Folk-Medicine: A Chapter in the History of Culture

|N approaching a subject involved in great obscurity 
the first duty of a writer must be to strike a note 
of warning. This is specially necessary when the 
primitive conceptions of the origin of disease, as 
suggested or evinced by existing folk-lore and kindred concep- 
tions in Folk-Medicine generally, are to be considered. How- 
ever well authenticated the facts may seem to be, any conjecture 
founded on them should, in the present state of our knowledge, 
be tendered with caution, and only accepted after careful con- 
sideration, for generalization on the subject of superstitions must 
be always perilous. 

But, while this is so, it must be obvious that no progress can 
be made at all unless we grapple with such facts as we have. 
We have some data to go upon. The possibility of arriving at 
definite rules in other branches has been proved, over and over 
again, by the students at home and on the Continent, who have 
presented the world with studies at once exact and liberal — 
exact, because they are the fruit of untiring zeal in seeking 
authentic sources of information ; liberal, because the bare 
facts have been collectively illuminated by a light which could 
have had no existence had generalization not been attempted. 

B 

It cannot be altogether vain to hope that reasons for investiga- 
tion, of a precise kind, may also be found in the beliefs which are 
treated of in the following pages, and, although it has always 
been with hesitation that I have allowed myself to do more than 
place my notes before my readers, yet these beliefs, like living 
things, have a beginning and a reason, and some indulgence may 
perhaps be allowed to one who finds his barque sailing among 
strange islands. 

I may go further, and affirm that in the matter of that which 
follows there is much which deserves attention. The facts are, 
indeed, so scattered up and down the pages of travels and his- 
tories, of voya^^es and tales, that it is easy to excuse even a man 
interested l\e proper study of mankind having but hazy 
notions of the thoughts of his rural countrymen on such a 
subject; yet, apart from other things, we have in the Folk- 
Medicine which still exists the unwritten record of the be- 
ginning of the practice of medicine and surgery. 

Medical science, like everything else, like our language and 
our mental conceptions, is the reward of long seeking after 
light. It has been built up from generation to generation by 
one people after another, by one man finding out the errors of a 
predecessor, and a third improving upon both. The tendency 
of all such developments, however, is to follow the conqueror's 
plan, and bum the ships. In nature the branch bursts from the 
tree, and the leaf bursts from the branch, but the growth of the 
branch does not make the tree less useful, nor does the leaf 
detract from the branch's merit. In the processes of men's 
minds, on the other hand, things go differently. When a 
thought has borne a new fruit, a new thought, — ^the new thought 
succeeds to the place of the old, as one king succeeds another 
on a throne. The old idea is consigned at once to the limbo 
of the forgotten. It seems useless, unnecessary, cumbering, 
dead, beside the new. In course of time, therefore, a work 
of no small difficulty lies before the student or philosopher 

who attempts to trace the growth of a single science if written 
records are wanting. It has not been my intention to illus- 
trate of purpose, by Folk-Medicine, the development of medical 
science; this is not the place for, nor am I competent to 
undertake, such investigation, but I do not hesitate to say 
that the early history of medical science, as of all other de- 
velopments of culture, can be studied more narrowly and 
more accurately in the folk-lore of this and other countries 
than some students of modern science and exact modern records 
may think possible. Mr. Spencer has said * the course of social 
change is so irregular, involved, and rhythmical, that it cannot 
be judged of in its general direction by inspecting any small 
portion of it; but, while this is admitted, when we consider 
an earlier remark of the same writer, f that true appreciation of 
the successive facts which an individual life, even, presents is 
generally hindered by inability to grasp the gradual processes 
by which ultimate effects are produced, it becomes clear that to 
elucidate the contending and conflicting facts, as well as may 
be, by the aid of comparative folk-lore, is at least one reason 
why such works as deal with the history of culture may g-d- 
vantageously be compiled and consulted. 

After the first shock of death the natural task of- man was to 
seek a reason for the sudden lack of life in one who, but a short 
time before, had gone about the world as did his brothers still. 
It must soon have been suggested that the rude weapon of the 
chase which had missed its aim had some volition of its own, 
or that some mysterious influence, which had protected the 
victim from injury before, had been absent or unfriendly. Such 
a thing as natural death was probably for a long time inconceiv- 
able, as it appdftrs still inconceivable to such peoples as the 
Prairie Indians, who treat all diseases alike, since they must all 
alike have been caused by one evil spirit. In the South 

* The study of Sociology, 7th edition, p. 105. 
t Ibid. p. 102. 

B 2 ^^^^^ MEDICAL LIBRARY 

STANF0;^;D UNiVERsixy 

Pacific no one is supposed to die a natural death unless de- 
crepit with extreme old age^ and in South Africa^ according 
to Chapman, and Philip, and Cameron, it is thought that no 
man dies from natural causes, or by Heaven's decree ; he must 
have been either poisoned or bewitched.* Instances might bo 
gathered from all quarters of the world where man in some 
measure retains the primitive thought, and traces of the belief 
may be found in modem folk-lore, perhaps also in the anxiety 
which is shown to account for any manner of illness by some 
external cause. 

Many are the reasons, as D'lharace says, that have tended to 
errors in medicine, ^^ teles que les pr^jug^ de I'^ucation, la 
disposition naturelle k I'erreur, les fausses id^, la cr^ulite, la 
prevention pour Tantiquit^, I'autorite, Texemple, et plusieurs 
autres, que les dialectriciens connoissent," t but it is not neces- 
sary here to do more than refer to the three great sources of 
disease and death which have commended themselves to peoples 
in search of some other explanation of the suspension of life 
than is oflFered by belief in natural death. These are — 

(1.) The anger of an offended external spirit ; 
(2.) The supernatural powers of a human enemy ; 
(3.) The displeasure of the dead. 

(1.) Nothing can be more easily aroused than the anger of 
a spirit. In L'ien-chow, in the province of Kwang-si, if a 
man hits his foot against a stone, and afterwards falls sick, 
his family know that there was a demon in the stone, and they 
immediately repair to the place where it lies with offerings of 
fruit, wine, rice, and incense, and worship. After this the 

♦ Lubbock, Ori^fin of Civilization^ p. 29 ; Gill, Myths and Songs from the 
So^Uh Pacific, p. 35 } Chapman, Travels in Africa, vol. i. p. 47 ; Philip, 
Sowth Africa, vol. i. p. 118 ; Cameron, Across Africa, vol. i.p. 116 ; Christian 
Express (Lovedale, S. Africa,) October, 1878, p. 11. 

t D'lharace, Erreurs popidaires sur la Medecine, 1783, p. ill. 

patient recovers.* The aborigines of Australia ascribe small- 
pox to a spirit who delights in mischief; in Cambodia all disease 
is attributed to an evil spirit who torments the sick man. 
Among the Dayacks of Borneo to have been smitten by a spirit 
is to be ill ; " sickness may be caused by invisible spirits inflict- 
ing invisible wounds with invisible speai's, or entering men's 
bodies and driving them raving mad." "As in normal con- 
ditions the man's soul^ inhabiting his body, is held to give it 
life, to think, speak, and act through it, so an adaptation of the 
self-same principle explains abnormal conditions of body or 
mind, by considering the new symptoms as due to the operation 
of a second soul-like being, a strange spirit. The possessed 
man, tossed and shaken in fever, pained and wrenched as though 
some live creature were tearing or twisting him within, ration- 
ally finds a personal spiritual cause for his sufierings," and a 
name for the possessing demon, " which it can declare when it 
speaks in its own voice and character through his organs of 
speech," so implicit is the sick man's belief in the personality, f 
The disease spirit having been thus created, we are not sui'prised 
that the native Australians regard their demon Biam as black and 
deformed, since he is the inflictor of small-pox, although neither 
Wuotan in Scandinavian mythology, nor Apollo in classic, share 
his repulsiveness, and yet from both, as Grimm points out, 
came severe illnesses and pestilence as well as cures.J Per- 
sonification of disease is general. In Ceylon the great demon 
of disease is associated with a peculiar legend. His father was 
a king who, believing his queen to have been faithless to him, 

♦ Dennys, Iblk-Lore of Chinas p. 96. Cf . " Even Siva is worshipped as a 
stone) especially that Siva who will afflict a child with epileptic fits, and then, 
speaking by its voice, will announce that he is Fanchanana, the Five-faced, and 
is punishing the child for insulting his image." — Tylor, Primitive Oultv/re^ 
vol. ii. p. 150. 

t Tylor, Primitive Oultwe, vol. ii. pp. 113, 114, 116. 

t Conway, Demonohgy and Devil-Lore, vol. i. p. 98 ; Grimm, Deutsche 
Mythologie, vol. i. p. 123 ; Stallybrass, vol. i. p. 149. 

L.r\ 1 i L iVi • • •• . ■ >■!..■,'.•>/ 

STAr.iF:."-. ■;••• :.^^ 

ordered her to be cut in two, one part of her body to be thrown 
to the dogs, and one part hung upon a tree. The queen before 
this sentence was executed is reported to have said, " If this 
charge be fake, may the child in my womb be bom this instant 
a demon, and may that demon destroy the whole of this city 
and its unjust king." Nevertheless the sentence was executed. 
But a wonder happened. The severed parts reunited, and a 
child was bom, who repaired to the burying-place of the city and 
there fattened on the corpses. " Then he proceeded to inflict 
mortal diseases upon the city, and had nearly depopulated it, when 
the godslswara and Sekkra interfered, descending to subdue him 
in the disguise of mendicants." He had eighteen principal 
attendants, the first of whom was the Demon of Madness.* 
This seems to have been almost as dreadftd a monster as that 
which appeared in a dream to a Chinese emperor who flourished 
about 700 A.D. One day when ho was iU, he dreamt he saw a 
blue half-naked devil coming into his palace. He stole the 
empress's perfume ba^:. and also the emperor's flute, which was 
ml of pLiom stones, and flew off with them to the palace 
roof. Suddenly there appeared another blue devil, but of 
giant stature, having a black leather high boot on ono foot, 
the other being bare. He had on a blue gown. One arm 
was bare, and wielded a massive sword. His head was 
like that of a bull. This fierce-looking monster seized the 
little one, and with a blow made an end of him. The emperor 
was greatly flattered at being visited by such a distinguished, 
although unearthly, personage, and waking xip found his disease 
gone. He called a painter to paint for him what he had seen in 
his dream, and it was executed so faithfully that the emperor 
ordered two himdred ounces of gold to be given him, and that 
copies of the painting should be distributed thi'ough the whole 
empire, so that all the people might know and pay due respect 

* Conway, Demonology^ vol. i. pp. 261, 262. 

to this blue bull-headed demon. To this day he holds a con- 
spicuous place in the temples of the people.* 

As the disease spirits of less cultured men than Chinese em- 
perors would be proportionally more horrible, we can believe it 
is with gratification the Orang Laut, like the Khonds of Orissa, 
contemplate the barricades of thorns and bushes, and ditches and 
stinking oil with which they endeavour to keep ofiF the goddess 
of small pox. So too among the Betschvaria, that disease may 
be averted, or prevented from entering their town, if a painted 
stone be planted in the ground in the middle of the entrance 
to the town (each town being inclosed by a hedge of bushes), 
or if a crossbar, duly smeared with medicine, be put up at the 
entrance. "When this is done, they imagine themselves safe." 
In the same sense we read in the Medicina de QuadrupedUms 
of Sextus Placitus, when he refers to the virtues of the neat, 
" take his liver, divide it, and delve it down at the turnings 
round of thy land boundaries, and of thy borough wall founda- 
tions, and hide the heart at thy borough gates ; then thou and 
thine shall be released in health to go about and home to return ; 
all pestilence shall be driven away, and what was ere done shall 
naught scathe, and there shall little mischief from fire." f 

This personification of disease, this theory that " jeder todes- 
engel ist der Tod selbst, der seine leute abholt " is illustrated in the 
imaginative conception of the same dread power, which we find in 
times more ancient than those of Sextus Placitus, " To the mind 
of the Israelite," says Mr. Tylor, " death and pestilence took the 
personal form of the destroying angel who smote the doomed."^ 
And in Justinian's time men saw brazen barques with black and 
headless men on board, and, where the vessel touched, there the 
pestilence appeared. 

* DenuySy Folh-Lore of China, p. 84. 

t Tylor, Primitive Culture^ vol. ii. pp. 115, 116 ; Sonth African Folk-Lore 
Jmirnal, vol. i. p. 34 ; Cockayne, LeeoJidovis, vol. i. pp. 329-331. 

J Grimm, Dentsche Mythologie, vol. ii. p. 989, et seq. ; Tylor, Primitive 
Cvlture, vol. i. p. 267 ; 2 Samuel xxiv. 16 ; 2 Kings xix. 36. 

Naturally when the fear of this personified disease overcame 
man he strove to make friends with his enemy by giving 
flattering names, '^so heisst es das gute, das gesegnete, das 
selige oder die seuche wird gevatterin angeredet," — as among 
the Greeks the furies were called Eumenides, and among our- 
selves the fairies — the mediaeval descendants of the jinns and 
demons of the East and the giants and monsters of the South — 
were so long styled " the good people," as in course of time to 
acquire all the good attributes which should pertain to such a 
name. It was beyond the imaginative power of man in any 
country, however, to cast this rosy light over the grim death 
angel himself. He was called the Good and the Blessed, but it 
was impossible to associate with the grim realiiy — except in the 
language of hyperbolical poetry — the magic human meaning of 
the words. We have, therefore, and in modern literature, a 
twofold personification of death, which it is difiicult to distin- 
guish although not impossible to comprehend. Like the good 
people, the lineal descendants of a superhuman race, we have 
death the reaper and death the brother of sleep, but we have also 
the grim skeleton ; we have, in a word, in our mind, at once both 
the terror-striking " Pest " and the mysterious " Good." And 
this double conception we owe to a time so ancient that our 
brains almost reel at the thought of the thousand minds required 
to give rounded significance to an idea. 

The Assyrians and Babylonians believed that the world was 
swarming with noxious spirits, who, in food or drink, might be 
swallowed, and so cause disease. Three hundred were of heaven, 
and six hundred of earth. Exorcisms were employed to expel 
the spirits, apparently in all cases, for no mention has been 
found of medicine. **The baneful charm," — runs one of these 
exorcisms — " like an evil demon, acts against the man. The 
voice that defiles acts upon him. The maleficent voice acts 
upon him. The baneful charm is a spell that originates sick- 
ness." These exorcisms appear to have been borrowed by 

the Assyrians from the primitive population of Babylonia.* 
Among the Finns, whoso language resembles the agglutinative 
language of the eariy Babylonians, all disease is regarded as the 
work of a demon, and the tietjat (savants) and noijat are said 
to have the power of chasing from the body diseases, " con- 
siderees comme des etres personnels, par le moyen de leurs for- 
mules, de leurs chants, et aussi de breuvages enohant6s dans la 
composition desquels ils faisaient entrer des substances rdeUement 
pharmaceutiques; ils ^taient les seuls medecins de la nation."t 

" Les Kirghises," says M. Lenormant, whose citations and 
remarks on this point are particularly interesting, ** s'addres- 
sent de memo k leurs sorciers ou baksy^ pour chasser les demons 
et gu^rir ainsi les maladies qu'on suppose produites par eux. Pour 
cela,ils fouettent lemalade jusqu'au sang et lui crachent au visage. 
Toute affection est a leurs yeux un ^tre personnel. Cette idee est 
pareillement si accreditee chez les Tchouvaches, qu'ils assurent 
que le moindre oubli des devoirs est puni par une maladie que 
leur envoio Tchemen, d^mon dont le nom est une forme alt^r^e de 
Schaitan. On retrouve a pen pr^s la mSme opinion chez les 
Tchouktchis ; ces sauvages ont recours, pour delivrer les 
malades, aux plus bizarres conjurations, "f Grimm quotes 
from a Finnish song, — ** einen alten frau, neun knaben 
geboren werden ; werwolf, schlange, risi (?) eidechse, nacht- 
mar, gliedschmerz, gichtschmerz, milzstechen, bauchgrimmen. 
Diese krankheiten sind also geschwister venderblicher umge- 
hauer ; in dem lied wird dann die letze derselben hervorgehoben 
und beschworen."§ That a person was bewitched, however, 
sometimes needed proof, but Cotta, in his Tryal of Witchcraft^ 

* Records of the Past, vol. i. p. 131 ; vol. iil. pp. 139, 147. 

f Lenormant, La MagUchez les Chaldiens^i^, 219 (quoting Lonnrot, Abhand^ 
lung iiber die TnagiseJie Medicin der Mn/nen), 

% Lenormant, Ibid. p. 188 (Levehine, Description des hordes et des steppes 
des KirghiZ'KazahSy pp. 356, 368 ; Nouvelles Annales des Voyages^ 5* s^rie, t. iv. 

p. 191). 
§ Grimm, Detitsohe Mythologies vol. ii. p. 972 ; Lenormant, Ibid, pp. 232, 233. 

made clear the two ways by which, as he says, reason may detect 
if the sick have been bewitched. The first way is by such things 
as are subject and manifest to the learned physician only ; the 
second is by such things as are subject and manifest to the 
vulgar view ; that is to say — ^first, by the preternatural appear- 
ance of the disease ; and secondly, the inefiicaoy of the remedies * 
Hodgson records a more elaborate mode of discovery practised 
among the Bodo and Dhimal. The exorcist sets thirteen loaves 
round the patient ; these represent the gods, one of whom must 
have been offended. The exorcist then holds a pendulum 
attached to his thumb by a string, until the god, much besought, 
declares himself by making the pendulum swing towards his 
representative loaf. The chief of Queensland demons makes him- 
self visible at great assemblies, and, as he is not only the author 
of disease, but also of mischief and wisdom, he fitly makes his 
appearance as a serpent. To the present day there are people 
in Great Britain who have seen the disease serpent when 
exhibiting himself in the annoying illness called shingles. One 
physician suffered so extremely as in moments of excessive pain to 
touch the rough scales of the imagined serpent with his hand.t 

It is more natural to regard the spirits as each appointed to 
a special charge, as do the Mintira of the Malay peninsula 
(whose most feared demons are tree-demons), than as causing all 
diseases impartially because they simply happened to be disea^s. 
Dr. William Bamsay, a court physician of the seventeenth cen- 
tuiy, thought that magicians and witches, as " the imps and 
instruments of Satan," might be instrumental in causing worms 
especially^. One wonders if this repute has any connection with 
the Polish naming of the wiese leiite Wiirmer, those who " in 
den menschen krankheiten verursachen." The connection 

♦ Cited by Spalding, Mizabethan Demonologyf p. 64. 

t Hodgson, AhoT, of India, p. 170, cited by Tylor, Primitive OuUurey vol. i. 
pp. 114,115,378,278-9. 

X TyloT, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. pp. 116,196; Ramsay's lEXfiiv9o\oyia, p. 79 
(1668). Bamsay supports his theory with many qnaint tales, citing Boisardns, 
De Divinatione, &c. 

would certainly be strengthened by the fact that, while some 
peoples have taught that toothache is the work of a devil (perhaps 
of a particular devil, and as the New Zealanders gave a separate 
deiiy to each part of the body, Tonga, to cause headache and 
sickness, Moko-Tiki, pains in the chest, and so on, the Chris- 
tians allotted saints and devils*), others have declared it to be 
the work of a worm ; but to this we shall refer later on. The 
Assyrians shared the same apportioning belief as the New Zea- 
landers, it appears, for among their demons, to which reference 
has above been made, some injured the head, some the hands 
and feet, f The Zulus, while believing in spirits, lay special 
stress on the killing propensities of the rainbow. " When it 
devours a person, he dies a sudden or violent death. All persons 
that die badly, by falls, by drowning, or by wild beasts, die 
because the rainbow has devoured their ka-la or spirit. On 
devouring persons it becomes thirsiy, and comes down to drink, 
when it is seen in the sky drinking water. Therefore, when people 
see the rainbow they say, * The rainbow has come to drink water. 
Look out, some one or other will die violently by an evil death.' " 
This is the belief of the Karens of Birma, and the Zulus similarly 
say, " The rainbow is disease. If it rests on a man something 
will happen to him. "J Well might these peoples wish the rain- 
bow were as accommodating as the demon in China, who may 
be pacified by a meal, after it has entered the body of a rela- 
tive of the sick man, and has reproved him for the sin which 

* Biesters, cited by Grimm, DeutsoJt-e MythologiSy vol. ii. p. 968. Taylor, New 
Zealand and its InhahitantSy p. 34. Lubbock, Origin of Cimlizationy p. 30. 

f Records of the Pasty vol. iii. p. 140. 

t Mason, Karens^ in Jour. As. Soo. Bengal, 1865, part ii. p. 217 ; Callaway, 
Zulu Tales, vol. i. p. 294 ; Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 266. Lightning, it 
might be expected, would be universally regarded as a terrible demon, but " einen 
blitzerschlagnen preisen die Osseten gliicklich und glauben, Elias (Hia) habe ihn 
zu sich genommen ; die hinterblieben erheben freudengeschrei, singen nnd tanzen 
nm den leichnam, alles stromt herzu, schliesst sich dem reihen an und singt : * O 
EUai, Ellai eldaer tschoppei' (O Elias, Elias, herr derfelsengipfel)."— Grimm, 
jyevtsche Myth^logu, vol. i. p. 145. Stallyhrass, vol. i, p. 174. 

had brought the disease upon him.'^ To get actual know- 
ledge of the visit of the spirits, " wenn einen kranken die 
weissen leute qualen wird in Polen freitags ein lager von 
erbsenstroh gemacht, laken gespreitet und der kranke darauf 
gelegt. Dann tragt einer ein sieb mit asche auf dem riicken, 
geht um den kranken herum, und lasst die asche auslaufen, so 
dass das ganze lager davon umstreut wird. Friihmorgens zdhlt 
man alle atriche auf der aschey und stillschweigends, ohne unter- 
wegs zu grlissen^hintenbringt sie einer der klugen frau^dienun 
mittel verschreibt," and " in der asche driicken sich die spuren 
der geiste ab, wie man auch den erdmannlein asche streuff 

Some tribes of Indians have tried to appease the anger of 
offended water-spirits by offerings of such things as they them- 
selves most prized. A mysterious virtue attached to water- 
lilies among the Frisians, and Dutch boys are said to be extremely 
careful in plucking or handling them, for, if a boy fall with the 
flowers in his possession, he immediately becomes subject to fits.J 

Paralysis was explained in Shetland, in former days, by saying 
that an evil spirit had touched the limb, or that the sound limb 
had been abstracted and an insensible mass substituted,§ with the 
same reasoning as had Africans when they spoke of certain aged 
persons as having taken and eaten the spirits of five individuals. 

It is a natural and well-known fact that the gods of one 
nation become the devils of their conquerors or successors. The 
Northern deities were only partially saved by the recognition of 
a Christ in Baldur, as the Boman deities by the identification of 

♦ Strange Stories from a CMmsze StttdiOf vol. ii. p. 131. 

f Grimm, Deutsche Mythologies vol. ii. p. 975. For another use of ashes 
'^wenn man erkennen soil dass einer bezanbert sey/' see Joh. Agricola in 
Chirurg, par. v. p. 671, quoted in Martins, De Magica Natwali^ p. 40. 

X Franklin, Journey to the Polar Sea, vol. ii. p. 245 ; Tylor, Primitive Oul- 
tu/re, vol. ii. p. 192 ; Notes and Queries, Ist S. vol. iii. p. 387 ; Choice Notes 
(^Iblk'Lore),]^, 7. 

§ Dalyell, Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 304 ; Hibbert, Shetland 
Islands, p. 431. 

the Virgin Mary with the highest virtues of the ancient queens 
of Heaven. " La plus grande partie de la magie du moyen 
&ge," says Lenormant, " a ee caractire et perp^tue les rites popu- 
laires et superstitieux du paganisme, k T^tat d'op^rations myst^- 
rieuses et diaboliques de sorcellerie." This is seen all over the 
world, as in Cevlon since the conversion of the island to Budd- 
hism, ^^ les anciens dieux du civaisme sent devenus des demons 
et leur culte des sortileges coupables que pratiquent les seuls en- 
chanteurs."* We may conclude that in England the devil has 
long represented much of old paganism still existing. He seems 
to have been regarded almost as the head of the medical pro- 
fession ; " the devil," Sir George Mackenzie said only two 
hundred years ago, " may inflict diseases, which is an effect he 
may occasion applicando activa passivis [by applying actives to 
passives] and by the same means he may likewise cure .... 
and not only may he cure diseases laid on by himself, as Wierus 
observes^ but even natural diseases, since he knows the natural 
causes and the origin of ^ven those natural diseases better than 
pliysicians can, who are not present when diseases are contracted, 
and who, being younger than he^ must have less experience. And 
it is as untrue that Pirius Thomas observes, who asserts that 
cures performed by the devil cannot continue, since his cures are 
not natural." 

Conrad imder head § xix. " magia effectorea est admiran- 
dorum operum realium, auxilio Diaboliproductio," discriminates 
as follows : — 

** Est autem ilia ipsa, respectu subjectorum circa quae occu- 
pata est, partim utilisy partim inutilis s. noxia^ quamvis utraque 
ad hominum tam temporalem quam setemam tendat pemiciem. 
Ad priorem dassem spectat curatio vulnerum, morborum, 
abactio Spectrorum (wenn ein Teufel den andern austreibet) 
aliorumque malorum averruncatio. Ad posteriorem, tempesta- 

* Lenormant) La Magie chez les ChaJdiens^ pp. 69-70. 

turn horrendarum ventorumque tumultuantium exoitatio^ firagum 
perditio, hominum pecorumque tesio, &c." •. 

A Scotch witch, who was famous for her cures of sick chil' 
dren, used to say as she administered the remedy, *' I give thee 
it in Godis name, but the devil give thee good of it." 

(2.) Next in importance to the theory of the origin of disease 
referred to above, if with propriety we may place one above 
another, or assign a greater or less importance, was the theory 
which attributed all diseases or bodily misfortune to the super- 
natural powers of a human enemy. It is the general alternative 
among races in a low state of civilization, and to the present day 
South American Indians, Kols of Nagpore, and Kaffirs of 
Koussa, speak with dread of the powers of the sorcerer, of the 
charmers who can bring evil or good upon a man.f Even in 
this century newspaper readers must be aware that wise women 
whose curses are feared, and whose advice is craved, are not 
uncommon in England. I know of a professional charmer for 
toothache having practised in Cheshire within the last twenty 
years ; in Lancashire consumptive patients and paralytics are 
often said to be bewitched ; and Mr. Gregor, writing of the early 
paii; of this century, speaks of a class of people whose curses or 
prayers^ as they were called, were much dreaded. To incur the 
displeasure of one of these people was to call down his prayers, 
and those prayers were speedily followed by bodily disease or 
accident, or by disaster to property, or by the miscarrying of 
some undertaking — by misfortune of some kind or other. " The 
remark was quite common, * So-and-so got his leg broken aifter 
So-and-so curst 'im.* * So-and-so never hid a weels day aifter he 
fell oot wi' So-and-so.' * HI health's never been out o' So-and-so's 
hoose sin he keest oot wee So-and-so.' * The beggar-wife's 

* Elias Conrad, Disputatio Ph/yHoa eahibens; i. Doetrifmrn de Magia, ii. 
Thearemata JMUeellanea, 1661. See Ramsay, BX/uvOoKoyia, pp. 64 et seq, 

t Lichtenstein, Travels in 8. Africa, voL ii. p. 266; Stevenson, Travels in S, 
America, vol. i. p. 60; Lubbock, Origin of OivUizatimif pp. 32, 224, 371. 

malison hiz lichtit on So-and-so's hoose for pittin' hir in 'ir bairn 
oot in a nicht o' blin' drift.' " * If ** dark working sorcerers 
tliat change the mind, soul-killing witches that deform the body," 
were thus fearfully regarded within our own days, it is not 
wonderful that in other countries and in earlier times the trade of 
disease-making, or invoking, was a decidedly favouriteone. The 
governing class was at once medical, legal, and religious ; the 
chief, the priest, and the medicine man were one. Disease 
being primarily attributed to an external supernatural power, 
who might, as Lenormant says of the god of the Finns, not 
only be the god of waters and air, but also " Tesprit d'ou 
decoule toute vie, le maitre des enchantements favorables, I'ad- 
versaire et le vainqueur de toutes les personnifications du mal, le 
souverain possesseur de toute science," f it is the duty of the 
priests to watch over the actions of this deity, yet the chief func- 
tion of their body as a profession is, we find, to discriminate in 
matters of medicine. A priest, if he cannot or does not see fit 
to trace the disease to a direct imposition on the part of an 
external spirit, should be able to point out a person who has 
occasioned the mischief, and if a spite be cherished against 
any one his fate is practically sealed. The office of magician is 
even in some places hereditary ; the son succeeds the father, if 
the father has managed to save himself, but if it is suspected 
that a wizard has practised against the welfare of a chief (though 
in many cases the chief is himself the head priest and doctor in 
one) the short and speedy way in Central Africa for preventing 
a repetition of the attempt is to destroy his whole household with 
the head offender. Oflen when suffering agonies these magicians 
boast of their exploits, and die with vaunts of the deaths they 
have caused, and the rainfalls they have prevented. The Austra- 
lians track their sorcerers by watching an insect which is said 

* Lancashire Folk-lore, p. 164 ; Jmirnal Anthropological Institute, vol. iii. 
p. 267. See also Gregor's Folh-Lore of North-East of Scotland^ p. 35. 
f Lenonnant, La Magie chez Ics Chalddens, p. 222. 

to crawl from tlie grave of a bewitched mail in the directiou ot 
the house of the wizard who caused his death, and other peoples 
have their modes of discovery.* 

But curses and denunciation are not the only means by which 
nations of thought have found their magicians work their evil 
wilL There are more elaborate ways, and more effectual, in so 
far as they appeal to secret feelings, and aspire to a greater 
command of the supematuraL 

Something which has belonged to the person on whom magic 
is to be practised being obtained, a rag of his clothes, a nail- 
paiing, a hair — anything so long as it is intimately connected 
with his personality, the magician has then that on which to 
work. The spittle of South Sea Island chie& is buried in some 
secret place, where no sorcerer can find it, by the servants, 
who follow the train with spittoons ; for an association, or rather 
sympathy of an indefinable kind, is supposed to exist between 
the tuhu^ as the Polynesians call it, and the person to whom it 
originally pertained, f The details vary in different places, but 
in the main the ceremony is the same everywhere. The enchanter 
invokes some power ; it enters the tubu^ and thence, of course, 
on repeated entreaty, passes naturally into the first owner of the 
tubu. When a man hears or imagines that some evil is being 
brought against him, it is not surprising that he should sink 
under his fears, or provoke the very triumph which the medi- 
cine-man has sought. Hair is nearly always required, and this 
illustrates and explains the nurse^s dislike of bits of nails or 
pieces of hair not being committed to the flames at once. If a 
bird got any human hair, and used it for building its nest, 
according to a West of Scotland belief, the person whose hair 
had been used would become liable to headaches, and ultimately 

• Cameron, Acrpss Africa^ vol i. p. 116 ; Oldfield, TV. Eth, Soc, vol. iii. p. 246, 
quoted by Tylor, Primitive Culture^ vol. i. p. 106. 

f Williams, Polynesian Researches, vol. ii. p. 228 ; Lnbbock, Ongin of 
Civilization, p. 245 j Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 129. 

become bald. And why ? With the light we receive from the 
superstitions of other nations we can look frirther, and see that 
the bold bird that used the human hair was in earlier days 
believed, possibly, to be an evil spirit, possibly a witch. In 
1798 an image of an Indian prince was cut in wood, charmed, 
and buried with some of the prince's hair thrust into its side ; 
thereupon the prince is said to have been seized by paralysis in 
the place in his body corresponding to the place in the image 
where the hair was inserted.* 

When Agnes Sampson was tried she confessed that to com- 
pass the death of King James VI. of Scotland she had hung up 
a black toad for nine days, and collected the juice that fell from 
it. Had she been able to obtain a piece of linen that the king 
had worn she would have killed him with this venom, " causing 
him such extraordinarie paines as if he had beene lying upon 
sharpe thomes or endis of needles, "f 

In the island of Tauna, in the New Hebrides, Turner tells of 
a colony of disease-makers, who lived by collecting such rub- 
bish as the skin of a banana which a man had eaten. The 
banana skin was rolled in a leaf, and slowly burned, the result 
being that as it burned the owner became worse and worse, and 
so naturally, " when a man fell sick, he knew that some sor- 
ccerer was burning his rubbish (nahak)^ and shell trumpets, 
which could be heard for miles were blown to signal to the 
sorcerers to stop and wait for the presents which would be sent 
next morning." J The Jakun, according to the Malay, can cause 
sickness and death simply by beating two sticks together ; it is 
of no consequence how far distant the house of his enemy 
may be, for, although the race is greatly despised, it is even 
more feared. 

It will have been noticed that the New Hebrides sorcerers are 

♦ Napier, Folk-lore, p. 114 ; Moor, Hindu Pantheon, p. 402 (note), quoted by 
Dalyell, Darker Superstitions, p. 365. 
t Pitcaim, I. ii. 218 ; Spalding, Elizabethan Demonology, pp. 113, 114. 
X Turner, Polynesia, pp. 18, 19, 424 ; Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 128. 

^ LANE iv^^•:■.-, f.lA^o-^-^. 

besought to stop iheir incantations by blowing of trumpets, but 
another conception is probably involved. We can seldom bo 
certain that the line of demarcation between cases of super- 
natural-origin of disease and magician- origin of disease can be 
pointed out, or that ravellers have grasped all the meaning of 
a foreign ceremony. While the discordant noise may be only a 
signal to the nahak burners to stop the burning of the banana 
shelly it is very possible it may have been a distinct challenge, 
and a recognised part of the contest between the patient and the 
spirit of his disease. The Stiens of Cambodia make night and 
day " an insupportable noise " with the view of relieving their 
sick from the evil influence. The Dacota s rattle gourds with 
beads inside and shout The Patagonians beat drums with 
figures of devils painted on them at the bed of sick persons.* 
The foUowing true story sent me from America by a cor- 
respondent shows the same belief in the efficacy of noise in 
driving away disease-demons existing among the Indians of 
Alaska. Captain Abram Osborne, of Edgbaston, Mass., was 
shipwrecked on the Alaska coast when a boy, and spent the 
winter among the people, who showed him and the other sailors 
much kindness. It happened that an old woman in the lodge 
where Osborne lived was suflFering from a swollen fece. He 
felt sorry for her, and made a poultice of some of the ship's 
bread, and with much trouble persuaded her to let him put it 
on. After it had been on for an hour, and no relief had been 
obtained, the medicine man was summoned. He came with a 
drum. When he beat the drum all present yelled out at the 
top of their voices. Louder and louder he beat, until finally he 
broke the drum. The patient was asked if she felt better, but 
as she did not a larger drum was sent for, and the beating 
and yelling began again. Last of all an enormous drum 

* This beating of devils' pictures reminds as of the reasoning which induced 
pietists of the Middle Ages occasionally to thrash the images of those saints which 
had not at once answered the prayers of the faithful. 

was brought with much solemnity, and more singers or criers 
summoned. It was in \ain, for this drum was also soon broken. 
As the patient felt no better, a string was put about her neck, 
and her sufferings were ended by strangulation. It was the 
medical opinion of those Indians that if a disease-spirit would 
not be expeUed by the biggest drum it could only be got rid of 
by destroying the body of which it had taken possession. 
Osborne vowed he would never again attempt the practice of 
medicine in a strange country. The passing bell was supposed 
among ourselves to drive away the evil spirits who stood waiting 
at the bed of the sick man for his soul. So, too, children wear 
bells on their clothes.* 

While wizardry is sometimes hereditary, wizards, even although 
they escape death by the hands of their dupes, are not supposed 
to bo always secure in their command of the supernatural. A 
Tauna rubbish burner sometimes discovers that an enemy is 
burning his rubbish, and blows his shells for mercy like an ordi- 
nary mortal; and of a distinguished Chinese, who, when any one 
in the village was ill, could point where the devils were that 
caused the disease and burn them out, we are told by the celes- 
tial savant, who finished his collection of stories in 1679, that 
before long he himself became very ill, " and his flesh turned 
green and purple ; whereupon he said * the devils affldct me thus 
because I let out their secrets. Henceforth I shall never divulge 
them again I* " 

One of the most esteemed ways of compassing evil was to 
form an image of the person whose health was aimed at, and by 
ceremonies wreak such symbolic injury on the figure as the 
wizard desired in reality to fall upon the original ; for, as Sir 
George Mackenzie puts it, " Witches do likewise torment man- 

* In China children wear hells with a conciliatory purpose, because when once 
upon a time a rash official ordered the tabooed bell of Canton to be rang, a thon- 
sabd male and female infants died within the city before the somid had died 
away, therefore bells are to be worn by infants that the tingle may conciliate 
tlie dreadful bell-demon. — Dennys, Folk-lore of China, p. 37. 

.C2 

kind, by making images of clay or wax, and when the witches 
prick or punce these images, the persons whom these images 
represent do find extreme torment, which doth not proceed from 
any influence these images have upon the body tormented, but 
the devil doth by natural means raise these torments in the person 
tormented, at the same very time that the witches do prick or 
punce, or hold to the fire these images of clay or wax ; which 
manner of torment," he adds, " was lately confessed by some 
witches in Inverness, who likewise produced the images, and it 
was well known they hated the person who was tormented ; and 
upon a confession so adminiculate, witches may very judiciously be 
found guilty, since constat de corpore delicti de modo de linquendi 
et inimicitiis praviis.^''* Nothing is more common in the trials of 
the seventeenth century than such accusations against tlie un- 
happy woman who came before the court Full details will be 
found in the case of Sir George Maxwell of Pollok.t 

The Hindoo sorcerers attach the name of their victim to the 
breast of the image which is to personate him, and it is not 
surprising, therefore, that the Abyssinians and other peoples 
should conceal their baptismal name. The baptismal name is 
the real name, the name registered in heaven, so if the enemy 
who makes the image does not know this name he cannot call 
the image by it. If only the usual name is used, then the figure 
cannot properly be said to represent the original, and the danger 
is escaped. J In a Chinese tale, which tells how it was sought 
to discover a necromancer, the story runs that the first time the 
necromancer was apparently cut down, only a paper man cut 
through the middle was found ; the second time, a clay image 

♦ A Treatise on Witchcraft, 1678, § xxii. 

t Witohen of Benfrewshire, p. 43. For the conspiracy against the young 
laird of Fowles and the young ladie Balnagown, see Dalyell, p. 371. 

X Simpson, An Artist's Jottings in Abyssinia^ " Good Words," 1868, p. 607, 
" In all church services, particularly in prayers for the dead, the baptismal name 
must be used. How they manage to hide it I did not learn. Possibly they con- 
fide it only to the priests.'' 

knocked to pieces ; and the third time, a wooden image. The 
editor, in a note, says, *' Taoist priests are generally credited 
with the power of cutting out human, animal, or other figures, 
of infusing vitaliiy into them on the spot, and of employing them 
for purposes of good or evil."* To the employment for good, of 
which there are few instances, I refer elsewhere. 

The most familiar way in which a personal power to cause 
sickness or misfortune was exercised — through what is generally 
known as " the evil eye " — is a subject on which so much* has 
already been written that it is not necessary to do more here 
than briefly refer to it as illustrating this part of my subject. 
For the fact Martins vouches — "Oculis fascina induci posse, 
tristis experientia abunde testatur. Quamvis enim radii visini 
ex oculis non egrediantur, effluvia tamen emanent, quae quando 
livore et invidia maligna redditS, per intentionem diriguntur ad 
certum quoddam objectum noxiam suam vim ibi exserunt."t In 
China, Dr. Dennys says, he has often been amused at the 
request not to stare at a child whose appearance had attracted 
him. In the early part of this century Caldcleugh speaks of a 
young woman being burnt, for having set evil eyes on a sick 
person. The Egyptian mother ascribes the sickliness of her 
children to the evil eye ; and Arabs and Scotch Highlanders 
alike resort to charms against it4 Nor is the power efficacious 
against man alone ; it is another instance of the belief in the 
close sympathy between him and nature that a Yorkshireman 
should be accused within this century of killing a pear tree by 
throwing the first glances of his evil eye in the morning upon 
the tree. " Look, Sir," said the informant of Mr. Carr, the 
compiler of The Craven Glossary ^ *^ at that pear-tree; it wor 

♦ Giles, Sbrwnge Stories from a Chinese Stttdio^ vol. i. pp. 49-51. 

t Citing many authors. — Martins, p. 38. 

