show
of niggardnesse. That day their boats are dressed curiously for the
showe, their masts are painted, and certain rytes observed amongst them
with sprinkling their bows with good liquor, which custome or
superstition, sucked from their ancestors, even continueth down unto
this present tyme.'

Perhaps at 'this present tyme' the ceremonies are not so elaborate; but
survivals of the 'custome or superstition' are to be found yet in our
fishing villages.

It is probable that the observers of St. Peter's Day do not know the
origin of their curious customs. It is certain that sailors, as a class,
do not now know why their favourite little bird is called petrel. We
have tried to remove the stigma which in modern times has come to rest
upon Mother Carey's chickens. Let us no longer do them wrong by
supposing that they are always the harbingers of woe. They have a busy
and a useful life, and it is one, as we have seen, with tender, even
sacred, associations.

It may be recalled as an interesting, although not an agreeable item,
that in the days of the French Revolution there was a notorious brood of
Mother Carey's chickens in Paris. They were the female rag-tag-and-bobtail
of the city, whose appearance in the streets was understood to forebode
a fresh political tumult. What an insult to our feathered friends to
bestow their honoured name on such human fiends!

The real Mother Carey is she who appeared to Tom and Ella in Peacepool,
after they had learned a few things about themselves and the world. They
heard her voice calling to them, and they looked, crying:

'"Oh, who are you, after all? You are our dear Mrs.
Do-as-you-would-be-done-by."

'"No, you are good Mrs. Be-done-by-as-you-did; but you are grown quite
beautiful now!"

'"To you," said the Fairy; "but look again."

'"You are Mother Carey," said Tom, in a very low, solemn voice, for he
had found out something which made him very happy, and yet frightened
him more than all that he had ever seen.

'"But you are grown quite young again."

'"To you," said the Fairy; "but look again."

'"You are the Irishwoman who met me the day I went to Harthover!"

'And when they looked again she was neither of them, and yet all of them
at once.

'"My name is written in my eyes, if you have eyes to see it there."

'And they looked into her great, deep soft eyes, and they changed again
and again into every hue, as the light changes in a diamond.

'"Now read my name," sai