a storm sounds over the mountains, the Welsh
peasant will tell you that his ear discerns the howl of the _Cron Annwn_
mingling with that of the wind, yet as clearly distinct from it as is
the atmosphere in a diving-bell from that of the surrounding waters.
These dogs of Annwn, or "couriers of the air," are spirit hounds, who
hunt the souls of the dead; or, as occasionally said, they foretell, by
their expectant cries, the approaching death of some man of evil deeds.
Few have ever pretended to see them; for few, we presume, would linger
until they dawned on the sight; but they are described by Taliesin, and
in the _Mabinogion_, as being of a clear shining white, with red ears;
colouring which confirms the author of the _Mythology of the Ancient
Druids_ in the idea that these dogs were "a mystical transformation of
the Druids with their white robes and red tiaras." Popular superstition,