% Dennys, Folh-lore of China^ p. 49 ; Caldcleugh, Travels 1819-21, vol. i. p. 73 ; 
Volney, Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte^ t. i. ch. 17, § 2, p. 223 ; Dalyell, Darker 
Superstitions of Scotland, It. 12. "Some persons eies are very offensive: non 
possum dicere qnare ; there is aliquid divinum in it, more than every one under- 
stands." — ^Aubrey, Bemains of Oentilisme (^Folk-Lore Society's ed.), p. 80. 

some years back, Sir, a maast flourishin' tree. Iwry momin*, 
as soon as he first oppans the door, that he may not cast his e^e on 
onny yan passiri* hy^ he fixes his een o' that pear-tree, and ye 
plainly see how it's deed away."* The motive here was admirable. 
It is not long ago since an honest North Lanarkshire farmer 
told me of the mischief that had been caused in the dairy of a 
&iend by a spiteful old woman. He had dismissed her son, a 
good-for-nothing lout, and as she, in revenge, overlooked his 
chum for a whole year, he was unable to get any cream. In 
the north of Scotland the evil eye has been said to belong to 
certain families, and to continue from generation to generation 
the inheritance which sire bequeathed to son. At the will of 
its possessor it was exercised not only for his private purposes 
of revenge but also in the service of those who paid for its 
exercise on their behalf against an enemy. To the present 
time, a correspondent writes me, the evil eye is believed 
in in Dorsetshire, and apart from the every day evidence 
afforded by newspaper cases, in which some unfortunate old 
woman has been maltreated, reference will often be found to 
some act of "overlook" which has been attributed to her. 
We have in the statement of the biographer of ijie late Vicar 
of Morwenstow, a proof of the hold the superstition still has in 
places where we should least expect to find it. Whenever Mr. 
Hawker came across any one with a peculiar eye-ball, sometimes 
bright and clear, and at other times obscured by a film, or with 
a double pupil ringed twice, or a larger eye to left than to right, 
he would adopt the ancient tactics and hold^his thumb and fore 
and middle fingers in the peculiar position which the super- 
stitions of Eastern Europe had taught him would ward off the 
evil effect of the evil eye.f Eed coral was among the Romans, 
as among ourselves, tied round the neck of infants to protect them 

♦ Carr, Craven Qlossat'y, vol. i. p. 137, cited by Harland and Wilkinson, 
La/noasMre Folk-lore, p. 69 (foot-note). 

t Mrs. P., 30 October, 1879 ; Baring Gould, Life tf Rev. R. S. Hawker, p. 
152. Reference must here specially be made to the second part of Mr. Story's 

from the evil eye. In Africa, Cameron found a mother who 
carried a baby, slung in goat-skin, on her back, wearing an apron 
made of innumerable thongs of hide, with a charm dangling 
from each, to preserve the infant from the evil eye and other 
forms of witchcraft. Mr. Napier, the veteran Scotch folk-lorist, 
says he has a vivid remembrance of having been himself con- 
sidered to have got " a blink of an ill e'e " when a child. He 
had taken a dvnning^ which baffled the experience of his family, 
and to effectually remove the fascination which was working 
him so much ill, a neighbour " skilly " in such matters was 
called in. "A sixpence was borrowed from a neighbour, a 
good fire was kept burning in the grate, the door was locked, 
and I was placed upon a chair in front of the fire. The 
operator, an old woman, took a tablespoon and filled it with 
water. With the sixpence she then lifted as much salt as it 
could carry, and both were put into the water in the spoon. 
The water was then stirred with the forefinger till the salt was 
dissolved. Then the soles of my feet and the palms of my hands 
were bathed with this solution thrice, and after these bathings I 
was made to taste the solution three times. The operator then 
drew her wet forefinger across my brow, called — scoring aboon 
the breath. The remaining contents of the spoon she then cast 
over the fire, into the hinder part of the fire, saying, as she 
did so, *Guid preserve frae a' skaith.' These were the first 
words permitted to be spoken during the operation. I was then 
put to bed, and, in attestation of the efficacy of the charm, 
recovered."* The scoring aboon the breath was the most com- 
mon way of averting mischief. But it was more generally the 

Castle of St. Angela, which contains an exhaustive and interesting account of 
fascination, after which it is not necessary to go at length into the subject in 
these pages. See also Mackenzie, § xx. 

* Napier, Folk-Lore, pp. 36, 37. Mr. Napier adds that he knows of this cere- 
mony being performed within the last forty years, "probably in many out-lying 
country places it is still practised." See Gregor, Folk-lore of North-East of 
Scotland, p. 8. 

suspected witoh who was scored above the mouth, and that, 
unfortunately for her, with a horseshoe, till the blood came. 
The Edinburgh Anniuzl Register^ 1814, contains a notice of such 
a cruel act *^ in the upper end of Peebleshire," by a shepherd 
who " shrewdly suspected " that an old woman, who lived 
fifteen miles away, had bewitched his cows. And other in- 
stances may be found within the last fifty or sixty years.* 
Satan is said to have taught Jonet Irving, " if she bure ill-will 
to onie bodie, to look on them with opin eyis^ and pray evil for 
thame in his name," " that she sould get her heartis desyre."t 
Martins says, surgeons do not show wounds to every man, for 
they have observed that by the malignant influence of some 
eyes heaUng up is of a truth hindered, t 

Foreigners, as foreigners, were naturally regarded as suspi- 
cious, and as suspicious then, allowing the simple manner of 
explanation which belongs to primitive peoples, likely to bring 
with them visible or invisible means of bringing harm on the 
shores on which they land. It is curious that to the present day 
the natives of St Kilda should regard strangers with aversion on 
account of a remarkable malady, a species of influenza, locally 
known as "strangers' cold" (cnotan na gall), which almost 
invariably follows the arrival of a vessel from the outer Hebrides. 
The epidemic has been noticed by every writer who has visited the 
island, and in recent times, in 1860, when the Porcupine, com- 
manded by Captain Otter, and having the late Duke of Aihole on 
board, had taken its departure, in a day or two ' the trouble' made 
its appearance, the entire population being more or less affected 
by it; in 1876, when the factor's smack came, and in 1878, 
when the Austrian crew landed, the symptoms were as before.§ 
It is a curious fact, noticed by Mr. Seton, that the gradual 

♦ Edinburgh Annual Begister, 1814, chronicle portion, p. cxxxi. ; Napier, 
Folk-Lorey p. 37 ; Glasgow Weekly Herald, August 5, 19, 26, 1876. 
t Trial of Jonet Irving, 6 March, 1616 ; Beo, Ork, f. 60 j DalyeU, p. 7. 
% Martins, p. 38, quoting Joh. Agricola. 
§ Seton, St. Kilda, Past and Present, 1878, pp. 228, 229. 

extinction of certain tribes on the Amazon is said to be in great 
measure due to ^^ a disease which always appears amongst them 
when a village is visited by people from the civilised settlements. 

The disorder has been known to break out when the 

visitors were entirely free from it ; the simple contact of civilised 
men in some mysterious way being sufficient to create it ; " and 
again, in the account of the cruise of H.M.S. Galatea in 1867-68, 
we read, " Tristan d'Acunha is a remarkably healthy island ; but 
it is a singular fact that any vessel touching there from St. Helena 
invariably brings with it a disease resembling influenza,"* 

(3.) That disease should be caused by the dead is not a con- 
ception which can belong to the earlier ages of culture. That death 
was possible was the first difficulty, and a great one, but that 
death could be caused by a species of warfare between the dead 
and the living would certainly be even as great a difficulty. To 
believe that the inanimate body which lay before him was not 
actually devoid of all the higher attributes of life would not be 
foreign to the reasoning of a savage, for to suppose that a single 
blow, a fall, or a mysterious thrust from nature, could at once 
and for ever cut a man off from his fellows must have been 
more difficult of credence ; but to fear the dying, not because 
they were going into an unknown country in an incomprehen- 
sible manner, but, as some peoples have said, lest a dying man 
who has not been parted with on friendly terms should return to 
wreak revenge, must be a comparatively late-born theory. It 
is more natural to regard the dead ancestors as beneficent minor 
deities than as devils, — to believe with the Tasmanians that the 
newly dead exercise their first spiritual powers in curing disease, 
and with the Malay islanders to look for prosperity and help 
from those who are now beyond the troubles of earth. 

Not improbably the dread of the spirits of the dead in general 

♦ Bates, TTie Naturalut on the River Amazon ; Cfruise of H,M,8 
Galatea, cited hj Mr. Seton, pp. 232, 233. 

arose from dread of fhe spirits of the magicians in particular. 
Turanian tribes of North Asia, according to Gastrin, fear their 
shamans more when they have quitted earth than when they 
were in the full exercise of their power on earth ; the Pata- 
gonians have no doubt of the evil demons who afflict their lives 
being the spirits of dead wizards.* But this fear of particular 
spirits soon developed. The Chinese have a general dislike of 
spirits of lepers, beggars, and other outcasts. ^^ Selon les 
Tch^r6misses," flexthausen (quoted by Lenormant) says, " les 
dmes des morts viennent inqui^ter les vivants, et, pour les en 
empScher, ils percent la plante des pieds et le coeur des morts, 
convaincus que, clouds ainsi dans leur tombe, ils n'en pourront 
sortir." t 

In Madagascar, among the S^klava, when a death occurs in 
one of their villages, the settlement is broken up, and the tribe 
remove their homes some distance from their former abode, 
believing that the spirits of the dead will haunt the spot, and do 
harm to those who remain in the place where it had dwelif 
Mr. Conway says that in 1875 he was told by an eminent phy- 
sician of Chicago, whose name he gives, of a case which, within 
his personal knowledge, had occurred in that city, in which 
the body of a woman, who had died of consumption, was taken 
out of the grave and the lungs burned, under the belief that she 
was drawing after her into the grave some of her surviving 
relatives; and he also quotes an account of a Mr. Rose, of 
Peacedale, Bhode Island, who in the previous year dug up the 
body of his own daughter, and burned her heart, because, it 
was believed, she was wasting away the lives of other members 
of his family. The people of Morzine, in Savoy, in 1857, 

* Gastrin, Mnn Myth.^ p. 122 ; Falkner, Patagonia^ p. 116 ; Tylor, Primi- 
tive Culture, vol. ii. p. 102 (see also vol. ii. p. 175), 

f Doolittle, Chinese^ vol. i. p. 206 ; Hexthansen, Etudes sur la situation 
int^riewe de la Russie, t. i. p. 419 ; Lenormant, La Magie chez les ChaldSens, 
pp. 187, 188 ; Folk-Lore Record, vol. ii. p. 41. Vampire stories are also illus- 
trative of this superstition. 

believed themselves to be actually possessed by the spirits of 
dead persons whilst they suffered the epidemic called hystero- 
demonapaihy.* The natives of tlie Transvaal, after mutilating, 
roasting, and partially eating the body of an enemy, mix blood 
and clay and smear their fiaces with the mixture in order to pro- 
tect them from the revenge of the spirit of the man who has 
been killed. Their regard for the influence of the dead is 
manifested in many ways. Medicine poured into the wounds of 
the dead son of a chief would, it was believed, cause the death 
of those who had killed him, and this seems to be a general 
practice. The Polynesians speak of departed souls devouring 
the hearts and entrails of sleepers.t 

Among ourselves, it is a Devonshire belief that you can give 
a neighbour ague by burying a dead man's hair under his 

shire, to produce a rash. In New Jersey, it is said to cause in- 
curable cramps in the foot. If any article from one's person, 
such as a pin, be buried with a corpse, the man or woman to 
whom it belonged will also be with the dead before the year is 
out. Ulster mep also speak of dead merits pinches^ small dis- 
coloured marks on the skin, resembling pinches or bruises, 
which come in the night in some mysterious way.| 

In olden England such proceedings mentioned above as 
having taken place in America would not have been permitted, 
for it was believed that to exhume any body would be an act 
followed by death and calamity in the deceased's family, as the 
following illustrates : — 

♦ Conway, Demonology and Devil-Lore, vol. i. p. 62 ; Cornhill Magazine, 
April 1866, « The Devils of Morzine." 

t Christian Express (South Africa), January, 1879, " Transvaalia," by Rev. 
A. Kropf, p. 8 ; Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 176. 

X Gregor, Folk-lore of North- East of Scotland, p. 35 ; Miss G. (Rochester, 
U.S. A.), 28 November, 1879 ; W. H. P. (Belfast), 26 October, 1878. Among the 
charms found by Mr. Ellis in the basket laid at his door and designed to bring evil 
were " hedgehog's bristles, parts of scorpions or centipedes, hair, earth said to be 
from ft grave," &c. Madagascar Revisited, p. 271 ; Folh-Lore Record, vol, 11. p. 43, 

" Thomas Fludd, of Kent, Esq., told me that it is an old obser- 
vation which was pressed earnestly to King James I. that he 
should not remove tlie Queen of Scots* body from Northampton- 
shire, where she was beheaded and interred. For that it always 
bodes ill to the family when bodies are removed from their 
graves, for some of the family will die shortly after, as did 
Prince Henry, and I think Queen Anne."* 

The belief that the dead cause the diseases of the living is 
strikingly shown in the inhuman dislike manifested alike in 
China and Scotland to save a drowning man. The government 
of Hong-Kong has found it necessary to insert a clause in the 
junk clearances, binding the junkmen to assist to the utmost in 
saving life. The theory of the Chinese is that the spirits of per- 
sons who have died a violent death, may return to earth if they 
can find a substitute. Thus, if A has just lost his son B, and is 
mourning his loss, should he see C struggling in the water he 
naturally will not help him, — he would rather see him quickly 
drovmed, for so will B return to life all the sooner. As for 

C, it is his fate, and he has only to wait until another person — 

D, E, or F — comes to the same end. The last man dead is 
supposed to keep watch and ward over the land of the dead ; to 
save a drowning man would be to defraud him of his substitute, 
and to incur the serious displeasure of a mysterious enemy.f 

Mr. Tylor regjirds the dislike manifested by the Hindoo, who 
will not save a man from drowning in the sacred Ganges, the 
Malay, the Kamchadal, the Bohemian, and other peoples, as in- 
dicating a universal belief that to snatch a victim from the very 
clutches of the water-spirit is a rash defiance of deity which 
would hardly pass unavenged, t He regards the drowning man 
as an offering to the spirit of the sea, or river, or lake ; a spirit 

♦ Turner, History of the Most Mema/rkahle Providences^ Lond. 1677, p. 77, 
cited in Notes and Queries, Ist S. vol. ii. p. 4. 

f Dennjs, Folh-Lore of Chma, p. 22 ; see also Giles, Strcmge Stories from a 
Chinese Studio, toI. ii. p. 200. 
• t Tylor, Primitive CuUnre, vol. 1. pp. 97-99. 

which, if not propitiated in some such maimer, will necessarily 
take revenge in some more terrible way. But although this 
explanation may be regarded as sufficient in some cases, I 
cannot regard it as applicable to all these illustrations of the 
prejudice. On the contrary, the remarkable similarity between 
the Chinese and the Celtic theories lead me to believe that the 
conception of a water-deity, who must be duly regaled with 
sacrifice, is generally subordinate to the belief that the soul of 
the last dead man is insulted, or done injustice to, by preventing 
another from taking his place. 

The Scotch did not regard the last death of so much con- 
sequence as the last burial. " The spirit of the last person 
buried watches round the churchyard till another is buried, to 
whom he delivers his charges."* " It was the duty of the last 
person interred to stand sentry at the graveyard gate from sun- 
set until the crowing of the cock everj^ night until regularly 
relieved. This sometimes, in thinly-inhabited parts of the 
country, happening to be a tedious and severe duty, and the 
duration of the faire claidth gave the deceased's surviving 
friends much uneasiness." The idea that the spirit had to 
watch the graveyard is a distinctly lower conception than that of 
the CTiinese, who regard -him as sentry in the unseen world, and 
is probably of late and explanatory introduction. Still, we can 
see clearly why Bryce, the pedlar in Sir Walter Scott's Pirate^ 
reftised to aid Mordaunt in saving the sailor from drowning, 
" Are you mad," he said, " you that have lived sae lang m 
Zetland, to risk the saving of a drowning man." It is true, he 
adds, " Wat ye not, if you bring him to life again, he will be 
sure to do you some capital injury ?" But it should be remem- 
bered that the Celts were not strangers to a doctrine of posses- 
sion, and it is easy to imagine that the defrauded spirit on guard, 
when he at last procured his release, should take the first oppor- 

* New Statistical Account of SootUmd, vol. xiy. p. 210. 

tunity of inflicting injury on him who had prevented the shorten- 
ing of his term, and that most readily through the very man 
who should have been the substitute. 

So terrible was the question, that we hear in Scotland, in the 
last century, of quarrels as to who should be first buried in the 
churchyard. In one case, when two burials were appointed 
for one day, " both parties staggered forward as fast as possible 
to consign their respective friend in the first place in the dust." 
If they met at the gate, the dead were thrown aside until the 
living decided by blows whose ghost should be condemned to 
porter it.* In October, 1876, two men, residing outside of 
Nenagh, Tipperary, were accidentally drowned together through 
the upsetting of a cart, in which they were crossing a small 
river. At the fimeral a free fight took place between the two 
parties of friends, each desiring that its corpse should be the 
first to enter the graveyard, since it was believed that the last 
buried would have to act as servitor to the other (i.^. the faire 
claidth of the Scotch). Mr. Napier's suggestion, that the spirit 
watched ** lest any suicide or unbaptised child should be buried 
in consecrated ground,"t is a modem engraftment, an attempt 
to explain a tradition of great antiquity in accordance with 
more modem teachings. 

Among miscellaneous theories to account for diseases or ill- 
nesses we note that in Ulster the brown foam from the seashore 
is said to cause warts to grow ; and as warts are said in Ulster 
always to come in pairs, a wart on the thumb of the right hand 
being balanced by a wart on the thumb of the left hand, care 
should evidently be taken. So, too, if one treads on hungry 
grass — which is said to grow up where persons dining in a 
field have not thrown some of the fragments to the fames — 
he will be seized with what the Irish call feargartha or fair^ 
gurthay hungry disease, an intolerable hunger and weakness.} 

* New Statistical Acootmt of Scotland^ vol. xxi. p. 114. 

t Folklore of the West of Scotland, p. 63. 

H: W. H. P. (Belfast), 26 October, 1878 ; Folk-Lore Record, vol. iy. p. 109. 

Harelip, in the north-east of Scotland, is said to be produced 
by a woman enceinte putting her foot into a hare's lair. If a 
woman discovers she has done this she should put two stones in 
the lair. Cancer was supposed to be produced by the bite of a pig, 
but soup made of fresh pork, as " pork bree," was looked upon 
as efficacious in the highest degree in cases of consumption or 
dyspepsia.* Killing a toad is said in New England to have the 
undesirable result of ensuring its slaughterer as many warts as 
it had spots. Vermont people add that such an act dries up the 
cows.f 

The Chinese sometimes attribute disease to the absence of the 
spirit, and in the case of a little child lying dangerously ill, Mr. 
Giles says its mother will go outside into the garden and call its 
name several times in the hope of bringing back the wandering 

spirit4 

Disease is brought upon men at St. Elian's Well, parish of 
Llanelian, Denbighshire, by casting a pin along with a pebble 
marked with the victim's initials into the well. The person 
cursed soon hears of the cruel charm, and it is not surprising 
that, ruminating upon all the forms of disease to which it may 
be possible that ho will be doomed, should readily induce, if not 
an actual sickness in a healthy man, at least a craving for the 
removal of the impending curse. It is easily removed; the 
pebble is taken out, the name is removed from the magician's 
book, and, once more free from the fear of the powers of this 
unholy well, the thankful spared can go about his work witli 
lightened heart. § 

A mysterious sympathy is sometimes supposed to exist 
between men and natural objects. Thus, when children have been 
passed through cleft trees (a ceremonial to which more detailed 

• Gregor, Folk-lore of North-East of Scotland, p. 129, but compare Nork, 
Mythologie der Volkssagen, <^o., p. 322. 
t Miss C. G. (Rochester, N.Y.), 28 November, 1879. 
J Giles, Strange Stories, vol. i. p. 189. \ /\\\r 

§ Wirt Sykes, British aoblins, pp. 365-6. ' '^'^^ ^^^^-^ - .'. U^l^^ !>y 

reference will be found later on), the child's life is supposed 
in a manner to be bound up with that of the particular tree 
through which he has been transmitted, and, should an attempt 
be unadvisedly made to cut the tree, no efforts will be spared 
by the man to secure the continued existence of his foster- 
brother. In the reign of Romwius Lacapenus it was desirable 
that Simeon, Prince of Bulgaria, should die. Now, on the 
arch Xerolophi, in Constantinople, there stood a column, and an 
astronomer assured Romanus that if the head of this column 
were struck off, Simeon, whose fate was bound up with it, 
would perish. The head was accordingly struck from the 
pillar, and at the same hour on the same day the prince died in 
Bulgaria of a disease of the heart* 

The wide-spread belief that toothache is caused by a worm in 
the offending tooth is not a little curious. In 1607 an English 
version of the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum of the eleventh 
century says : — 

" If in your teeth you hap to be tormented 

By meane some little wormes therein do breed, 
Which pain (if need be tane) may be prevented, 

Be keeping cleane your teeth, when as yon f eede ; 
Bnme Francomsence (a gum not eyil sented), 

Put Henbane unto this, and Onyon seed. 
And with a tunnel to the tooth that's hoUow, 

Convey the smoke thereof, and ease shall follow." f 

Only four years ago a person of considerable education told 
me how the worm had been removed from his tooth nine years 
previously by a Greenock working-man. The method was 
exactly the same, but it is scarcely necessary to say frankincense 

♦ Cedrenus, Compendiv/in HigtoriaruMy t. ii. p. 626, cited in DalyelPs Darker 
Superstitions of Scotland^ pp. 365, 366, 

t " The Englishman's Doctor ; or, the School of Saleme," Notes and Queries^ 
5th S. vol. Yi. p. 97. The Latin runs, 

^* Sic dentes serva, porromm collige grana, 
Ne careas jure (thure ?) cum hyoscyamo ure, 
Sicque per embotum fnmum cape dente remotum.*' 

Vy. 240-2. 

was not used. My impression is that tobacco was resorted to 
instead. Shakspeare, in Much Ado About Nothing ^ mentions 
the belief: ** What!" says Don Pedro, "sign for the tooth- 
ache ? " " Where is," says Leonato, " but a humour or a 
worm." In Aberdeenshire, in China, in Orkney, in New 
Zealand, in Derbyshire, in North Germany, everywhere one 
might almost say, this belief is found. In Madagascar the suf- 
ferer from toothache is described as being marary olitra (poorly 
through the worm). In Manx the plural form of Beiaht (a 
beast), Beishtyriy is used for the toothache, " from the opinion that 
the pain arose from an animal in the tooth," and in Gaelic 
cnuimhy a worm, gives half the name of toothache, which is 
cnuimh jhiacalL* The remedies for " ti»oth worms " given in 
the first Leech Book are quaint : — 

" For toothwark, if a worm eat the tooth, take an old holly 
leaf or one of the lower umbels of hart wort, and the upward 
part of sage, boil two doles {i.e. two of worts to one of water) in 
water, pour into a bowl and yawn over it, then the worms shall 
fall into the bowl. 

" If a worm eat the teeth, take holly rind over a year old and 
root of carline thistle, boil in hot water, hold in the mouth as 
hot as thou hottest may. 

" For tooth worms, take acorn meal and henbane seed and 
wax, of all equally much, mingle these together, work into a 
wax candle and bum it, let it reek into the mouth, put a black 
cloth under, then will the worms fall on it."t In Norfolk one 
would think such ceremonies must be unknown if, as some say, 
toothache is called the love pain there, and sufferers conse- 
quently receive little sympathy. 

♦ Ch&ice Nvtes (JPolk'Lore)y p. 62 ; Nota and Qncries, 6th S. vol. v. pp. 24, 
156, 476 ; vol. vi. p. 97 ; Folk-Lore Record, vol. ii. p. 36 ; Kelly, Manx Dic- 
tionary ; McLeod and Dewar, Gaelic Dictionary ; Shortland, Traditions an-d 
Superstitions of the New Zealanders, pp. 108-110. 

t Cockayne, Saxon Leechdovis, vol. ii. p. 51. For Instances of this supersti- 
tion, see also Derbyshire Gatherer, p. 204. 

D

|HEN disease was recognised, though tardily, to have 
positive existence, and the fact realised that, despite 
prayers and offerings, it might mysteriously be com- 
municated by the sick man to another person who 
suffered in much the same way, complaining of similar pains 
and exhibiting the same general symptoms, a step had been 
taken in folk-medicine. If a man could without conscious act 
on his part infect his neighbours, why might he not of purpose 
transfer his complaint to something of a lower order, which 
should suffer the disease in his place?* This is a specious 
reasoning, and may not unreasonably be supposed to have found 
early acceptance. Since powers beyond the reach of man were 
able to give a particular disease to every sufferer ; since those 
powers settled in the person of a witch or a medicine man enabled 
them to transfer one creature's distemper to another ; was it not 
possible that an ordinary human being should be able at least to 
transfer disease to a slave, a dog, or a horse ? Pliny speaks of 
pains in the stomach being cured by transferring the ailment 
into a puppy or a duck.-|* To inhale the cold breath of a duck 

* '^ Per qoam Natnras peritns morbmn mediis Ileitis ex homine aliorsnm trans- 
fert, ut sanitas exinde sequatur." — Martins, p. 27. 

f " Sunt occnlti interaneomm morbi^ de qnibns mirnm proditnr. Si catnli, prius- 
qnam videant, appliccntnr triduo stomacho maxime ac pectori et ex ore aegri sue- 
turn lactis accipiant, transire vim morbi, postremo exanimari dissectisqne palam 
fieri aegri causas." " Quod praeterea traditnr in torminibus mirnm est, anate 
apposita ventri transire morbnm anatemque emori." — ^Pliny, 30, 7. « So hat 
man noch bis in den letzten jahrhnnderten jnnge welfe angelegt und sangen 
lassen."— Grimm, Deutsche Mythologw, yol. ii. p. 980. See also yol. iii. p. 343. 

is still recommended in England. In Devonshire and in Scot- 
land alike when a child has whooping-cough a hair is taken from 
its head, put between slices of bread and butter, and given to a 
dog, and if in eating it the dog cough — as naturally he will — 
the whooping-cough will be transferred to the animal, and the 
child will go free. Indeed this remedy is practised with local 
variation all over the country. In some parts of Ireland when 
one has been attacked with scarlet fever some of the sick man's 
hair is cut off, and passed down the throat of an ass, which is 
supposed then and there to receive the illness. Ague in a boy 
is cured by a cake made of barley-meal and his urine and given 
to a dog to eat ; the dog in a case cited had a shaking fit, and 
the boy was cured ! * 

Possibly the simplest mode of transference is given by Pierius ; 
the patient is to sit on an ass, with his face to the tail, and thus 
the pain will be transmitted to the ass.t 

Marcellus, of old, to cure toothache recommended the patient 
to spit in a frog's mouth, and request him to make off with the 
toothache, and in Cheshire it is still by no means uncommon for 
a young frog to be held for a few moments with its head inside 
the mouth of a sufferer from aptha or thrush. The frog is sup- 
posed to become the recipient of the ailment, which has, indeed, 
in some districts received the folk-name of " the frog '^ from the 
association. " I assure you," said an old Shropshire woman as 
she finished her account of the cure which she had often super- 
intended, '* we used to hear the poor frog whooping and cough- 
ing, mortal bad, for days after ; it would have made your heart 

* Pettigrew, Superstitiang connected with the Practice of Medicine and 
Surgery, p. 77. Madame de Scudcry mentions a similar cure for fever in a letter 
of date 20 October, 1677, to the Comte de Bnssy. Speaking of an abbe of fame, 
" On dit qu'il ne fait que prendre pour toutes fievres de Turine des malades dans 
laquclle il fait dnrcir un oenf hors de sa coque, apres quoi il le donne k manger a 
un chien qui pre^id en merne terns lajievre du malade, qui par ce moien en gnerit. 
C'est un question de fait que je n'ay pas eprouve.*' — Notes and Queries, 5th S. 
vol. viii. p. 126. 

t Pettigrew, p. 78. 

d2 

ache to hear the poor creature coughing as it did about the 
garden." * 

Toads are also used in cases of whooping-cough, but fish are 
occasionally substituted, as the following shows : — " An old 
fisherman, formerly well-known at the Forge, Keswick, once 
caught a fish, which he put into the mouth of a child suffering 
from whooping-cough. He then replaced the fish in the Grata. 
He affirmed that the fish, after being placed in the mouth of the 
child and returned to the river, gave the complaint to the rest 
of its kind, as was evident from the fact that they came to the 
top to cough." Apart from old Edmundson's fable, it is clear 
that the superstition did exist in Cumberland. Mr. Henderson 
also refers to it, and to a correspondent of Notes and Queries we 
are indebted for an account of the practice in America : ** One 
morning, during the early fall of the present year (1875)," he 
says, " I was wandering along the banks of the Schuylkill river, 
in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia. The day being sultry, I 
sat down on a projecting rock to enjoy the cool breeze from the 
water. Near by stood two men fishing with rod and line. 
Presently a young woman, carrying a child some two years old, 
made her appearance, and, approaching one of the anglers, asked 
him for a fish he had just caught. Americans, as a rule, are ex- 
tremely courteous to the gentler sex, so, taking it from the 
hook, he politely handed it to her, when, seating herself on the 
bank, she deliberately opened the child's mouth, and, thrusting 
in the head of the fish, held it there, despite the child's struggles, 
for the space of a minute or two, then, withdrawing it she con- 
signed the still living animal to its native element. My curiosity 
being aroused by this rather novel proceeding, I requested an 
explanation, when she informed me that the child was afflicted 
with the whooping-cough, and that the head of a living fish held 

* Cockayne, Leechdoms, vol. i. p. xxx. ; Jour. Brit. Arch. Assoc, vol. xxxiv. 
p. 328 ; W. H. 7 September, 1880 ; Rev. G. S. S. 24 November, 1878. 

for a moment in the sufferer's mouth was * a sure and certain ' 
cure for that complaint." The writer was unable to tell from 
what nation this custom had been derived as the population was 
of very mixed descent.* 

Marcellus distinguished between six kinds of transference or 
transplantation : (a) inseminatione ; (b) implantatione ; (c) 
impositione ; (d) irritatione ; (e) inescatione ; (/) adproxima- 
tione ; but in practical folk-medicine the method followed is 
always the same. The creature to be infected is brought into 
immediate contact with the suffering person, and, after time 
allowed for ordinary infection, is set free. 

Sometimes, however, the disease is only intended to be a tem- 
porary burden. Thus Steinhauser, speaking of the custom, in 
West Africa, of transferring a^sick man's ailment to a live fowl, 
says if any one catches the fowl when set free the disease goes 
to him, and incidental illustrations of this case will be found in 
many cases of transference. 

Transference to inanimate objects is not uncommon. In de- 
velopment of the original theory Salmuth relates a case of cure 
by transplantation. The patient had a most violent pain of the 
arm, and " they beat up red coral with oaken leaves, and, having 
kept them on the part affected till suppuration, they did in the 
morning put this mixture into an hole bored with an augur in the 
root of an oak, respecting the east, and stopt up this hole with a 
peg, made of the same tree ; from thenceforth the pain did alto- 
gether cease, and when they took out the amulet, immeiliately 
the torments returned sharper than before." Grimm has several 
notes on this subject* " Beachtenswerth," he says, " ist dies 
iibertragen der krankheit auf baume, d.h. auf den geist, der in 
ihnen wohnt. Unten den beschworungsformeln beginnt xxvi. 
mit den worten : ^ zweig ich biege dich, fieber nun lass mich !' 

♦ Notes aiid Queries, 5th S. vol. ix. p. 64 ; Yol. iii. p. 345 ; see also Hender- 
son's Folk-Lore of the Northern CmmtieSy p. 141. 

^ Hollerast hebe dich auf, rothlauf setze dich drauf, ich hab dich 
einen tag, habe dus jahr und tag.' " He who has gout goes 
on three successive Fridays after sunset to a fir tree, and says, 
*' Tannenbaum, ich klage dir, die gicht plagt mich schier," 
and so on, — the fir will wither, and the gout disappear. *' Deus 
vos salvet sambuce, panem et sal ego vobis adduca, febrem ter- 
tianam et quotidianam accipiatis vos, qui nolo earn." * Westen- 
dorp, quoted by Grimm, gives the following Dutch charm for a 
fever : The patient must go at the break of day to an old willow, 
tie three notes on a branch of it, and say, *' Goe morgen, olde, ik 
geef oe de kolde, goe morgen olde." Then he turns and runs 
without looking back.f A similar New England charm for an 
obstinate ague has been sent to me by an American corre- 
spondent. The patient in this case is to take a string made of 
woollen yam, of three colours, and to go by himself to an apple 
tree ; there he is to tie his left hand loosely with the right to the 
tree by the tricoloured string, then to slip his hand out of the 
knot, and run into the house without looking behind him.J In 
Cheshire the absolute transference of warts is worth noting. 
Steal a piece of bacon and rub the warts with it, then cut a slit 
in the bark of an ash tree, and slip in the bacon under a piece 
of the bark. Speedily the warts will disappear from the hand, 
but will make their appearance on the bark of the tree as rough 
excrescences, and the success of this remedy has been vouched 
for.§ 

Martins speaks of piercing the gums in case of toothache, 
"dum sanguinem fundant," with a piece of bark, then return- 
ing the bark, covered as it will be with blood, to the tree, and 
covering it carefully with mud. " Et corticem reductum luto 

♦ Boyle, Usefnlness of Experimental Philosophy, pp. 226, 227 ; Pettigrew, 
p. 77 ; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, yoI. ii. p. 979. 

t A common prohibition, see Herbarium Ajyuleii; Cockayne, Lecchdomsy vol. i. 
p. 99. 

% Miss C. F. G. (Rochester, U.S A.), 28 November, 1879. 

§ Science Gossip, 1865, p. 85 ; Folk-Lore Record, vol. i. p. 158. 

bene muni." This, he avows, is useful in cases of habitual or 
constantly recurring toothache.* Sir Kenelm Digby for tooth- 
ache directs the gum to be cut with an iron nail till it bleed, 
and then the nail with blood upon it is to be driven into a 
wooden beam up to the head. When this is done, you never 
shall have toothache again all your days. Within the last forty 
years there was a charmer in Eiccarton, near Kilmarnock, who 
cured toothache after this fashion, but more simply. He did 
not put his patients to further pain by scarifying the gum with 
the nail ; he only drove a nail into the beam which supported 
the roof of his house. In course of time it became studded 
with nails, from the fact that possibly the beams first so em- 
ployed were of oak ; some say that to drive a nail into an oak 
tree is sufficient to cure toothache. 

Certain oak trees at Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire, were 
long famous for the cure of ague. The transference was simple 
but painful. A lock of hair was pegged into an oak, and then 
by a sudden wrench transferred from the head of the patient to 
the tree. 

Mr. Tylor, on the authority of Mr. Spottiswoode, says : — " In 
Thuringia it is considered that a string of rowan berries, a rag, 
or any small article touched by a sick person, and then hung on 
a bush beside some forest path, imparts the malady to any 
person who may touch this article in passing, and frees the sick 
man from the disease This gives great probability to Captain 
Burton's suggestion that the rags, locks of hair, and what not 
hung on trees near sacred places by the superstitious, from 
Mexico to India, and Ethiopia to Ireland, are deposited there as 
actual receptacles for transference of disease."t -^.n Irish in-"^ 
stance immediately suggests itself. At the holy well, Tubber 
Quan, near Carrick-on-Suir, the faithful were (and for all we 

* Martins, Be Magiay p. 32; Cf. Daniel Beceri, Microcosm Med, lib. i. c. 14, 
pp. 76, et seq. 
t Tylor, Primitive OiUture, yoI. ii. p. 137. 

know are) wont to resort on the three last Sundays in June to 
pray to St. Quan and St. Brogaum, who, if cures are to be vouch- 
safed, appear in the holy well in the shape of two wondrously 
fair trout. After the pilgrims have gone through some trying 
penances, they cut locks of their hair, and tie them on the 
branches of a certain tree (round which they have three times 
gone on their bare knees) as specifics, so the account runs, 
against headaches. " The tree is a great object of veneration, 
and presents a curious spectacle, being covered all over with 
human hair." The Dayacks, with a feeling akin, hang rags on 
the trees at crossways. In Malabar, the practice reminds us of 
the trees at Berkhampstead, but in this case the patient is 
securely tied to the tree, and flogged before his hair is fastened in. 
This has been cited as an instance " that hair may be a substitute 
for its owner," but I think it may also be looked upon as belonging 
to transference. Morier* presents us with an essential modifica- 
tion of the theory. In Persia, according to his account, the patient 
has only to deposit a rag on certain bushes, and from the same spot 
to take another, which has been left there from the same motives 
by a previous visitor and sufierer. This is a further develop- 
ment of the theory, but not one, apparently, which took such 
firm hold of the European mind. The Persian custom, con- 
sidered by itself, would probably suggest that the rags and other 
things were offerings to tree-spirits, and this is a conception 
which should be kept in view. The Persian theory may be that 
by offering the rag, or other article, the patient is cured, without 
involving evil consequences to the next person who touches it. 
The fact of offering may presume purification, and the next 
pilgrim takes with him a sanctified charm. Captain Burton 
speaks of articles into which spirits had been drawn being 
driven into or hung to a devil's tree, and this " has the effect of 
laying the disease spirit." A subtler reasoning, but of the 

* Jmirnry to Perftiay p. 230. 

same nature, may perhaps sen-e to elucidate the custom men- 
tioned by Morier. 

In Scotland, John Dougall was libelled on November 12, 
1695, for having, among other things, prescribed as a cure for 
convulsions parings from the sick man's nails, and hair from his 
eyebrows, and the crown of his head " bound up in a clout, with 
a halfpenny," which should be laid down in a certain place, and 
that whoever found would take the disease, and the diseased be 
set free.* In Germany, an offensive form of transference also 
exists, for a plaster from a sore, if left at a crossway, is believed 
to transfer the disease to a passer-by. In Ireland, a correspon- 
dent informs me, if a charm or a curse is left on a gate or stile, 
the first healthy person who passes through will have the patient's 
sickness transferred to him.f Here there is no mention made of 
either the charm being in contact with the patient, and thus 
acquiring the disease, or of the newly-infected having even 
touched the dangerous paper. It is enough that the charm has 
a potency of its own, great enough to render the gate or passage 
to which it is attached, and which is between it and the passer- 
by, an actual source of disease. 

The most common mode of transference in this comitiy 
requires a short notice. Lancashire wise men tell us — " for 
warts rub them with a cinder, and this tied up in paper, and 
dropped where four roads meet {Le, where the roads cross), will 
transfer the warts to whoever opens the parcel." Another mode 
of transferring warts is to touch each wart with a pebble, and 
place the pebbles in a bag, which should be lost on the way to 
church ; whoever finds the bag gets the warts. Hunt says that a 
Cornish lady told him that when a child, out of curiosity, and 
in ignorance, she once took up such a bag, and examined its con- 
tents, the lamentable consequence being that in a short time she 
had as many warts as there were stones in the bag. A Scottish 

♦ Vide WitcJies of Renfrewshire, p. xxiii. 
t W. H. P. (Belfast), 6 November, 1878. 

version bids the sufferer wrap up in a parcel as many grains of 

bai'ley as there are warts, and lay the parcel on the public road. 

Whoever finds and opens it receives the warts. A still simpler 

plan is to go to a point where four roads meet, lift a stone, 

rub the warts with the dust from below the stonej" repeating the 

words — 

** A'm ane, the wart^s twa, 
The first ane it comes by 
Tacks the warts awa*." 

The warts will soon vanish.* In Shetland a person afiected 
with ringworm takes on three successive mornings ashes between 
tlie forefinger and thumb, before taking food, and, while holding 
them to the part aiFected, says — 

" Ringworm, ringworm red 1 
Never mayst thou spread or speed 
But aye grow less and less 
And die away among the ase {a8?ie8).'f 

There seems here no intention of transferring the ringworm 
to any other person, but simply that the ashes may in some way 
receive and dis]X)se of the disease, as in South Lincolnshire, 
when warts have been rubbed nine times with an apple cut into 
nine pieces, the sections are reunited, are not left abroad for 
the unwary, but buried where no human foot treads.J 

Boys in some parts of the United States revert to the unfor- 
tunate toad for the cure of their warts, rubbing them against 
one of those unfortunate creatures impaled on a sharp stick. § 

A curious mode of getting clear of disease is by forcing it in 
some manner upon the dead. A charm for boils consists in 
poulticing the boil for three days and nights, and then placing the 
poultices, and their cloths, in the coffin of a dead man.|| So, too, 

* Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore ^ p. 157 ; Hunt, Romances 
and Drolls, second series, p. 211 ; Gregor, Folk-Lore of North-Fast of Scot- 
land^ p. 48. 

t Choice Notes (^Folk-Lm'e),i^,^%. 

X But this possibly from a sympathetic feeling, that as the apple decays the 
warts will go. 

§ Wirt Sikes, British OoUins, p. 352. 

II Dyer, English Folk- Lore, p. 171. 

in the case of rheumatism in Donegal. I cannot do better than 
quote the picturesque account of the scene given by a recent writer. 
^^ At a wake in Fannet, a wild region on the Donegal coast, a man 
bent almost double, and tottering slowly, supported by his stick, 
entered the house, and sat down by the fire. He was a neighbour of 
the bereaved family, so that the people smoking round the hearth 
in the ' wake-house ' were not surprised to see him join them. 
It was the day of the funeral ; the coffin had arrived, and the 
dead man was about to be laid within it, and carried to his long 
rest. But before they raised him from the bed, the cripple man 
cnept over, and taking the hand of the corpse, applied it to his 
arm, to his shoulder, and to his leg, saying, * Tak' my pains wi' 
you, Thady, in the name of God ! ' The neighbours and family 
stepped back, whispering, * Poor Donald! poor crayther,he'8 
sore afflicted wi* the pains, why shouldn't he try the cure ? ' 
Again, when the coffin was being lifted over the threshold, 
Donald called after it, ^ Tak' my pains wi' you, Thady, in the 
name of God ? ' ^ Was the cure successftil ? ' we asked our 
informant. ' Ay, Donald threw away the stick, an' walked as 
weel's I do ; but sure, miss dear, it was a harsh unfeeling thing 
to do. I'd sooner ha' suflTered the pains.' Donald, who tried 
the cure, and Kitty, who told us of it, are Roman Catholics, and 
their idea probably was that the pains of rheumatism would be 
an imperceptible addition to those of Purgatory."* Whether 
the fair folklorist is right in hqr final surmise or not there can 
be little doubt of the approval with which such conveyance to 
the dead has been received. In Kent, if a man wets his fore- 
finger with saliva, and rubs the wart he wishes to get rid of 
three times in the same direction as a passing funeral, saying 
each time (without any of the ceremony above observed) *' My 
wart goes with you," a cure will soon foUow.f In Donegal, the 
words are preceded by throwing a stone after the corpse in the 

* " Fairy Superstitions in Donegal,'* Univ, Mag. Ang. 1879, pp. 214, 215. 
t Dyer, English Folh-Lore, p. 167. 

name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.* There, too, 
only the corpse of a person who has no near relative or *' sib " 
IS to be so treated. The custom of burying pins which have 
touched warts in a newly-made grave seems to belong to this 
belief. They are generally placed in a bottle ; the remedy is 
considered infallible.f 

But the transference of disease was not always a simple 
voluntary act on the part of the patient ; on the contrary, in 
Scotland it became a work which demanded the energies of the 
best reputed witches. Thus Agnes Sampson, who was tried for 
witchcraft in 1590, had been called in to cure Robert Kerr of a 
disease " laid on him be ane Westland warloc quhen he was at 
Dumfries, quhilk seiknes sche tuck vpone hirself, and keipit the 
samen with grit greiving and torment quhill the morne," when 
she naturally tried to transfer it by some clothes to a cat or a 
dog, and " thair wes ane grit dyn hard in the haus." By some 
mistake, however, the disease was transferred to Alexander 
Douglas, of Dalkeith, who pined away and died thereof, while 
Robert Kerr " was maid haill."t 

When Margaret Hutchinson was charged with transferring a 
disease from a woman to a cat, it was urged in her defence that 
the argument was not relevant because Sir George Mackensie 
notes, it was said, (1), una saga non potest esse ligans et solvens 
in eodem morbo (the same witch cannot both cause and cure a 
disease) ; (2), that in such transactions as these, the devil never 
used to interpose his skill, except where he was a gainer ; and 
therefore, though he would transfer a disease from a brute to a 
rational creature, yet he would never transfer a disease from a 
rational creature to a beast, but these defences were repelled, 
since, as the devil could make sick and make whole, it followed 
that he could also transfer disease as he pleased. 

