the ass and the cross
TRANSCRIPT
The Ass and the CrossAuthor(s): Charles MitchellSource: Folklore, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Dec., 1937), p. 426Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1257555 .
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426 Correspondence
tated as a sign of servitude and closing of the hand with thumb inside is a ritual against the Evil Eye. Also I remember well as a child being told that if you clenched your fist with the thumb inside you were girlish. Now there is considerable evidence that the teeth have been regarded as phallic symbols or at any rate loss of teeth indicated loss of virility. So they symbolized the " will to live ". Do you know if there is any such association with the thumb? The association between teeth and thumbs has not to my knowledge been touched upon by any writers on dental folklore and it is an interesting avenue of speculation.
Yours sincerely, B. R. TOWNEND, L.D.S.
To THE EDITOR OF Folk-Lore
NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, GREENWICH, S.E.IO
DEAR SIR,-I am trying to discover whether the story that the ass has a cross on his back because he carried Christ into Jerusalem is older than the seventeenth century, and am looking for literary evidence of its existence then or earlier. I have found one reference in Browne's Vulgar Errors, but have failed to find any in Migne, the Exempla Literature, Moralized Aesops and other obvious sources.
Information would be gladly received. Yours faithfully,
CHARLES MITCHELL
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