[245] August Schleicher, Volkstuemliches aus Sonnenberg (Weimar, 1858), p. 134; B. Souche, Croyances, Presages et Traditions diverses (Niort, 1880), p. 11; A. Meyrac, Traditions, Coutumes Legendes et Contes des Ardennes (Charleville, 1890), p. 171; V. Fossel, Volksmedicin und medicinischer Aberglaube in Steiermark[2] (Graz, 1886), p. 124.  A correspondent, who withholds her name, writes to me that in a Suffolk village, where she used to live some twenty or thirty years ago, “every one pickled their own beef, and it was held that if the pickling were performed by a woman during her menstrual period the meat would not keep.  If the cook were incapacitated at the time when the pickling was due, another woman was sent for out of the village rather than risk what was considered a certainty.”  Another correspondent informs me that in some of the dales in the north of Yorkshire a similar belief prevailed down to recent years with regard to the salting of pork.  Another correspondent writes to me:  “The prohibition that a menstruating woman must not touch meat that is intended for keeping appears to be common all over the country; at least I have met with it as a confirmed and active custom in widely separated parts of England....  It is in regard to the salting of meat for bacon that the prohibition is most usual, because that is the commonest process; but it exists in regard to any meat food that is required to be kept.”

[246] R. Andree, Braunschweiger Volkskunde (Brunswick, 1896), p. 291.

[247] W.R.  Paton, in Folk-lore, i. (1890) p. 524.

[248] The Greeks and Romans thought that a field was completely protected against insects if a menstruous woman walked round it with bare feet and streaming hair (Pliny, Nat.  Hist. xvii. 266, xxviii. 78; Columella, De re rustica, x. 358 sq., xi. 3. 64; Palladius, De re rustica, i. 35. 3; Geoponica, xii. 8. 5 sq.; Aelian, Nat.  Anim. vi. 36).  A similar preventive is employed for the same purpose by North American Indians and European peasants.  See H.R.  Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States (Philadelphia, 1853-1856), v. 70; F.J.  Wiedemann, Aus dem inneren und auessern Leben der Ehsten (St. Petersburg, 1876), p. 484.  Compare J. Haltrich, Zur Volkskunde der Siebenbuerger Sachsen (Vienna, 1885), p. 280; Adolph Heinrich, Agrarische Sitten und Gebraeuche unter den Sachsen Siebenbuergens (Hermannstadt, 1880), p. 14; J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,*[4] iii. 468; G. Lammert, Volksmedizin und medizinischer Aberglaube aus Bayern (Wuerzburg, 1869), p. 147.  Among the Western Denes it is believed that one or two transverse lines tattooed on the arms or legs of a young man by a pubescent girl are a specific against premature weakness of these limbs.  See A.G.  Morice, “Notes, Archaeological, Industrial, and Sociological, on the Western Denes,” Transactions