* Bord&i* Mag. August, 1863, " Wart and Wen Cures," and Folk-Lore Record, 
vol. i. p. 223. See also Choice Notes (^Fdh-Lm^e), p. 251 ; Aubrey, p. 118. 
t Hunt, B^m-anoes and Drolls^ second series, p. 210. 
X Dalyell, Darker Superstitions of Scotland, pp. 104, 105. 

Katherine Grieve cured Elspeth Tailyeour of a deadly disease 
by transferring it to a calf, which immediately died. So too 
another woman, also in the seventeenth century, was cured by 
the transference of her disease to a cow, which "ran woid 
and deit"; and other instances of alleged transference to a 
mare, to a lamb, to a cat, to a dog, may be found in the witch 
prosecutions of the time. 

One instance given by DaJyell, although he does not seem to 
regard it as belonging to transference, is too remarkable not to 
be quoted: " The accusation of Marioun Ritchart, * Ye cam to 
Stronsay, and asking almes of Andro Coupar, skipper of ane 
bark ;* he said, ' Away witch, carling ; devil ane farthing ye 
will fall ! ' quhairvpoun ye went away verie offendit, and incon- 
tinentlie, he going to sea, the bark being vnder saill, he rane 
wode, and wald have luppen (leapt) ourboord; and his sone 
seeing him, gat him in amies, and held him ; quhairvpon the 
seiknes immediatelie left him, and his sone ran wode; and 
Thomas Paiterson seeing him tak his madness, and the father to 
turn weillj ane dog being in the bark, took the dog, and bladdit 
[struck] him vpon the tua schoulderis, and thairefter flang the 
said dogg in the sea, quhairby these in the bark were saiflPed.' " 
Nothing could be clearer than this. The madness of tlie father 
at once communicated itself to the son, and the son's madness 
in turn was communicated by the careful Thomas Paiterson to 
the dog. The dog's death at once removed danger of any new 
infection. It does not seem to have been a case of pure oblation, 
and, even if this were Paiterson's idea, at least the sudden 
infection of the son is worthy of note in anything which deals 
with the transference of disease ; besides, the Shetland records 
inform us that transference could be effected simply by wishes, 
and grasping the hand of the intended sufferer. 

The Hottentots in Kat Kiver settlement, on the Eastern fron- 
tier of Cape Colony, according to a correspondent of Notes and 
Queriesy in order to cure the bite of a snake, pluck a few 

feathers from the breast of a fowl, and make a small incision in 
the skin, to which the wound is applied ; after some time the 
process is repeated, the fowl in the meantime gradually dying as 
the poison extracted from the wound operates on it. A somewhat 
similar mode of cure is practised in Devonshire,* but here 
civilisation has so far advanced claims to humanity that the 
chicken is killed, and the wound is then only thrust into its 
stomach, there to remain until the bird becomes cold. " If the 
flesh of the bird, when cold, assumes a dark colour it is believed 
that the cure is effected, and that the virus has been extracted 
from the sufferer ; if, however, the flesh retains its natural 
colour, then the poison has been absorbed into the system of the 
bitten person." 

Transference in Wales is a very serious ceremony, as tlie 
following account of the various observances which an epileptic 
patient has to go through at St. Tegla's Well, halfway between 
Wrexham and Ruthin, shows. The patient repairs to the well 
after sunset, and washes himself in it ; then, having made an 
offering by throwing into the water fourpeuce, he walks round 
it three times, and thrice recites the Lord's Prayer. If the 
patient is a man, a cock is carried in a basket first round the well, 
then round the church, and if a woman, a hen is substituted. 
The paternoster is again repeated, and the patient then enters 
the church, creeps under the altar and remains there until break 
of day, with the Bible for pillow. In the morning another 
offering, this time of sixpence, is made, and the cock or hen 
left in the church. Should the bird die, it is supposed that the 
disease has been transferred to it, and the man or woman con- 
sequently cured.t In 1855 the parish clerk of Llandegla, says 
Mr. Sikes, said that an old man of his acquaintance remem- 
bered quite well seeing tlie birds staggering about from the 
eflFects of the fits which had been transferred to them. J 

* Dyer, English Folk- Lore, p. 137. 

t Arch, Camh, first series, yoI. i. p. 184, quoted in Brituh Goblins, p. 329. 

J Wirt Sikes, British Gohlins, p. 360. 

Animal diseases were likewise transferred ; and of this prac- 
tice we have, as might be expected, more instances in the last 
two or three hundred years than of transference of men's 
diseases. The animal who had died of plague^ or some other 
serious disorder, was carried at night to a neighbouring pro- 
prietor's land and buried — sometimes in a wood or a lone hill- 
side, sometimes in the ditch between the properties. Between 
forty and fifty years ago a farmer in the parish of Keith, a 
tenant of the Earl of Fife, conveyed the carcase of one of his 
animals to a hill in the property of the Earl of Seafield.* About 
Pendle, Lancashire, according to Messrs. Harland and Wil- 
kinson, when a young beast had died of the hydrocephalus, it 
was usual, and it has been the practice of farmers yet alive, to cut 
oflF the head and convey it to the nearest part of the adjoining 
county. It has been suggested that in this there is " some 
confused and fanciful analogy to the case of Azazel (Levit. 
xvi. 22), an analogy between the removal of sin and disease, 
that as the trangressions of the people were laid upon the head 
of the scape-goat, the diseases of the herd should be laid upon 
the head of the deceased animal." f Whether this be so or not, 
it seems at any rate there is the simpler meaning in the act, of 
intentional transfer of the disease to a neighbour's land, and this 
explanation seems natural enough when we consider how deep 
an impression the theory of transference, as we have seen, has 
made upon the same classes. It is true that some students of 
folk-lore see in transference simply a perpetuation of the scape- 
goat ; but I cannot — when the various forms which transference 
presents in different parts of the world have been considered — 
bring myself to consider Leviticus as here sufficient and all- 
explaining. It may be admitted that, in course of time, what 
was, perhaps, the original theory of simple transference, and 
the more elaborate theory of symbolical or vicarious expiation, 
were confused or blended. 

♦ Gregor, Folk-Lore of North-East of Scotland, p. 187. 
t Lancashire Folk-Lore y p. 79. 

A method of transference applicable either to man or beast 
was formerly practised in the north-east of Scotland. The cow, 
or man, diseased, was made to leap, along with a cat, through a 
circle made of a straw rope twisted the contrary way. The cat 
received the disease and, by duly dying, put an end to it. 
It is only one instance of the curious way in which various 
customs of diflFerent origin have been combined, that we have in 
this cure the Eastern teaching of symbolic new birth plainly 
indicated by the leap through the opening — a custom later 
touched upon — and simple transference to an animal. 

' ^"-- 94305

N Australia, according to the accounts of some 
travellers, a native doctor, when his aid is sought 
by a sick man, fastens one end of a string to the 
part of the patient's body which appears to be the 
seat of suflFering, and by sucking at the other end impresses his 
dupe with the belief that he is drawing forth blood, or, in other 
words, visibly extracting his pain. It is a simple remedy. 
Even more simple in its method of cure must be the copy of 
The New York Commercial Advertiser which Catlin introduced 
to the Minatarees, if it is still preserved. These Indians were 
much puzzled at the intentness with which Catlin pored over 
this paper. Why should he look so long at a white and black 
sheet ? Surely it must be a medicine cloth for sore eyes. Several 
liberal oflTers were made him, Catlin says, but these he was 
obliged to refuse, having early in the day sold it to a young son 
of Esculapius, who told the traveller that if he could employ a 
good interpreter to explain everything in the newspaper he 
could travel about amongst the Minatarees, and Mandans and 
Sioux, and exhibit after Catlin's departure, and no doubt in 
course of time it would make him a great medicine man. 
" Just before I departed I saw him unfolding it to show to some 
of his friends, when he took from around it, some eight or ten 
folds of birch bark and deer skins, all of which were carefully 
enclosed in a sack made of the skin of a polecat, and un- 
doubtedly destined to become, and to be called, his mystery or 

E 

• • • .•• • » ••• ••_ * ••% 
•••••• • • • • • \ I*-. "^ « 

• • •• •••• •••••• • •• 

medicine bag." * Nor need we go so far afield to find instances 
of association of ideas operating in medical superstitions, for in 
the vulgar English direction to " take a hair of the dog that bit 
you " we have at once an example of this association, and an 
indication of that doctrine of sympathy which accompanies all 
remedies by association, except that of the rough and primitive 
kind given above. That dog's hair heals dog's bite has long 
been one of the common phrases of a village adviser, and, as I 
have shown in another place, within recent years the advice 
has been followed to apply to the wound the hair of the dog 
which has caused it. Dr. Dennys tells us of a distinguished 
sinologue who, on his missionary tours in the Canton 
province, was usually accompanied by a powerful dog, 
which, on one or two occasions, bit very slightly some of the 
frightened children in the villages he passed through. When 
a child was bitten, the mother at once ran after the dog's 
master to beg for a hair from the dog to apply to the part 
bitten, t So, too, in Madagascar the natives wear a crocodile 
tooth as a charm against crocodile, and so general was the dread 
of this animal that a golden crocodile tooth formed at one time 
the central ornament in the royaJ crown. " Man," as Mr. Tylor 
has said, " dS yet in a low intellectual condition, having come to 
associate in thought those things which he found by experience 
to be connected in fact, proceeded erroneously to invert this 
action, and to conclude that association in thought must involve 
similar connection in reality."J To apply this admirable ex- 
position to the case before us. The connection between the dog 
as an animal, and the bite which the dog produced, was easy to 
see. The dog bit, and a wound was caused. Now, reverse this. 

♦ Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs^ and Condition of tlie 
North American Indian, vol. ii. p. 92. 

t Dennys, Folh'Lore of China, p. 52 ; Folk-Lore Record, vol. ii. " Malagasy 
Folk-Lore," p. 21. 

% Tylor, Primitive Culture^ vol. i. p. 104 ; see also p. 76. 

*> to • • 

fc « 

b ■ • • * • 
» • • • • 

• • « • 

• « 
•• •• 
« • • • 

• e « • • 
• • • • • 

The wound is here ; will not the dog cure ? The wound is in- 
separable from the bite of the dog. In one of Cervantes' novels, 
La GitaniUaf he tells of a young man, who was approaching a 
gipsy camp at night, being bitten by the dogs which attacked 
him. The old gipsy who undertook his cure took some hairs 
from the dogs, and, after washing the bites he had on his left 
leg with wine, applied the hairs, which she had fried in oil, 
with the oil, and covered them with a little chewed green rose- 
mary. She then bound up the wounds with clean cloths, and 
made the sign of the cross over them.* That the body of a dead 
serpent, bruised on the wound it has caused, is thought an in- 
fallible remedy, is what one would expect f 

Dr. Dennys, when he says that a dog's virus, being powerless 
on its own body, a person, by swallowing one of its hairs, might 
hope to share the immunity enjoyed by the animal it came 
from, seems to me to have let the early and simple theory be 
obscured by the jocular meaning which now attaches to the 
phrase " take a hair of the dog that bit you," and to ignore 
what is well illustrated by the instance he gives, that originally 
the question was one of the assumed connection of part and 
whole, — in a word, of sympathy. His conjecture is, however, to 
some extent, supported by the direction of the leeches to ad- 
minister a piece of mad dog's liver to those by whom the dog 
has been bitten, and by the Scotch practice of extracting the 
heart of a mad dog, drying it over a fire, and administering it 
ground to powder in a draught to the patient.| It is a little 
startling to find that in 1866, at Bradwell, a woman stated at 

♦ Cited in Dyer's English FolhrLore, p. 144. 

t Hunt, Romances and Drolls, second series, p. 215. A versified proverb mns — 

<< The beanteons adder hath a sting, 
Yet bears a balsam too." 

From this, viper bngloss (^Bchium vtUgare), from its supposed resemblance to a 
snake, was thought to be effectual against bites. — Annie Pratt, Wild Mowers, 
vol. i. p. 62. 
J Dennys, Folh^Lore of China, p. 61. 

e2 

the inquest held on the body of a child of five years of age, who 
had died from hydrophobia, that, at tlie request of the mother of 
the child, she had fished up the body of the dog by which the 
child had been bitten, and which had been drowned nine days 
before, in order to extract the dog's liver. A slice of this liver 
she cooked before the fire, and gave it to the child to eat with 
some bread. In spite of this treatment, however, the child died.* 
The reason for drowning a dog, which has bitten a person, is 
precautionary. The dog may not, it is true, the gossips said, 
be mad now, but if it should by any chance become mad here- 
after, the person it had bitten would naturally, and from 
sympathy, instantly suffer from hydrophobia. This connection 
between dog and man corresponds to the connection which 
elsewhere was supposed to exist between the child, who had been 
passed through a split ash, and the tree. If it were cut down 
there would be little hope of the child, or man as he might then 
be, surviving. There does not appear to have been any re- 
ciprocal sympathy. The man might be dependant on the dog 
or the tree for his life, but neither tree nor dog would be 
affected by the death of the man arising from other causes than 
those with which they had to do. 

It is only a step from this respect for some&ing belonging 
to an animal which causes dread, as the dog among ourselves, 
and the crocodile in Madagascar, to a general esteem of an 
instrument by which a wound may have been caused. Yet 
the greatest teacher of sympathetic treatment, in this ease, 
was the eminent Sir Kenelm Digby. Cornelius Agrippa, in 
his Occult Philosophy^ says, " It is a wondrous thing, but easy to 
experience, that Pliny speaks of : ^ If any person shall be sorry 
for any blow that he hath given another afar offer nigh at hand, 
if he shall presently spit into the middle of the hand with which he 
gave the blow, the party that was smitten shall presently be free 
from pain.' " " The doctrine and the employment of the ritual," 

* Pall Mall Gazette, October 12, 1866. 

SYMPATHT AND ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 5S 

says Pettigrew, *^ is to be traced back to the time of Paraoolsus^ 
who, in some points of view, may be considered as the first fabri- 
cator of the powder of sympathy. Van Helmont, the panegyrist of 
his predecessor Paracelsus, acquaints us that the secret was first put 
forth by Ericcius Mehryns of Eburo," and so on, but it was Sir 
Kenelm Digby, without doubt, who did most for the propagation 
of the doctrine. Authenticity Digby guarantees to his reports by 
the deep study which James I. of England gave to the problem of 
sympathy, and James's talents and industry in matters of natural 
history and their origin, he says, is well known. The secret 
lay in its simplicity, in applying medical treatment not to the 
wound, but to the instrument which had inflicted the wound, 
or to some bandage connected with the wound. One instance 
will perhaps better illustrate the sympathetic theory than a 
page of explanation. Mr. Howell, secretary to the Duke of 
Buckingham, was wounded seriously in a duel ; the best doctors 
were consulted, but in vain ; even the king's own physician 
found the case beyond him. Four or five days after the duel, 
when the doctors feared gangrene would set in^ and the hand bo 
lost, the patient was in the lowest depth of misery from the ex- 
cessive pain he suffered, and Sir Kenelm's advice was sought. 
He said he was willing to do his best, but he was, not unnaturally, 
afraid of being charged with witchcraft or incapacity. He was 
assured that the fame of his previous cures was so great that ho 
need be under no apprehension. He then asked for a piece of 
cloth on which was some of the patient's blood, and he was handed 
part of the first bandage that had been applied. Sir Eonolm 
asked next for a basin of water as if he would wash his hands, 
and into this he put a handful of the powder ho kept in the 
cabinet on his table, and when it was dissolved he abided the 
piece of blood-stained doth. After waiting anxiously for an 
hour he asked the patient how he felt. The reply was gratify- 
ing ; he felt an agreeable coolness, he said, as if a napkin cold 
and wet had been laid upon his arm. Sir Kenelm assured 

Howell it was the good effect of his medicine, and that if 
moderate heat and cold were attended to he would soon be well. 
The result justified his assertion. This cure was attested by the 
Duke of Buckingham, and James himself inquired as to the 
cure very narrowly, at the same time joking Digby (who hastens 
to remark, in a kind of literary stage whisper, that his majesty 
was always of most excellent amiability) on being a magician 
and sorcerer. 

Dryden in his Tempest introduces this treatment In act v. 
sc. 1, Ariel says, with reference to the wound received by Hip- 
polito from Ferdinand, — 

** He must be dressed again, as I have done it. 
Anoint the sword which pierced him with this weapon salve, and wrap it 
close from air, till I have tmie to Yisit him again." 

And in the next scene (sc. 2, act v.) the following dialogue 
ensues between Hippolito and Miranda — 

HiPPOLiTO : 0, my wound pains me. 
MlBAKDA : I am come to ease yon. {She vnwraps the sword.) 
Hip. : Alas I I feel the cold air come to me ; 

My wound shoots worse than ever. (^She wipes and anoints the 
sword.) 
MiRAKDA : Does it still grieve yon ? 

Hip. : Now methinks there's something 
Laid just upon it. 
Miranda : Do yon find no ease 7 

Hip. : Tes, yes, upon the sudden, all the pain 

Is leaving me. Sweet heaven, how I am eased ! 

The matter-of-fact explanation is, " A wound, in general terms, 
may be defined to be a breach in the continuity of the soft parts 
of the body ; and an incised wound is the most simple of its 
kind. These, it must be remembered, were of the description of 
wound to which the sympathetical curers resorted, and their 
secret of cure is to be explained by the rest and quiet which the 
wounded parts were permitted to enjoy, in opposition to the 
ordinary treatment under the fallacious doctrines and practice of 

that day in digesting, mundificating, incarnating."* So that, 
in fact, the beauty of Sir Kenelm's system was, that it allowed 
nature to interfere, far as such an intention was from the mind 
of either Sir Kenelm or his followers. 

With the passage from Dryden that I have quoted above still 
in our memory, it is curious to learn from Mrs. Latham that 
when a man of her acquaintance fell down on a sword-stick, and 
cut himself severely, the sword-stick was hung at the head of his 
bed, and polished night and day at stated intervals by a female. 
We have here the Miranda and Hippolito incident, but this 
time in West Sussex, and in the nineteenth century. Even 
simple cuts are healed in the same way. The knife with which 
a man has cut himself should be rubbed with fat, that the heal- 
ing of the cut may be hastened, and this both in England and 
in the Netherlands. Warenfel's note — "If the superstitious 
person be wounded by any chance he applies the salve not to the 
wound but, what is more effectual, to the weapon by which he 
received it," — might, strange to say, be illustrated from many 
quarters. When a Northumbrian reaper is cut by his sickle 
he not uncommonly cleans and polishes the sickle, and from 
a midland county a correspondent tells me that, to cure a horse 
lamed by a nail, the farmers will thrust the nail into a piece of 
bacon, and wait for the foot to heal. 

On an earlier page I have referred to that branch of 
association of part and whole which seeks to procure sick- 
ness or death. To bury the hair of a man, or something that 
had personally belonged to him, was a sure way to secure his 
future illness. We shall now find that exactly the same cus- 
toms are followed to restore a man's health. We found, in the 
first instance, the enemy of a man endeavouring to bury the 
man's life ; we now have the friend of a patient seeking to 
bury the patient's disease. In the county of Moray the people 

♦ Pettigrew, Superstitions coniiected with the Practice of Medicine and 
Surgery y p. 163. 

were formerly in the habit of paring the nails of the fingers and 
toes of persons sufiering from hectic and consumptive diseases. 
The parings were put in a rag cut from the patient's clothes, 
and waved three times round his head, with the cry Deas soil. 
After this the rag was buried in some miknown place. Among 
medical men, " the Oalenist of much repute," of whom Boyle 
writes, was induced, when other means of cure failed, to boil an 
egg in his own urine. The egg was afterwards buried in an 
ant-hill, and as the egg wasted the physician found his dis- 
temper go, and his strength to increase.* In Staffordshire, a 
correspondent says that to cure jaundice a bladder is often 
filled with the patient's urine and placed near a fire ; as the 
water dries up the jaundice goes, and, were it necessary, many 
other instances of this superstition might be given. In New 
England, to cure a child of the rickets, a lock of its hair is buried 
at cross roads, and if at full moon so much the better. 

A less personal connection is involved in rubbing warts with 
meat or snails, and then burying the meat or causing the death 
of the snail, but the theory of sympathy is the same. When 
you have rubbed the warts, a Lancashire woman will tell you, 
with a piece of meat stolen from a butcher's stall or basket, you 
must bury the meat secretly under a gateway at four lane ends, 
or, if you cannot conveniently and speedily find a gateway at 
four lane ends, you may bury the meat in any secluded spot. 
As the meat decays the warts go.f If the snail cure is pre- 
ferred there are many ways of performing it Some direct that 
for nine successive nights the snail should be rubbed on the 
warts and then impaled on a thorn to waste away, while others, 

* Pettigrew, Superstitions^ pp. 72-76 ; Boyle, Usefulness of Experimental 
Philosophy, p. 227. Pettigrew (p. 77) speaks of a similar cure of jaundice, but 
inaccurately calls it an instance of *' transplantation." It is not transplantation, 
i.e, transference, but sympathy, and to be distinguished from the instance of 
transference given, ante, p. 35. 

f Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Iblk-Lore, p. 78. The practice is com- 
mon in England. 

and more cruelly, to cure ague, string nine or eleven snails on 
a thread, the patient saying, as each is threaded, " Here I leave 
my ague." When all are threaded they should be frizzled over 
a fire, and as the snails disappear so will the ague. My clerical 
authoriiy for this adds, " As a note against this, I have ^ from 

Widow K , whose own mother was thus cured,' and I well 

remember how indignant the old woman was when I threw 
discredit upon the remedy.'^ This was in the South of Hamp- 
shire.* 

Sometimes an apple will be cut in slices, and when all the 
warts have been rubbed the slices will be buried ; the boy or 
girl rejoices that in a few days his or her warts will be gone. Or 
a bean-shell has been used for the same purpose, and buried 
secretly under an ash, with these magic words — 

*' As this bean-shell rots away, 
So my wart shall soon decay." 

In Donegal, the sufierer should seek a straw with nine knees, 
and cut the knots that form the joints of every one of them — 
any superfluous knots being thrown away, — then bury the knots 
in a midden or dungheap, and as the joints rot so will the warts. 
To cure a disease in the hoof of cattle, called " the foul," writes 
a Worcestershire friend, cut a sod from a spot on which the 
animal has been seen to tread with the bad foot, and hang it on 
a blackthorn bush ; as it dries the hoof heals, f If one takes as 
many buds from an alder bush as one has warts, and buries 
them, there should soon be a cure. Strike the wart downwards 
with the knot of a reed three times, and the same happy result 
will be obtained. A cure for ague, given in the East Anglican^ 
is as follows : — When a fit is on, the sufferer should take a 
short stick and cut in it as many notches as there have been 
fits, including the present fit ; then tie a stone to the stick, and 

♦ Rev. G. S. S. 16 Octoher, 1878. 

t Rev. G. S. S. ; English Folk-Lore, p. 165 ; Folk-Lore Record^ vol. i. p. 221 ; 
Miss E. S. 8 March, 1879. 

throw Stone and stick privately into a pond, which should be 
lefl without a backward look. If the strictest secrecy has been 
obtained, it is guaranteed by those who have tried it that the 
ague fits will cease. The New England practice is slightly 
different. First of all, the operator must learn the patient's 
exact name (this savours of the early disease-creating, which 
makes it still a matter of policy among some peoples to conceal 
their real names*) and the precise hours at which the chill comes 
on. Then send the person to cut a number of willow-rods 
corresponding to the time of day. Thus, if the chill comes on at 
ten o'clock, let him cut ten rods ; take the rods one by one and 
lay them on the fire, saying, as each is put into the fire, " A. B. 
has the ague ; as the rod bums, let the ague bum too," or words 
to that effect. When all the sticks have been burned the ague 
will be cured. The patient must look on in silence. The corre- 
spondent who has favoured me with this charm says, ^^ I know 
a man who declares that an old woman in Canada cured him of 
most obstinate chills and fevers by this means, but whether 
every one can do it I can't say." In Sussex a snake is drawn 
along a man's neck if it be swollen, and afterwards the snake 
is put into a bottle, which is tightly corked. The bottle is 
buried in the ground, and, as the snake decays, the swelling 

goes-t 

" In time of common contagion," says Sir Kenehn Digby, whose 
authority in matters of sympathy no student of Folk-Medicine 
may slight, " they use to carry about them the powder of a 
toad, and sometimes a living toad or spider shut up in a box ; 
or else they carry Arsnick, or some other venomous substance, 
which draws unto it the contagious air, which otherwise would 
infect the party." The simplicity of this cure has recommended 
it in all cases, and although the reason given for wearing a 
spider or a toad is not that assigned by Sir Kenelm, we shall 

* See ante, p. 20. 

t Choice Notes {Folh-Lore), p. 36. 

not go far wrong if we conclude that it is to the older explana- 
tion that the more modem is indebted for its origin. It will 
often be found that the superstitious wearer of an amulet 
assumes a practical and rigidly sensible position. He will 
not deny that he expects the odd contents of the little bag he 
wears round his neck to do him good. He would not wear it, 
he will tell you, unless he thought he had grounds, and sufficient 
grounds too, for believing that there is a virtue in it. Then, 
more probably than not, will follow an exposition of the how and 
the why — the ingenious exposition which has salved the half- 
educated man's own mind. It is by no means uninteresting, 
but it is generally as wide of the mark as it could well be. A 
glance at the charms which are in his neighbourhood, and at 
the nature of their composition, would do more to convince a 
man of the gross superstition which his conduct implies than 
any amount of good advice and injunctions to abjure dark prac- 
tices and vague beliefe. 

First, of spiders. Burton says he first saw the spider cm*e 
practised at Lindlay, in Leicestershire, by his mother in his 
father's house. The spider, in this instance, was put in a nut- 
shell " lapped with silk." For long he thought this somewhat 
absurd, but, " at length," he tells us, " rambling amongst 
authors, as often I do, I found this very medicine in Dioscorides, 
approved by Matthiolus, repeated by Alderovandus, I began to 
have a better opinion of it, and to give more credit to amulets 
when I saw it in some parties answer to experience." Long- 
fellow, in Evangeline^ says : — 

" Only beware of the fever, my friends 1 Beware of the fever 1 
For it is not, like that of onr cold Acadian climate, 
Cored by wearing a spider hnng ronnd one's neck in a nntshell." 

Alexander of Tralles speaks of tying up ^' the little animal that 
sits and weaves with the view to catch flies," in a rag, to be 
worn on the left arm, and endorses it as good for ague. When 

Elias Ashmole was suffering from ague, on the eleventh day of 
May, 1681, he sought the aid of the spider. In the most 
matter-of-fact way he enters his treatment in his diary : — ^^ I 
took, early in the morning, a good dose of elixir, and hung three 
spiders about my neck, and they drove my ague away. Deo 
GratiasP^ The leeches directed suitable words to be said 
over a spider, which should be worn as a phylactery for the 
cure of a troublesome uvula.* " An uncle of mine," wrote a 
correspondent of If^otes and Queries ^ *^ when a child, suffered 
from an attack of ague, and one of the medicines or antidotes 
prescribed for him, probably by an old nurse, was that he 
should wear in a bag round his neck a large live spider. He 
did so ; but with the natural curiosity of a child the bag was 
opened, and upon the spider being discovered it was immedi- 
ately killed. I believe the effect expected from this singular 
treatment was, that from the creeping of the spider in the bag, 
which was next the skin, a horror or disgust would be created, 
which would give a turn to the blood and system of the 
patient." t I^ t^® West of Scotland the spider was put into a 
goose-quill and sealed up ; it was then hung round the neck of 
the ague patient, " so that it would be near the stomach." 
Sometimes more repulsively the Glasgow working-man had to 
make a medicine of the spider's web. One pill made of spider's 
web taken every morning before breakfast for three successive 
days was thought to bring about a speedy and satisfactory cure. 
This reminds us that in West Sussex many an old doctor still 
prescribes in bad cases of jaundice a live spider rolled up in 

♦ Cockayne, toI. i. p. xxx. At p. 43, vol. iii. there is another spider charm. It 
is an incantation against a watery eruption, and was to be sung first into the left 
ear and then into the right, then above the man's head. " Here came entering : a 
spider wight : he had his hands upon his hams : he quoth that thou his hackney 
wert : lay thee against his neck : they began to sail off the land : as soon as they 
off the land came, then began they to cool : then came in a wild beast's sister : 
then she ended : and oaths she swore that never this could harm the sick, nor him 
who could get at this charm, or him who had skill to sing this charm, amen, fiat." 

t I^otes cmd Queries, 2nd S. vol. iii. p. 437. 

butter to be swallowed as a pill, and that in New England the 
spider, and even a more disagreeable remedy, is administered 
in a spoonful of molasses.* 

In Norfolk, to cure a child of whooping-cough a common 
house spider is tied up in a piece of muslin and pinned over the 
mantelpiece, and when the spider dies the cough will go.f In 
Worcestershire it appears that a spider in a nutshell will ward 
off toothache if worn in a bag round the neck-l The theory 
here seems to be that if the spider is good for one thing it should 
be good for another, and I do not know that any one, even 
now, will be able to allege a reason why it should not be as 
efficacious in curing toothache as in curing ague or whooping- 
cough ! 

When a Donegal peasant's child suffers from whooping-cough 
the anxious mother will go out in the evening, in the hope that 
a beetle may fly against her and be caught. When it is caught 
— and it must not have been looked for — the beetle is put into 
a bottle and carried home. As it dies the cough will go. In 
Lancashire a hairy caterpillar is tied round the child's neck, 
with the same object and the same trust.§ 

The instances of the use of toads or parts of toads, as Sir 
Kenelm Digby indicates, are also numerous. In 1822 there was 
a toad-doctor who travelled through the country. He cut off 
the hind legs of toads brought to him by his patients, and put 
them into small bags, which he hung round the neck of those 
who suffered from king's evil. The bags were to be worn until 
the legs inside were entirely decayed. We shall not be surprised 
that he travelled in his own gig when we note that for each of 
his bags he charged seven shillings, an entire week's wages to 

* Napier, Folk-Loref p. 95 ; Folk-Lore Record, vol. i. p. 46 ; Miss C. F. G. 
Nov. 1879. 

t Dyer, English Folk-Lore, p. 164. 

% Miss E. S. 8 March, 1879. 

§ " Fairy Superstitions in Donegal," University Magazine» August, 1879, p. 
219 ; Lancashire Folk-Lore, p. 156. 

many of his patients.* The following account of a cure in the 
middle of the last century is quaint — " A girl at Qaddesden, 
having the evil in her feet from her infancy, at eleven years old 
lost one of her toes by it, and was so bad that she could hardly walk, 
therefore, was to be sent to a London hospital in a little time. 
But a beggar woman coming to the door, and hearing of it, said 
that if they would cut off the hind leg, and the foreleg on the 
contrary side of that, of a toad, and she wear them in a silken 
bag about her neck, it would certainly ctire her ; but it was to 
be observed that, on the toad's losing its legs, it was to be 
turned loose abroad, and as it pined, wasted and died, the dis- 
temper would likewise waste and die ; which happened accord- 
ingly, for the girl was entirely cured by it, never having had the 
evil afterwards. Another Gaddesden girl, having the evil in 
her eyes, her parents dried a toad in the sun, and put it in a 
silken bag, which they hung on the back part of her neck, and 
although it was thus dried, it drawed so much as to raise little 
blisters, but did the girl a great deal of service, till she carelessly 
lost it" t 

To cure fever or stop bleeding at the nose, it was thought in 
the south of Northamptonshire that a toad killed by transfixing 
it with a sharp-pointed instrument was good if the toad was 
hung round the neck in a bag. Dr. Jessop says that in July 
1875 an intelligent grazier and horsedealer at Tintagel, who 
had been ill with quinsy, consulted a wise woman at Camelford. 
She directed him to get a live toad, fasten a string round its 
throat, and hang it up till the body dropped from the head. He 
was then to tie the string round his own neck and never take it 
off, night or day, till his fiftieth birthday. " You'll never have 
quinsy again," she said. The Wiltshire labourer wears the 

* Nates cmA Queries^ 5th S. vol. iv. p. 83. 

t Choice Notes (Iblh-Lore), p. 22, from the quaint old work by William 
Ellis, farmer, at Little Gaddesden, near Hempstead, Herts, published at Salisbury 
in 1760. Cf . Digby, A Late Disoov/rse touching the Owre of Wounds, ^c, p. 77. 

forelegs of a mole, and one of its hind legs, in a bag to secui'e 
his immunity from toothache.* 

The right foot of a frog, wrapped in a deer's skin, is said to 
preserve against gout. Any one who is desirous of curing sore 
eyes is recommended, in Aberdeenshire, to catch a live frog and 
lick its eyes with his tongue. After this he has only to lick any 
diseased eye and a cure is effected. A cure for red water, a 
disease in cows, was thrusting a live frog down the animal's 
throat ; the larger the frog the more speedy the cure.f An old 
woman in Donegal, who was bom in the first years of this cen- 
tury, said, " My grandmother was that afflicted with the pains 
that she couldna lift her hand to her head. One day a poor 
woman, looking for her bit, came in an' took a seat by the fire, 
an' while she was there the grandmother reached up to the shelf 
for her knitting, an' she groaned an* lamented when she moved 
her arm. ^ Good woman,' says the poor auld wife, ^ I'm sorry 
to see you the way you are. What is it ails you?' Wi' that 
my grandmother told her all about the pains, an' she bid her 
get frog^s spawn out o' the dykes, an' put it in a crock wi' a 
slate on the top of it, an' bury it for three months in the 
garden ; then take it up and rub the pains wi' what she'd find 
in the crock. It was done, an' at the end o' the three months 
the crock was dug up, and the purest water was in it. I heered 
my mother saying that they persevered rubbing wi' the water, 
an' the old woman got rid of her rheumatics.'' | Helmontius 
praises, according to Martins, "ossiculum brachii bufonis."§ 
Toads made into a powder, called " Pulvis -3Ethiopicus," were 
much used internally, as well as externally, in cases of dropsy 

♦ Choice Notes^ p. 10 ; Notes and Queries, 5th S. vol. iv. p. 184 ; Dyer, 
JSnglish Folk-Lore, pp. 166, 175. 

t Sir Thomas Browne, Vulgar JErroi's, 1658, p. 244 ; Gregor, Folk-Lore of 
North-East of Scotland, p. 144. 

X "Fairy Superstitions in Donegal," University Magazine, August, 1879, 
p. 214. 

§ Martins, p. 32. 

and small-pox. Laid on the back of the neck alive, or dried, 
they were supposed to stop bleeding at the nose.* 

Although, as Daly ell says, few examples are found of images 
formed to procure the health of a sick man, still there are some 
recorded. In China the figure of a man, cut in paper, is carried 
out into the street, in the belief of the people, with the disease. 
When the priest has squirted water from his mouth over the 
patient, and the paper man, and the mock money which sur- 
rounds him, the mock money and the paper figure are burned. 
Sprenger, when he was inquisitor, knew of a case where, when 
a waxen image, which had been found pierced with needles at 
Issbruck, was burnt, one who was sick recovered. Now, 
according to the general theory, the sick man should have died 
when his image was melted. Again, Pizzumus is quoted to the 
effect that the fabrication of a waxen image has been recom- 
mended, either of the portion corresponding to a single 
diseased organ, or of the whole body in the case of a universal 
affection.f 

♦ Bates, Pharmacopoeia ; Pettigrew, p. 783 ; Cf . Boyle, Experimental PJUlo- 
sophy, vol. i. p. 216 (quoting Henricus de Heer, Ohserv. Medic, oppido. rarif. 
p. 194). 

f Doolittle, Chin€se,\oL i. p. 152 ; DBljeU, Darker Super stitionsj pp. 335, 364 ; 
Sprenger, Malletis Malejicaj'um, p. ii. q. i. c. 12, p. 314 ; Pizzumus, Bnchiridion 
JExoraisticum, lib. i. p. iii. c. 5, p. 64 ; " In modern India the pilgrim coming for 
cure will deposit in the temple the image of his diseased limb, in gold or silver 
or copper, according to his means," Tylor, Primitive Culture^ vol. ii. p. 368.

|T a period of the world's history, of which we know 
only that it must have been comparatively late in 
the history of culture, the possibility of entering life 
afresh — like a newly-born child — by a symbolical 
new birth, presented itself to mankind, worn out by struggles 
with invisible and visible powers, and ever-present evils of body 
and mind. That the old life should be left behind, with its 
reproaches and its regrets, that the faults and the sins of the 
penitent should become as it were the burdens of another, was 
a pleasing thing to the man who was at once weary of the old 
life and eager to begin a new. That the sores and diseases 
which afiOicted the body, that the aches and pains which made 
day and night alike miserable, should be removed for ever, and 
the weak body started once again in strength and health, rose 
before the sufferer a tempting and fascinating dream. Whether 
the theory of the spiritual or the bodily new life was the first 
to be adopted, whether the ceremony for the latter was a copy 
of the former, or both were taught at one and the same time, 
are not only questions which show difficulties on the surface, but 
for the solution of which scarcely any further light is afforded 
us after we have considered the subject. Of the antiquity of 
both we can have no doubt, and that they had their origin in 
times prior to the Aryan dispersion would be as difficult to 
disprove as, 1 venture to think, it would be to establish. 

For the spiritual new birth, as practised by the Hindus, it is 

F 

directed to make an image of pure gold of the female power of 
nature, in the shape either of a woman or of a cow. The 
person to be regenerated is enclosed in, and passed through 
this image. As a statue of pure gold would be too expen- 
sive, it is sufficient to make an image of the sacred f/onty 
through which the person to be regenerated may go. Per- 
forated rocks are considered as emblems of yoniy and through 
them pilgrims and others pass for the purpose of being regen- 
erated. The utmost faith is placed in this sin-expelling transit.* 
It is difficult to believe that there is no connection between this 
ancient custom and one which prevails to the present daj in 
Cornwall, at the " holed stone," near the village of Lanyon. 
Through this MSn-an-tol scrofulous children are passed naked 
three times, and then drawn three times on the grass, against 
the course of the sun. Even men and women, says Hunt, 
who have been afflicted with spinal diseases, or who have 
suffered from scrofulous taint, have been drawn through this 
stone, and all declare that its ancient virtues are still retained.f 
Many theories have been broached as to the Men-an-tol, — that 
its main use was to mark the time of the summer solstice ; 
that it is all that remains of a two-chambered dolmen ;| that 
to it victims intended to be sacrificed were bound ; that it was 
a stone of compact; but that it was a stone of healing, of 
transmission, seems the view taken by competent writers on the 
subject. § Another hole used for the transmission of those afflicted 
with " a crick in the back " is the Crick Stone in Morva, Corn- 
wall, but this stone is forked, and admittedly only a substitute 
for the holed stone, the higher virtues of which are conceded.|| 
The most common form of transmission with the view to 

♦ Coleman, Hindu Mythology^ pp. 161, 175. 
f Hunt, Romancetf and Drolls, first series, p. 191. 

j Jowmal of Brit, Arch. Assoc, vol. xxxiii. art. " On some Megalithic Monu- 
ments in Western Cornwall,'* pp. 295, 296. 
§ Ibid. art. ** Notes on the Mcn-an-tol and Chywoon Quoit, Cornwall," p. 176. 
II Hunt, first series, pp. 191-192. 

relief from sickness and disease is that mentioned by White in 
his Natural History of Selbome. In a farmyard near the 
middle of Selbome, he says, stood a row of pollard ashes, which 
by the seams and long cicatrices down their sides manifestly 
showed that in former times they had been cleft asunder. 
^^ These trees, when young and flexible, were severed and held 
open by wedges while ruptured children stripped naked were 
pushed through the apertures, under a persuasion that by such 
a process the poor babes would be cured of their infirmity. As 
soon as the operation was over the tree in the suffering part 
was plastered with loam and carefully swathed up. If the part 
coalesced and soldered together, as usually fell out where the 
feat was performed with any adroitness at all, the party was 
cured ; but where the cleft continued to gape, the operation, it 
was supposed, would prove ineffectual. We have several per- 
sons now living in the village who, in their childhood, were sup- 
posed to be healed by this superstitious ceremony, derived 
perhaps from our Saxon ancestors, who practised it before their 
conversion to Christianity." ♦ At Spitchwich, near Ashburton, in 
more recent days, a gamekeeper, when some remark was made 
on the peculiarity of an ash sapling, said that the tree had been 
used for the purpose of curing ruptured children. He gave 
details of the ceremony, and instances of the cure in the case of 
several well-known young men of the neighbourhood, who had 
been transmitted through the split in their boyhood and had grown 
up strong and healthy. Sometimes the patient is supposed to 
have thenceforth a sjrmpathetic life with the tree ; and the intelli- 
gent keeper, referring to a tree which had evidently suffered from 
the experiment, spoke of the deformity and sickly growth of 
a youth who had been passed through itf So, too, in Com- 

• White, Natural History of Selbome, 1789, p. 202. 

f Reports and Trans, of Devonshire Assoc, 1876, viii. p. 54 ; see also 
Gentleman's Mag, Oct. 1804; Brand, Popular Antiquities, p. 737; Pettigrew, 

Medical Superstitions, p. 75. 

wall. In West Sussex the child, on being carried to the tree, 
must be attended by nine persons, each of whom passes it through 
the cleft from west to east.* In Germany we hear of cherry 
trees and oaks being used for similar purposes ; thus Grimm, — 
" Aus dem Magdeburgischen vernahm ich folgendes: wenn zwei 
briider, am besten zwillinge, einen kirschbaum in der mitte spalten 
und das kranke kind hindurchziehen, dann den baum wieder 
zubinden, so heilt das kind wie der baum heilt;" and, ^' In der 
Altmark bei Wittstock stand eine dicke krause eiche, deren aste 
in einander und locher hindurch gewachsen waren : wer durch 
diese locher kroch, genas von seiner krankheit, um den baum 
herum lagen kriicken in menge die genesenden weggeworfen 
halten." t I do not know of children being passed through the 
branches of the maple for the cure of any special complaint, but 
in some parts of England it is thought that by so doing longevity 
is secured to the children.^ In West Grinstead Park one of 
these trees had been long resorted to, and " when a rumour 
spread through the parish a few years ago that it was about to 
be cut down, humble petitions were presented that it might be 
spared." An American correspondent of Notes and Queries^ 
says that when he was a boy he saw in Burlington County, New 
Jersey, a tree the trunk of which had divided into two parts 
which met again at a short distance above. Through the open- 
ing ruptured children were passed. Unfortunately the name of 
the tree is not given. 

