DAY BY DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 89, Issue 13814, 19 July 1918, Page 4

DAY BY DAY

People who believe in omens and portents and prophecies conOmens eerning the war will be ana interested, we have no Fortents. doubt, in a portent of which news has just come from Ireland. On May Ist the town of Strokestown, in Roscommon, was exeitpl by a report that a little girl of 12 had seen a black pig come up out of the ground and walk about. She told the teacher, who came but failed to see the animal, although the discoverer and other children persisted that it was there, actually walking across the master's boots. On the next day the children saw it again, and some adults gathered, but these latter could see nothing. The affair has caused a sensation in Roscommon, where many people affirm that St. Columcille prophesied the coining of a black pig as an evil omen for Ireland. One legend runs that "the black pig"—not "a" black pig—was chased over half of Ireland by St. Patrick, who finally captured him and commanded him to stay until the years of the Great War. Trouble for Ireland could onlv be averted if the pig were shot by a oneeyed marksman at Honny-a-glass, a field behind the rectory at Kilmore. This legend is quite as good and reliable as any that have to do with the war, and it has more bodv in it, as it were.

The general public, forced to pay hitherto undreamed of Cost prices for materials, are of inclined sometimes to Materials, think that they are being exploited by the retailer under the cloak of "war conditions ; but that the retailer is not always the exploiter lie is accused of being is proved by the following figures, supplied by an importer to his clients :n Hamilton, showing the abnormal rise in the cost of certain materials between 1915 and 1918; Patent satin quilts 1914, lis 2d; 1918, 30s 6.1; coloured Alhainbra quilts, 7s id—26s; white Turkish towels, l is 3d-—32s 6d; striped Turkish towels, 10s 3d—3Bs; brown linen pile, lbs lid—Bßs 6d; bleached sheeting, is i*d—3s 6d; silvasteen, bid—ls 4d; flannelette, (>id—ls 8 3 dIloyles' print, 4 9-lGd—ls 3?d. '