Hone's Year Book

William Hone, The Year Book of Daily Recreation and Information (1832).

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One volume, 1832. Later editions bind it with the Every-Day Book and the Table Book.

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Monday 1 March

Printed under this month, but not tied to a day: anecdotes, charms and beliefs the books set down here.

Folklore from the old calendars

Charming the sword No longer kept IrelandUnder St Patrick's Day Hone gathered old English accounts of Irish beliefs.
Paschal wax for the cattle Lore and belief EnglandHone reprinted from Reginald Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft a charm to keep cattle from being bewitched.
Peter Priestley’s hiss Lore and belief YorkshireAbout 1790 Peter Priestley was clerk, sexton and gravestone cutter at Wakefield parish church, a man not given to superstitious fears.
The Bath prophecy Lore and belief SomersetBath was to be destroyed at noon on 30 March 1809 by an earthquake that would make Beacon Hill meet Beechen Cliff, as an old woman claimed an angel had told her.
The Newcastle witch-pricker Lore and belief NorthumberlandOn 26 March 1649 the townspeople of Newcastle petitioned the council about witches, and the magistrates sent to Scotland for a man who claimed to find them by pricking with pins, at twenty shillings for every one he condemned.
Weathercocks in the Kentish trees No longer kept KentOn Lady Day 1672 John Evelyn rode back from the Kent coast through the best farmed country he had ever seen, the fields as level as a bowling green.