Scotch witches passed children under hectic fever, and con- 
sumptive patients, thrice through a wreath of woodbine, cut 
during the increase of the March moon, let down over the body 

♦ Folk-Lore Record, vol. i. p. 40. 
t Grimm, Deutsche Mythologies vol. ii. p. 976. 

X Folh-Loi*e Becordy vol. i. p. 43 ; also Henderson, Iblk-Lore of the Northern 
Counties (1879), p. 17. 
§ Notes and Queries. 6th S. vol. i. p. 16. 

NEW BIRTH AND SACRIFICE. ^ 69 

from the head to the feet.* One, more elaborately, is said to 
have thrown round the patient, at intervals of twenty-four 
hours, "Ane girth of woodbind, thrysis thre times, saying, *I do 
this in name of the Father, the Sone, and the Halie Ghaist ; '" 
and instances might be multiplied.! A good cure for any 
cattle disease is said to consist in making the cow, in company 
with a cat, leap through a loop made of a straw rope plaited 
contrary way and tied. The cow is cured, but the unfortunate 
cat dies. I 

Transmission through an artificial substance might also be 
effected, for the Perth Kirk Session Eecord of 1623 bears witness 
to the preparation of three cakes from nine portions of meal 
contributed by nine maidens and nine married women. In 
each cake a hole was made in order that a child might be trans- 
mitted thrice in name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
Ghost. § A remedy quite as suggestive of new birth, though 
much less elaborate than this transm^'ssion, was practised near 
Bushiro, in the Persian Gulf, for the cure of hydrophobia, some 
years ago. A MooUah or priest, who was a descendant of the 
Prophet, when consulted by persons bitten by dogs, mounted 
a couple of small columns of masonry a little apart from each 
other, placed one leg on each, and bade the afflicted pass 
between and under, the result being a complete cure. || 

Again, a child in Cornwall was supposed to be overlooked ; its 
father and two companions burst into the witch's cottage and 
pinned her to the floor. The father then dragged three blazing 
pieces of furze from the fire and laid them across each other 
outside the door. He forced the child to cross the fire three 

♦ Shaw, Eutory of the Provinee of Moray (1827), p. 282, cited in Dalyell, 
Darker Sv^erstitions of Sootland, p. 121. 
t DalyeU, p. 121. 
t Gregor, FollirLore of North-East of Sootland^ p. 124. 

Dalyell, p. 394. 
II Notes and Queries, 5th S. vol. xi. p. 6. 

times,* thus symbolically taking her as a new being beyond the 
reach of the witch's power. 

To crawl under a bramble which has formed a second root in 
the ground is said to cure rheumatism, boils, and other com- 
plaints. The arch must be complete. If it is a child suffering 
from whooping-cough, who is thus symbolically to be re-bom, 
he is passed seven times from one side to the other, while the 
operators repeat these lines — 

** In bramble, ont congh, 
Here I leave the whooping-congh." 

" I have not a doubt," writes an Essex correspondent, " that 
should whooping-cough make its appearance here to-morrow, 
the next day the victims would be subjected to the above treat- 
ment."t In the island of Innisfallen, Killarney, is a tree called 
the eye of the needle. The name was given to the tree owing 
to its double trunk uniting. " Sure your honour will thread the 
eye of the needle ; every one that comes to Innisfallen threads 
the needle," said his guide to Croker, and when he was asked 
what was the use of pressing through, the answer was ready, 
" The use, Sir I Why it will ensure your honour a long life, 
they say ; and if your honour only was a lady in a certain way, 
there would be no fear of you after threading the needle." Mr 
Croker went through. J 

It is a fact, which could, if need were, be proved from 
many provincial stories, that sacrifice remains imbedded in 
our folk-lore. In order to aA'oid misconception, I should say, 
almost in the words of Grimm, that sacrifice has two objects 
and two meanings. The first object is, to propitiate those 
superhuman powers which have the control of health and 

* Hunt, first series, pp. 236, 237. 

t Hunt, second series, pp. 212, 215 ; Dyer, English Folh-Lorey p. 171 ; TranB- 
actions of Devonshire Association^ 1877, vol. ix. p. 96 ; Rev. E. S. C. 3 November, 
1879. " The newer root of such a bramble dug up, cut into nine pieces with the 
left hand, with ceremonies, was used to cure dysentery."— Cockayne, vol. ii. pp. 
291, 293. 

% Croker, Legends of Killarney, p. 46. 

sickness, prosperity and misfortane ; the meaning desired to be 
conveyed in this oflfering is that the favour of those powers should 
be continued towards the suppliant, that storms should not be sent 
in time of harvest, or ill-hoalth when good health is a present 
possession. The second object is to conciliate the powers, should 
they be supposed to have exhibited displeasure — to expiate the 
offence which has brought about disaster, — the significance of 
this being, that the gods or powers are supposed to be amenable 
to the same influences which regulate man's relations vnth man* 
In a word, we have sacrifices to keep the powers in good 
humour, and sacrifices to restore good humour, for, in the 
dependent faith of the sacrificer, all followed in matters beyond 
his ken as much on the good humour of the powers as within 
his ken on the good humour of his fellows. 

To the first class all our ofierings to fairies may be said to 
belong. When the cream-bowl was left for the lubber-fiend, 
or the brownies found their wort ready, we can boldly go beyond 
the popular explanation that these gifts were left as rewards for 
undertaking that mysterious labour which the good people were 
credited with accomplishing in the watches of the night. It is 
more than doubtftd if any idea of aid in return was attached to 
the food left in early times for the visitant. Later, when the 
ever-reasoning and explaining mind set itself to discover why the 
bowl of cream should be left, it was natural to assume that it 
was as a reward, or, more bluntly, a hire for work done. But 
in reality there was originally no idea of hire. It must be 
remembered that our folk-lore did not tumble dovm the chimney 
on a winter night, a complete and coherent whole. Every Jack 
and Jill is a descendant of a race whose origin and customs are 
lost in obscurity, so far as they are not shadowed forth in the 
daily life of Jack and Jill as we now see them, or as we may 
gather from what occasional scribes have told us of the more 
primitive ways they lived among. The bowl of cream, or what- 
ever else was left when the household went to bed, was as much 

in its conoeption an oflforing to an unseen power as any sacrifice 
in a Pacific island. It was a petition that the powers which might 
come in the night should be kindly, and take of the ofierings 
by which their servants sought to secure the continuance of 
their favour. This does not seem inconsistent with the later 
theory of hire. When the dim beings, who, although very 
dreadfol, would share man's goods, had been forgotten as a 
source of possible evil, there still lingered the notion of some- 
thing coming in the night. It was a natural conclusion to a 
practical man that if the something came and was fed, it must 
be because he had some reason for coming. Thus, as indi- 
cated above, the conception of hire began to dominate our tales 
of fairies. 

To the second class belong all our medical superstitions con- 
nected with folk-lore. In Aberdeenshire, when a man is first 
seized with epilepsy, his clothes should be burned on the spot 
where he fell. This is an impromptu bumt-oflering. As 
altars were built on places of visions or miracles, so, where the 
influence of the unseen made itself suddenly felt, the burnt- 
offering was incontinently prepared. Another cure was to bury 
a cock on the same sacred spot. The antiquity of the connection 
of the cock with sacrifice is very great. The dying utterance of 
Socrates was a direction to sacrifice a cock to Esculapius, to 
whom, with Apollo, it was dedicated. In Egypt, the red cock 
was sacrificed to Osiris. During the prevalence of infectious 
diseases in the East, Barthelemy says the cock was offered as 
an oblation, being sacrificed at the comers of the temples, 
or killed over the bed of the invalid, who was sprinkled with 
its blood. It is curious to note that a Scotch cure for epilepsy 
was to bury a cock below the patient's bed, or with parings 
of nails and toes, cuttings of hair, and ashes from the four 
corners of the hearth, at the place where the fit seized the 
man. Here there is real sacrifice of some portion of the man, 
along with the cock, in the same way that Chinese children will 

cat a slice off their own calves to mix with the physic ordered 
for a sick father's use. Five hundred years ago an Irish witch 
was said to have sacrificed nine red cocks to her familiar spirit, 
and the Buddhists of Ceylon are said still to sacrifice red cocks 
to evil spirits, that is, to spirits that bring evil, which must be 
removed. It was a red cock's blood with which Christian 
Levingston baked the bannock which the patient could not eat. 
A remedy for insanity was burying a cock between the lands of 
two lairds. To cure consumption Peter Levens says : " Take a 
brasse pot, fill it with water, set it on the fire, and put a great 
earthen pot within that pot, and then put in these parcels fol- 
lowing : — Take a cock and pull him alive, then flea off his skin, 
then beat him in pieces, take dates a pound, and slit out the 
stones, and lay a layer of them in the bottom of the pot, and then 
lay a piece of the cock, and upon that some more of the dates, 
and take succory, endive, and parsley roots, and so every layer 
one upon another, and put in fine gold and some pearl, and 
cover the pot as close as may bee with coarse dow, and so let it 
distill a good while, and so reserve it for your use till such time 
as you have need thereof."* 

A custom has been noticed above of hanging on a bush or tree 
rags that have touched a sick person, in order that a passer-by 
may take the rag, and with it the disease. But these rags were 
often left as sacrifices. Thus, when people went to St Oswald's 
Well to discover by the floating or sinking of his shirt if a 
man would recover or not, they at their departure hung a rag 
of the shirt on the bush at hand. This, too, was the custom 
at Holywell Dale, in North Lincolnshire, at Great Cotes, at St. 
John's Well, Aghada, Cork, and many other places. Park, 
speaking of a large tree decorated with rags and scraps of cloth, 

♦ Grimm, vol. i p. 34 (or Stallybrass, vol. i. p. 41); Demiys, pp. 68, 69; 
"Romance of Chinese Social Life," Temple Bar, Jnly, 1880, p. 319; Dyer, Ihiglish 
Folh-LorCt p. 93 ; Dalyell, p. 86 ; Levens, 1664, Pathway to Health, cited in 
Notes and Qtieries, 1st S. vol. ii. p. 435; MitcheD, Past in the Present, pp. 146, 
266, 274. 

says that at first these scraps were probably to inform the traveller 
that water was near, but that the custom has been so sanc- 
tioned that nobody presumes to pass without hanging up some- 
thing.* It is more conformable, however, to the rules of super- 
stition to think that this tree served to the Africans the purpose 
of the votive temples of the Bomans. 

To avert the destruction of an entire drove it is still known 
that the burial of one cow alive may be useful. More cruelly, 
there are instances of a cow being rubbed over with tar, and 
driven forth from the stricken herd. The tar is set on fire, and 
the poor animal is allowed to run till death puts an end to its 
sufierings. To burn to death a pig has been recommended by a 
wise woman of Banffshire as a cure for cattle disease. The ashes 
were to be sprinkled over the byre and other farm buildings.t 

Human sacrifices are, happily, now rare. Grimm says that in 
folk-tales there are traces of children being put to death as a 
cure for leprosy. Xenokrates, Galen reports, said good things 
of cannibalism, writing "with an air of confidence on the 
good effects to be obtained by eating human brains, flesh, or 
livor," Act Twins are regarded as of ill omen among the Bar- 
nangwato living at Shoshung in South Africa, and at the yearly 
sacrifice for the protection of the town from war, pestilence, or 
other misfortunes, twins are substituted for the orthodox black 
bull, and used in a decoction with which all the town is daubed. § 
Tongans chop off pieces of the little finger as a sacrifice for the 
recovery of a relative of rank who is sick. || 

♦ Pettigrew, pp. 38, 39 ; Notes and Queriejt, 5th S. vol. vii. p. 37 ; vol. vi. pp. 
424, 186 ; Grimm, vol. ii. p. 986. 

t Lecky, HUtory of England in the Mghteenth Century, vol. ii. p. 29, citing 
Mitchell, Superstitions of North- West Highlands; Gregor, p. 186. 

X Grimm, vol. i. p. 37 (or Stallybrass, vol. i. p. 46) ; Cockayne, vol. i. p. xvii. 

§ Folk^Lore Journal, S. Africa, vol. i. pp. 36, 36 (Rev. Boger Price on The 
Ceremony of JHpheku), 

II Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. pp. 363-366.

|T would be wrong to charge our forefathers, and wrong 
to charge the peasantry of the present day, with 
irreverence because we frequently find the name of 
Our Saviour connected with trivial and apocryphal 
legends as to the cure of sickness. If charms were originally 
simply invocations or prayers, which might be of the simplest, 
for John Mac William, a Scottish wizard, simply said, " God 
restore you to your health," there was nothing but what was in 
itself praiseworthy in the mention of the name of the Great 
Healer. That He, in the course of His lifetime, had cured many 
sick and dying, the people knew from their teachers, and the 
natural form of any prayer on behalf of a sick daughter was, 
that as once upon a time Jairus's daughter was raised, so might 
the child of the believer; or as the woman with the issue of blood 
was healed for her importuning faith, so the cure of the relative 
on whose behalf so much prayer had been oflFered might be per- 
fected. That the evil itself had been inflicted as a chastening we 
find acknowledged, as in the charms for the cure of sores which 
Lawrence Boak and his wife used, and which they acknowledged 
to have used when they were charged before the Kirk Session of 
Perth in 1631— 

" Thir soirs are risen throngh God's wark, 
And mnst be laid throngli God's help ; 
The mother Mary, and her dear Son, 
Lay thir soirs that are begun.*** 

* Domestic Annals of Scotland, vol. i. p. 323. 

The more general practice, however, was to couple with the 
name of Jesus some fact in his life with or without the attribu- 
tion of a legendary incident, and then to pass on at once to an 
exorcision of the ailment from which the patient was suffering. 
For the cure of bleeding — 

** Christ was bom in Bethlehem, 
Baptised in the riyer Jordan. 
The riyer stood, 
So shall thy blood. 

{Nams of person.) 
In the name of the Father/* &c. 

or in prose : ^^ Jesus that was in Bethleem bom, and baptyzed 
was in the flumen Jordane, as stente the water at hys comyng, 
so stente the blood of thys man N. thy Servvaunt, thorw the vertu 
of thy holy name + Jesu 4- , and of thy Co%j\\ swete Sent Jon. 
And sey thys Charme fyve times with fyve Pater Nosters, in the 
worschep of the fyve woundys." 

A more incomprehensible version is — 

<< Christ was bom in Bethlehem, 
Baptised in the riyer Jordan ; 
There He digg*d a well, 
And turned the water against the hill, 
So shall thj blood stand still. 
In the name," &c.* 

A simpler prayer, to be used in cases of nose-bleeding and 
wounds, given in the MS. Liber Loci Benedicti de Whalley (1296- 
1346), prays that not more " than one drop of blood" be allowed 
to flow. " So may it please the Son of God. So His mother 
Mary. In the name of the Father, stop, blood ! In the name 
of the Son, stop, blood ! In the name of the Holy Ghost, stop, 
blood ! In the name of the Holy Trinity." 

When cutting the club moss (Lycopodium inundatum), which 
is good against all diseases of the eyes, the Cornish wise people 

♦ Hunt, Romances cmd Drolls, second series, pp. 209-214 ; Brand, Popular 
Antiquities, p. 729. 

first of all show the knife, with which the moss is to be cut, to 
the moon, and repeat — 

<< As Christ heal'd the issue of blood, 
Do thon cnt, what thon cnttest, for good."* 

Sometimes the legends are difficult either to explain or trace. 
This may be well illustrated by the charm for toothache which 
is so popular among peasantry at home and abroad, and which 
has never, so far as I know, been explained or had its origin 
elucidated. One version runs — 

" Christ pass'd by His brother's door, 
Saw His brother lying on the floor. 
What aileth thee, brother ? 
Fain in the teeth ? 
Thy teeth shall pain thee no more. 
In the name," &c. 

In Lancashire the following is frequently worn sewn inside 
the waistcoat or stays, and over the left breast : — 

" Ass Sant Fetter sat at the geats of Jerusalm our Blessed 
Lord and Sevour Jesus Crist Pased by and Sead, What Eleth 
thee ? hee sead. Lord my teeth ecketh. Hee sead, arise and 
follow mee, and thy teeth shall never Eake Eney mour. 
Fiat + Fiat + Fiat'' 

Another Lancashire version, which we find amplified in 
Orkney, informs us that Peter ** sat weeping on a marble stone," 
and a Devonshire charm beginning — " All glory ! all glory ! 
all glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy 
Ghost !" places the scene of the incident in the garden of 
Gethsemane. A clergyman, writing in Notes and Queriesj 
says that he once endeavoured to combat the general belief of 
country folks that this charm is in the Bible. He said, in 

♦ Lancashire Folk-Lore, p. 77; Hunt, Romances and Drolls, second series, 
p. 21 6. ** At sundown, having carefully washed the hands, the club moss is to be 
cut kneeling. It is to be carefully wrapped in a white cloth, and subsequently 
boiled in some water taken from the spring nearest to its place of growth. 
This may be used as a fomentation." 

answer to her arguments — ** Well, but dame, I think I know 
my Bible, and I don't find any such verse in it" But the reply 
was triumphant and unhesitating — " Yes, your Beverenoe, that 
is just the charm. IV a in the Bible^ but yoa carCt find itV In 
Berkshire Bortron is substituted for St. Peter.* A corre- 
spondent lately sent me a long extract from the Inverness 
Courier, which referred to this charm. A lady had tried all 
remedies for incessant toothache, but in vain. One of her 
shepherds, touched by her sufferings, asked for leave of absence, 
and hurried to a brother shepherd, a souih-countryman, living 
in a glen some twenty mUes off, whom he knew to have 
had at one time a marvellous charm in his possession. It was 
lent on the security of the northern shepherd's watch, and in 
less than half-an-hour after it had been hung round the lady's 
neck, her toothache vanished for ever. The charm, which was 
similar to those given above, was written on what seemed like 
an old fly-leaf, and was encased in a piece of green silk, sewn 
into the form of a Maltese cross. On inquiry, it was found 
that the charm had been introduced into the glen in the early 
part of this century by an Irish packman, called Ambrose Keen. 

^' All the people about the place firmly believe that Mrs. 

was cured by the virtue inherent in this charm. As for herself, 
although she will not actually confess that she believes with the 
rest, she seems very plainly to show that she has some hidden 
faith in it ; for I see it vexes her when any one laughs at what 
is a piece of superstitious nonsense." 

Another legend is preserved in a familar charm against 
sprains and bruises. Thus, " As our Blessed Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ was riding into Jerusalem, His horse tripped and 

♦ Lancashire Folk-Lore, p. 76 (citing Carr's Glossary, voL ii. p. 264) ; Hunt, 
Bomances and Drolls, second series, p. 215; Choice Nites (^Folh-Lore), pp. 
62, 168 ; Journal of the British Arohaological Association, vol. xxxiv. p. 
329. ** The belief [in West Sussex] is that the possession of a Bible or a 
Prayer Book with this legend written in it is a charm against tooth-ache." — 
Folk-Lore Becord, vol. i. p. 40. 

sprained his leg. Our blessed Lord and Saviour blessed it, and 
said — 

** Bone to bone, and vein to yein, 

O yein tnm to thy rest again. 

M. N, so shaU thine. In the name/' &c. 
or — 

" Our Lord forth raide, 

His foal's foot slade, 

Onr Lord down lighted, 

His foal's foot righted. 
Saying, Flesh to flesh ; blood to blood, and bane to bane. 

In onr Lord His Niune." 

The version known in Shetland is very similar, but is said in 
such a tone as not to be heard by the bystanders or even the 
person whose cure is being sought, and is preceded by the 
application of what is known as the " wresting thread," a thread 
spun from black wool with nine knots on it, to the sprained leg 
or arm. Grimm's remarks as to the corresponding versions in 
Norway and Sweden and Germany (with Oden instead of 
Christ) are most valuable and instructive, and to his pages I 
may refer those desirous of further comparing the diflferent 
charms.* 

The incident of the spear of Longinus is used as a charm 
(a.d. 1475) " to draw out Yren de Quarell ": — 

" Longinus Miles Ebreus percussit latus Domini nostri Jesu 
Christi; Sanguis exuit etiam latus : ad se traxit lancea + tetra- 
gramaton + Messyas + Bother Emanuel -h Sabaoth+ Adonay + 
Undo sicut verba ista fuerunt verba Christi, sic exeat ferrum 
istud sine quarellum ab isto Christiano. Amen. And sey thys 
Charme five tymes in the worschip of the fyve woundys of 
Chryst." 

Or from the Liber Loci Benedicti de Whalley (above quoted). 
" To Staunch Bleeding. A soldier of old thrust a lance into 
the side of the Saviour ; immediately there flowed thence blood 

♦ Choice Notes, p. 167 ; Notes and Queries, Ist S. vol. iii. p. 268; vol. iv. p. 
500 ; Chambers, Fireside Stories, p. 37 ; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, vol. ii, 
pp. 1030-1031. 

and water — the blood of Redemption and the water of Baptism. 
In the name of the Father H-maj the blood cease. In the name 
of the Son + may the blood remain. In the name of the Holy 
Ghost -h may no more blood flow from the mouth, the vein, or 
the nose." 

For a Stitch the leeches tell us to make a cross and sing over 
the place thrice, — 

^^ Longinus miles lancea ponxit dominum et restitit sanguis 
et recessit dolor."* 

From Cornwall we have — 

'* Sanguis mane in te, 
Sicnt Christns fait in se, 
Sanguis mane in ink yen&, 
Sicnt Christns in sua pena ; 
Sanguis mane fixus 
Sicnt Christns quando cmcifixus/* 

Another from East Anglia — 

" Stand fast ; lie as Christ did 
When he was crucified upon the tree. 
Blood remain up in the veins, 
As Christ did in all his pains." 

From the History of Polperro I take the following : — 

^* Christ he walketh over the land, 
Carried the wild fire in his hand, 
He rebuked the fire and bid it stand, 
Stand wildfire, stand. 
In the name,'' &c.f 

For a Burn. " As I passed over the Kiver Jordan I met with 
Christ, and He said to me, ^ Woman, what aileth thee ? ' * 0, 

* Brand, Popular Antiquities^ p. 729; Lancashire Folk-Lore^ p. 77; Cockayne, 
Saxon LeechdomSt vol. i. p. 393. 

f Hunt, Bomanoes and Drolls, second series, p. 214; Ikst Anglican, vol. ii.; 
Crouch, History of Polperro, p. 149. Another charm is — 

" Christ rode over the bridge, 
Christ rode under the bridge. 
Vain to vain, strain to strain, 
I hope Gk>d will take it back againe." 

« 

my Lord, my flesh doth bum.' The Lord said unto me, ^ Two 
angels cometh from the West, one for Fire, one for Frost, Out 
Fire and in Frost. In the name,' " &c. 

The resemblance in form of this charm to that which cures 
toothache will be noticed, but the mention of the three angels 
introduces a new element. We have elsewhere three angels 
invoked to come from the East, " and this form of words is 
repeated three times to each one of nine bramble leaves immersed 
in spring water, making passes with the leaves from the diseased 
part," and a complete form in Norfolk runs as follows : — 

'< An angel came from the north. 
And he brought cold and frost ; 
An angel came from the south, 

And he brought heat and fire ; 
The angel came from the north 
Put out the fire. 
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." 

But I have no note of any other instance in which Christ has 
been connected with the coming of these angels.* 

Blagrave testifies that he received the following from the 
father of a girl who by wearing it was cured of ague, from which 
she had suffered two years, and also that he knew many others 
who had been so cured. 

* Crouch, History of Poljterro ; Hunt, second series, p. 213 ; Dyer, English 
Folk'Lore^ p. 169. " The child of a Devonshire labourer died from scalds caused 
by its turning over a saucepan. At the inquest the following strange account 
was given by Ann Manley, a witness : — * I am the wife of James Manley, labourer. 
I met Sarah Sheppard about nine o'clock on Thursday coming on the road with 
the child in her arms, wrapt in the tail of her frock. She said her child was 
scalded ; then I charmed it, as I charmed before, when a stone hopped out of 
the fire last Honiton fair and scalded its eye. I charmed it in the road. I charmed 
it by saying to myself, * There was {sic) two angels come from the north, one of 
them brought fire, and the other frost ; out fire, in frost.' I repeat this three 
times. It is good for a scald. I can't say it is good for anything else. Old John 
Sparway told me this charm many years ago. A man may tell a woman a charm, 
or a woman may tell a man, but if a woman tell a woman, or a man a man, I 
consider it won't do any good at all.' "— PaZi Mall Gazette^ 23 November, 1868. 

G 

">^^ . \>^ 

.^^>AVA 

" When Jesus went up to the cross to be crucified the Jews 
asked him, saying, ' Art Thou afraid, or hast Thou the ague ? ' 
Jesus answered and said, ^ I am not afraid, neither have I the 
ague.' All those who hear the name^of Jesus about them shall 
not be afraid nor yet have the ague. Amen, sweet Jesus, 
amen, sweet Jehovah, amen." 

Marsden found a similar version among the charms vvritten 
on long narrow scrolls of paper, filled with scraps of verses 
separated by drawings, worn in Sumatra. 

** 4- When Christ saw the cross he trembled and shaked, and 
they said unto him. Hast thou the ague ? And he said unto 
them, I have neither ague nor fever ; and whosoever bears these 
words either in writing or in mind, shall never be troubled with 
ague or fever. So help thy servants, Lord, who put their 
trust in Thee."* 

The crown of thorns is constantly introduced into rustic 
charms. As for the prick of a thorn — 

" Christ was of a yirgin bom, 
And he was prick'd by a thorn, 
And it did never bell (throb) nor swell, 
As I trust in Jesns this never will." 

Or, 

" Christ was crown'd with thorns, 
The thorns did bleed but did not rot, 
No more shall thy finger. 
In the name/' &c. 

Or, more fully, 

*' Happy man that Christ was bom ! 

He was crowned with a thorn ; 
He was pierced through the skin, 

For to let the poison in ; 
But his poor wounds, so they say, 

Closed before He passed away. 
In with healing, out with thorn, v 

Happy man that Christ was bom."f 

• Brand, Pojnilar Antiquities, p. 766 ; Marsden, Hidory of ^matra^'p. 189 ; 
Pettigrew, Medical Superstitivns, p. 67. 

t Hunt, second series, p. 213 ; Variety in Choice Notes {Folh-Lore\ p. 12 
Dyer, English Folh-Lore, p. 173 ; East Artglican, vol. ii. ; Henderson, Folk- 
Lore of Northern Countks^ p. 171. 

At the same time as these verses are being said, says another 
account, " let the middle finger of the right hand keep in 
motion round the thorn, and at the end of the words, three times 
repeated, touch it every time with the tip of your finger, and 
with God's blessing you will find no further trouble." Another 
legend speaks of the pricking with the thorn as when "Jesus 
walked over the earth." He pricked his foot with a thorn, " the 
blood sprang up to Heaven, "his flesh never crankled or perished, 
no more wilt not thine ; in the name," &c. 

Agnes Sampson, the famous witch who was burned in 1590, 
in her exorcism of diseases, entitled " A prayer and incantation 
for visiting of sick folkis," conjures ills thus — 

<^ All kindis of illis that ener may be, 
In Chrystis name I conjnre ye, 
I conjnre ye, baith mair and less, 
By all the virtnes of the mess, 
And rycht sa, by the naillis sa, 
That naillit Jesn, and na ma ; 
And rycht sa, by the samyn blnde, 
That reiket owre the mthful rood, 
Fnrth of the flesh and of the bane. 
And in the erth, and in the stane, 
I conjnre ye in Goddis name." 

Mother Joane of Stowe's charm for curing the diseases of 
beasts as well as those of men and women, as given in Lord 
Northampton's DefenaaUve against the Poyson of supposed Pro- 
phecies* does not differ save in a few words from those above 
given. 

The cross itself is invoked in a curious charm, which, I was 
informed by the anonymous correspondent who sent me a copy, 
roughly printed and creased as by much folding, is still sold to 
Irish emigrants as they leave Queenstown. 

* London, 1583, 4to.; Pettigrew, Medical SuperttUiom, p. 69. 

g2 

84 folk-medicinb. 

^' The Following Prayer. 

" The following prayer was found in the tomb of Our Lord 
Jesus Christ, in the year 803, and sent from the Pope to the 
Emperor Charles as he was going to battle for safety. They 
who shall repeat it every day, or hear it repeated, or keep it 
about them, shall never die a sudden death, nor be drowned in 
water, nor shall poison have any effect upon them ; and it being 
read over any woman in labour she will be delivered safely, and 
be a glad mother, and when the child is born lay this on his or 
her right side, and he or she shall not be troubled with any 
misfortunes ; and if you see any one in fits, lay it on his or her 
right side, and he or she shall stand up and thank God, and 
they who shall repeat it in any house shall be blest by the Lord ; 
and he that will laugh at it will suffer. Believe this for sertain 
{sic) ; it is as true as if the Holy Evangelists had written it. 
They who keep it above them shall not fear lightning nor 
thunder, and they who shall repeat it every day shall have three 
days' warning before their death :— 

The Prayer. 

^' ! adoorable [sic) Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, dying on 
the Sacred Tree for our lives ; I Holy Cross of Christ, see me 
in thought; 01 Holy Cross of Christ, ward off from me all 
sharp repenting words ; ! Holy Cross of Christ, ward off 
from me all weapons of danger ; ! Holy Cross of Christ, 
ward off from me all things that are evil ; I Holy Cross of 
Christ, protect me from my enemies ; ! Holy Cross of Christ, 
protect me in the way of happiness ; ! Holy Cross of Christ, 
ward off from me all dangerous deaths and give me life always ; 
I crucified Jesus of Nazareth, have mercy on me, now and 
for ever. Amen. 

'* Li honour of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in honour of His 
sacred passion, and in honour of His holy resurrection, of God- 

like ascension, to which He liked to bring me to the right way 
to Heaven, true as Jesus Christ was bom on Christmas Day in 
the stable, true as Jesus Christ was crucified on Good Friday, 
true as the three wise kings brought their offerings to Jesus on 
the third day ; true as He ascended into Heaven so the honour 
of Jesus will keep me from my enemies, visible and invisible, 
now and for ever. Amen. 

" ! Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me ; Mary and 
Joseph, pray for me, th(r)ough Nicodemus and Joseph who took 
our Lord down from the Cross and buried Him. 1 Lord 
Jesus Christ, through Thy suffering on the Cross, for truely [sic) 
your soul was parting out of this sinful world, give me grace 
that I may carry my cross patiently with dread and fear when 
I suffer, and that without complaining, and that through Thy 
suffering I may escape all dangers, now and for ever. Amen." 

It is scarcely necessary to say that the sign of the cross 
occupies an important place in the prescriptions of the people. 
In Shropshire a cross is made on the flour after putting it to rise 
for baking, and also on the malt, in mashing up for brewing, to 
prevent each from being bewitched. To cure a sleeping foot cross 
it with saliva. For hiccough you may cross the front of the left 
shoe with the forefinger of the right hand, while you repeat the 
Lord's Prayer backwards.* If a man have sudden ailments, 
say the leech books, make three marks of Christ, one on the 
tongue, one on the head, and one on the breast ; he will soon be 
well. According to the Patriarch Helias's advice to King 
Alfred, ^* Petroleum is good to drink simple for inward tender- 
ness and to smear on outwardly on a winter's day, since it hath 
very much heat ; hence one shall drink it in water ; and it is 
good if for any one his speech faileth then him take it, and make 
the mark of Christ under his tongue and swallow a little of it. 

♦ Notes and Qunriss, 5th S. vol. iii. p. 466 ; Hunt, JRomances and DrolU, 
second aeries, p. 240 ; Choice Notes {FolU-Lore:)^ p. H ; Miss E. S. 8 March, 
1879. See Aubrey, Rcmaines of Oentilismef p. 61. 

Also if a man become out of his wits then him take part of it, 
and make Christ's mark on every limb, except the cross upon 
the forehead, that shall be of balsam, and the others (also) on 
the top of his head." Hunt says he remembers when quite a 
child being taken to an old woman to have a large "seedy 
wart " removed. Two charred sticks were taken from the fire 
and carefully crossed over the wart while some words were 
muttered. " I know not how long it was before the wart dis- 
appeared, but certainly at some time it did so." In North 
Hants a common charm for cramp consists in putting the shoes 
and stockings at bedtime in a position which somewhat resembles 
a cross. In Hampshire the ague patient makes three crosses, 
with white chalk, on the back of the kitchen chimney, that in the 
centre being larger than the other two, and as the fire-smoke 
blackens them so will the ague disappear. Hot cross buns in 
Tenby are hung up in a bag in the kitchen from one Good 
Friday to another, as a ready all-heal and medicine for man or 
beast.* 

The association of cure of whooping-cough with* rides on a 
donkey is due to the cross on the animal's back It is said to 
have been placed there, in some mysterious way, after Christ's 
entry into Jerusalem. The child who is suffering from whoop- 
ing-cough should be placed on a donkey which has the cross on 
its back well defined ; then, according to Dorsetshire usage, the 
child and donkey should be taken to where four roads meet, and 
ridden up and down slowly several times. The woman who told 
my informant declared that she had done it to all her children 
save one, — that one, who was too delicate to be put on the 
donkey at the early age customary, was the only one of a very 
numerous family that had the cough, and she nearly died of it. 
In Gloucestershire a few hairs from the donkey's cross are sewn 

* Hunt, second series, p. 211 ; Choice Notes (^Folk-Lore'), p. 11 ; Athenceum., 
11 August, 1849; "DyQXy English Folh-Lore^^, 162; Sikes, British Oohlins, 
p. 267. 

up in a black silk bag, and hung round an infant's neck when 
teething, as this will prevent fits or convulsions.* 

The apocryphal correspondence between our Lord and Abgar, 
King of Edessa, is frequently found in Devonshire and Shrop- 
shire cottages. It is looked upon as a genuine epistle of Christ, 
and as a preservative from fever. " Si quis hanc epistolam 
secum habuerit, securus ambulet in pace." The custom is an 
ancient one.f 

Against all but incubi and succubi, according to Sinistrarius, 
the power of holy names and signs extends. " Enfin pour 
mettre en fuite le mauvais D^raon, pour le faire trembler et 
fr^mir, il suffit, comme P^crit Guaccius, du nom de J^sus ou de 
Marie, du signo de la croix, de I'approche des saintes reliques 
ou des objets b^nits, des exorcismes, adjurations ou injonctions 
des pretres ; c'est ce qu'on vait tons les jours dans le -cas de 
^nergumenes, et Guaccius en rapporte maints exemples tires 
des jeux nocturnes des Sorcieres, ou, au signe de la croix form^ 
par Tun des assistants, au nom de J^sus simplement prononce, 
Piables et Sorcieres disparaissent tons ensemble. Les Licubes 
au contraire — ."J 

♦ Mrs. p. 30 November, 1879 ; Notes and Queries, 6th S. Yol. i p. 204. " There 
were some doggerel lines connected with the ceremony, which have escaped my 
memory, and I have endeavoured in vain to find any one remembering them. 
They were to the effect that, as Christ placed the cross on the ass's back when he 
rode into Jerusalem, and so rendered the animal holy, if the child touched where 
Jesus sat it should cough no more." — Hunt, second series, pp. 218-219. 

t Notes and QuerieSf 5th S. vol. i. pp. 325, 376, 376 (citing Cureton, Ancient 
Syrlac Doovments, 1864 ; Jones, New and Full Method of Settling the Canonical 
Authority of the New Testament^ 1827, vol. ii. p. 2). 

t " Ulterius mains Daemon, ut ex Feltano et Thyreo scribit Guaccius, Com- 
pend. Malef. lib. i. c. 19, fol. 128, ad prolationem nominis Jesu aut Marise ad 
f ormationem signi Crucis, ad approximationem sacrarum Heliquiarum, sive rerum 
benedictarum, et ad exorcismos, adjurationes, aut praecepta sacerdotnm, aut 
f ugit aut pavet, concutiturque, et stridet, ut conspicitur quotidie in energumenis, 
et constat ex tot historiis, quas recitat Guaccius, ex quibus habetur, quod in noc- 
tumis ludis Sagarum facto ab aliquo assistentium signo Crucis, aut pronuntiato 
nomine Jesu, Diaboli et secum Sagae omnes disparuerunt. Sed Incubi — ," &c. 
De la Dini4>nialiUy &c. par. C. R. P. Louis Marie Sinistrari d'Ameuo traduit 
par Isidor Liseux, pp. 128 et seq. 

Reference will elsewhere be made to the sacrament rings made 
(or supposed to be made, for too often the silversmiths played the 
faithful a trick) of sixpences or threepences collected from nine 
bachelors, if the patient were a female, and from nine spinsters 
if the patient were a man. But this is perhaps the proper place 
to note that in Yorkshire in the beginning of this century, 
sufferers from whooping-cough would frequently resort, Protes- 
tants as well as Roman Catholics, to drink holy water out of a 
silver chalice, — which might not be touched by the patient, — as 
in Ireland weakly children are taken to drink the ablution, that 
is the water and wine with which the chalice is rinsed after 
the priest has taken the communion — the efficacy arising from 
the cup having just before contained the blood of our Lord. 
The common fame of the chalice cure for whooping-cough may 
be gathered from its mention in one of the C Mery Tales : 
— " and incontjment,'^ runs Tale xxxix. " thys gentylman went 
to the preest and sayd : syr, here is a skoller, a kynnysman 
of myne, gretly dyseasyed wyth the chyncough [whooping- 
cough]. I pray you, when masse is donne, gyve hym iii, 
draughiys of your chales. The preest grantyd hym, and tornyd 
hym to the skoler, and sayd : syr, I shall seme you as sone as I 
have sayd masse. The skoler than taryed siyll and herd the 
mas, trusting that whan the masse was done, that the preste 
wold give hym hys typet of sarcenet. Thys gentylman in the 
mean whyle departyd out of the chyrche. Thys preste, whan 
mas was done, putte wyne in the chales, and cam to the skoler 
knelying in the pew, proflFeryng him to drynk of the chales. 
Thys skoler lokyed upon hym, and musyd and sayd : why, master 
parson, wherfore prefer ye me the chales? Marj'-, quod the 
prest, for the gentylman told me ye were dysseasyd with the 
chyncough, and prayd me therfor that for a medecyne ye might 
drynk of the chales. Nay, by seynt mary, quod the scoler, he 
promysyd me ye shulde delyuer me a tipet of sarcenet. Nay, quod 
the preest, he spake to me of no typet, but he desyred me to 

gyve you drynk of the chales for the chyneough," &c,* The 
parish monthly nurse of Churcham, Gloucestershire, used in- 
variably after public baptism to wash out the mouth of the 
infant with some of the remaining sanctified water, — it was a 
safeguard against toothache. Such water was so much valued 
for charms in Cornwall, that formerly all the fonts had to be 
kept locked that the people might not steal it. In the puritan 
west of Scotland it was looked upon as having virtue to cure 
many disorders — further it was a preventive against witchcraft, 
and eyes bathed with it would never see a ghost, f A drink of 
herbs (githrife, cynoglossum, yarrow, lupin, betony, &c.) 
worked up off clear ale was recommended for a fiend-sick 
patient. Seven masses were to be sung over the mixture, and 
garlic and holy water added. The patient should then sing the 
psalm Beati immaculati, and Exurgat, and Salvum mo fac, deus, 
and drink the preparation out of a church-bell. The priest, 
when all was finished, sang over him, Domine, sancte pater 
omnipotens.J A second Confirmation is sometimes resorted to 
in West Sussex, in the belief that the bishop's blessing will cure 
any ailment from which the person may be suffering. § To 
carry a child suffering from whooping-cough into three parishes, 
fasting, on a Sunday morning, used to be thought in Devon- 
shire to be likely to be of great service. Other Devonshire 
prescriptions were : for fits, that the patient should go into a 
church at midnight and walk three times round the Communion 
table ; for the cure of sore breasts, to go to church at midnight 

♦ Choice NoteSy p. 216; Notes and Queries^ 1st S. vol. iii. p. 220; A C. Mery 
Tales (^Shakspei'e Jest-Boohs'), 1864, pp. 60 et seq. 

f Notes and Queries, 5th S. yoI. i. p. 383 ; Hunt, second series, p. 213; Napier, 
Ihlh-Lo7*e, p. 140. To prepare a holy salve if one have not enough butter: " Hallow 
some watei' with tJie hallowing of the baptismal font, and put the butter into 
a jug, then take a spoon and form it into a bristle brush ; write in front these 
holy names, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John." After singing psalms and chants a 
mass priest was to hallow the necessary herbs. — Cockayne, vol. iii. p. 25. 

t Leechbook, i. ch. Ixiii. ; Cockayne, vol. ii. p. 139. 

