Note 3 — I.—INTRODUCTORY.

Any arrangement of subjects is of course arbitrary; but I shall endeavour to follow what seems to me the most natural order of sequence; and I must here be pardoned for devoting a short space to explaining what I conceive that order to be. The unstudied arrangement of many able works on European folk-lore, although perhaps adding additional charm to their perusal on the part of the general reader, somewhat militates against their use for handy reference by those who care to study them for the sake of comparison. It is therefore much to be desired that some general system could be agreed upon by those who care to make this entertaining subject a matter of serious research. With some diffidence I adopt an arrangement which deals in the first instance with superstitions personal to the individual, such as those relating to birth, marriage and death—superstitions which we find equally disseminated amongst the most degraded and the most civilized peoples of the earth. To these succeed the beliefs accorded to the good or evil luck attaching to days or seasons. Next to them come the credence placed in lucky numbers, portents, auguries and dreams, succeeded by the popular beliefs in charms, spells and divinations. These are followed by accounts of popular superstitions—such as those relating to drowned men, the last piece of edible left upon a plate, the virtues of human blood, &c. Entering the domain of the more technically supernatural, but still dealing with beliefs immediately affecting the happiness or misery of mankind, we come to witchcraft and demonology,—sprites, elves and fairies, such as those who, to quote a native composition, “come in clouds and go in mist;” who make use of “grass that when cut makes horses, or beans that when scattered become fighting men.”3 Ghosts and apparitions are naturally connected with the foregoing. The next section refers to dragons, serpents, fabulous animals, and monsters, which play as important a part in the popular legends of China as in those of Christendom. Long before our patron saint St. George slew the monster so long depicted on the now extinct five-shilling piece, a doughty Chinese champion (a lady, by the way) had performed a similar feat, and had been also embalmed in popular memory; while the snake, regarded with not less awe as an incarnation of the supernatural in China than in Europe, figures conspicuously in her legendary lore. Natural phenomena, such as typhoons, earthquakes, floods, &c., which I next deal with, have naturally, here as elsewhere, been attributed to supernatural influence from time immemorial. Legends form the next division of our subject, commencing with those of locality; for the hills and vales of Cathay have their haunted spots, and its cities too have their haunted houses. Legends of Locality and Household Tales conclude this branch of the subject, a selection of the best known, and those of an essentially popular nature, being alone given. Fables and Proverbial Lore complete the series; but the latter has been too fully dealt with in separate works and essays to render more than passing reference to its characteristics necessary.