§ Folh-Lore Recoi*d, vol. i. p. 46. " I have heard of an old woman who was 
confirmed several times, because she thought it was good for her rheumatism." 

and cut off some lead from every diamond pane in the windows, 
and with the lead thus obtained to make a heart to be worn by 
the patient* A leaden heart was also prescribed in the North 
East of Scotland, but it was made thus. A sieve for sifting meal 
was put on the head of the patient, who was seated. In the sieve 
was placed, in the form of a cross, a comb and a pair of scissors, 
and over them a three-girded cog. Into the cog water was 
poured, and melted lead slowly dropped from a height into the 
water. The water was then carefully inspected, to see if any 
of the pieces of lead resembled a heart. If none of the pieces 
were suitable, the process was repeated until a rough heart 
was discovered, it was sewn up in a piece of cloth, and worn 
constantly by the patient. Sometimes the water and the lead 
were both poured through one of the loops of the scissors, and 
tlie patient either buried the heart where two lairds' lands met, 
or kept it under lock and key. " Ghen ony thing be oot o'ts 
place," said the operator during the ceremony, ^* may the Al- 
miehty in's mercies fesst back."t 

To go fully into the cures said to have been wrought by the 
saints would be beyond my purpose, and would indeed require 
not one volume to itself but many. J To the honoured names of 
Joseph and Mary, however, English peasants still bear special 
reverence when they send a child suffering from whooping- 
cough to a house where these are the names of the master and 

♦ Notes and Queries^ Ist S. vol. ix. p. 239 ; Choice Notes (^Folk-Lore) y p. 218; 
Notes and Queries, Ist S. yoI. iii. p. 258 ; Yol. viii. p. 146 ; Choice Notes (Folk- 
Lore), pp. 168-169. 

t Gregor, Folk-Lore of Nortlv-East of Scotland, p. 43. 

% Among others the following saints are invoked against diseases: St. Anthony 
against inflammation ; St. ApoUonia and St. Lucy against the toothache ; St. 
Benedict against the stone and poison ; St. Blaise against hones sticking in the 
throat, fires, and inflammation ; St. Christopher and St. Mark against sadden 
death ; St. Clara against sore eyes ; St. Genow against the goat ; St. John 
against epilepsy and poison ; St. Margaret and St. Edine against danger in 
child-bearing ; St. Otilia against sore eyes and headache ; St. Petronilla and 
St. Genevieve against fevers ; St. Qaintan against coughs ; St. Baffin against 
madness ; St. Wolfgang against lameness. — See Brand, p. 197. 

mistress. The child must ask, or rather demand, for there 
should be no courtesy prefix, bread and butter. Joseph must 
cut the bread, and Mary butter it and give it to the child, then 
a cure will certainly follow.* In the preparation of a drink for 
the phrensied, the Saxon leech recommended, besides recitations 
of litanies and the paternoster, that over the herbs twelve masses 
should be sung in honour of the twelve apostles, f 

In the course of one of the charms given above, it will be 
noticed that a cure is asked, not only for our Lord's sake but 
for that of " Thy cousin sweet St. John." The name of St. 
John is indeed connected with many charms and superstitious 
customs. Old roots pulled from under the root of the mugwort 
were, according to the Practice of Paul Barbette (1675), good for 
cure of the falling sickness, if gathered on the eve of St. John 
Baptist about twelve at night, and the saint's day itself was 
generally devoted to the collection of herbs for secret purposes.^ 
Possibly from some confusion of names the Gospel of John ac- 
quired its magical reputation. Sinistrari d'Ameno says : '* a se 
confier en Dieu, a user frequemment de la confession ; il lui 
persuada de lui faire sa confession sacramentelle, rdcita avec lui 
les pseaumes Exsurgat Deus et Qui habitaty et I'Evangile de 
Saint Jean." Auerhan, in the Life of Wagner ^ complains that 
the Grospel of St. John and the Psalms are wont to be used in 
conjurations against such spirits as himself. Valdes in Dr. 
Faustus § says — 

* In Cornwall the sponses must bear the names of John and Joan. Mrs. 
Whitcombe, Bygone Days in Devon and Cornwall, p. 147, cited by Dyer, 
English Folk-LorOy p. 153. "Some deemed inscribed amulets useless unless 
written on virgin parchment, suspended towards the sun by three threads, which 
had been spun by a virgin named Mary/* Martin de Aries, § 38 ; Dalyell, p. 390. 

t Cockayne, vol. ii. p. 139. 

J Brand, p. 183 ; Dalyell, Darker Stipei'stltions of Scotland, p. 114. 

§ De la DimonialiUy p. 157 ; Life of Wagner, c. xxv. ; Dr. Ihmt'us, sc. i. 
lines 160-163. " The use of the first verses of the Gospel of St. John in con- 
jurations is constantly recommended in the handbooks of magic." — ^Prof. Ward, 
note, p. 141. 

" Then haste thee to some solitary groye, 
And bear Ttdse Bacon's and Albanns' works, 
The Hebrew Psalter, and New Testament.** 

If the children of the Irish had not a piece of wolf's skin round 
their necks, they had the beginning of St. John's Gospel. Burton 
says that Jaspar Beza, a Jesuit, cured a mad woman by hang- 
ing this Gospel about her neck, and "many such," in the 
water. Holy water had effected cures in Japan. When the 
Tigretier seizes Abyssinians it causes first violent fever, and then 
a lingering sickness, often ending in death. The remedy gene- 
rally sought is tlie assistance of a learned Dofl^r, who reads the 
Gospel of St. John, and drenches the patient with cold water 
daily for seven days, and if he survive this he may be expected 
to recover. This reminds us that in the Chinese tale of the 
Talking Pupils, Fang is cured of blindness by a man reading 
the Kuang-minrff sutra to him.* St. John the Evangelist was 
said to have drunk poison without hurt, so drinks consecrated 
to him were believed by Teutonic tribes to prevent all danger 
of poisoning.t 

Of the merits attributed to other saints, I can only speak 
briefly, for it is difficult to distinguish between genuine in- 
stances of the people's continued reliance on a particular saint 
and the legendary associations which give his name prominence 
in religious records. St. Blaze, Bishop of St. Sebaste, and 
martyr a.d. 288, since he restored to life a boy who had been 
suffocated by a fishbone, has been invoked against sore throats, 
and thorn pricks are also in his domain. The daughter of the 
Tribune Quirinus was cured of some disorder in the throat by 
kissing the chains of St. Peter. St. Nacaise was besought on 

♦ Brand, p. 339; Bnrton, Anatomy of Melancholy , p. 298; Htck&Cy Epidemics 
of the Middle Ages, p. 124 ; Giles, Strange Stories, vol. i. p. 6. 

f Grimm, Deutsche Mythologies vol. i. p. 50 (Stallybrass, vol. i. p. 61). With 
John's name was associated that of Gertrude, because " Gerdrut verehrte den 
Johannes iiber alle heiligen.*' To their united names minne was drunk by 
friends at parting, and by travollors. 

behalf of small-pox patients, — " In the name of our Lord Jesus 
Christj may the Lord protect these persons, and may the work 
of these virgins ward off the small-pox. St Nacaise had the 
small-pox, and he asked the Lord (to preserve) whoever carried 
his name inscribed, 0, St. Nacaise I thou illustrious bishop and 
martyr, pray for me a sinner, and defend me by thy interces- 
sion from this disease. 4^men." * We have evidently here an 
old legend. 

St. Apollonia was the chief recognised healer of toothache, 
despite the incessant mention of St. Peter in charms. At her 
martyrdom in Alexandria, under the Emperor Philip, her teeth 
were beaten out. Her emblems are, " Holding a tooth in 
pincers. Her teeth pulled out. Pincers in left hand ; tooth in 
right. Pincers alone. Tied to a pillar and scourged." The 
Spanish legend, while resembling that of St. Peter, makes 
St. Apollonia suflFer in heaven. " Apollonia was at the gate of 
heaven, and the Virgin Mary passed that way, ^ Say, Apollonia, 
what are you about? Are you asleep or watching?' ^My 
lady, I neither sleep nor watch ; I am dying with a pain in my 
teeth.' ^ By the star of Venus and the setting sun, by the most 
Holy Sacrament which I bore in my womb, may no pain in 
your teeth, neither front nor back, ever affect you from this 
time henceforward.' "t 

St. Guthlac's belt was good against headache, and the pen- 
knife, boots, and part of the shirt of Becket were useful to aid 
parturition. A commemoration of St. Greorge was thought in 
the Philippine Islands to protect one's rest against the scorpions.} 

♦ Miss Bnsk, Valleys of Tirol, p. 38 (note) ; Scot, Discoverw of Witchcraft , 
p. 137 ; Brand, p. 189 ; Pettigrew, p. 82. 

f Husenbeth, EmhleiM of SaintSj p. 11 -y Notes and Queries^ 5tli S. yoI. xi. 
pp. 515, 516 ; " St. Appolin the rotten teeth doth keep when sore they ache ;" 
Barnaby Googe ; Don Quixote^ 1842 (Jervis's translation), vol. ii. p. 73, note on 
the remark of the Don's honsekeeper, " The orison of St. ApoUonife, say you ? 
That might do something if my master's distemper lay in his teeth, but, alas J it 
lies in his brain." See also Iloinily against Peril of Idolatry. 

X Tettigrew, pp. 42, 78. 

St. Veronica's aid was invoked in Anglo-Saxon spells,* and St. 
Marchutus and St. Victricius for convulsions. Like Dr. Pane- 
grossi, when he saw the remarkable cure effected by the Blessed 
John Berchmans, " When such physicians interfere, we have 
nothing more to say."* 

* For the miracnlouB cure of the Emperor Tiberias at the sight of St. 
Veronica's portrait of Christ, see Journal of the British AroluBological Asso- 
ciationf vol. xxxyii. p. 239, art. " Apocryphal Legends."

|N an earlier chapter reference has been made to the 
superstition which still lingers in our rural districts, 
that mischief can be brought upon a person enjoying 
good health by, in some way, bringing him into con- 
tact, with a hair it may be, of a dead man. Thus, in Devon- 
shire, the belief was noticed that the ague can be given to a 
neighbour by burying such a hair under his threshold, and in 
New England mere walking over graves will cause incurable 
cramp in the foot. We have now to consider the other side of 
the question, to consider how disease can, according to popular 
belief, be cured through contact with the victims of mortality, 
or their relics. It would seem to be a hidden belief that life is 
buried with a man, and that that life can be taken, in some 
cases, back again, to keep those whoso supply of the vital flame 
is small, still among the living. 

In November, 1876, a correspondent of a Manchester news- 
paper related that he had lately been requested by a respectable 
tradesman to allow his man to assist in taking a young man, 
much afflicted with fits, to the parish church of Warningham, 
near Sandbach, at midnight, for if the young man could fetch 
a handful of earth off the grave most recently made, when the 
clock was striking twelve, it was believed that it would cure 
him. The ceremony was actually gone through, but with what 
results we are not informed. So, too, in Lauuceston, it is said 
that a swelling on the neck may be cured by the patient going 
before sunrise, on the first of May, to the grave of the last 

young man who has been buried, if the patient is a woman ; 
and if a man, then to the grave of the young woman who has 
been last buried, and applying the dew gathered by passing the 
hand three times from the head to the foot of the grave, to the 
part affected. A similar procedure was known in Devonsliire. 
A friend of the patient was directed to go into a churchyard on 
a dark night (tlie darkness was imperative), and to the grave of 
a person who had been interred the day previous, walk six 
times round the grave, and crawl across it three times. A 
woman had to do this if the patient was a man, and if a woman 
the duty devolved upon a man.* 

The grass in the churchyard of St. Edrins, in South Wales, 
in the year 1848, was eaten by a woman bitten by a dog, for it 
was believed to be an antidote to hydrophobia. Henderson, 
quoting from the Wilkie MS., tells us that the blacksmith of 
Yarrowfoot's younger apprentice " was at last restored to health 
by eating butter made from the milk of cows fed in kirkyards, 
a sovereign remedy for consumption brought on through being 
witch-ridden." ^' Das grab des heiligen," Grimm says, " tragt 
einen birnbaum, von dessen filrchten kranke als bald genesen."t 

The powder of a man's bones, burnt, and particularly tliat 
made from a skull found in the earth, was esteemed in Scotland 
as a cure for epilepsy. As usual, the form runs that the bones 
of a man will cure a woman, and the bones of a woman will 
cure a man. Grose notes the merits of the moss found growing 
upon a human skull if dried, and powdered and taken as snuff 
in cases of headache, and Boyle, in his essay on the Porousness 
of Animal Bodies^ says, ^* Having been one summer frequently 
subject to bleed at the nose, and reduced to employ several 
remedies to check that distemper ; that which I found the most 
effectual to staunch the blood was some moss off a dead man's 

* Choice Notes (^Folk-Lore), p. 8 ; Trans, Devonshire Association^ 1867, vol. ii. 
p. 39. 

t Maidstone Gazette j 12 September, 1848 ; Henderson, Folk-Lore of Northern 
Counties^ p. 192 ; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologies vol. ii. p. 996. 

.! 

skull (sent for a present out of Ireland, where it is far less rare 
than in most other countries), though it did but touch my skin 
till the herb was a little warmed by it" For fits, twenty years 
ago, a collier's wife applied to the sexton of Ruabon church for 
" ever so small a portion of human skull for the purpose of 
grating it similar to ginger ;" she intended to add the powder 
to a mixture she proposed giving to her daughter. Floyer says, 
moss off a man's skull is like common moss, of an earthy smell, 
and of a rough earthy taste. He says it is much used for 
stopping haemorrhages, that applied to the nose it may help the 
congealing of the blood, and act as an astringent, and that it may 
disturb the fanciful when thej> hold it in the hand, and by occa- 
sioning some terror may stop bleeding. Dalyell speaks of the 
great virtue supposed to attach to powder made from the remains 
of the dead, and the consequent violation of graves, and, among 
other cases, mentions that of John Neill, who was convicted, in 
March 1631, of consulting with Satan regarding the destruction 
of Sir George Home. First of all Neill got *' tra the devill of 
ane inchantil dead foill " to be put in Sir George's stable 
" under the hek [or rack] or manger thereof: and nixt getting 
of ane deid hand, also inchantit be the devill, to be put in the said 
Sir George's yaird in Beruik, and for laying of the said foill, 
and deid hand in the seuerall pairtis abone writtin," but Father 
Arrowsmith's hand brought about notable cures in Lancashire.* 
A knife that has killed a man is said in China to guard from 
disease, and an Irish love charm was made from a strip of skin 
taken with a black-handled knife from a male corpse, which 
had been nine days buried.f 

♦ Domestic Annals of Scotland^ vol. iii. p. 64 ; Boyle, Works, vol. iv. p. 767 ; 
Stamford Mercvry, 8 October, 1858 ; Floyer, Touchstone of Medicines, vol. i. 
p. 154 ; Dalyell, p. 380. 

f Dennys, Folk- Lore of China, p. 51 ; Irish Popular and Medical Superstitions, 
p. 3. " Having restored the corpse to the grave the strip of skin is next stretched 
npon a tombstone, and over it certain spells are cast, and certain incantations 
pronounced by the attendant priestess, who sprinkles it with water found in the 

H 

In North Hants a tooth taken from the mouth of a corpse is 
often enveloped in a little bag, and worn round the neck to 
secure the wearer against toothache, but Martins says, although 
the friction of a dead man's tooth may be good for toothache, 
yet, " teste Helmontio," the loss of the patient's teeth is likely 
to follow.* In the north-east of Scotland the sufferer required 
to pull with his own teeth a tooth from the skull. 

Those who steal the bones of people who have been burnt to 
death, or the bodies of illegitimate children, for the purpose of 
compounding medicines, are looked upon with such horror in 
China that it is said when they are born again it will be without 
eai*s, or eyes, or with hand, foot, mouth, lips or nose maimed in 
some way or other. It will be remembered that among the mis- 
cellaneous contents of the witches' cauldron was — 

** Finger of birth-strangled babe, 
Ditch-deliyered by a drab." 

John Fian, the leader of the witches and warlocks, who en- 
deavoured by storms to prevent King James from bringing home 
his bride, when he visited churchyards at night to dismember 
bodies for his charms, preferred the bodies of unbaptised infants. 
No wonder Scotch parents ^* often on calm nights heard the 
wailing of the spirits of unchristened bairns among the trees and 

dells.''t 

Water found in the coffin of the Maid of Meldon in New- 
minster Abbey was said to be a specific in removing warts. The 
graves of the notable were always credited with peculiar virtues, 
as Grimm says : ^* Den grabem der heiligen wurde in ma. 
unmittelbares heilvermogen beigemessen und alles was mit 

hollow of a sacred stone, and then, folding it np in the form of a cross, places it 
over the beating heart of the credulous girl, who, nnder her dictation, mutters 
other incantations." 

* Martins, De Magica^ p. 32. 

t Giles, Strange Stories from a Chinese StttdiOj vol. ii. p. 378 ; Macbeth^ iv. 
i. 30 ; Spalding, Elizabethan Demonology^ p. 113 ; Napier, Folk- Lor e^ p. 31. 

ihnen in beruhning stand gewahrte hilfe, sogar der trunk des 
iiber knochen, kleider, hoIzspHtter und erde gegossnen was- 
sers. Basen und than auf dem grab heilen. Beda erzahlt von 
dem heiligen Oswald ; in loco, ubi pro patria dimicans a paganis 
interfectus est, usque hodie sanitates infirmorum et hominum et 
pecorum celebrari non desinunt. Unde contigit ut pulverem 
ipsum, ubi corpus ejus in terram corruit, multi auferentes et in 
aquam mittentes suis per haec infirmis multum commodi 
ajBFerrent, qui videlicet mos adeo increbuit, ut paulatim ablata 
exinde terra fossam ad mensm*am staturae verilis reddiderit ; de 
pulvere pavimenti in quo aqua lavacri illius effiisa est, multi 
jam sanati infirmi ; habeo quidem de ligno, in quo caput ejus 
occisi a paganis infixum est ... . tunc . benedixi acquaih et 
astulam roboris praefati immittens obtuU aegro potandum. nee 
mora, melius habere coepit ;" et seq.* 

In Scotland and in Ireland, in times quite recent, warts were 
washed with water that had accumulated in the hollows of grave- 
stones. There is, at the time I write, in a poorhouse in Glas- 
gow, a man to whom the water with which a corpse had been 
washed was administered with the view of curing him of fits. 

Some Affghanistan Buddhist graves have repute for curing 
diseases, as that at lohpan, near Gundamuck, where at the ziaret 
of Shaik Baheen Dad," by the use of prayer and at the same 
time circumambulating the grave and beating the limbs with 
a bunch of reeds, a certain cure for rheumatism, it is believed, 

will be found."t 

Premature decease has a peculiar power of imparting life- 
giving powers to inanimate objects. As Dalyell says, there 
seems to be " some indistinct notion of absorption of life by 
the instrument of death" involved in the principle. f Pliny 

* Grimm, Dentsche Mythologies vol. ii. p. 985. See the whole passage, 
f Simpson, " Ancient Buddhist Remains in Afghanistan," Fraser's Magazine, 
new series, No. cxxii. February, 1880, pp. 197, 198. 
X Dalyell, p. 129. 

h2 

mentions that in cases of difficult parturition relief was expected 
from the act of throwing over the patient's house a stone or 
missile which had proved fatal at a single blow, or a javelin 
withdrawn from a body without having touched the ground.* So 
in China a knife that has been used to kill a fellow creature is 
regarded as a sovereign charm.f A halter with which one 
had been hanged was regarded within recent times in England 
as a cure for headache, if tied round the head ; and the chips of 
a gallows worn in a bag round the neck were reputed to cure 
ague. Earth taken from the spot where a man had been slain 
was prescribed in Scotland for an ulcer or a hurt J Kerchiefs 
dipped in King Charles's blood were found to have as much 
efficacy in curing the king's evil as had the living touch. Was 
not a girl of fourteen or fifteen years of age who lived at Dept- 
ford cured thereby in 1649 ? All physicians had been in vain ; 
the girl had become quite blind, but at the touch of the hand- 
kerchief stained with the martyr's blood she at once regained 
her sight. Hundreds went to see this "miracle of miracles" as 
it was called. § So in China after an execution, with the same 
faith, large pith-balls are steeped in the blood of the criminal, 
and sold to the people as a cure for consumption under the name 
of blood bread. II Lepers there some four years ago attacked 
and ate healthy men that they might drink their blood, under 
the belief that thus they would be cured of their disease. 

The touch of the dead was, however, regarded with more 
universal respect. Hunt says he once saw a young woman led 
on to the scaffold in the Old Bailey for the purpose of having a 
wen touched with the hand of a man who had just been 

* Pliny, Hi8t, Nat. xxviii. c. 6, 12. 

t Dennys, p. 61. 

X Dalyell, p. 126 ; 1616, llec. Ork. 

§ " A miracle of miracles wrought by the blood of Charles I. upon a mayd 
at Detford, four miles from London, 1649," quoted in Lecky's England in the 
Eighteenth Century ^ vol. i. p. 69. 

II Dennys, p. 67. 

executed ;* and at Northampton formerly numbers of sufferers 
used to congregate round the gallows in order to receive the 
" dead stroke." The fee demanded for the privilege went to the 
hangman, f 

The touch of a suicide's hand is reported to have cured a 
young man of Cornwall who had been afflicted with running 
tumours from his birth. Scot, in the Discoverie of Witchcrafty 
says, " To heal the king or queen's evil, or any other sore- 
ness of the throat, first touch the place with the hand of one 
that died an untimely death; otherwise let a virgin fasting 
lay her hand on the sore and say, * Apollo denyeth that the 
heat of the plague can increase where a naked virgin quencheth 
it,' and spit three times upon it." In Storrington not many 
years ago, a young woman afflicted with a goitre was taken by 
her friends to the side of an open coffln that the hand of the 
dead should touch it twice ; and another West Sussex woman 
who had suffered for years from an enlarged throat, when she 
heard that a boy had been drowned in Waltham Lock, set off 
there immediately, and had the part affected stroked with the 
dead hand nine times from east to west, and nine times from 
west to east.f If one who is suffering from any disease can 
attend the funeral of a suicide, and manage to throw a white 
handkerchief on the coffln, is a Devonshire belief that as the 
handkerchief decays so the disease will vanish. § 

Symbolic burial was sometimes resorted to. On the border 
ground of Suffolk and Norfolk, to quote Mr. Dyer, a hole is 
dug in a meadow, and into this the little sufferer from whooping- 
cough is placed in a bent position, head downwards ; the flag cut 
in making the hole is then placed over him, and there he 
remains till a cough is heard. It is thought that if the charm 

* Hunt, Romances and Drolls, second series, p. 164. 

t Notes and Queries, Ist S. vol. ii. p. 36 ; Chmce Notes {Folk- Lore), p. 10. 

X Folk-Lore Record, vol. i. p. 48. 

§ Notes and Queries, 5th S. vol. i. p. 204. 

be done in the evening, with only the father and the mother as 
witnesses, the child will soon recover.* Brand, in his Descrip- 
tion of Orkney^ says parents were wont to dig two adjacent 
graves beside a lake in tide parish of Beay in Caithness, and 
there to lay their distempered children in the interval in order 
to ascertain the probability of their recovery, but a fall descrip- 
tion or further enlightenment he declined to give his readers.t 

I have above noticed the ^' verter " water found in hollows of 
tombstones and rocks, and add here references to other waters 
useful in the cure of disease. 

Speaking of the two wells at Newton, near St. Neots, Harrison 
says, " Never went people so fast from the church, either unto a 
fair or market, as they go to these wells," and naturally the 
reputation which such wells enjoyed has made reference to 
them in connection with Folk-Medicine a matter of some diffi- 
culty. It is not, therefore, necessary to attempt to enumerate 
the numerous wells — sanctified by the Church or the common 
consent of the people — which became celebrated as means of 
cure. Insane patients were dipped in Cornwall in St. Nun's 
Well ; in the presbytery of Sterling they were taken to Strut- 
hill. To St. John^s Well, in the parish of Wembdon, more 
than six hundred years ago, in the reign of Edward IV., an 
immense concourse resorted, who were restored to the health 
they sought. Those who drank of the Chader Well, in the 
Island of Lewis, two hundred years afterwards, made a bold 
experiment, for if convalescence did not immediately follow the 
draught, death would do so. It was kill or cure. So, too, 
there was a well in Dumfriesshire, the water of which if too 
strong for those who had been enfeebled by illness would cause 
death.} 

* Dyer, English Folk-Lore^ p. 154. 
t Brand, Description of Orlmey^ p. 154. 

% Harrison, Description of England (iV. Shak, Soc. ed.), bk. ii. ch. xxiii. 
p. 350 ; Hunt, second scries, p. 51 ; Collinson, History of JSom&rset, vol. ill. p. 
% Dalyell, Darhr Svperstitions of Scotland, pp. 82, 83, 84. 

Probably the best known of these wells in the present day is 
that of Holywell. When St. Winifred's head, as the legend 
goes, was struck off by Prince Caradoc, it rolled into the church 
of St. Beuno, the uncle of the pious maiden, and where 
it rested a wonderful spring came forth. The approach to the 
vault is by stairs, trodden in their time by many feet, but the 
vault itself is not inviting, nay, even depressing; the carv- 
ings are chipped and broken, and one cannot but think that 
the visitors of to-day are neither so anxious nor so reverent as 
those who of old for hours were to be seen up to their 
chins in the water, praying devoutly. One noble knight pro- 
longed too greatly his devotions, for, " having continued so long 
mumbling his paternosters and Sancta Winifreda orapro me^ the 
cold struck into his body, and aflber his coming forth of that well 
he never spoke more." Hither came William the Conqueror, his 
grandson Henry II., and the first Edward ; here, too, many of 
the Gunpowder Plot Conspirators, and later James 11. The 
Duke of Westminster, in 1876, leased the well to the Corpora- 
tion of Holywell for a thousand years at a sovereign a year. 
The flow is always at the same rate, and although the water is 
extremely cold it never freezes. At the date of a recent visit, 
the following left by patients, who had gone away cured, might 
have been seen by the curious: — Thirty-nine crutches, six 
hand-sticks, a hand-hearse, and a pair of boots. 

When a friend was about to take water from the Dow Loch, 
in Dumfriesshire, it appears from an old trial that each time the 
vessel was raised from the surface these words were to be pro- 
nounced, " ' I lift this watter in name of the Father, Sone, and 
Holy Gaist, to do guid for thair helth for quhom it is liftit,* 
quhilk wordis sould be repeitit thryse nyne times."* 

The Borgie well, at Cambuslang, near Glasgow, is credited 
with making mad those who drink from it ; according to the 
local rhyme — 

* Trial of Bartie Paterson, 18 Dec. 1607 ; Hee, Just; Dalyell, p. 84. 

'' A drink of the Borgie, a bite of the weed, 
Sets a' the Cam'slang folk wrang in the head." 

The weed is the weedy fungi. The story, however, must be 
an implied satire on the Cambuslang people generally, for the 
original Borgie's well, which was blocked up some years ago, 
was the principal water supply of the district. 

To the wells of St. Elian, St. Cynhafal, St. Barruc, and 
others, in which patients were accustomed to drop pins, I shall 
elsewhere refer. It is believed that on the twenty-sixth day 
of June, in each year, the waters on Saw Beach, Maine, become 
gifted with power to heal and strengthen. People flock to the 
beach from all the country round for a healing dip.* 

Many persons and cattle were cured by washings from a 
stone called St. Convall's Chariot — the stone, according to 
tradition, upon which St. Convall had been borne from Ireland 
to the banks of the Clyde. From a letter of 1710 it appears 
that when stones were washed the first water was poured out, 
and that only to the second water belonged the virtue. f 

The Chinese do not approve of running water near their 
dwelling-houses because they say it runs away with their luck.f 
The English and Scotch peasant, on the other hand, attaches a 
special value to a stream because it will bear away all the evil 
which may beset a household. For thrush the wise woman would 
tell the child's mother to take three rushes from a rmming 
stream and pass them separately through the mouth of the 
infant, then throw them into the stream, for as the rushes were 
borne away by the current so the thrush was borne from the 

* Miss C. F. G. 23 March, 1880. 

t Dalyell, pp. 152, 511. 

t " I myself knew a case of a man, provided with a pretty little honse, rent 
free, alongside of which ran a mountain rill, who left the place and paid for 
lodgings out of his own pocket, rather than live so close to a stream which he 
averred carried all his good luck away. Yet this man was a fair scholar and a 
graduate to boot." — Giles, Strange Stories from a Chinese StvdiOf vol. ii. p. 110. 

CHARMS CONNECTED WITH DEATH OR THE GRAVE, 1 05 

child.* To cure inflammation, the leeches ordered the friend of 
the patient to take a hazel, or an elder stick, or spoon, and cut his 
name thereon, " cut three scores on the place, fill the name with 
the blood, throw it over thy shoulder, or between thy thighs into 
running water, and stand over the man." So, also, the blood 
taken from a scarified neck, after the setting of the sun, to remove 
blotches was thrown into running water. When a holy drink 
against elfin tricks and temptations of the devil was to be 
prepared, it was half a sextarius of running water that the im- 
maculate person was to bring in silence to receive the herb crys- 
tallium, and tansy, and zedoary, and cassuck, and fennel, and to 
wash the texts and psalms from the dish on which they had been 
written into the dish ^^ very clean," which when hallowed by 
holy wine was to be taken to church, and have masses sung over 
it, " one Omnibus Sanctis, another Contra tribulationem, a third 
of St. Mary ;" and the psalms, Miserere mei, dominus, Deus in 
nomine tuo, Deus misereatur nobis, Domine Deus, Inclina 
domine, and the Credo, the Gloria in excelsis domino," and 
some litanies, t Within the last few years a lady sketching on 
the bank of the Lennan, a trout stream not far from Letter 
Kenny, saw a young girl come down a sloping field on the 
opposite side, leading a boy with a halter round his neck. When 
the pair reached the river the boy went down on his hands and 
knees, and so led by the girl crossed the river, bending his lips 
to drink. They then recrossed in the same fashion ; he drank as 
before, and she led. Then they went up the hill home. But 
presently they again appeared, coming down the hill. This time, 
however, the boy led the girl, otherwise the ceremony was in 
every respect the same. *^ Me and Tom's very bad with the 

* Notes and Queries^ Ist S. vol. viii. p. 265. Another version mentions only one 
straw, but says, " repeat the verse, < Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,' " 
&c. — English FoUi-Lore^ p. 160. 

t Cockayne, vol. ii. pp. 105, 77 ; vol. iii. p. 13. Another version of the last 
charming will be found in vol. ii. p. 137. 

mumps," explained the little girl, raising her hands to her 
swollen neck and cheeks, ^^ so I put the branks on Tom an' took 
him to the water, an' then he put them on me. We be to do 
that three times, an' its allowed it be a cure." And a cure did 
A result* Is this superstition, the crossing the hill being borne in 
mind, connected with a New England superstition with which a 
correspondent has favoured me, that if any one living on one 
side of a hill or mountain suffers from sore throat, water must 
be brought from a well or spring on the other side, and the 
patient drink the water aflber bathing the part affected ? 
' Water taken by a maiden for nine days from a stream which 
ran directly east was recommended as a cure for ^^ ivens at the 
heart," but in general that the direction of the water should be 
from north or south was regarded as far more auspicious. 
Patients were instructed to wash themselves three nights in a 
south-running stream, and persons suffering from witchcraft 
were bid to do the same thing. According to the Perth Kirk 
Session Record of May 1623, the " rippillis " was cured by 
hog's lard, and ablution in such esteemed water. John Brough 
was accused twenty years later of mysteriously curing cattle 
and women by washing their feet in south-running water 
with other ceremonies. When John Neill cured George Beule 
he ordered Reule's wife to wash his shirt in south-running 
water and put it wet on the patient ; and Jonet Stewart, when 
she went to see Bessie Inglis, " tuke off hir sark and hir 
mutche, and waischit thame in south-rynnand water, and pat 
the sark wat upon hir at midnycht, and said thrysis over, ^In the 
name of the Fader, the Sone, and Holy Gaist,' and fyret the 
water and brunt stray at ilk nwke of the bed." To cure 
whooping-cough in Northumberland a fire was made on a girdle 
held over a south-running stream and porridge cooked thereon. 
When this was done, not very long ago, the number of candi- 
dates, Mr. Henderson says, was so great that eaclT patient got 

♦ " Fairy Superstitions in Donegal,^' Univ, Mag. Aug. 1879, p. 219. 

but one spoonfiil as a dose. A holy well in Ireland, round 
which the whole night a circle of pilgrims sat on May-eve, was 
said to be a south-running spring of common water.* Ac- 
cording to the " Exmoor scolding," sciatica, known in the 
neighbourhood of Exmoor as " boneshave " may be cured by the 
patient lying on his back by the side of a river or brook with a 
stick between him and the water, while one repeats over him — 

** Boneshave right, 
Boneshave straight. 
As the water runs hj the stave, 
Good for boneshave." f 

* Dalyeil, pp. 84 et seq,; Witches of Renfrewshire, p. 22 (Mackenzie, § x.); 
Henderson, Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties, p. 141 ; Eichardson, Folly of 
Pilgrimages in Ireland, 1727, p. 65. 

t Pettigrew, p. 64.

COLOUR. 

I HAT connection between the properties of substances 
and their colour might to some extent be presumed 
was, it has been remarked, an opinion of great 
antiquity. Bed, regarded as representing heat, 
was therefore itself in a manner heat; white, representing 
cold, was therefore cold in itself. The superstition will 
be found to be very general. Bed flowers were given for 
disorders of the blood, and yellow for those of the liver.* The 
flowers of the amaranthus dried, and beaten into powder, Cul- 
pepper says, stop a certain complaint, " and so do almost all 
other things ; and by the icon or image of every herb the 
ancients at first found out their virtues." " Modern writers," 
he continues, " laugh at them for it ; but I wonder, in my 
heart, how the virtues of herbs came at first to be known if not 
by their signatures."! " We find," Pettigrew — who accumu- 
lated some curious historical information on this point — writes, 
" that in small-pox red bed-coverings were employed with the 
view of bringing the pustules to the surface of the body." The 
bed-furniture, John of Gaddesden directed, when the son of 
Edward II. was sick of the small-pox, should be red ; and so 
successftd, apparently, was his fnode of treatment, that the 

* Cf . " Pari qnoqne ratione berbaram snccos, qui snccos sive humores hnmani 
corporis colore referebant, in illins hnmoris peccantis pnrgationem adbibe- 
bant. Hinc croceis plantamm liqnoribns bilem flavam, atris, pnrpurascen- 
tibns ant coemleis nigram, albis pitnitnm, rubris sangninem, lactescentibuB lac et 
sperma valebant curare."— Hencherus et Fabricins, De Vegetalihus Magicis, 
Wittenberg, 1700. 

f English Physician Enlarged, p. 13. 

prince completely recovered, and bore no mark of his dangerous 
illness. So, at the close of the last century, the Emperor 
Francis I., when suffering from the same disease, was rolled up 
in a scarlet cloth. But this case was not attended with so much 
success, for the emperor died. A Japanese authority testifies 
to the children of the royal house, when they were attacked 
by small-pox, being laid in chambers where bed and walls were 
alike covered with red, and all who approached were clothed in 
scarlet* 

If red colours were useful in cases of sickness, one reason 
probably was, because they were obnoxious to evil spirits. To 
the present day, in China, red cloth is worn in the pockets, and 
red silk braided in the hair of children ; and of a written charm 
Dennys says — " The charm here given was written on red 
paper, that colour being supposed to be peculiarly obnoxious to 
evil spirits." Red pills were administered by Chiao-no, in a 
Chinese tale ; in one case, to cure a wound, the pill was passed 
round and romid the place, and in another, to restore life, it 
was put into the man's mouth, "and presently there was a 
gurgle in his throat and he came round."t It was because 
evil spirits would be frightened, probably, that red was used so 
liberally at the death of a New Zealander. His house was 
painted red ; wherever tapu was laid a post was erected and 
painted red ; at whatever spot the corpse might rest a stone, or 
rock, or tree at hand was painted red ; and if the corpse was 
conveyed by water, when it had been taken ashore at its 
destination it was painted red before it was abandoned. " When 
the hahunga took place, the scraped bones of the chief thus 
ornamented, and wrapped in a red-stained mat, were deposited 
in a box or bowl smeared with the sacred colour, and placed 

* Pettigrew, Superstitions connected with the History and Practice of 
Medicine and Surgery y pp. 18-19. 

t Dennys, Folk-Lore of China^ p. 54 ; Giles Strange Stories from a Chinese 
Studio y Yol. i. pp. 40, 44, 45. 

in a painted tomb. Near his final resting-place a lofty and 
elaborately carved monument was erected to his memory ; this 
was called the tikiy which was also thus coloured."* The 
guardians of the ryot's fields in Southern India — the four 
or five standing stones — are daubed with red paint,t and 
Shashtl's proper image is a rough stone smeared with the same 

colour. J 

Bed was also, we learn from Meralla, a sacred colour in 

Congo. When a Mahometan of sanctity dies, over his grave is 

placed a heap of large stones, or of mud, and in the centre is a 

pole with a piece of white or red cloth on the end, " as a banner 

or signal to all who pass that a holy man is buried there, and 

the spot becomes famous as a resort for prayer. "§ It would 

seem, from a passage quoted by Daiyell, that red played an 

important part in the symbolical destruction of an enemy in 

India, and it is curious, in this connection, to note that the 

ghosts of suicides are distinguished in China by wearing red 

silk handkerchiefe. When the corpse candles in Wales bum 

white the doomed person is a woman, but if the flame be red 

then it is a man.] 

It is not surprising, therefore, to find that red cords and red 

bands should play an important part in Folk-Medicine. In the 

West Indies a little bit of scarlet cloth, however narrow a 

strip, worn round the neck, will keep off the whooping-cough. 

Many centuries earlier, for lunacy one was told by the leeches 

♦ Taylor, New Zealand and the New Zealanders, p. 95 ; Lubbock, Origin of 
Civilisation^ p. 306. 

f To give them eyes to watch ? In China " on a certain day after the death 
of a parent the snryiying head of the family proceeds with much solemnity 
to dab a spot of ink upon the memorial tablet of the deceased. This is believed 
to give to the departed spirit the power of remaining near to, and watching 
over the fortunes of those left behind." — Giles, vol. ii. p. 224 (foot note). 

X Tylor, Primitive Oulture, vol. ii. p. 160. 

§ Finkerton, vol. xvi. p. 273 ; Simpson, ** Ancient Buddhist Remains in 
Afghanistan," Fraser's Magazine, new series, vol. cxxii. February 1880, p. 197. 

II Daiyell, Da/i*ker Saperstitions of Scotlandf p. 365 ; Dennys, p. 75 ; Sikes, 
JJritish Goblins, p. 239. 

to take of the clove wort {Ranunculus acrid) "and wreathe it 
with a red thread about the man's swere (neck) when the moon 
is on the wane in the month which is called April ; soon 
he will be healed." In the west of Scotland it is, or was, 
common to wrap a piece of red flannel round the neck of a 
child in order to ward off whooping-cough. The virtue, our 
authority is careful to inform us, " lay not in the flannel but in 
the red colour. Red was a colour symbolical of triumph and 
victory over all enemies." Is this a recollection of the red beard 
of Thorr, invoked by men in distress?* 

To prevent nose-bleeding people are told to this day to wear a 
skein of scarlet silk thread round the neck, tied with nine knots 
down the front ; if the patient is a man, the silk being put on 
and the knots tied by a woman ; and if the patient is a woman, 
then these good services being rendered by a man. Sore throats 
were cured in ancient England by wearing a charm tied about 
the neck in a red rag. We have evidence of the recent use of 
scarlet, with a sympathetic purpose, in the testimony of a corre- 
spondent of Notes and Queries^ who writes — " When I was a 
pupil at St. Bartholomew's, forty years ago, one of our lecturers 
used to say that witliin a recent period there were exposed for 
sale in a shop in Fleet Street red tongues— f.e., tongues of red 
cloth— to tie round the throats of patients suffering front sr3arlet 
fever." A shrewmouse, wrapped in clay or a red rag, and 
waybroad " delved up without iron ere the rising of the sun," 
bound with crosswort in a red fillet round the head, were 
Saxon remedies, t Salmuth mentions the use of red coral 
beaten up with oak leaves in the transference of an ailment. 
Even the jasper owes its high reputation for stopping haemor- 

• Branch, Contemporary Meview, October, 1875 ; Cockajne, Saxon Leech- 
doms, vol. i. p. 101 ; Napier, Folk-Lore, p. 96 ; Cf. Giles, vol. i. p. 324 ; Grimm, 
Deutsche Mythologie, vol. i. p. 147 (Stallybrass,' vol. i. p. 177). " A common 
mode of making up peace in China is to send the aggrieved party an olive and a 
piece of red paper in token that peace is restored." Man in the Moon ties together 
with a red cord the feet of those destined to be man and wife. — IHd. pp. 121, 141. 

f Notes and Queries, 5th S. vol. xi. p. 166 ; Cockayne, vol. i. xxxi.-ii. 307. 

rhage to its blood-red colour, and Boetius de Boot relates a mar- 
vellous story thereauent.* 

In Guinea the fetish woman orders a white cock to be killed 
when she is consulted about a man's disease, but the Buddhists 
of Ceylon, like the Irish of the fourteenth century, are said to 
sacrifice red cocks. So, too, did Christian Levingston by Chris- 
tian Saidler's counsel, " get a reid (red) cock, quhilk scho slew, 
and tuke the blude of it, and scho bake a bannock theirof with 
floure, and gaif the said Andro to eit of it, quhilk he could not 
prief." t 

The virtues of the sanguine colour even applied to animals ; 
for in Aberdeenshire it is a common practice with the house- 
wife to tie a piece of red worsted thread round the cows' tails 
before turning them out for the first time in the season to grass. 
It secured the cattle from the evil eye, elf shots, and other 
dangers. Further afield, in Carinthia, we find, possibly because, 
as Mr. Kelly says, '* red thread is typical of lightning," that a 
red cloth is laid upon the churn when it is in use, to prevent the 
milk from being bewitched and yielding no butter. $ 

It is to blue that we should have expected to find the 
most power attributed. It is the sky colour and the Druid's 
sacred colour. In Christianity it is the colour of the Virgin, and 
therefof e holy ; ana yet it is remarkable that the mention of it 
in connection with Folk- Medicine is scanty. 

In 1635 a man in tlie Orkney Islands was, we are led to 
believe, utterly ruined by nine knots cast on a blue thread and 
given to his sister. We can understand this, for if a colour 
possessed mysterious properties it was quite as certain that they 

* Pettigrew, p. 77 ; De Lapid. et Rem, lib. ii. cap. 102, quoted by Pettigrew, 
p. 82. 

t Tylor, Pi'imitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 123 ; Croker, Researches in tlie Smith 
of Ireland ; Dalyell, p. 86. 

X Choice Notes {Folh-Lore), p. 24 ; Kelly, Indo-European Tradition and 
Folk-Lore, p. 147 ; Cf. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologies yol. i. p. 148. 

would be used if possible for hurt as for healing. On the banks 
of the Ale and the Teviot, however, the women have still a cus- 
tom of wearing round their necks blue woollen threads or cords 
till they wean their children, doing this for the purpose of 
averting ephemeral fevers. These cords are handed down from 
mother to daughter, and esteemed in proportion to their anti- 
quity.* Probably these threads had originally received some 
blessing. This we should suppose to have been the thread of 
proper colour to receive such a blessing — for, was not blue the 
Virgin's colour? We have, therefore, here, two illustrations of 
the current of the people's thoughts. In the Orkneys, the blue 
thread was used for an evil purpose because such a colour 
savoured of " Popery " and priests ; in the northern counties it 
was used because a remembrance of its once pre-eminent value 
still survived in the minds of those who wore it, unconsciously, 
though still actively, influencing their thoughts. In, perhaps, 
the same way we respect the virtue of the red threads, because, 
as Conway puts it, " red is sacred in one direction as symbolising 
the blood of Christ " ; and again, as in Shropshire, refuse to 
allow a red-haired man to be first-foot on New Year's Day, " or 
there'll be a death in it afore the year's out," because red again 
is '^ the colour of Judas who betrayed that blood."t 

Flannel dyed nine times in blue was supposed to be useful in 
removing glandular swellings, but, again, the nip which the devil 
gave a witch, and by which devil's mark she was to be recognised, 
was blue. More, when the devil appeared to those forming the 
clay image which was to take away the life of Sir George Maxwell 
of PoUok in 1677, it was noticed that " his apparel was black, 
and that he had a bluish band and handcuflFs." In German folk- 

♦ Rec. Ork, p. 97, quoted in Dalyell, p. 307 ; Henderson, Folk-Lore of the 
Northern Counties, p. 20. 

t Conway, Demonology and Devil Lore, vol.ii. p. 284 ; N, and Q, 6th S. yol. iii. 
p. 465. 

I 

lore the lightning is represented as blue, as Grimm shows quoting 
from a Prussian tale, " der mit der blauen peitsche verfolght den 
teufel," i.e. the giants. The blue flame was held especially 
sacred on this account, the North Frisians swearing " donners 
bloskSn help !" and Schartlin's curse was '^ blau feuer !" * 

Eily McGarvey, a Donegal wise women, employs a gree?i 
thread in her work. She measures her patients three times 
round the waist with a ribbon, to the outer edge of which is 
fastened a green thread. " If her patient is mistaken in suppos- 
ing himself to be afflicted with heart fever, this green thread 
will remain in its place ; but should he really have the disorder, 
it will be found that the thread has left the edge of the ribbon, 
and lies curled up in the centre. At the third measuring Eily 
prays for a blessing, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and 
of the Holy Ghost. She next hands the patient nine leaves of 
* heart fever grass,' or dandelion, gathered by herself, directing 
him to eat three leaves on successive mornings." Generally, 
green is regarded as unlucky, and specially so by the Sinclairs 
of Caithness. " They were dressed in green, and they crossed 
the Ord upon a Monday in their way to Flodden Field, where 
they fought and fell in the service of their country, almost with- 
out leaving a representative of their name behind them. The 
day and the dress are accordingly regarded as inauspicious." 
" Green's forsaken and yellow's foresworn " is a common say- 
ing, ^* and blue is the colour that must be worn." Green stock- 
ings were sent to any elder sister in Scotland if a younger sister 
was married before her, that she might wear them as a forsaken 
maiden at the dance which followed the wedding, but for bridal 
bed-colours blue, as representing constancy, and green as repre- 

* Pettigrew, p. 19 ; Sir George Mackenzie, Lams and Customs of Scotland in 
Matters Orimin^l, 1678; Renfrewshire Witches, p. 48; Grimm, Deutsche 
MythologiCy yol. i. p. 148; "Blue Clue in Hallow'een Divination," Brand, 
Popular Antiquities, p. 209 (foot-note). Folh-Lore Record, vol. ii. p. 204. 

senting youth, were chosen, for " combine the two and you have 
youthful constancy." * 

Turning to yellow^ we find that charms yellow or written on 
yellow paper are quite as numerous in China as those written 
on red, for yellow is the imperial colour, one of the five recog- 
nised in the Chinese cosmogony, and a peculiar virtue therefore 
attaches to it. Martins says that some hang a live beetle sewed 
up in a yellow linen bag round the neck, like an amulet. BridaJ- 
garters should be yellow, " signifying honour and joy." ^* The 
demon of jaundice," says Conway, ^' is generally when exorcised 
consigned to yellow parrots, and inflammation to red or scarlet 

weeds."t 

For illustration of the use of black and white in folk-medicine 

we can go back to the Assyrians. 

1. Take a white cloth. In it place the mamit, 

2. In the sick man's right hand ; 

3. And take a black cloth, 

4. Wrap it round his left hand. 
6. Then all the evil spirits 

6. And the sins which he has committed 

7. Shall qnit their hold of him 

8. And shall never return. 

This has been explained thus — by the black cloth in the left 
hand he repudiates all his former evil deeds, and he symbolises 
his trust in holiness by the white cloth in the right hand.J In 
Scotland, in November 1596, Christian Stewart was burned as 
a witch, having been found " art and part of bewitching Patrick 

♦ "Fairy Superstitions in Donegal,'* University Magazine y August, 1879, 
p. 217 ; Brand, pp. 320, 360. Cf. " Green, indeed, is the colour of Lovers,*' 
Love* 8 Labour* 8 Lost, act i. 2 ; Antiquary j vol. iii. p. Ill ; Gregor, Folk-Lore 
of North-East of Scotland, p. 87. 

t Dennys, p. 54 ; Martins, p. 31; Brand, p. 362; Conway, vo?. i. p. 284. "In 
certain cases a charm in China is written upon two pieces of yellow paper with 
a new vermilion pencil. One piece is burned and the ashes swallowed, the other* 
is placed above the patient's door." — Credulities Past and Present ^ p. 180. 

J Records of the Pasty vol. iii. p. 140. 

i2 

Ruthven by laying on him a heavy sickness with a black clout, 
which she herself had confessed before several ministers, notaries, 
and others at divers times." 

In ancient Germany white sacrifices were generally considered 
the most acceptable, but the water spirit demanded a black lamb, 
and a black lamb and a black cat were offered to the huldres. 
Calddeugh testifies to the blood of a black lamb being adminis- 
tered for erysipelas in South America.* 

In England the black cat was the chosen familiar of the 
witches, and on this account figures so prominently in all 
modem tales of darkness. In North Hants to cure a siye in 
the eye you are told to pluck one hair from the tail of a black 
cat on the first night of the new moon, and rub it nine times 
over the stye. Blood. of a black cat taken from the tail was 
frequently used by old women for shingles {herpes). It was 
smeared over the place affected.t I have heard of this being 
recommended in Ireland in recent times, but it caused, in an 
authentic case, considerable mischief. A three-coloured cat is 
said to be a protection against fire, but a black cat is credited 
in rather a vague way with curing epilepsy and protecting 
gardens. In New England the skin of a black cat is considered 
a remedy in cases of sore throat, and it is lucky if a black cat 
come to you, but to sail with one on board is unlucky ; how- 
ever, if the cat be killed certain ruin will follow. In the north- 
east of Scotland it is considered imlucky to meet a black cat at 
any time.J 

One Gemer, according to the Kirk Session Record of St. 
Cuthbert's, gave " drinkes of black henis aiges and aquavite to 

♦ Grimm, vol. i. p. 44 (Stallybrass, vol. i. p. 64); Caldcleugh, TraveU, vol. ii. 
p. 212. 

t Turner, Diseases of the Skin, p. 79. 

% Gregor, p. 124. Burial of a black cat's head, see Aubrey's ReTnains of 

* Gentilisme (Folk-Lore Society), p. 102. The connection between cats and 

witches is illustrated in Grimm, " Das Volk sagt: eine zwanzigjahrige Katze 

werde zur Hexe, eine hundertjahrige Hexe wieder zur Katze,'* vol. ii. pp. 918-919. 

Rundrie persones that had the hert aikandes." If you have called 
up the devil by repeating the Lord's Prayer backwards, the 
only way to appease him, they say in Weardale, Durham, is to 
present him with a black hen.* It was by the baptism of a 
black cat that the Scotch witches raised the dreadful storm 
which assailed James VI. on his way to his kingdom with his 
bride, t 

A cake made of the heart of a white hound baked with meal 
was recommended for convulsions ; but to meet a white horse 
without spitting at it (spitting averts all evil consequences) is 
considered very unlucky in the Midland Counties, and to see a 
white mouse run across a room is a sure sign of approaching 
mortality to Northamptonshire people. 

Agrimony and black sheep's grease were employed in combi- 
nation, and for " dint of an ill wind " (Perth Kirk Session 
Record, 1623) black wool and butter were prescribed, probably 
for unction, and black wool, olive oil, and eggs for a cold. 
Dalyell, who notes these remedies, mentions that when he was 
recovering from a dangerous fever in the spring of 1826, an 
estimable relative presented him with some black wool to put 
into his ears, as a preservative from deafness. He availed 
himself eagerly of the gift, but declares that he would abstain 
from proclaiming its eflScacy. The intention here was kindly 
enough, and if the remedy was not successful we must re- 
member — 

Seyen times tried that judgment is 
That did never choose amiss. 

♦ The blood of a perfectly black hen will cure rheumatism, shingles, or, in 
fact, anything if applied externally, say some New England wise-men. 
t Dalyell, p. 116 ; Folk-Lore Record^ vol. ii. p. 205. ^

1. NUMBER. 

F all mystic numbers, Nine is the most popular in 
Britain, or perhaps it would be more correct to 
say Three, or some multiple of it. When a child 
is passed under and over an ass for the cure of 
whooping-cough, it is always three or nine times that the oper- 
ation is performed. In an Irish case the child was passed three 
times under and over for nine successive mornings. The Corn- 
wall system is even more elaborate — the child is passed nine 
times under and over a donkey three years old. Then three 
spoonftds of milk are drawn from the teats of the animal, and 
three hairs cut from the back, and three hairs cut from the belly 
placed in it. Afler the milk has stood for three hoiirs it should be 
drunk by the child in three doses, the whole ceremony being 
repeated three successive mornings.* When Margaret Sandieson 
went to cure Margaret Mure, she took but "thrie small stones and 
twiched her head thrie tymes with everie one of them," which 
cured her speedily. From the record in the trial of Bartie 
Paterson, in 1607, it appears that among other remedies for an 
unknown disease the patient was directed to kneel by his bed- 
side " thrie severall nichtes, and everie nicht, thryse nyne tymes, 
to ask his helth at all leving wichtis above and vnder the earth 
in the name of Jesus;" and again, he was "to tak nyne 
pickellis of quheit [? wheat] and nyne pickellis of rowne trie, 

♦ Lancashire Folh-Lore, vol. i. p. 157 ; W. H. P. (Belfast), 26th Nov. 1878 ; 
Jftjfe; N. and Q. 5th S. vol. x. p. 126 ; Manchester 6hiardiun, August, 1876 ; Hunt, 
MoniaTices and BrollSf second aerieaf p. 218; Cf. Gregor, Folk-Lore of N^orth- 
Fast of Scotland, p. 132. 

and to weir thame continuallie vpone for his helth."* In North 
Berwick a draught, repeated nine times, from the ham of a living 
ox was prescribed, Dalyell says, "for whooping-cough"; toge- 
ther with putting the patient " nyne severall tymes in the happer 
of ane grinding mill." Three times, to cure inflammatory 
diseases, the invocation of the three angels is repeated in Cornwall 
to each one of nine bramble leaves, immersed in spring water. 
Nine times in Sussex the snake is drawn across the "large 
neck " of the sufierer, after every third time being allowed to 
crawl about. Scotch maidens wishful to remove freckles wash 
their faces with buttermilk, in which for nine days silver weed 
{Poteniilla anserina) has been steeped. And in cases of trans- 
mission or new birth, the number of the transmissions — either 
three or nine — is usually scrupulously regarded.f 

Nine spar stones from a running stream, made red hot and 
dropped into a quart of water jfrom the same stream, which is 
then bottled, is recommended to be given on nine mornings to a 
whooping-cough patient. " If this will not cure the whooping- 
cough nothing else can," says the believer. J Nine times should 
the stye be rubbed with the cat's tail ; for nine nights the impal- 
ing of snails is required to cure warts. Nine days a fever patient 
in S. Northants will wear the lace he has obtained from a 
woman without giving money, giving reason for his request, or 
thanks for its fulfillment. § Nine red cocks was supposed in 
Ireland to be the sacrifice of a witch to her familiar spirit In 
County Wicklow, a correspondent tells me, the points of three 
smoothing-irons are pointed three times in the name of the 
Trinity at a painftil tooth — for then, sure enough, the pain 
vanishes. Against blains, the Saxon leech recommends the 
physician to " take nine eggs and boil them hard, and take the 

* Dalyell, Darker Superstitions, pp. 388-394. 

t Dalyell, p. 117 ; Hunt, 2nd S. p. 213 ; Chaice Notes (Iblk-Lore), p. 36 ; 
see supra^ New Birth, 
t Hunt, 2nd S. p. 218. 
§ N. and Q. 1st S. vol. ii. p. 36 ; Choice Notes (Folk Lore), p. 11. 

yolks and throw the white away and grease the yolks in a pan, 
and wring out the liquor through a cloth, and take as many drops 
of wine as there are of the eggs, and as many drops of unhal- 
lowed oil and as many drops of honey, and from a root of fennel 
as many drops ; then take and put it all together, and using it 
out through a cloth and give to the man to eat, it will soon be 
well with him." Of another charm the leech says ^* sing this 
charm nine times in the ear and a paternoster once."* 

Nine pieces of elder cut from between two knots furnished a 
good amulet for the epilepsy, and nine knots on a string hung 
round a Lancashire child's neck would soon cure whooping- 
cough, but the number of knots on the blue thread by which 
the Orkney islander was ruined was nine.f 

But though the reliance we place on nine is perhaps excessive, 
and the place it occupies in our history generally peculiar — for 
it was with nine eyes the great Lambton worm was credited, 
which was fed from the milk of nine cows, it was the peascod 
" closely filled with three times three" Gay tells produced lub- 
berkins, and it was nine Oxford persons who saw the ghost of 
Lady Dudley at Cumnor, — the reverence cannot be said to 
have originated with us, or to be peculiar to English folk-lore. 
Every schoolboy knows that the hydra had nine heads, but it is 
more to the point to learn that an Italian author (Pizzumus) 
alludes to the pain arising from stings being assuaged by the 
touch of nine stones, that Pliny mentions the virtues of nine 
knots being known to the magi, and that the people of Apulia, 
to cure the bite of a mad dog, would, according to Pontanus, 
go nine times round the town on the Sabbath with prayers and 
supplications. Marcellus, too, recommends the thrice three 

* LeechdomSy vol. iii. pp. 380, 381, also cited in W. de Gray Birch's " On Two 
Anglo-Saxon Mannscripts in the British Mnsenm,'* p. 22 (Beprintedfrom Trans, 
of the Royal Society of LiterainrCy xi. part iii. new series). 

t Another remedy for epilepsy is for the snfferer to creep head-foremost down 
three pairs of stairs three times a day for three successiye days.— Dyer, Domegtic 
Folk-Lore y p. 153. 

times repetition of a certain verse as a remedy which experience 
had found to be effectual.* Three handftdls of dust saved the 
unburied soul from wandering by the Styx, 

Quamqnam f estinas, non est mora longa, licebit, 
Injecto ter pulvere curras. 

In the west of Ireland in order to procure a woman's safe 
delivery it was customary to count over her nine articles of 
clothing — men's, if possible.f 

Although seven might have been expected to be a popular num- 
ber in England from its frequent mystical associations in Scripture, 
I can find but few examples of its use in Folk-Medicine. The 
Assyrians held that seven evil spirits might at once enter a man, 
and one tablet tells how when the god stands by the sick man's 
bedside — 

" Those seven evil spirits he shall root out, and shall expel 
them from his body. 

" And those seven shall ndver return to the sick man again."| 

* Pizzumus, EnoMridion Exorcisticvm, p. iii. c. 6, p. 65 ; Pliny, Hist Nat, 
lib. xxyiii. § 12 ; Dalyell, pp. 392, 395 ; Marcellus, Empiricus de MedicamentiSy 
§ 8, p. 278 ; the Apulian prayer (Pettigrew, p. 78) ruDS thus : — 

Alme yithe pellicane, 
Oram qni tenes Apnlam, 
Littnsqne polyganicnm 
Qui Morsus rabidos levas, 
Irasque canum mitigas. 
Tu, Sancte, Babiem asperam 
Rictnsque canis luridos, 
Tu sffivam prohibe luem. 
I procul hinc Rabies 
Procul hiuc furor omnis abesto. 

Five and seven are the fayourite numbers in China in superstitions, but in 
his " Numerical Categories " Mr. Mayers gives sixty-eight current phrases 
with reference to the number three, and only sixty-three and eighteen with 
reference to numbers five and seven respectively. Dennys, Folk-Lore of 
China, p. 40. 

t Irish Popular and Medical Superstitions, p. 13. 

% Assyrian Talismans and Exorcisms, translated by H. F. Talbot. Records 
of the Past, vol. iii. p. 143. At p. 147 is a Babylonian charm against a magician^ 
of whom Hea says to the sick man " by means of the number he enslaves thee." 

When certain magic words are to be used against " a warty 
eruption," the Saxon leech says, " one must take seven little 
wafers, such as a man offereth with.'** Although, no doubt, the 
wise men and women would, if questioned, say with Trick- 
more, " let the number of his bleedings and purgations be odd, 
numero Deus impare gaudet," yet the number seven was not of 
great healing significance save in the succession of sons, and 
to the personal powers of a seventh son reference is made 
elsewhere. A seventh son is looked upon with horror in 
Portugal, and is supposed to assume the likeness of an ass on 
Saturdays — ^but this is exceptional. To cure ague. West Sussex 
counsels say, " Eat fasting seven sage leaves for seven mornings 
fiisting." t To cure a sore mouth, the eighth Psalm is repeated 
in Devonshire over the patient seven times on three mornings ; 
but in other places, to cure thrush, it is repeated three times on 
three mornings. K it was said, " With the virtue," it was an 
unfailing cure."J 

The running, or rhyme number spells, are curious. Against 
the bite of an adder a piece of hazlewood, &stened in the shape 
of a cross, should be laid softly on the wound, and the following 
lines, twice repeated, " blowing out the words aloud, like one of 
the commandments " : — 

Underneath this hazelin mote, 

There's a hraggoty worm with a speckled throat, 

Nine double is he ; 
Now from nine double to eight double, 
And from eight double to seven double, 
And from seven double to six double. 

♦ Cockayne, vol. iii. p. 43. 

t Dyer, English Folh-Lore, p. 23 : " He that would live for aye, must eat 
sage in May," is another saying. 

% Choice Notes (Folk-Lore), pp. 169, 218. Some say three times every day 
on three days in the week for three successive weeks. ^Dyer, Domestic Folk- 
Lore, p. 1 63. The mention of babes and sucklings probably led to its selection 
as a charm for children's eases. 

And from six double to fiye double, 
And from five double to four double, 
And from four double to three double, 
And from three double to two double, 
And from two double to one double, 
And from one double to no double. 
No double hath he ! * 

Another version, to much the same effect, but actually taken 
from the MS. of a charmer, runs thus :^- 

" A Charamfor the Bite of an Ader. 

" * Bradgty, bradgty, bradgty under the ashing leaf to be 
repeated three times, and strike your hand with the growing of 
the hare. * Bradgty, bradgty, bradgty,' to be repeated three 
times^nine before eight, eight before seven, seven before six, 
six before five, five before four, four before three, three before 
two, two before one, and one before every one. Three times 
for the bite of an adder."! 

Another Cornish charm, to cure a tetter, is : — 

Tetter, tetter, thou hast nine brothers, 
God bless the flesh and preserve the bone ; 
Perish, thou tetter, and be thou gone, 
In the name, &c. 

Tetter, tetter, thou hast eight brothers, 
God bless the flesh and preserve the bone ; 
Perish^ thou tetter, and be thou gone, 
In the name, &c. 

Tetter, tetter, thou hast seven brothora, 
&c. &c. kc. % 

Thus the verses are continued under tottor liuvhig ** no 
brother " is imperatively ordered to begone. 

There is a divinity in odd num1)orM 
Either in nativity, chance, or death. 

♦ Hawker, Footprints of Former Men in Far Ctprn/wallt p. 177, 
t Braggaty = spotted, mottled. 
I Hunt, 2nd S. p. 214. 

A common charm for ague, to be said up the chimney by the 
eldest female of the family on St. Agnes Eve, is, — 

Tremble and go I 

First day shiyer and burn, 
Tremble and quake ! 

Second day shiyer and learn, 
Tremble and die I 

Third day neyer return.* 

A doctor's first patient, people say, is always cured, and if a 
person who sees an epileptic fit for the first time draws blood 
from the patient's little finger, the patient will be restored to 
his every-day health. 

2. Influence of the Sun and Moon. 

Mead says that " the learned Kirckringius " relates the fol- 
lowing story: — He knew a young gentlewoman whose beauty 
depended upon the lunar force, insomuch that at full moon she 
was very handsome, but in the decrease of the moon became so 
wan and ill-favoured that she was ashamed to go abroad till the 
return of the new moon gave fullness to her face and attraction 
to her charms. If this were indeed the case, we can fully credit 
a later assertion of Mead, that the powerful action of the moon 
is observed not only by philosophers and students of natural 
history, but " even by common people, who have been fully 
persuaded of it time out of mind."t True it is that Comishmen 
believe that a child born in the interval between an old moon 
and the first appearance of a new one will never live to attain 
puberty ; old people of extreme age are said to die at new or 
full moon. Gralen is cited to the efiect that animals born at full 
moon are strong and healthy. Bacon is said to have fallen 
invariably into a syncope during a lunar eclipse. In Sussex a 
new May moon is credited with curing scrofulous complaints 

* Pettigrew, p. 70. 

f Mead, Influence of Sim and Moim upon Human Bodies, — Woi'JtSj p. 132. 

when aided by certain charms. A correspondent in Rochester, 
U.S.A., tells me that an old black woman there asserts that 
asthma can be cured by walking three times round the house 
at midnight alone, at the fall of moon ; to cure rickets, 
further, if you bury a lock of the child's hair at a cross-road it 
will be all the better if the full moon is shining.* When the 
moon is one day old, he who is attacked by sickness, according 
to the leeches, " will be perilously bestead. If sickness attacks 
him when the moon is two days old he will soon be up. If it 
attacks him when the moon is three days old he will be fast- 
ridden, and will die. If it attacks him when the moon is four 
days old he will have a hard time of it, and yet will recover. 
If it attacks him when the moon is five days old he may be 
cured. If it is six days old, and sickness comes on him, he will 
live. If it be seven days old he will be long in a bad way. If 
it be eight days old, and disease attacks him, he will die soon. 
If it be nine, ten, or eleven days old he will be ill long, and, not- 
withstanding, recover. If it be twelve days old he will soon be 
up. If it be fourteen nights old, or fifteen, or sixteen, or seven- 
teen, or eighteen, or nineteen, there will be great danger on 
those days. If it be twenty days old he will be long abed and 
recover. If it be twenty-one, twenty-two, or twenty-three, he 
will lie long in sickness and suffer and recover. If it is twenty- 
four he will keep his bed. If it is twenty-five he is perilously 
bestead. If he is attacked when the moon is twenty-six, twenty- 
seven, tweniy-eight, or twenty-nine days, he will recover. If 
he is attacked when the moon is thirty days old he will hardly 
recover, and yet will leave his bed."t Martins, in his Erfurt 

* F, L, Record, vol. i. p. 45 ; Miss C. F. G. 28th Nov. 1879, « In Mada- 
gascar the waning of the moon is an unfavourable time for any important 
undertaking. Among the Antankarana the dead are only buried immediately 
after the new moon appears." — F. L. Record^ vol. ii. p. 32 ; Cf . Grimm, Deutiohe 
MythohtgiCy vol. ii. p. 596. 

f Cockajme, vol. iii. p. 183. 

address of 1700, speaking of the effect, according to rustics, of 
the moon's position upon the sap of growing plants, from which 
he says " primum nemo negabit, lunam virtute sua in corpore 
sibi subjecta manifesto agere," proceeds, " et observarunt medici 
ac chirurgi, referente Waldschmidio, non solum vulvera capitis 
in plenilunio ob cerebri turgescentiam majori cum periculo 
conjuncta esse, quam in novilunio, ubi cerebrum magis subsidet," 
but that all purgatives have happier issues when the moon is 
waning.* Mead, following Galen, says the moon governs the 
period of epileptic cases, and that when he had met sailors who 
had contracted the disease by frights in sea-engagements or 
storms in Queen Anne's wars, he was often able to predict the 
times of the fits with tolerable certainty; " and T. Bartholin," 
he continues, " tells a story of an epileptic girl who had spots 
in her face which varied both in colour and magnitude accord- 
ing to the time of the moon. So great, says he, is the corre- 
spondence between our bodies and the heavens." Chaucer refers 
to a fever caused by the moon when he speaks of a blaunche or 
white fever in Troilus and Cressida — 

And some thou sejdest hadde a blannche fevere, 
And preydest God he sholde never kevere. — i. cxxxi.f 

To cure warts in the west of Scotland, the sufferer is directed 
— instead of addressing words of endearment to the moon as 
would a Lancashire maid, desiring to know her true love- 
to stand still, and take a small portion of earth from under the 
right foot when he first catches sight of the new moon. The 

* Martins, Be Magia Natv/rali^ ejusque iisu medico ad moffice et magica 
(ywramdvmii 1700, Erfnrt, pp. 21 et seq. ** That births and deaths chiefly happen 
abont the new and fnll moon is an axiom even among women. The husband- 
men likewise are regulated by the moon in planting and managing trees, and 
several other of their occupations. So great is the empire of the moon over the 
terraqueous globe." — Mead, Works, pp. 146, 146. 

t For, as Mr. Fleay has pointed out, fevers were divided into red (Mars) 
black (Saturn), yellow (Sun), and white (Moon), according as they showed 
inflammation, mortification, jaundice or pallor. — Folh-Lore Record, vol. ii. 
p. 158. 

earth he makes into a paste, which he puts on the wart, wrapping 
it round with a cloth ; plaster and cloth should remain till the 
moon is out.* 

Sir Kenelm Digby, in his Discourse on the Power of Sym- 
pathy y in a well-known passage asks if one would not think it 
a folly that one should wash his hands in a well-polished silver 
basin, wherein there was not a drop of water ; " yet this may 
be done by the reflection of the moonbeams only, which will 
afford it a complete humidity to do it ; but they who have tried 
it have found their hands much moister than usually ; but this 
is an infallible way to take away warts from the hands if it be 
often usedn't 

Mead's general explanation of the moon's influence is — " If 
the time in which either the peccant humour is prepared for 
secretion, or the fermentation of the blood is come to its height, 
falls in with those changes in the atmosphere which diminish 
its pressure at the new and full moon, the crisis will then be 
more complete and easy ; and also that this work may be for- 
warded or delayed a day upon the account of such an alteration 
in the air, the distension of the vessels upon which it depends 
being hereby made more easy, and a weak habit of body, in 
some cases, standing in need of this outward assistance." I 

It is a common superstition that it is when the tide is at the 
lowest that death occurs. Who does not remember the end of 
Sir John Falstaff, — '^ A' parted," says the Hostess, " even just 
between twelve and one, even at the turning o' the tide ; " and 
better than many other quotations will be the familiar words of 
Dickens in David Copper/ield. Barkis is dying. " ' He's a going 
out with the tide,' said Mr. Peggotiy to me, behind his hand. 

♦ Mead, p. 132 ; -F. L, Becord, vol. ii. p. 158 ; Napier, p. 97 ; Invocation of 
Moon, cf. Aubrey, Remains of GentilisTne, pp. 83, 131 ; Dennys, Folk- Lore of 
China, p. 117 ; Nork. Mythologie der Vollttagen und Volksmaroheny p. 920 ; 
Grimm, vol. ii. pp. 587-596 j Livingstone, South Africa^ p. 236 ; Lubbock, 
Origin of Ckmlisation, pp. 317-318. 

t See also Aubrey, p. 188. % Mead, iUd. p. 146. 

" My eyes were dim, and so were Mr. Peggotty's ; but I 
repeated in a whisper, * With the tide ?' 

*^ ' People can't die, along the coast,' said Mr. Peggotty, 
^ except when the tide's pretty nigh out. They can't be born, 
unless it's pretty nigh in^not properly bom, till flood. He's a 
going out with the tide. It's ebb at half arter three, slack water 
half an hour. If he lives 'till it turns, he'll hold his own till 

past the flood, and go out with the next tide.' 

«««««« 

^* I was on the point of asking him if he knew me, when he 
tried to stretch out his arms, and said to me, distinctly, with a 
pleasant smile : 

" ' Barkis is willing !' 

*^ And, it being low water, he went out with the tide." 

It is said, in Ireland, that if a woman's last child is bom when 
the moon is on the increase, the next birth will be a boy, but if 
on the decrease it will be a girl.* The following common lines, 
formerly repeated by Ulster midwives after they had marked 
each outside comer of the house with a cross, but before they 
crossed the threshold, is virtually a prayer to the moon. It is 
still, with the alteration of the third person to the first, in use as 
a prayer in rural districte:- 

There are four comers to her bed, 
Four angels at her head : 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ; 
God bless the bed that she lies on. 
New moon, new moon, God bless me, 
God bless this house and family .f 

The influence of the belief in planetary influence was seen in 
the constellated rings to which reference is elsewhere made ; 
and so recently as June 1875, at the inquest held on the body 
of Miriam Woodham, who died under the prescriptions of a 
herbalist, it was elicited that the pills he gave her were made 

* Irish Popular a/nd Medical Superstitions^ p. 16. 
t Lancashire Folh^Lore^ p. 69 (foot-note). 

from seven herbs which were governed by the sun. A Baby- 
lonian exorcism runs, " On the sick man, by means of sacrifice, 
may perfect health shine like bronze ; may the Sun god give 
tliis man life ; may Merodoch, the eldest son of the deep, give 
liim strength, prosperity, and health ; may the king of heaven 
preserve, may the king of earth preserve."* The Assyrians 
trusted in an image of Hea placed in the doorway keeping 
away the evil spirits. The Finns invoke the smi by the name of 
Beiwe, " pour le prot^ger des demons de la nuit et guerir cer- 
taines maladies, specialement les infirmites de I'intelligence, de 
meme que les Accads leur Oud, qui personnifie la meme astre." 
A Persian remedy for bad dreams comes to me from America, — 
if you tell them to the sun you will cease to be troubled with 
them. The manifold contortions of the dervishes are supposed 
to repeat the movements of the planets. The devil dancers of 
Southern India are thought to tempt the evil spirits of the 
stars to enter them, and so become dissipated, instead of afflict- 
ing the people generally. t 

Fracastorius could predict plague by the conjunction of many 
stars under the large fixed stars. Kircher, " after a strict 
examination of almanacs and astrological tables," pointed out 
the evil effects of a conjunction of Mars and Saturn, which he 
contended emitted both very deadly exhalations; myriads of 
animalcules were generated, and such diseases as small-pox, 
measles, or fever became inevitable.''^ Culpepper declares the 
greatest antipathy to be between Mars and Venus in a passage 
which is as quaint now as it was once, no doubt, satisfactx)ry : 
" One is hot, the other cold ; one diurnal, the otlier nocturnal ; 
one dry, the other moist ; their houses are opposite ; one mas- 

♦ Conway, Bemonology and Devil Lore^ vol. i. p. 260 ; Records of the Party 
vol. i. p. 135, " Babylonian Exorcisms," translated by Prof. Sayce. 

t Lenormant, La Magie cliez les Chald^nSj p. 224 ; Miss C. F. G. 28tli Nov. 
1879 ; London TinieSf June 11, 1877 ; Conway, vol. i. p. 250. 

X Pettigrew, p. 19. 

K 

cuHne, tho other feminine ; one public, the other private ; one 
is valiant, the other effeminate ; one loves the light, the other 
hates it; one loves the field, the other the sheets; then the 
throat is under Venus, the quinsie lies in the throat, and is an 
inflammation there. Venus rules the throat (it being under 
Taurus, her sign). Mars eradicates all diseases in the throat by 
his herbs (of which wormwood is one), and sends them to 
-^gypt on an errand, never to return more ; this by antipathy. 
The eyes are under the luminaries ; the right eye of a man, and 
the left eye of a woman, the sun claims dominion over ; the left 
eye of a man, and the right eye of a woman, are the privileges 
of the moon ; wormwood, an herb of Mars, cures both ; what 
belongs to the sun by sympathy, because he is exalted in his 
house, but what belongs to the moon by antipathy, because he 
hath his fall in hers."* 

It was to the tail of the demon Rahu that the Indians traced, 
not only comets and meteors, but also diseases, and the name, 
Ketu, is said to be almost another word for disease.f The 
first time a Cornish invalid goes out he must go in a circuit, 
and with the sun ; if he goes the contrary way to the sun there 
will be a relapse. When a New England woman will cure warts 
she rubs the wart seven times round with the third finger of the 
left hand with the course of the sun, and if she is truly gifted 
the wart will disappear in a few days ; but not everyone, I am 
told, has the power to make this charm. This was the natural 
progression, and perhaps, as Dalyell has suggested,! motion 
with the sun's apparent course may involve a religious act in 
following it with the gaze from below. To move against the 
sun was to exhibit respect for Satan, in much the same way as 
repeating the Lord's Prayer backwards was supposed to do. 

* Culpepper, English Physician, enlarged, pp. 266-267. See ** On the 
Inflaence of the Stars," Martins, De Mag la Xatumll (cited suj?ra), 

t Dictionary of Bohtlingk and Rath, cited in Conway, Dcnumology, vol. i. 
pp. 254-255. 

X Dalyell, Darker Suj^erstitlons of Scotland, p. 456. 

But going ^* widderschynnes," as this retrograde motion was 
termed, was much resorted to. When Thomas Grieve, with 
some idea of sacrifice in his mind, took an animal to kill for the 
cure of a sick family, he put the animal out of the window 
thrice, and took it at the door thrice, " widderschynnes." This 
was in 1623. John Sinclair carried his sister backward to the 
kirk, and then laid her to the north. To cure sleepy fever in 
north-east Scotland, the patient's lefl stocking was taken and 
laid flat. A worsted thread was placed along both sides of it 
over the toe, and the stocking was so rolled up from toe to top 
that the two ends of thread hung Joose on different sides. Three 
times this stocking was passed round each niember of the family 
contrary to the course of the sun. If a member were affected 
the thread changed its position from outside to inside, otherwise 
it kept its position. When the process had been gone through 
three times in perfect silence the thread was burned.* When, 
in former times, a baptismal party were about to start on the 
often long journey to the church where the ceremony was to be 
performed, a quantity of common table-salt was carried 
" withershins " (the spelling varies, but the word is the same) 
round the baby. When the salt had been thus carried round 
it was believed that the child, even in its unregenerate state, 
was safe from harm.f Salt, of course, was in repute on 
account of its own celebrity ; for, apart from the fact that salt, 
or salt and water, was applied anciently for distempered eyes, 
and used as a bandage for bites of mad dogs, salt was, as every 
reader of tales and ballads knows, a favourite way of procuring 
disenchantment. Noel du Fail recommends, to cure gout, that 
a piece of linen, which has previously been steeped in salted 
water, should be applied to the painful parfj 

* Dalyell, p. 467 ; Gregor, Folk^Lore of North-East of Scotland, p. 44. 

f " I have conrersed with an old woman, a native of Ayrshire, who had seeii 
the custom put in practice when she was a girl." — J. (Glasgow), Notes and 
Queries, 2nd S. vol. iii. p. 69. 

$ Les Contes et Discours d'Entrapal, 1732, vol. i. p. 85« 

k2 

The importance of time in birth, in disease, and other inci- 
dents of life, was suggested by consideration of planetary influence. 
If a child in China is born between nine and eleven o'clock, if 
his early path be rough at last he will arrive at great riches ; and 
unlucky all his days will be the child born between three or five 
o'clock either of the morning or of the evening But although 
such importance attached to the time of birth in the celestial 
empire, yet the fate of a man might be modified by his good 
works, for one was told " your filial piety has touched the gods, 
a protecting star-influence has passed into your nativity sheet, 
and you will come to no harm."* In Lancashire, persons 
born during twilight are supposed to see spirits, and know 
which of their acquaintance will be soonest to die ; but others 
hold that this power belongs only to those bom exactly at mid- 
night. This perhaps arises from the superstition, common both 
in England and China, that midnight is a fatal period ; con- 
sequently any spirit coming into being at that time might be 
supposed to have met those spirits which were quitting life. 
Not without reason, then, it would be argued they should 
be able to recognise what others, having no opportunity of ever 
seeing, could never know or recognise — the dead spirits.f It 
was ac midnight that rickety children used to be put naked on 
the Logan stone, near Nancledrea. By day-time it was impos- 
sible to move the stone, but exactly at midnight it would rock 
like a cradle. Many a child was said to be cured. I It is after 
midnight of the seventh day of the seventh month that Canton 
women draw the magical water which, if used in cooking 
food for the patient, will cure cutaneous diseases or fevers. 

♦ Dennys, FolhrLore of Chinay p. 8 j Giles, Strange Stories from a Chinese 
StudiOy vol. ii. p. 67. 

t Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore, p. 106 ; Dennys, Folk- 
Lore of China, p. 27. 

X Unnt, Romances and Drolls, first series, p. 195 : " If, however, the child 
was 'misbegotten,' or if it was the offspring of dissolnte persons, the stone 
would not move, and consequently no cure was effected." 

Such water, though kept for years, will never become putrid. 
Rain which falls on Holy Thursday is, in the neighbourhood of 
Banbury, to return to our own country, carefully bottled for 
use in cases of sore eyes.* So, too, in Worcestershire, a cor- 
respondent informs me, and probably generally over England, 
the superstition holds good. Good Friday bread, as known in 
the same county, is a small lump of dough put in the oven early 
in the morning of Good Friday, and baked until perfectly hard 
throughout. A small quantity of this, grated, is given to a 
patient when all other remedies fail. It is kept hanging from 
the roof.f Hot cross buns, if kept from one Good Friday to 
another, are thought, in Lancashire, to prevent an attack of 
whooping-cough. On the whole, the reputation of Friday is good 
throughout folk-medicine. The most favourable time to visit a 
seventh son is said to be, in Ireland at least, on a Friday, just 
before sunrise— just at the cock-crowing perhaps, which in 
Europe generally was looked upon as the proper time for taking 
medicine. For plying venom, and every venomous swelling, 
the leeches say chum butter on a Friday from cream which 
has been milked from a neat or hind all of one colour ; let it be 
mingled with water, sing over it nine times a litany, and nine 
times the Paternoster, and nine times an incantation. Even 
for deep wounds this Friday ceremony would be good. J 

In Scotland illness was expected to be more severe on Sunday 
than on any other day ; and a relapse was anticipated if the 
patient seemed easier. And yet it was a day of special healing 
at many wells. Sick children were carried, on the first Sunday 
of May, to St. Anthony's Well, near Maybole, and on that day 
were the waters of the cave of Uchtrie Macken, and the white 
loch of Merton, most efficacious, and the well at Ruthven. The 

♦ Dennys, loc. cit. p. 38 ; Thiselton Dyer, English Folk-Lorey p. 152. 

t Miss S. 8 March, 1879. 

X "Fairy Superstitions in Donegal," University Mag, August, 1879, p. 218 ; 
Pizzumus, Enchiridion, iii. lib. 1, c. 6, p. 54 ; Dalyell, p. 420 j Cockayne, vol. ii. 
p. 113. 

well at Trinity Gask was sought on the first Sunday of June. 
There appears to have been some old charm for toothache, 
which ran over the days for the week, for we have the following 
as a mock charm in A, C. Mery Talys : — 

" The son on the Sonday, 
The mone on the Monday, 
The Trynyte on the Tewsday.'* ♦ 

It was on Sunday that the people of Apulia circumvented the 
walls of their town nine times, to secure the cure of one bitten 
by a tarantula, or a mad dog. 

When Shane, the son of Croohoore Bawn, was a priest in 
Bome, he saw one of the students shaving himself on a 
Monday. 

" * Mor a smoh, lath veh yuan 
Naw dane lum an Lnan/ 

said Shane. ^What's that you're saying?' said the student. 
' Why,' said Shane, ' it's an old Irish saying ; and the meaning 
of it is, ^ if you wish to live long, don't shave on a Monday.' 
' I have you now,' thought the student, though he said notJiing 
to Shane ; but as soon as he had done shaving away he goes to 
the abbot, and told him what Shane said, saying it was a great 
crime for a priest to believe in any such thing, and that he had 
no right to be bringing his auld Irish pishogues (charms) to 
Rome." f All rhymes as to the days of birth seem to agree 
that Monday's child should be fair of face, but I am surprised 
that the day of the moon should not have had more honour in 
the medical lore of the people. Possibly, farther research may 
result in information on this point. 

The first Wednesday in May is the day in Cornwall for bath- 
ing rickety children, and on the first three Wednesdays of May 
children suffering from mesenteric disease are dipped three 

♦ Sinclair, Stat, Ac, of ScotUmdf 1793, vol. v. p. 82 ; Dalyell, p. 80 ; Shake- 
tpeare Jest Books, 1864, pp. 58, 69. 

I Ctrker, Legends of Killamey, 1879 ed. p. 74i 

times in Chapell Uny " widderschynnes," and widderschjames 
dragged three times round the well. A ring of pure gold, 
inscribed with certain letters, was to be worn on a Thursday, 
at the decrease of the moon, by the patient of Marcellus (temp. 
Marcus Aurelius), who suffered from pain in the side. If the 
pain were in the left side the ring was to be worn on the right 
hand, and if in the right side the ring was to be worn on the 
left hand.* 

Vervain is recommended for " sore of liver " in the Her* 
bariiim Apuleii, if taken on Midsummer Day, and lithewort 
(Sambucus ebulus) for another complaint, if taken before the 
rising of the sun " in the month which is named July."t 

To conclude, let us note the days of danger, as the leech- 
books give us them. They are, in March the first, and fourth 
before the end ; in April the tenth, and eleventh before the 
end ; in May the third, and seventh before the end ; in June 
the tenth, and fifteenth before the end ; in July the twelfth, 
and tenth before the end; in August the first, and second 
before the end ; in September the third, and tenth before the 
end ; in October the third, and tenth before the end ; in No- 
vember the fifth, and third before the end ; in December the 
seventh, and tenth before the end ; in January the first, and 
seventh before the end; in February the fourth, and third 
before the end. J It is not so long ago that medical men stoutly 
defended their belief in the influence of the moon on lunacy ; 
and that a full moon has more influence than a waning moon 
is still a far from rare thought of country people. 

* Hunt, Romances and DrolUy second series, p. 55 ; Jones, Finger Ring 
Lore^ p. 147. 
t Cockayne, vol. i. pp. 91, 127. % Cockayne, vol. ii. p. 163.

|NDER some such heading as this we must group those 
instances of cures through the merits of a special 
healer which are not infrequently met with. The 
power of a seventh son is known everywhere to be 
indeed remarkable, — according to a Scotch writer, if worms had 
been put into his hand before baptism, or, according to an Irish, 
if his hand has, before it has touched anythJhg for himself, been 
touched with his future medium of cure. Thus, if silver is to be 
the charm, a sixpence or a threepenny piece is put into his hand, 
or meal, salt, or his father's hair, "whatever substance a seventh 
son rubs with must be worn by his parents as long as he lives." 
The former ceremony was the simpler, because the child was 
thenceforth believed to be able to heal by simply rubbing the 
afflicted part with his hand. If the child was born on Easter 
Eve he might be expected, according to foreign lore, to cure 
also tertian or quartan fevers.* There is mention in Grimm of 
the reputation a fifth son enjoys in France, f but if we may 
trust Le Journal du Loiret of some twenty-three years ago the 
seventh son is supreme, for he has on his body somewhere the 
mark of a fleur-de-lis, and like the kings of France and Eng- 

♦ Gregor, Folh-Lore of North-East of Scotland, p. 47 ; " Fairy Superstitions 
in Donegal," University Mag. August, 1879 Notes a/ad Queries^ 5th S. vol. xii. 
p. 386. 

t Grimm, Deutsche Mythologies vol. ii. p. 964, " Nach franz abergl. 22 ist es der 
fiinfste sohn." Cures were brought (temp. Charles II.) by Valentine Great- 
sakcs, sec letter to Boyle, or by John Leverett, neither of whom seems to have 
been of peculiar birth. — Pettigrew, pp. 155, 156. 

land in former days can cure simply by breathing upon the part 
affected, as allowing the patient to touch his fleur-de-lis. Of all 
the marcous of the Orl^anais, he of Ormes, says Le Journal 
du Loirety is the best known and most celebrated. Every year, 
from twenty, thirty, forty leagues around, crowds of patients 
come to visit him ; but it is particularly in Holy Week that his 
power 18 efficacious, and on the night of Good Friday, from 
midnight to sunrise, the cure is certain. Accordingly, at this 
season from four to five hundred persons press round his dwell- 
ing to take advantage of his wonderful powers. 

It scarcely surprises us that a twenty-first son, born without 
the intervention of a daughter, should have perfonned pro- 
digious cures.* 

The merits of a seventh daughter are not unknown. A 
herbalist in Plymouth, who was tried in June 1876 for obtain- 
ing a sovereign on false pretences from a pauper, represented 
herself to be the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter of a 
seventh daughter. Nevertheless she had to refund the sovereign. 
In the Superstitions Anciennes et Modemea of 1733 it is re- 
corded : " On me disoit, il y a quelque tems, que les septi^mes 
fiUes avoient le privilege de gu^rir des mules aux talons." f 

Those who were born with their feet first were, in the north- 
east of Scotland, to be credited with the power of healing all 
kinds of sprains, and lumbago and rheumatism. As the virtue 
lay in the feet, although cures might be effected by rubbing, 
trampling on the suffering part was most recommended ; in 
Cornwall the merit also attached to the mother of the child who 
was so born, and she was accordingly invited to trample on 
rheumatic patients. J The touch of a child who has never seen 
his father cures swellings, Grimm says, and Bernard's Super- 

* Choice Notes {Folk-Lore), p. 69 ; Oent, Mag, 1731, io\. i. p. 643. 

\Note8 and Queries, 5th S. vol. vi. pp. 144, 176 ; Superstitions Anciennes et 
Modernes : Prejvgds Vvlgaires qui ont induit les Peuples a des Usages et a des 
Pratiques contraii'es a la Religion, book xvi. p. IW. 

X Gregor, p. 45 ; Hunt, Romances and Drolls, second series, p. 212. 

stitiona notes : " Mais ce rare privilege no snbsiste dans rimaori- 
nation des personnes qui veulent railler, non plus que celui 
de gu^rir les louppes, lequel on attribue aux enfans posthumes." 
According to the Swedes, " Das erstgebome mit zahnen auf die 
welt kommne kind kann bosen biss heilen." * In Essex, a 
child, known famib'arly as a "left twin," i.e. a child who has 
survived its fellow twin, is thought to have the power of 
curing the thrush by blowing three times into the patient's 
mouth, if the patient is of the opposite sex. To rub warts 
against a man who was the father of an illegitimate child, when 
done without his knowledge, was thought to aid in their speedy 
removal. A pulmonary complaint, known in the Highlands 
as *' Macdonald's disease," was so called because it was thought 
that the gift of curing it by touch, accompanied by a formula, 
was hereditary in certain families of this name.f 

Generally in the West and Midland counties of England the 
virtue lying in the person of a woman who has married a husband 
of the same name as herself, or after the death of her first hus- 
band marries a second whose name is the same as that of her 
maidenhood, is extolled, and this is the more strange that one 
of the commonest maxims for the guidance of marriageable girls 
IS to the effect that 

^' A change of the name with no change of the letter 
Is a change for the worse and not for the hetter." 

Be that as it may be, the little sufferer from whooping-cough is 
in Cheshire trustfully sent to get plain currant cake from a 
woman who has married a man of her own name, and in the 
neighbourhood of Tenbury to get bread and butter and sugar 

♦ Grimm, Deutsche Mytliologie, vol. ii. p. 964 ; Superstitions Anciennes et 
Modemes^ book xvi. p. 107 (in reference to seventh daughters, supra). To 
guard against whooping-cough Donegal peasants will wear a lock of hair from 
a posthumous child. 

t Henderson, Folk^Lore of the Northern Counties^ p. 307 ; Gregor, p. 49 ; 
Smith, ParUh of Logierait^ ap, Stat. Aoct. vol. v. p. 84 ; Dalyell, Darker 
Superstitions, p. 61. 

from widow Smitli, nee Jones, who has become on her second 
marriage Mrs, Jones.* 

It was no more necessary in every case that the special healers 
should be near their patients than it was for medicine men, 
abroad or at home, who instead of health were compassing 
destruction, to have their victims at hand. 

A Donegal wise woman having received a careful description 
of a case in which (say) a splinter seemed to have got into her 
distant patient's eye, would fill a bowl with water and walk with 
it to her door. " She takes a mouthful of the water, and puts it 
out again. ' Na, it's no there yet,' she says. Another mouthful 
IS taken, probably with like result ; but at the third trial she 
exclaims ' Ay ! there it is ! ' and shows to the messenger the 
small grain of iron or steel, or whatever it may have been that 
caused the pain, floating in the bowl of water."f 

Sometimes a single word was sufficient ; thus, a woman of 
Marton, near Blackpool, became so celebrated for her success in 
stopping bleeding that for twenty miles around when a case 
occurred her aid was called in. The men and women of Zennar 
were alike powerful charmers, and could cure erysipelas, ring- 
worm, pains in limbs or teeth, and ulcerations. " Even should 
a pig be sticked in the very place, if a charmer was present and 
thought of his charm at the time, the pig would not bleed. "J 
It is impossible to avoid thinking that the best time for witches 
was the early part of this century. The spread of education was 
not in country districts sufficiently great to discredit recourse to 
wise men who only insisted on such simple preliminaries as an 
acknowledgment of faith in tlie charmer's power, while it was 
great enough to prevent a charmer who, like Alexander Drum- 
mond in the seventeenth century, cured those "visseit with 

♦ CJioice Notes, p. ISf ; Miss G. S., 8 March, 1879. 

f ** Fairy Superstitions in Donegal,'' Letitia McLintock, University Mag, 
August, 1879, p. 220. 

J Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore, p. 77; Hunt, Romances 
and Drolls, second series, p. 208* 

frenacies, madness, falling evil : persones distractit in their 
wittis, and possessit with feirful apparitiones," sharing the fate 
which befel him when his fame was beginning to decline. None 
that I know of were like him " strangled and burnt as too familiar 
with Satan," though even in this year of grace there are some 
who, with as little real knowledge as the Chinese, who, when he 
was told by a Taoist priest " skilled in physiognomy," that he 
should be a doctor, collected a few common prescriptions and a 
handful of fishes' teeth and some dry honeycomb from a wasp's 
nest and set up in practice, have practised, and not without 
profit to themselves, upon the credulity of their neighbours.* 

A peculiar sanctity is attached in Ireland to the blood of the 
Keoghs. In Dublin, the blood of a Keogh is frequently put 
into the teeth of a sufferer from toothache. A friend of my own 
in Belfast writes that his foreman, on whose word he can 
depend, says he knew a man named Keogh whose flesh had 
actually been punctured scores of times to procure his blood. 
'^ The late Sir William Willis," another correspondent informs 
me, " says that the blood of the Walches, Keoghs, and Cahills, 
is considered in the west of Ireland an infallible remedy for 

erysipelas." t 

The cure of the King's Evil, by the royal touch, has been 
elsewhere fully discussed. It almost now belongs more 
properly to the domain of history than that of popular super- 
stitious. I shall, therefore, do but little more in this place 
than mention the leading points. The question as to whether 
the power, which belonged both to the English and French 

• Mention of recent charmers will be found in 2V^ote9 and Querieg, 6tli S. vol. i. 
pp. 364-365 ; Folk-Lore Record y vol. iv. pp. 116, 117. For Drtmmond's Case, 
in the kirktoun of Auchterairdaur, 3 July, 1629, Bee. Inst, see Dalyell, 
p. 60. 

f This passage is said to be " in a small book published a great many years 
ago." A query in JVbtes and Queries (6th S. vol. ii. p. 9) has, unlike most such 
inquiries, brought me no information as to the name of this book, or any incident 
in the history of the Keogh family which might have given distinction to the 
family blood. 

sovereigns, was more ancient in the family of the former or 
the latter raised a discussion which, to modem eyes, seems 
strongly disproportionate to its importance. The English 
claimed for their king the sole exercise of the power Edward the 
Confessor had exercised, and hinted that the king on the other 
side of the Channel had derived it from alliance with the 
English. The French, on the other hand, claimed a clear 
inheritance from St. Louis or Clovis. Both lines sedulously 
exercised their powers. The ceremonial was always imposing ; 
the court was present ; the sovereign had generally prepared 
himself by confession, and after by fasting. In England, Henry 
VII. had a special Latin service drawn up for his use. The 
Reformation did not, to the perplexing of the Roman Catholics, 
interfere with Elizabeth's divine power, and even a Popish 
recusant, who was thus miraculously cured, was converted, and 
returned to the bosom of the English Church. The queen 
changed the inscription which appeared on the touching-piece, 
which Henry VII. had introduced, from " Per cruce tua salva 
nos xpde rede " to " A Domino factum est istud et est mira- 
bile in oculis nostris " ; and when, after her reign, the size of 
the coin was lessened, another alteration was made, and " Soli 
Deo Gloria " alone inscribed. Charles II. changed the metal, 
and used silver instead of gold. Sir Kenelm Digby is said to 
have maintained that all the security of the patient lay in this 
touch-piece, and that if it were lost the malady would return. 
Charles 11. touched for the evil in Flanders, Holland, and 
France, when he was an exile, as Francis I. had done in Spain, 
as his own nephew did long afterwards in Rome, and his grand- 
nephew in Edinburgh. On Charles's accession he touched more 
persons than any previous king, nearly a hundred thousand per- 
sons, and yet " in his reign more died of scrofula than in any 
other." When Mr. Pepys saw the ceremony in April 1661 he 
was not impressed — " Met my lord with the duke; and after a 
little talk with him I went to the banquet-house, and there saw 

the king heal, the first time that ever I saw him do it ; which he 
did with great gravity, and it seemed to me to be an ugly 
office and a simple one." James II. touched some seven or 
eight hundred sick at Oxford on a single Sunday, and a petition, 
Mr. Lecky says, has been preserved in the town of Portsmouth, 
in New Hampshire, asking the assembly of that province to 
grant assistance to one of the inhabitants who desired to make 
the journey to England to obtain the king's touch. Under 
Anne the proclamations of the Privy Council were read in all 
the parish churches, and a suflering child, who was afterwards 
to be Dr. Johnson, was among those presented to the queen. 
" Tliat many persons so touched, and labouring under a scro- 
fulous disposition, should receive benefit, may not unfairly be 
admitted, and an explanation — it is probably aflbrded by the 
beneficial eflect produced on the system occasioned by the strong 
feeling of hope and certainty of cure. Such feelings are cal - 
culated to impart tone to the system generally, and benefit those 
of a scrofulous diathesis in whom the powers are always weak 
and feeble." This explanation, however satisfactory as regards 
cases of grown suflerers, cannot be applied to the cases in which 
infants were presented, who were scarcely likely to be affected 
by strong feelings of hope and certainty ; and yet Dr. Heylin 
has distinctly stated that he saw infants touched and cured. It 
is possible that here it would be said it was the attendant doctor's 
powers which had been weak and feeble until stimulated. 

Charles X. of France, who touched on his coronation a hun- 
dred and twenty-one sick persons, was the last king of whom it 
could be said, as of Edward— 

" How he solicits heaven) 
. Himself best knows ; but strangelyvisited people, 
All swoln and alcerous, pitiful to the eye, 
The mere despair of surgery, he cures, 
Hanging a golden stamp about their necks." 

In 1838, failing the royal touch, a few crowns and half-crowns 

bearing the effigy of Charles I. were still used in the Shetland 
Islands as remedies for the evil.* They had been handed down 
from generation to generation, along, perhaps, with the story 
which some travelled Shetlander had told of the ceremony on 
St John's day, 1633, when Charles I. went to the royal chapel in 
Holy rood, " and their solemnlie ofired, and after the ofiringe 
heallit 100 persons of the cruelles or kingia eivell, yonge and 
old." t At the execution of Charles many persons purchased 
chips of the block, and blood-discoloured sand, and hair ; some, 
Perrinchief says, did so " to preserve the relics of so glorious a 
Prince whom they so dearly loved," but " others hoped that they 
would be as means of cure for that disease which our English 
kings (through the indulgence of Heaven) by their touch did 
usually heal ; and it was reported that these relicks experienc'd 
fail'd not of the effect. $ Grimm notices that the touch of queens 
has been deemed efficacious, and this we know in England from 
the historic account alone of the child of the Lichfield bookseller 
and Queen Anne. 

In Cairo, according to the passage from Haynes's Letters^ 
quoted by Pettigrew, pieces of garments that have touched the 
pilgrim camel which cai'ries the grand seigneur's annual present 
are preserved with great veneration, and when any lie danger- 
ously ill they lay these scraps upon their bodies as infallible 
remedies. Remigius is said to have seen people near Bordeaux 
who cured fractured limbs and dislocated joints merely by touch- 

* Pettigrew, Svperstitions connected with Practice of Surgei^, pp. 153-154. 
I take this opportnnitj of here acknowledging my incessant obligations to the 
notes of Mr. Pettigrew on this subject, and also to Mr. Lecky's Histonj of 
IJngland in tJte Eighteenth Century. Mr. Lecky's Yolume needs no praise of 
mine, but the ample and accurate fashion in which he has treated of the Touching 
(vol. i. pp. 67 et seq.) would of itself secure the meed of approbation from 
students of culture which his whole work has received from the public generally. 

t Kew Stat. Account of Scotland, vol. xv. p. 86 ; Lecky, vol. i. p. 223 ; Bal- 
four, Tfie Order qf King Charles intring UdinhurgJwy MS. p. 23 (Advocates' 
Library) ; Dalyell, p. 62. 

t The Itmjal MaHyr ; or, The Life and Death of King Charles I. 1727, 

p. 174. 

ing the girdle of the patient at a distance, and in the western 
islands of Scotland there were women so skilled as to take a 
mote out of one's eyes though at some distance from the party 
grieved. The source of such superstition, as Dalyell has said, is 
j^robably to be found in the different passages of Scripture rela- 
tive to the staff of Elisha, the handkerchiefs and aprons of Paul, 
persons cured of infirmities by the sanctified, and at a distance, 
and the like.* 

We are accustomed to see occasionally in the newspapers 
accounts of wonderful stones which cure hydrophobia. In 1877, 
for example, a description appeared of a mad stone in the pos- 
session of a farmer in Kentucky. It had been found in Switzer- 
land ; an Italian took it to America and sold it to the Kentucky 
farmer, who in twenty-three years cured fifly-nine persons. It 
was said to be one inch thick by one inch and a-half long ; it 
weighed two ounces, like bone, but harder and porous. When a 
person who had been bitten was brought to be treated the stone 
was applied to the wound, and when presumably it had dropped 
oflF full of poison it was soaked in warm milk and water and was 
soon ready to be used again. A query as to mad stones was 
inserted in Tlie Medical Record of New York, in May 1880, 
and Prof. Charles Rice's reply, with a copy of which I was 
favoured (condensed), is as follows: "The fable of the mad stone 
may be traced back to the earlier period of the Middle Age — a 
time when medical men first began to leave the old beaten track 
of therapeutics laid down by the earlier Greek and Arabic phy- 
sicians, and to study and observe nature for themselves. Yet 
their steps on this new groimd were so feeble, and rational 
explanations of natural phenomena, or of newly-observed facts, 
were so difiicult for them, that superstition for a long time after- 
ward found a fruitful field for development. Not only were new 
facts discovered which were unintelligible, and were, therefore, 

♦ Dalyell, Darker Superstitions, p. 320 ; Martin, Westti'n Islands, p. 22 ; 
Bemigins, Damonolotreia, lib. iii. c. 1. § 13. 

often misconstrued, but sometimes there were properties and 
virtues assigned to newly-discovered substances which were 
in direct proportion to the rarity of their occurrence or the 
singularity of their appearance. Among such rare substances 
may be counted the peculiar concretions which are sometimes 
found in some of the inner organs of animals, particularly those 
concretions which consist of mineral or inorganic matter. The 
first notice that I am aware of, exists in the work of Ibn Baithar 
(died 1248, a.d.) ^ On Simples,' who gives a detailed, but some- 
what confused, account of hddzahar^ which is our present word 
bezoavj and is, without question, the substance forming the sub- 
ject of the above query. Ibn Baithar, as he usually does, gives 
extracts from the works of his predecessors, and among others 
cites a passage from Aristotle, which, however, must be a mis- 
take, since the contents of the passage are of such a nature that 
they could not have been known at the time of Aristotle. At 
the end of the article he quotes Ibn Dj&mi', who says that ' the 
animal bezoar, or that which is found in the deer's heart, is 
better than the other kinds.' He fails, however, to give a 
description of the latter, or to mention any vegetable or other 
bezoars. Ibn Baithar's description already characterises the 
bezoar stone as being endowed with wonderful power as an anti- 
dote to poison, and ascribes to it the faculty of ' attracting the 
poison of venomous animals.' The word bezoar ^ which has some- 
times been written hezoardy bazehardy bezaar^ &c., is originally 
derived from the Persian bad-i-zohvy meaning ' the wind or the 
breeze of poison,' in the sense of the ^wafting away of the 
poison,' and therefore ' an antidote to poison.' The Persian 
word became bdd~zahar in classic Arabic, bddizahar in modern 
Arabic, and bddr-zehr^ or pdn^zelir^ in Turkish. I have stated 
above that the term bezoar ^ or rather bad-zohar^ in the meaning 
of ' a concretion foimd in animal organs,' did not occur, so fai' 
as I am aware of, in any published work written before Ibn 
Baith&r's time. Yet the word was used long before him by 

L 

Arabic and Persian authors in its original sense — ^antidote 
to poison.' Since Ibn Baithar himself quotes from works of 
authors who had preceded him, the word must have acquired its 
double sense a considerable time before him. After the term 
had once been misapplied to ' bezoar stones,' and the notion of 
the efficacy of the latter as antidotes to poison had once spread, 
the fable — as it happened with many other similar ones — ^took a 
firm hold among the ignorant classes, being handed down from 
one generation to another as a priceless family prescription, 
sometimes even accompanied by a veritable family bezoar stone. 
These mad stones are, in our days, principally used as a sup- 
posed infallible remedy for the bite of mad dogs, and naturally 
every application of such a stone to a dog bite, even if the latter 
would have been of itself harmless, is scored as an additional 
victory for the stone."* Speaking of the inhabitants of the 
Holy Land, Kelly says " they have a sovereign remedy, which 
absorbs, as they assert, every particle of venom from the wound. 
This is a yellowish porous stone of a sort rarely met with. A 
fragment of such a stone always commands a high price, but 
when the piece has acquired a certain reputation by the number 
of marvellous cures wrought by it it becomes worth its weight 
in gold."t The ^' alluring stone " of Carmarthen is a different 
superstition. It is said to be a soft white stone, about the size of 
a man's head. Grains used to be scraped from it and given to 
those who had been bitten by a dog, and although the scraping 
went on for centuries the stone never got less. The stone is said 
to have fallen from heaven on the farm of Dysgwylfa, about 
twelve miles from the town of Carmarthen.} In de la Pryme's 
Diaryj under date " 1696, April 10," is the following entry : 
" I was with an old experienced fellow to-day, and I was show- 

♦ The Medical Record (New York), 8 May, 1880, p. 628. 

t Kelly, Syria and the Holy Land, p. 127, quoted in Henderson's Folk-Lore 
of the Northern Counties, p. 166. For other healing stones, see Henderson, 
pp. 146, 166; Gregor, p. 39. 

t Sykes, British Goblins, pp. 367-368. 

iiig him several great stones as we walked, full of petrified shell- 
fish. He said he believed that they are ^ greuith ' stone, and 
that they were never fish. Then I asked him what they called 
them ; he answered, ^ milner's thumbs,' and adds that they are 
the excellentest things in the whole world, being burnt and beat 
into powder, for a horse's sore back ; it cures them in two or 
three days."* 

* Diary of A. de la Pryme^ p. 90. 

l2

I HE consideration of what appears at first to be simply 
animal cures is i;endered somewhat difficult by the 
fact that those animal cures do not in most cases 
depend simply upon the animal association. There 
are other associations not easy to distinguish or to trace. 
Paths diverge in many directions, but I have thought it on 
the whole better to group cures connected with animals as 
far as possible together, for, apart from other considerations, a 
comparative light is more likely to be directed to a collection 
than to notes scattered piecemeal. To enter into the history 
in detail of the beliefs and superstitions regarding the curative 
powers or properties of animals which have come to us, often 
altered and distorted, is foreign to my purpose, and beyond the 
limits to which it is purposed to confine this chapter. 

The dog does not bulk so largely in folk-medicine as might 
have been expected. A cake of the " thost" of a white hound 
baked with meal was recommended against the attack of dwarves 
(convulsions). In Scotland much more recently a dog licking a 
wound or a running sore was thought to efiect a cure.* For a 
fever the right foot shank of a dead black dog hung on the arm 
is said to be a good remedy, — " it shaketh ofi* the fever." The 
head of a mad dog pounded and mingled with wine was reputed 
to cure jaundice ; if burned and the ashes put on a cancer the 

♦ Cockayne, Saxon Leechdoms^ vol. i. p. 366; Gregor, Folh-Lore of the North- 
East of Scotland, p. 127. 

UO 

cancov ■wnuiel bo lioaled ; and if the ashes of a dog be given to 
a man torn by a mad dog it " caatcth out all the venom and 
the foulness, and healeth the maddening bites." Floyer sayB 
that "mad dog's liver is given againat madness." This is on the 
principle of taking a hair of the dog that bit you, which has been 
referred to above ; but of the modern literal observance we have 
an instance in a passage in Miss Lonsdale's Life of Sister Dora. 
In the out-patients' ward one day she eame upon a dog-bite 
upon which a mass of hairs had been plastered, and though it is 
not recorded whether the hairs were those of the animal which 
bad caused the wound or of some other dog, the presumption is 
they were the hairs of tlio dog supposed to be mad, A negro 
superstition at Kingston used to be that certain large, black, 
hairless, india-rubber-looking dogs that were common on the 
beach would neutralize a fever if stretched on the body of a 
patient. Those "fever dogs," as they were called, were none 
the worse for the contact, tho fever was not transferred but 
neutralized,* The tongues of dogs were said in France as in 
Scotland to euro ulcers, but whether by licking or medical 
application I have no means of knowing.f In Cliina it is 
believed that the blood of a dog will reveal a person who has 
made himself invisible, and Mr. Giles gives a tale of a magician 
who was discovered by this means. Tt also seems to have been 
given as a kind of Lethe draught to what in England are called 
changUngs. (" Now I understand," cried the girl, in tears ; " I 
recollect my mother saying that when I was born I was able to 
speak ; and thinking it an inauspicious manifestation they gave 
rae dog's blood to drink, so that I should forget all about my 
previous state of existence.")! I* '^ ^ this association of some- 
thing "uncanny" about a dog that we owe the dislike to its 
howling. The dog can see more than can be seen by men. In 

* CockBpie, vol. i. pp. 363, 371 ; Fbjer, Jhuei^oae of Medieine, vol. ii. 
p, 91 ; Sister Dora, p, 170 ; ^etef and Queries, Bfh 8. vol, it. p. 463. 
t Erreuri Populaircl et props) imlgairei, toL ii. p. 178. 
J GilBB, Strange Sfories/rnm a CMneie Studio, vol. i. pp. 62, IB*. 

Rabbi Becliai's Exposition of the Five Books of Moses a passage 

tells how " our rabbins of blessed memory have said when the 

dogs howl then cometh the angel of death into the city ;" and to 

the same effect in Rabbi Menachem von Rekenat's exposition on 

the same books we have, " Our rabbins of blessed memory have 

said when the angel of death enters into a city the dogs do howl ; 

and I have seen it written by one of the disciples of Rabbi 

Jehudo the Just that upon a time a dog did howl, and clapt his 

tail between his legs, and went aside for fear of the angel of 

death, and somebody coming and kicking the dog to the place 

from which he had fled the dog presently died." In the Odyssey 

it will be remembered none knew of Athene's presence save 

Odysseus and the dogs. Telemachus saw her not, but with 

Odysseus — 

"The dogs did see 
And would not bark, but, whining lovingly, 
Fled to the stalls* far side." 

Pausonius speaks of the dogs howling before the destruction 
of the Messenians, and Virgil says : — 

" Obscoenique canes, importunaeque volncres 
Signa dabant." 

" Bemerkenswerth scheint," Grimm says, " dass hunde geis- 
tersichtig sind und den nahenden gott, wenn er noch menschlichen 
auge verborgen bleibt, erkennen. Als Grlmnir bei Geirrodr 
eintrat, war ' eingi hundr sva olmr, at a hann mundi hlaupa,' der 
konig Hess den schwarzemantellen fangen, ' er eigi vildo hun- 
dar arada.' Auch wenn Hel umgeht, merken sie die hunde.^'* 
Grimm says above that although " nur hausthiere waren offer- 
bar, obgleich nicht alle, namentlich der hund nicht, der sich 
sonst oft zu dem herrn wie das pferd verhalt ; er ist treu und 
klug, daneben aber liegt etwas unedles, unreines in ihm, weshalb 
mit seinem namen gescholten wird." Some English peasants 
lay stress on the dog continuing to bark for three nights, and 

some German on the way in which the dog looks when he barks, 
for if he looks upward a recovery will be in store, and it is 
only if he barks while he looks downward that death may be 
looked for.* 

To rub a stye with a tom-cat's tail has long been known in 
every homestead and village of England and Scotland to be worth 
trying, but in Northants more than this is enjoined. It must 
be the first night of the new moon if the operation is to be 
performed, the cat must be black, and only one hair plucked 
from its tail, and with its tip the pustule should be nine times 
rubbed.t To remove warts, rubbing them with the tail of a 
tortoiseshell tom-cat in May has been recommended. Can this 
in any way be connected with the somewhat inexplicable tradi- 
tion that a tri- coloured cat protects against fire?$ A corre- 
spondent assures me that when she was recently suffering from 
shingles a friend ofiered, and in perfectly good faith, to operate 
at once upon the cat's tail.§ The singular remedy of cutting 
oflp one-half of a cat's ear, and letting the blood drop on the 
part affected, is said to have been lately practised in the parish 
of Lochcarron, in the North-West Highlands. || A New Eng- 

* Notes aTld Qtieries, 6th S. vol. iii. p. 204 (citing Rabbinical Literature , 
or the Traditions of the JewSy by J. P. Stehelin, 1748) ; Dyer, English Folk- 
Lorey p. 102 ; Chapman, Homer, Odyssey, book xyi. ; Grimm, Deutsche Mytli^ 
ologie, vol. ii. p. 555 ; Hnnt, Romances and Drolls, second series, p. 166 ; Wuttke, 
VolksaberglaubCj p. 31 ; Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 107. The dogs see 
the Mother-of-God of Kevlaar when she comes to the sick son, — 

<' Die mntter schant Alles in Traume 

And hat nicht Mehr geschant ; 

Sie erwachte ans dem Schlnmmer 

Th£ Sunde bellten so laut.'* 

Heine. 

t Notes and Queries, 6th S. vol. ii. p. 184 ; Choice Notes, p. 12 ; Notes amd 
Queries, Ist S. vol, ii. p. 36. 
X Dyer, English Folk-Lore, p. 166 ; Conway, Demonology and Devil Lore. 
§ See Chapter VII. On Colour in Folk Medicine ; also Pettigrew, p. 79. 
II Henderson, Folh-Lore of the Northern Cou/nties, p. 149. 

land injunction to rheumatic patiente is to lake the cat to bed 
with them — ^possibly with some thought that they will be so much 
occupied in thinking about the cat that they will have no time 
to think about their pains. 

Hair taken from the tail of a horse — some say it should be a 
gray stallion — is used in Gloucestershire for reducing a wen or 
thick neck in females. Avicenna is said to have sanctioned 
tying a horse-hair round warts as a means of strangling them.* 
If a woman, among the old Irish, had only borne daughters and 
desired to beget a son, the tooth of a stallion was tied in a 
thong of sealskin hallowed by seven masses, and suspended 
round her neck. In England in the present day to cure worms 
a hair from the forelock of a horse is spread on bread and butter 
and given to the patient to eat. The hair is supposed to choke 
the worms.t The East Mongolians, according to Schmidt, to 
cure the sick place their feet in the opened breast of newly- 
killed horses. The inside of a horse's hoof dissolved was used 
by a West Kent man as a cure for ague ; it is kill or cure, pro- 
ducing a violent sickness, from which if one recovers he is hence- 
forth permanently cured. $ De la Pryme mentions a repulsive 
draught which, when all other remedies had been found ineffica- 
cious, completely cured one Peter Lelen, who had been " taken 
almost of a sudden, as he was at an adjacent town, with an 
exceeding faintness, and by degrees a weakness in all his limbs 
so that he could scarce go, attended with a pain in his syde 
which increased day by day." No sooner had he tasted the 
compound — horse-dung and beer — "but that it made all the 
blood in his veins boil, and put all his humours into such a 
general fermentation that he seemed to be in a boyling kettle, 

♦ Notes oMd Queries^ Sth S. Yol. i. p. 204 ; see Lovell, History of Animals^ 
p. 79 (quoted in Folk-Lore Mecordy Yol. i. p. 219). 

t Irish Popular and Medical SfwperstitionSy-p. 10 ; Rev. G. F. S., 16 October 

X Scltmidt iiher Ost Mongalen, p. 229, cited by Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie 
vol. ii. p. 980 ; Notes and Queries^ Sth S. vol. i. p. 287. 

&.C., and this it was that eurod him ;" it is added, " he coveted 
strong ale mightily." Floycr also mentions this remedy." 

Generally over England and Scotland it is believed that any 
directions given by a, man riding a piebald horse as to the treat- 
ment of whooping-cough will be followed by satisfactory results. 
Jamieson says, " I recollect a friend of mine that rode a piebald 
hoi'sc, that he used to be pursued by people running after him 
bawling, 

' Miin wi' the piety horse, 
Wlmt's gudo for the kink horse.' 

Ho always told tliem to give the bairn plenty of sugar candy." 
Among other writers the core is mentioned by the latest writer 
on West of Scotland superstitions, f 

The skin of a wolf was reputed a complete preventive against I 
epilepsy both in England } and on the Continent, as Grimm, / 
'* Anderwiirts wird angerathen gegon die epilepsie sich mit einor 
wolfhaut Ku giirten."§ The hoof of an ass's right foot was 
reputed to have a similar virtue when mounted in a ring. i 
Jones mentions that several such rings are in the Waterton 
collection, || and Burton of old said, " I say witli Renodoens 
they are not altogether to be rejected." 1[ Sinistrari mentions 
wolf and ass together when he refers to " la eonnaissanco que 
nous avons de plusieurs herbes, pierres et substances animales 
qui ont la vertu de ohasscr les Demons, comme la rue, le miDe- 
pertuis, la vervaine, la germanclr^e, la palma-christi, la cent- 

• Diary nf A. de la Pryme, p. 38 ; Floyer, Tmtchgtime ef Medicine, vol. ii. 
p. 97 ; aee also Boyle, Some CimMerationt tovching the Uiefvlneiti ef Ei/jieri- 
•mental PMlomphy, 1664, Works, vol. i. p. 142, 

+ Napier, Folk-Lore, page 06. For a recent example see Chambers' Jeumal, 
fourth BeriflH, part 200 (Septemher, 1880), p. 639. Here the person conanlted 
waa only driving tha piabaid horse, ao that the association was still more difficolt 
to follow than had he been riding. 

J Chambers, DomfftU Annalt nf Seetlaml, toI. iii. p. 53. 

§ Duutfche Mytholegie, Yol. ii. p. 981 ; bob also p, 980. 

II Jones, Fint/iT Ring Lore, p. 153. 

^ Anatinny nf Mflancbnly,^. i5^\. 

aurde, le diamaiit, le corall, le jois, le jaspe, la peau de la tSte du 
loup ou de Vane J les menstrues des femmes, et cent autres.'* 
His conclusion is curious, "pour quoi il est ^crit: a celui qui 
sautient I'assaut du Demon, il est permis d'avoir des pierres, au 
des herbes, maia sans recourir aux enchantements.'^* The skin 
of the wolf is also reputed a charm against hydrophobia, its teeth 
are said to be the best for cutting children's gums, and if a 
person once bitten survives he is assured against future wound 
or pain of any kind.f According to the Medicina de Quadru- 
pedibus of Sextus Placitus wolf-flesh well dressed will prevent 
annoyance by apparitions, a wolfs head under the pillow will 
secure sleep, and so on 4 The native Irish are said to have 
hung round the necks of their children the beginning of St. 
John's Gospel, a crooked nail of a horseshoe, or a piece of a 
wolfs skin. The left} jaw of a wolf burnt is an ingredient in a 
charm given in the Saxon leechbook, and even a wolfs tooth, 
according to Albertus Magnus {De Virtutibus Herharum)^ gives 
such sovereign virtue to a bay leaf gathered in August if wrapped 
therein that no one can speak an angry word to the wearer. 
Alexander of Tralles, who flourished in the middle of the sixth 
century, recommends for colic, as guaranteed by his own ex- 
perience, the dung of a wolf shut up in a pipe and worn during 
the paroxysm on the right arm, the thigh, or the hip, in such 
manner as it shall touch neither the earth nor a bath. § 

The hare, which shares with the cat the reputation of being 
the familiar of witches, has naturally some virtues attributed 
to it. Thus, that the right forefoot worn in the pocket will 
infallibly ward off rheumatism is a common belief in North- 
amptonshire, and generally over England ; the ankle-bone has 
been said to be good against cramp. A hare's brain in wine 

* De la B&numialite, traduit du LatiUypar Isidore LiseuXy pp. 144, 146. 
t Conway, Demonology and Demi Lore^ vol. i. p. 143. 
X Cockayne, Saxon LeecMoms^ yol. i. p. 361. 

§ Brand, Pop^dar Antiquities^ p. 339 ; Aubrey, Remains of Oentilisme^ 
p. 115 (foot-note) ; Cockayne, vol. i. p. xxxii.; p. xviii. 

was good for over-sleeping in the opinion of the Saxon leeches ; 
for eoro eyes, also, the luug of a hare bound fast thereto, and for 
" foot- swellings and scathes, a hare's lung bound as above and 
beneath, wonderftdly the steps are healed."" "Thus much," 
says Cogan, " will I say as to the commendation of the hare, 
and of the defence of hunter's toyle, that no one beast, be tt 
never so great, is profitable to so many and so diverse uses in 
Physicke as the bare and partes tliereof, as Mattli. [lib, iii. Dios. 
cap. 18] sheweth. For the liver of the hare dryed and made 
in powder is good for those that be liver sick, and the whole 
hare, skinne and all, put in an earthen pot close stopped, and 
baked in an oven so drie that it may be made in powder, 
being given in white wine, is wonderful good for the stone. "f 
The Chinese say that a hare or rabbit sits at the foot of 
the cassia tree in the moon pounding the drugs out of which tlio 
elixir of immortality is compounded. In a poem of Tu Fu, a 
bard of the T'ang dynasty, the fame of this hare is sung — 

The devil's mark was said to sometimes resemble the impres- 
sion of a haro's foot, sometimes that of the foot of a rat or spider. 
Seeing a hare was thought in Ireland to produce a hare lip in the 
child to be bom, and as a charm the woman who unfortunately 
saw the hare was recommended to make a small rent immedi- 
ately in some paii. of her dress. § 

As tho snake is the symbol of health, twined around the staff 
of Esculapius or Hygia, it is not surprising that its part in folk 
medicine is not unimportant In China the skin of the white 

• Choice Notei (JFbIJ-£iwe), p. 12 ; Eatt Angliea/a, vol. il ; Ct^an, Haoert 
lif Health, p. 119 ; CocksTne, Saxim Leeehdomi, vol. i. p. 3i3. 

t Cogan, Hoiemi if IltaXili, p. 118. 

% Giles, Strange StorUtfroin a Chinese Studio, vol. ii. p. IGS (footnote). 

g Delrio, I. v., sect, i, nnm. 28, citod by Sir George Mackenzie, Wttehes nf 
Bi-nfri'WiJtire, p. 17 ; IrWt Popular flurf Midieal Superntitionii, p. 9. 

spotted Bnako is used in leprosy, rheumatism, and palsy, and the 
native doctors are said to make free use of the flesh of other ser- 
pents in their medicines.* In New England in the present day 
keeping a pet snake, or wearing a snake-skin round the neck, is 
believed to prevent rheumatism; and rattlesnake oil is prescribed 
by the Indians for the same discomfort, and indeed for lameness 
of all sorts. Serpents' skin steeped in vinegar used to be applied 
to painful teeth. An old man who used to sit on the steps of 
King's College Chapel, Cambridge, and earn his living by 
exhibiting the common English snake, made part of his business 
selling the sloughs of the snakes as remedies, when bound round 
the forehead and temples, for every headache. In some places 
they are also used for extracting thorns. Thus, if the thorn 
has fastened in the palm, the slough must be applied to the back 
of the hand, for its virtue is repeUent, not attractive, and where 
it has been applied on the same side it is said that the thorn has 
been forced completely through the hand. For the cure of a 
swollen neck in Sussex a snake is drawn nine times across tho 
front of the neck of the person affected, the reptile being allowed 
to crawl about for a short time after every third application. 
When the operation is finished, the snake is killed, the skin 
sewn in a piece of silk and worn round the patient's neck. The 
swelling by degrees will gradually disappear, as probably it 
would at any rate.f 

The patella of a sheep or lamb was worn in Northants to cure 
cramp. During the day it was worn as near the skin as possible 
and at night laid beneath the patient's pillow. It was locally 
known as " the cramp bone." That a human patella has been 
used does not surprise us when we remember that the knees as 
well as the fingers and toes of the dead were taken from the 

* Dcnnys, Folk'Lore of China, p. 103. 

t Dyer, English Folh-Lore, pp. 157, 168 ; Choice Notes {Folk-Lore), p. 168 
(Notes and Queries, Ist S. vol. iii. p. 258) ; IHd, p. 36 {Notes and Queries, 
vol. iii. p. 405). 

kirk in Lowthian by the Scotch witches when they had " danced 
a reel or short dance."* A decoction of sheep's dung and water 
was used in recent times in Scotland for whooping-cough, and in 
cases of jaundice. The same mixed with sulphur and porter was, 
according' to an Irish official report of 1878, administered in 
that year at YoughaJ, Ardmore, to every child who showed symp- 
toms of measles. This dose, locally known as " crooke," brought 
about another complaint which the medical men found all ordi- 
nary remedies to have no eflfect in stopping. In Keogh's 
Zoologia Medicinalis Hibemica a similar infusion is recommended 
as useful in the extreme in many diseases which ai*e enumerated.! 
In Somersetshire a consumptive patient is taken through a flock 
of sheep as they are let out of the fold in the morning. Soon 
after this it is believed the complaint will gradually disappear.} 
To help weak eyes, in South Hampshire a correspondent tells 
me snails and bread-crusts are made into a poultice. Mrs. Delany, 
in January 1758, recommends that two or three snails should be 
boiled in the barleywater or tea of Mary who coughs at night, 
" taken in time they have done wonderful cures. She must 
know nothing of it. They give no manner of taste. It would 
be best nobody should know it but yourself," (this is the cautious 
tone to be expected, but it is what any village witch should 
have insisted on in a similar case;) "and I should imagine six 
or eight boiled in a quart of water, and strained oflF and put into 
a bottle, would be a good way of adding a spoonful or two of that 
to every liquid she takes. They must be fresh done every two 
or three days, otherwise they grow too thick." From Schroder 
we learn how snail water should be prepared : " Take red 
snails, cut and mix them with equal weight of common salt, and 
put them into Hippocrates his sleeve, that in a cellar they may 

♦ Choice Notes, p. 11; Pitcaini, I. ii. 217; SpaXdingf Mizabethan Deino7i' 
ology,p. 116. 

t Notes and Queries, 6th S. vol. x. p. 324. 
X English Folk-Lore, p. 150. 

fall into liquor; which is good to anoint gouty and pained 
parts, and to root out warts, being first pared with a penfield." A 
Berwickshire man was told to rub a white snail on a wart on his 
nose ; he did so, killed the snail, and the wart disappeared. In 
Gloucestershire to cure earache a snail is pricked and the froth 
which exudes dropped into the ear as it falls ; but Pliny recom- 
mended long ago that when the uvula was swollen it should be 
anointed with the juice drawn with a needle from a snail which 
was suspended in the smoke.* An old black woman in New 
England advised as a certain cure the oil from a pint of red 
earthworms hung in the smi. To cure a child it appears from 
the Holyrood Kjrk Sessions Record it was stripped, rubbed with 
oil of worms, and held over the smoke of a fire.f 

A tooth from a living fox was thought to be an excellent cure 
for inflammation of the leg, if the tooth was wrapped up in a 
fawn's skin and carried as an amulet. An Irish superstition is 
that a fox's tongue applied to an obstinate thorn will cause its 
immediate withdrawal from a suffering foot. Marcellus says, 
if a man have a white spot or cataract in his eye, catch a fox 
alive, cut his tongue out, let him go ; dry his tongue and tie 
it in a red rag, and hang it round the man's neck ; and one has 
only to turn to the Medicina de Quadrupedibus of Sextus Placitus 
to see the many virtues which attach to different parts of the 

animal4 

To cure snake bites, it is said in Worcestershire that the warm 
entrails of a fowl, newly killed, should be applied to the poi- 
soned pari The occipital bone of an ass's head is said to be a 

♦ Book of Days, vol. i. p. 198 ; Dyer, English Folk-Lore^ pp. 121, 167 ; History 
of Animals as they are used in Physik and Chirurgery, 1689, p. 34 ; Pliny, 
Hist. Nat. XXX. c. 4 ; Folk-Lore Record, vol. i. p. 218. 

t Dalyell, p. 115 (Halyrudhous, K. S. R. 1647). See also Henderson, p. 164 : 
"Water in which earthworms had been boiled." He mentions that a live 
trout laid on the stomach of a child suffering from worms is believed to be a 
certain cure. 

J Cockayne, vol. ii. p. 106 ; Henderson, Northern Cmmties, p. 169 ; Cockayne, 
vol. i. p. 339. 

good periapt, and so also a bone from the heart of a living stag 
when inserteil in a brooch from a rivet from a wrecked ship. 
In Madagascar, an ancient saying as to uses of the ox appor- 
tions the different parte of the animal thus : " Its horns to the 
maker of spoons ; ite teeth to the plaiters of straw ; its ears to 
make medicine for a rash" &c.* 

Fried mice are regarded in North-East Lincolnshire as an 
infallible cure for whooping-cough ; the mother generally pre- 
pares the messj for full faith, of coui-se, in its efficacy ; and 
instances are recorded of the whooping-cough in due course 
passing away, whether in consequence of this treatment I do 
not like t« say. In Aberdeenshire, where this euro was also 
known, the mouse had to be eaten with a spoon made from a 
horn taken from a living animal, known as " a quick horn- 
spoon." It was also recommended in that part of the country 
for jaundice patients.+ In Lancashire it was administered to 
young children for another ptirpose.J It used to be a common 
belief that paralysis was due to the crawling of a shrewmouse 
over the affected limb, and when a mouse had been caught a 
hole was made in the trunk of a tree and tJie mouse plugged up 
init.§ 

That a child who has ridden upon a bear will never have 
whooping-cough is a common English belief, and much of the 
profits of the bear -keepers of old is said to have been made from 
the fees of parents whose children had been permitted to have a 
ride. The tooth of a bear is mentioned by Floyer, with the 
bones of carps and perches, the jaw of a jack, the hoofs of elk, 
horse, and ass, and men's bones and skulls, as possessing virtue 

• fblk-Lere Sesard, vol. ii. p. 25. 

t JViiiei and Qneriei, 6th 8. voL x. p. 273 ; Gregor, p. i6. 
J Lancoihife IWk-Lvre, p. 76. 

§ " In recent times in Ireland milk in which a moose has been boiled vas 
BdminiBtered toprocnce bairennBafl." — IrUh Papjilar and Medieal Supitretitimm, 

p. 6. 

which depends " on the earthy part which absorbs acids, and on 
a volatile, whereby they are fetid and anti-hysterick."* Any- 
thing that a western Indian dreams of at his first fasting may 
be his medicine for life, and one fortunate Indian, sayd an 
American correspondent to whom I am indebted for many 
curious and valuable notes, had the good fortune to dream of a 
great white bear. It was always his guide and adviser. One 
day he was in battle and severely wounded. When the enemy, 
however, had retired, and his brother warriors gathered round 
him, this Indian said the great white bear, his medicine, had 
appeared to him, and told him that if his friends would kill a 
buffalo, and give him the raw heart to eat, he should be able to 
rise and walk, and go with them at least part of the way. The 
buffalo was soon killed, and the heart given to the sick man. 
That day he followed the trail, supported and encouraged by the 
great white bear, who, though invisible to all but himself, went 
by his side by day and slept by his side at night. The next day 
the bear prescribed the tongue of a buffalo, and when this had 
been furnished the wounded warrior was able to keep with his 
companions all the way. On the third day the bear ordered its 
patient to eat a buffalo's dewlap, and such was the success of the 
remedy that he reached home in safety, and his wound healing 
quickly he lived for many years, till, as the Indian who told the 
story said, " he and the white bear went together to the spirit 

land."t 

Among such animal cures as may surely with proprieiy be 

called miscellaneous is that recommended for earache by a 

♦ Lancashire Ihlk-Lore, p. 156 ; Floyer, Touchstone of Medicine^ vol. ii. p. 94: 
<< It seems that among the Indians and Norwegians the hoof of the elk is regarded 
as a sovereign cure for some malady (epilepsy) ; the person afflicted applies it to 
his heart, holding it in his right hand, and rubbing his ear with it." Jones, 
Finger Ring Lore^ p. 163. In Father Jerome Merolla de Sorrento's Voyage to 
Congo it is said that when the elk is knocked down it will lift np the leg which 
is most efficacious. It must be at once cut off with a sharp scimitar. Fettigrew, 
p. 61. 

t Miss C. F. G. 22 March, 1880. 

Demerara lady to a correspondent. To boil a cockroach in oil, 
and then stuff it into the ear was the remedy, but one of which 
my informant has not as yet proved the efficacy. An old Scotch 
certain cure for deafness was ants' eggs, mixed with the juice of 
onions when dropped into the ear.* For swollen eyes the 
leeches recommended a live crab to be taken, his eyes extracted, 
and he replaced in the water aJive, — the eyes put upon the neck 
of the man who had need, would soon bring about a satisfactory 
cure. For a strumous swelling the powder of a water crab, 
mingled with honey, applied to the swelling would justify their 
claim " soon he will be well."t ^ ^^ south of Hampshire a 
plaster of warm cowdung is applied to open wounds. The 
breath and smell of a cow are thought good for consumption in 
Fifeshire and certain parts of England.} A paw cut from a 
live mole is thought in Sussex to be good for toothache. In 
Aberdeenslure a man who wishes to cure certain festers will 
catch a live mole, and rub it slowly and gently between his hands 
till it dies. The touch of that man will then work a cure.§ 
To cure a sprain an eel-skin, wet and slimy as taken off the eel, 
is said to be used in Ulster. || Scotch boys used to wear an eel's 
skin round their leg when bathing, in order to secure them 
against cramp. The liver of an eel, according to Floyer, is 
commended in diflSculiy of labour, and is given in powder. IT 
Eels are said to be sent from Lochleven to London to cure cases 
of deafness. The woman who was collecting the eels was asked 
one day if she believed that eels cured deafness. She answered, 
" Od, I dinna ken. Sir; but thae English doctors shud ken," 

* W. H. P. 26 Oct. 1878 (also Mtes and Queries, 6th S. vol. i. p. 383) ; 
Chambers, Domeitio Annals of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 55. 

t Cockayne, Saxon Leechdoms, vol. ii. pp. 307, 46. 

X Rev. G. S. S. 10 Oct. 1878 ; R. C. C. 25 July, 1879 j W. M. B. T. July, 

§ Folk-Lore Record, vol. i. p. 40 ; Gregor, p. 123. 

II W. H. P. 26 Oct. 1878. 

% Totwhstone of Medicine, vol. ii. p. 91. 

M 

and no doobt they shonld. Warts, they say in the North, ahonld 
be mbbed with eel's blood.* 

The Delphic oracle recommended Demokrates to get some 
worms from a goat's brain, and in the Medidna which the 
Saxons adopted, a mountain goat's brain, drawn through a 
golden ring, is recommended to be given to a child sick of 
epilepsy before it tastes milk. A goat's horn, laid under the 
head of a sleepless man, ^' tumeth waking into sleep," and for 
the bite of a snake the sufferer is told to shave off shavings of a 
goat's horn into three cups, and to drink, at three different 
times, the milk of the same goat mingled with wine.f In 
Scotland the blood of a wild goat, with ten drops of carduos 
water, was given in cases of pleurisy. j: Cameron met a com- 
municative friend in his journey across Africa, who told the 
party that the six circlets of skin on his left wrist were of 
elephant's hide, and denoted the number he had killed. " This 
induced me to inquire whether the yellow ones on his right 
wrist were trophies of lions he had killed, but he replied, ' Oh, 
no ; goat's skin, worn as a fetish.' "§ 

Irish labourers believe that if a man with his tongue licks a 
lizard all over, not only will no lizard ever slip down his throat 
when he is lying on the grass for an hour's rest, but also that 
his tongue has for the future acquired the power of curing any 
sore or pain to which it may be applied. || 

When the Queen of Charles IL was ill, and Pepys had come 
to St. James to inquire on 19 October, 1663, he was told that she 
had slept five hours pretty well, and that she waked and gargled 
her mouth, and to sleep again. Her pulse, however, beat faster, 

* Of many other things with which warts shoald be mbbed, see Iblk-Lore 
Heoord, vol, i. ; pig's blood (p. 218) ; lisard'g blood (p. 219) ; tortoise's blood 
(ibid,) 

t CockaTne, vol. i. p. xx. pp. 861, 353. 

t Chambers, Domestic Annals of 8cotla/ndf yol. iii. p. 65. 

§ Across Jfrica, vol. i. p. 100. 

II Mrs. J. (Dublin), 29 December, 1879. 

beating twenty to the king or my Lady Suffolk's eleven. She 
had been so ill, he adds, as to be shaved, and to have pigeons put 
to her feet, and extreme unction administered. So, too, in another 
desperate case, when in January, five years later, Kate Joyce sent 
word to Pepys that if he would see her husband alive he must 
come presently. Pepys says, " his breath rattled in his throat, 
and they did lay pigeons to his feet, and all despair of him." This 
application of pigeons to the feet seems to have been a last 
resource ; but in France pigeons used to be applied in a varieiy 
of ways to a varieiy of cases. To the heads of mad people, to 
the side of those suffering from pleurisy, the pigeon cut open 
along the back was applied hot. Pigeons' blood was thought 
good for ophthalmic complaints ; some drops of blood, let fall from 
under the wing of a young pigeon, would cure a wounded eye if 
they fell upon the wound. Pigeons' dung burned, or otherwise 
reduced to powder, was used in poultices with linseed, mixed 
with old white wine, and otherwise. Naturally what France did 
Scotland approved, but sometimes there seems to be excess of 
crueliy. At times, in the North-East, the pigeons were left 
fluttering in their dying agony against the dying man's feet. 
Early in the morning a near relative would remove the pigeons 
and carry them to a place " where the dead and the living did 
not cross, that is, to the top of a precipice, and left them." * 
Possibly connected with the use of pigeons is the belief that 
persons cannot die on a bed of pigeons' (some say game) feathers. 
As a Sussex man said of his friend, ^* Poor soul, he could 
not die ony way till neighbour Puttick found out how it wer, 

* Muster S ,' says he, ^ ye be lying on geame feathers, mon, 

surely,' and so he wer. So we took'n out o' bed and laid'n on 
the floore, and he pretty soon died then." Again, to ask for 
pigeons is generally thought a bad sign ; it is thought to be the 
last craving for food. *' Ah ! poor fellow ! " said a farmer's wife 

* Pepys' 8 Diary ^ ed. 1848, vol. ii. p. 224 ; Yol. It. p. .329 ; Bataud et Corbi^, 
Leg Pigeons devolikre et de oolombier, 1824. I haye not myself seen this work ; 
extracts were sent to me by a correspondent. 

m2 

/ 

to a correspondent of Notes and Queries^ who wanted pigeons for 
a sick friend, " is he so far gone ? A pigeon is generally almost 
the last thing they want ; I have supplied many a one for the 
like purpose/'* 

So much for pigeons. In Yorkshire, here and there, owl 
broth is said to be considered a certain specific for hooping 
cough. Swan, in his Speculum Mundi^ recommends owls' eggs 
to be broken " and put into the cups of a drunkard, or one 
desirous to follow drinking, [they] will so work with him that 
he will suddenly lothe his good liquor and be displeased with 
drinking." In Spain, storks' eggs are esteemed for the same 
purpose-t The owl, however, is generally thought an uncanny 
bird. The Spaniard says it was present at the Crucifixion, and 
has never ceased to cry " crux, crux." The natives of Mada- 
gascar say it is with owls, wild cats, and bats that the spirits of 
the unburied, or of notorious criminals or sorcerers, are doomed 
to associate, and the English peasant does not think more kindly 
of the night bird. To carry the bones of a linnet, it seems from 
the trial of Elspeth Cursetter, was thought, in the seventeenth 
century, to secure health. Alexander of Tralles advises that a 
lark eaten is good, and adds that the Thracians tear out its 
heart while the bird lives and make a periapt, which they wear 
on the left thigh. When the German peasant hears the 
cuckoo for the first time he rolls himself three or four times on 
the grass, and thus secures himself for the rest of the year 
against pains in the back. He goes through the same ceremony, 
if it can be so called, when he hears the cuckoo for the first 
time in the year. The sinews of a vulture's leg and toes tied 
on with due regard to the right going to the right, and the left 
to the left, were commended of old for gout} 

• N^otes and Qtteriegf Ist S. yol. t. p. 341 ; 1st S. vol. iv. p. 517 ; Choice 
NoteSy pp. 43, 47. 

t Dyer, English Folk-Lore, p. 164 ; Notea and Queries , 6th S. vol. i. p. 604. 

X Dalyell, footnote, p. 150 ; Cockayne, vol. i. pp. xviii. xix. ; Mannhardt, Die 
Gdttenmelt der Deutschen und Nordischen V&lker, cited in Kelly, CurioHHes 

Indo-Ewropean Tradition, p. 98.

SPECIFIC CHARMS. — (1) MAGIC WRITINGS. 

|0 protect her child from fairies the Scotch mother leaves 
an open Bible beside it, when she is obliged to go 
from the room where it is. So the Chinese places his 
classics under his pillow to scare away evil spirits. 
Serenus Samonicus is said to have prescribed for a quartan ague 
that a copy of the fourth book of the Hiad should be placed under 
the patient's head.* In ancient Assyria sometimes the images 
were brought into the sick room, and written texts from the 
holy books were put on the walls, and bound round the sick man's 
brains. Holy texts were spread out on each side of the thres- 
hold. In the course of a Babylonian curse against a sorcerer it 
is said " by written spells he shall not be delivered." The phylac- 
teries of the Jews were believed to be efficacious in averting all 
evils, but especially useftd were they in driving away demons, 
as appears from the Targum or the Canticles. Thus it is evident 
that the saying quoted by Grimm, " Christianos fidem in verbis, 
Judaeos in lapidibus pretiosis, et Paganos in herbis ponere," 
is not strictly correct, for the Jews added to a trust in stones a 
faith in the long, embroidered text-inscribed phylactery. A charm 
for diarrhoea brought to Home in the time of Gregory the Great, 
and containing Latin, Greek, and Hebrew words, was to be 

* Napier, FollirLore^ p. 40 ; Dennys, Folk-Lore of China, p. 51 j Pettigrew, 
p. 70. 

t Records oftlie Past, vol. iii. pp. 139, 142, 148. 

written on parchment, and hong round the neck of him who had 
need of it Marcellos gives many such charms, which were to be 
written on clean sheets and hung round the neck.* Mr. Napier 
says : " I have known people who wore written charms, sewed into 
the necks of their coats if men, and into the head-bands of petti- 
coats if women." In Africa, although quotations from the Koran 
worn as amulets are believed to have as much efficacy as the 
Bible is credited with in Scotland, or Homer in the South, they 
are admitted not to aflTord protection from fire-arms, but this, it 
is said, is only natural, for when Mahomet lived there were no 
such things, so how could the Koran protect against them now ?t 
In Tripoli, to ward off the evil eye, a written charm used to be 
burnt, and the ashes drank in wine while prayers were said, 
and the patient perfumed with incense. A prescription written 
on thirteen boards, and then washed off to be given as a potion, 
was successful in curing a king near Koalfisi, and the doctor who 
prepared the potion was suitably rewarded for his science, j: 
Chinese physicians, if the drug be not ready that is required, 
write the prescription, and let the patient swallow its ashes or 
drink an infrision of it. This practice, Mr. Tylor thinks, may 
even descend from the time when the picture element in Chinese 
writmg was still clearly distinguishable, so that the patient ate a 
picture, and not a mere written one.§ The European custom 
was to attach the written charm or prescription — ^here they are 
indeed one — to the arms, neck or body of the patient 

• Deutsche Mythologie, yol. ii. p. 996, citing Meibom script. toL i. p. 186 ; 
Cockayne, Tol. iii. p. 67 ; vol. i. p. xxix. 

f Astley, Collection of Voyages, yoI. u. p. 36, cited in Lubbock's Origin of 
Civilization, p. 26. 

I Letters from Tripoli, vol. i. pp. 168, 246 ; Clapperton, Journal of a Second 
Expedition, cited by Dalyell, p. 220. 

§ Tylor, History of Man, pp. 128-129. Is an indication of this prescription- 
burning to be fonnd in the Chinese story of the old blind priest engaged selling 
medicines, and prescribing for patients, who distinguishes the merits of essays by 
the smell each makes in burning ? — See Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio 
(xcn. " Smelling Essays")) vol. ii. pp. 139 et seq. 

According to the curious treatise of Conrad of Wittenberg, 
Doctrina de Magiuj there are two classes of words used by 
magicians. In the first class are Johova, Jesus, Halleluja, 
Hosianna, and so on : and Abracadabra, Sator, Arebo, Tenet, 
Obera, Eotas, Hax, Pax, Max, Deus Adimax. In the second 
class, "Nomen Dei et SS. Trinatatis, quod tamen invanum 
assumitur, contra acerrimum summi Legislatoris interdictum, 
JExod, 20. Similiter Heptalogus Christi, Evangelium Johannis, 
quod vel collo appenditur, vel pani et butyro inscriptum aegrotis, 
potissimum vero a rabido cane vulneratis,deglutiendum praebetur, 
Deum immortalem, quanta superstitio ! quantae ineptiae !"* The 
following charms are taken from Blumler's Amuletorum JHisto- 
via. Against nose bleeding, " Cum trina formatione crucis, una 
cum trina recitatione Orationis Dominicae, et Ave Maria haec 
verba dicunt: Max, Hackx, Lyacx, lesus Christus. Et his 
credunt profluvium sisti posse.'* Against the pest there is this 
formula : — 

I . N <' Qui Terbnm caro factum est &c. Conterat omnem potestatem inimi- 
X comm nostromm, visibiliam et inTisibilinm, ille ab hac domo, et habitan- 

K . I tibus in ea, expellat omnem diaboli neqoitiam &c. Ipsa purificet et 
santificet. Ecce cmcem x Christi fngite partes adversa. Vicit Leo de 
tribn Inda, radix Dayid. Agios X Acheas X Agios Tschjrios X Agios 
Atheneos X Eleemosynos, Kyrie-Eleison." 

Of running charms, as they may be called, we have severed 
examples in these interesting treatises, but Abracadabira with 
two sister charms will be enough in this place to illustrate the 
nature of the superstition. 

• Doctrina de Magia, Wittenberg, 1661, § xix; Pazig (^J)e Jnccmtationibus 
Magicisy 1721, p. 22) says, "Morbi in corpore homano causas natorales, nuUam 
vero verborum magicorom veris agnoscnnt. Herbis potios aliisqae rebns attri- 
bnendom est, quod benefici ex ignorantia et malitia adscribant Tocibns. Et 
qnamvis etiam Diabolns interdam hoc fnco ladit homines, nihilominns tamen 
illc Natorae vim inferre neqait, sod abntitor tantam tarpissirne nataralibns 
mediis." 

(1.) ABRACADABRA <* Qnod ad Tocis hnins originem attinet, com- 
ABBACADABB posita Tidetnr inxta qnoBdam, ex Chaldaicis 

ABBACADAB tribos Tocibns Sanctae Trinitatis 

ABRACADA Alii ab Abraxas dedncimt, de qno yideatnr 

A B R A C A D Seldenns. ludaeien^UcKatyeir FulguraDeu4 

A B R A C A ut dispergantur hostes ex Fsalmo Danidico." 

ABRAC 

ABRA 

ABR 

AB 

A 

(2.) S D P N Q C N "/.«., Soapitante, Deo, Perdet, Nemo, Quin, Capiet 

D P N Q C N Nemo, et Nemo, Capiet, Qnin Nemo Perdet, Deo Sospi- 

P N Q C N tante. Similis medicina ad sedandmn narimn profln- 

N Q C N nimn, praecribitiur, a Marcello, his yerbis repetendo 

Q C N subter diminaendis." 
CN 
N 

(3.) SICYCVMA 

CYCVMA 

YCVMA 

CVMA 

VMA 

MA 

A ♦ 

" Against a warty eruption " the leeches advised the patient to 
take seven wafers and write on each wafer, Maximianus, Mal- 
chus, lohannes, Martinianus, Dionysius, Constantinus, Serafion ; 
then a charm was to be sung to the man, and a maiden was 
afterwards to hang it about his neck.f 

A genuine Saxon charm against wens which escaped Mr. 
Cockayne, and other students, has been brought under my 
notice by Mr. de Grey Birch, who discovered it at the end of 
the Royal MS. 4. A. xiv. in the British Museum. Although 
written in prose, it is manifestly in a loose rhythm. The hand- 
writing was of the eleventh century. 

♦ Martinns Frider Blnmler, Amnletorum Ilistoriam, ^c. cioiaccx. pp. 18, 
19. 20. 
t Cockayne, vol. iii. p. 43. 

"Wen, wen, 
Little wen ! 

here shalt thou not bnild 
nor any holding haye, 
but thon shalt forth 
eyen to the nearest town 
where thou hast poor (?) 
any brother, 
he shall lay for thee 
a leaf at thy head 
(?) nnder the footsole, 
(?) nnder the eaglets feather 
(?) nnder the eagle's claw 
ever may'st thou wither, 
[ & J shrink, as it were, 
a coal on the earth ; 
[and] shrink, as it were, 
(?) excreta voided ; 
and wither, as it were, 
water in a vessel ; 
so little may'st thou become, 
as a grain of linseed 
And much less than 
As it were a 
handworm's hip-bone ; 
And so little may'st thon become 
That thon become nothing at all."* 

" For all manner of falling evils " the Pathway to Health 
directs us to take blood from the little figure of the sick man, 
and with it write the following lines, thenceforth to be worn 
as an amulet round his neck : — 

* Jasper fert Mirrham, Thus Melchior, Balthazar Anrum, 
Haec qnicnmqne secnm portat tria nomina regnm, 
Salvitur a morbo, Domini pietate, cadnco,' 

and it shall help the party so grieved."t When William Jack- 
son was being measured for the chains in which, after his 

* "On Two Anglo-Saxon MS. in the British Museum'' (reprinted from 
Trans, of Royal Society of Literature, vol. xi.), p. 23. 

f The Pathnsay to Healthy by Peter Levens, London, 1664 ; Notes and 
Queries, Ist S. vol. ii. p. 436 ; Choice Notes QFolk-Lore), p. 267 ; see also 
Blumler, p. 19. 

execution, he was to be hong, in January, 1748-9, similar lines 
were found in a linen purse that he carried — 

** Sancti tres Beges 
Gaspar, Melchior, Balthasar 
Orate pro nobis nimc in hora 
Mortis nostrae I" 

^^ Le billets ont touche aux trois tetes de SS. Roys k Cologne, 
lis sent pour les voyagers, centre les malheurs de chemins, 
maux de teste, mal-caduque, fi^vres, sorcellerie, toute sorte de 
malefice, mort subite."* 

While some taught that against the bite of an adder it was 
only necessary to speak one work, " Faul," and Pliny tells us 
of the merits of *'Duo,'' a more wonderful story appears in 
Skippon's Journey through the Low Countries. Ferrarius, in his 
lectures, it seems, told of a Spanish lieutenant, who was suffer- 
ing from ague, and how simply he was cured. The words 
FEBBA FUGE were written on paper, and one letter cut off 
daily ; as each letter was cut off the fever abated ; when the 
letter F was reached — for the doctor cut backwards — the ague 
left the lieutenant. Fifty other persons were cured in the same 
manner in the same year.f 

Many magic writings are simply invocations of the devil. 
The following, written on parchment, was carried about by an 
old Devonshire woman, who suffered from St. Vitus' dance, 
as an amulet : — 

** Shake her, good Devil, 
Shake her once well ; 
Then shake her no more 
Till you shake her in hell." 

A woman obtained an amulet to cure sore eyes. She re- 
frained from shedding tears, and her eyes recovered. On a 

* Jackson was a proscribed smuggler, sentenced to death for murder at 
Chichester. — Gentleman's Magazine^ vol. xix. p. 88. 

t Cockayne, vol. ii. p. 115 ; Pliny, lib. xxviii. 6 ; Pettigrew (citing Skippon)^ 
p. 69. 

zealous friend opening the paper these words were found — " Der 

teufel cratze dir die augen ans, und scheisse dir in die locher," 

and naturally, when the woman saw that it was in this she had 

trusted, she lost faith ; began to weep again, and in due time 

found her eyes as bad as ever.* Cotta, in his Short Discoverie 

of the Dangers of Ignorant Practices of Physick^ gives the same 

charm in Latin, saying in this " merrie historie of an approved 

spell for sore eyes " that " by many honest testimonies it was a 

long time worne as a Jewell about many necks, written in paper 

and enclosed in silke ; never failing to do sovereigne good when 

all other helps were helplesse" until the unlucky "curious 

mind " opened and read.f 

A young woman in Chelsea had a sealed paper to guard her 

against toothache. Her priest, evidently another " curious 

mind," prevailed on her to open it, and all inside was found to 

be— 

" Good devil, cure her, 
And take her for your pains." 

A quack doctor, at Crewkerne, in 1876, to cure a young 
woman's mother, gave her a bottle of water with some thorns 
and a piece of paper in it, and told her to bury it in the garden. 
As her mother did not recover within the promised fourteen 
days, she took up the bottle and found on the paper — " As long 
as the paper and thorns remain in the bottle I hope Satan, the 
angel of darkness, will pour out his wrath on the person who is 
the cause of the illness, and will throw him on a bed of sickness, 
which nobody can cure, and as this water is tormented by the 
thorns, so may he be tormented by the illness^ and as the water 
dries up in the bottle, so might his flesh dry up on his bones, 
and he shall not live over nineteen days, when he shall be taken 
into hell by Satan and his angels." t 

♦ Lancashire Iblh-Lore, p. 87 ; Cockayne, vol. i. p. xxxiii. (Wier, Ojpera, 
p. 403). 
t Cotta, Short JDiscoverie, p. 49. 
X Notet and Queries, 5tb S. vol. vi. p. 144. 

(2) Rings. 

It is one of tbe pleasing legends connected with Edward the 
Confessor that a ring which he had given to a poor person, who 
had asked alms from him in the name of St. John the Evange- 
list, was brought back to him from the East by some persons 
coming from Jerusalem, and that it was found to have become 
all powerful in curing cramp and falling sickness. From this 
arose a custom of hallowing rings on Gk)od Friday, which were 
bestowed, according to Andrew Boorde, " without money or 
petition." An entry in the Liber Niger Domus Regis Edward 
IV. — " Item, to the Kjmge's offerings to the crosse on Grood 
Friday, out from the couniyng- house for medycinable rings of 
gold and sylver, dylyvered to the Jewell house, xxv s." shows that 
there were at least two sets of rings, silver for the common 
people, and gold possibly for such favourites as those to whom 
Anne Boleyii sent consecrated rings as great presents. King 
Henry VIII. 's practice was not followed by his son, but Queen 
Mary, at her accession to the throne, determined to revive the 
ancient custom, and had the office for it " written out in a fair 
manuscript," of which Burnet had a copy.* 

As a symbol of eternity the ring naturally possessed, in the 
eyes of the superstitious, virtues of an extraordinary character. 
This would be more and more the case, if the connection of a 
particular ring with some eminent man, or with some holy cere- 
mony, could be traced. Thus, a ring that had belonged to 
Remigius, if dipped in holy water, was said to ftimish a good 

• Brand, Popular Antiqmties, p. 79 ; Pettigrew's Superstitions connected 
with the History and Practice of Medicine and Smrgery^ pp. 87, 88 ; Maskell, 
Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, vol. ill. p. 335 ; Proc. Soc, Ant, 1st 
S. vol. ii. p. 292. The last two references are given on the authority of Notes 
and Queries f 5th S. vol. ix. p. 435 ; see p. 514, same volnme. 

drink for fevers and other diseases,* and the virtues of a gold 
wedding ring for curts, warts, and styes, are celebrated through- 
out Christendom. For sore of eyes we read in the Herbarium 
Apuleiiy before sunrise, or shortly before the light go, the wort 
proserpinaca (knot-gras — polygonum-aviculare), and scratch it 
round about with a ff olden ring^ " and say that thou wilt take it 
for leechdom of eyes, and after three days go again thereto before 
rising of sun, and take it and hang it about the man's swere 
(neck) ; it will profit well." f Li Beaumont and Fletcher's 
Mad Lovers (v. 4) we have the same cure alluded to, though, 
perhaps, a little indefinitely. When Chilax is told, " I have a stye 
here, Chilax," the reply is, " I have no gold to cure it, not a 
penny." Rings of gold, especially if inscribed with magical 
words, were believed to be most efficacious in curing St. An- 
thony's fire. But the real merit of the wedding-ring is not 
because it is of gold, but because it is something which, once 
given, cannot be re-claimed. Li the West Indies if you give a 
thing away and take it back, you are sure to have a stye, you 
will be told. In Donegal the stye would be cured by pointing 
at it nine times with a gooseberry thorn, which had been passed 
through a wedding-ring — and the saying generally there is, that 
any ring given in a present is an efficacious amulet, as, for 
example, against toothache, j: 

A ring made of mistletoe is esteemed in Sweden as an amulet. § 
Lilly says that the constellated rings made by Dr. Napper to cure 
epilepsy were highly successful. The continuance of the cure, 
however, depended upon possession of the healing ring being 
retained, for a woman who had been completely cured by the 
use of such a ring again suffered from fits on its being thrown 
down a well. When the ring was found again, convales- 

♦ Jones, Finger Ring Lore, p. 141. 

f Cockayne, Saxon Leechdoms, vol. i. p. 113 ; see also p. 351. 
X Jones, p. 141 ; ** Fairy Superstitions in Donegal," University Mag, August, 
1879, p. 216. 
§ Kelly, Indo-European Tradition and Folk-LorOf p. 186. 

cence followed. The ring of Paracelsus seems, Boyle thinks, to 
have been a mixture of all metals joined under certain constel- 
lations.* Alexander of Tralles gives several gnostic devices good 
to wear on rings, as — a ring with Hercules strangling a lion 
on the Median stone, or have the setting of an iron ring octa- 
gonal, and engrave upon it " Flee, Flee, Ho, Ho, Bile, the lark 
was searching;" on the head of the ring an N engraved.f 
Monardes could make a ring which, if worn, "the pain of 
haemarrhoids would be taken away in the little time requisite 
to recite the Lord's Prayer." A head cut on green jasper, and 
set in a brass or iron ring, engraved with the letters B. B. P. P. 
N. E. NA., would preserve from many diseases, especially fever 
and dropsy. Rings of lead mixed with quicksilver were worn 
as preventives of headache.} 

Sacrament rings hold a high place in the esteem of English 
villagers. The manner in which the money necessary for their 
making is collected diflfers, as might be expected, but the general 
features are always the same. Thus in Cornwall a paralytic or 
rheumatic woman would collect thiriy pennies at the church 
porch without asking for any. The parson would change the 
coppers into one silver coin from the offertory, then the patient 
hobbled into the church, and when the clerk had moved the 
communion table from against the wall, so as to allow a passage 
all roimd, she walked round it three times. The belief was that 
within three weeks after the ring, which was to be made from 
the coin thus sanctified, had been placed on her finger she would 
regain the use of her limbs. § A woman in Northants suffering 

♦ Lilly, HUtory of his Life and limes, p. 63 ; Boyle, Some Considerations 
touching the Usefulness of Uxperimental Philosophy (second edition, 1664), 
vol. i. p. 209. 

t See Cockayne, Introduction, vol. i. p. 18 (Montfaucon, plates 169, 161, 163). 

X Boyle, Some Considerations, vol. i. p. 208 ; Jones, Finger Ring Lore, p. 113 
(note), p. 161. 

§ Hunt, Romances and Drolls, second series, p. 212. 

from fits would collect nine pieces of silver and nine three half- 
pences from nine bachelors, the silver pieces to be made into a 
ring, and the pence to the maker of it. If the patient were a 
man, then the money was collected from women. Another 
accomit speaks of five sixpences collected from five different 
bachelors, none of whom shall know for what purpose or to what 
person they gave them. A bachelor is then to take the money 
to a smith (who must also be a bachelor), to have a ring made. 
That the smiths played too often upon the credulity of the people 
is more than probable. One, a Norfolk smith, informed a cor- 
respondent of Notes and Queries that the requests that he should 
make rings out of such miscellaneous collections were common, 
but that, although he supplied the patients in due course with 
silver rings, he had never taken the trouble to manufacture them 
specially and as directed. Brand says that pieces of money 
collected on Easter Sunday were regarded as peculiarly 
efficacious. There seems to be a tendency in the present day to 
shirk the ring, and simply to wear the shilling. Thus a Stafford- 
shire mother, whose son was subject to fits, asked the clergy- 
man of her parish, some six years ago, for a sacrament shilling 
in exchange for an ordinary shilling, which had already been 
exchanged for twelve pennies collected from twelve maidens, 
but no mention was made of a ring ; the shilling itself was to 
hang round the patient's neck.* 

Cramp rings used to be made from old coffin handles. In 
Devonshire it seemed sufficient to have the ring made out of 
three nails or screws that had been used to fasten a coffin, and 
that had been dug out of a churchyard. In China a single 
nail which has been so used is regarded as a sovereign charm ; 
sometimes beaten out into a rod or wire, and, encased in silver, 
it is worn as a ring round the ancles or wrists. Grimm speaks 

* Notes and Qtieries, Ist S. vol. viii. p. 146 ; Choice Notes (^Iblk-Lore), pp. 17, 
36 ; Brand, p. 743 ; Notes and Q^ieries, 5tb S. vol. iv. p. 508. The suggestion has 
been made that the number " twelve " has reference to the number of the Apostles. 

176 F0LK-MED1C1^'£. 

of rings made firom nails from which men have been hanged 
as being worn by gouty patients on the ring finger ot the right 
liand.* 

The touch of the ring finger is generally believed to have a 
healing efiect The touch of all other fingers is thought to be 
poisonous. This merit of the ring finger arises, no doubt, from 
its supposed connection with heart, a tradition which Sir Thomas 
Browne says is not merely Christian, ^^ but observed by heathens 
as Alexander ab Alexandre, Hellius, Macrobius, and Pierius 
have delivered, as Le\dnus Lemnius hath confirmed." Hence 
Levinus Lemnius in Lipothymies, or swoundings, ^^used the 
frication of this finger with saffix)n and gold," and hence he says 
the ancient physicians mixed their medicines therewith. But 
against this must be mentioned the West of Scotland superstition 
of the early part of this century, that only the middle finger was 
non-poisonous ; all the other fingers were held to have a tendency 
to poison or canker a wound. The forefinger of the right hand 
is considered in Lancashire specially poisonous, f 

Van Helmont had a magic metal from which, if a ring were 
made, it would cure many pains in twenty-four hours. To make 
use of the marvellous stones of which we hear, it was necessary 
to set them in rings. The agate has eight virtues ; its third is, 
that no venom may scathe the man who wears it ; and its fifth 
virtue is, that the stone taken in liquid will cure any disease. 
Boyle quotes Monardes as to the Lidian belief that the touch of 
a bloodstone will stop bleeding. The virtues of jewels are not, 
however, much known among our own coimtryman, and to dis- 
cuss the stories of Helmont and Boyle would be here out of place. 

Sometimes the wearer of a charmed ring is also the bearer of 
a charmed girdle. Charmed belts are conunonly worn in Lan- 

* Lancashire Iblk-Lore, p. 76 ; Pettigrew, Medical SupergHtiont, p. 61 ; 
Dennjs, Iblk-Zore of China, p. 48 ; Grimm, Deutsche Mjfthologic, vol. ii. p. 

t Psendoxia Epidemica (1668), p 234 ; Napier, Iblh-Lore, p. 99 ; Lanca- 
shire Folk- Lore, p. 76. 

cashire for the euro of rheumatism* Elsewhere, a cord round the 
loins is worn to ward off toothache. Is it possible that there is 
any connection between this belt and the cord which in Burmah 
is hung round ike neck of a possessed person while he is being 
thrashed to drive out the spirit which troubles him ? Theoretically 
the thrashing is given to the spirit, and not to the man, but to 
prevent the spirit escaping too soon a charmed cord is hung round 
the possessed person's neck. When the spirit has been suffi- 
ciently humbled and has declai*ed its name it may be allowed to 
escape, if the doctor does not prefer to trample on the patient's 
stomach till he fancies he has killed the demon.* 

* Tylor, Primitive Cultv/re^ vol. ii. p. 124. 

N

LTHOUGH it is true that all the charms I have 
occasion to refer to are domestic, yet there are some 
more particularly connected with the family circle 
which do not demand the assistance of any woman 
wise beyond her class to interpret and carry through, the assist- 
ance of wliich may be sought by any person. To put a piece of 
cold iron in the bed of a labouring woman to guard against 
fairies did not require the services of any one outside the cottage ; 
and to ring the church bells to expedite childbirth was no hard 
labour for the expectant mother's friends. The tribes of the 
Malay Peninsula light iSres to keep away the evil spirits, and 
the numerous notices in the folk-lore of all countries of magic 
stones, holy girdles, and other nurses' specials, attest the common 
sympathy of the human race.* 

The custom of the " couvade," where the husband at diild- 
birth undergoes medical treatment, is curiously perpetuated in 
Ireland. Historically the custom is traced to the time when 
succession through the father, instead of through the mother, as 
originally, was adopted. The father then became the important 

* lavinins, in Erasmus' Colloquies, p. 27, says : ''Do not slight my present; it 
is the eagle stone ; it is good for woman with child ; it is good to bring on their 
labour." See also Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 147 ; Diary of A. dela 
Pryme, p. 90 ; Noel du Fail, Les Contet et Discours d'^Urapel, voL i. p. 82. 

relation.* In course of the progress of civilization, however, 
the father became weary of the senseless confinement and hmited 
regimen which his position as begetter of his child was supposed 
to entail. The Tamil jokoa the Korovan on his eating aaaafietida 
wlien his wife lies-in in the present day, and most peoples have 
forgotten the singular practice which marked the great social 
and legal change. But in Ii'eland a tradition remains. The 
husband does not indeed pretend to suiFer the pains of labour, 
but the nurses boast that they possess the power of transferring 
the suiferings to him or to any other person they please. 
Literally, in earlier times when the nurse announced to tlio 
husband that he was about to be a father she brought the 
pretended pains, for her appearance was tantamount to a decla- 
ration that his confinement and restricted living must com- 
mence. Now the nurse threatens a real transfer, and, not 
understanding why the husband should be tlie only sufferer, 
she boasts of being able to give the moUier'a pain to any man, 
])articnlarly, my informant says, to old baclielor8.t 

An Ulster superstition is that each child a woman bears costs 
her a tooth ;{ it is probably thought a small price. When the 
child is bom the care taken of its first days in every nation is very 
great. To wash a child before its forehead has been touched by holy 
water is thought in the Tyrol to be highly injurious to it. In 
Scotland the newly-born child in the Higldands was given ash- 
sap at once, because it is a iiowerftil astringent and also a guai'd 
against witches ; and in the Lowlands bathed in salted water, 
made to tatte it three times, because the water was atreugthemug 

' Lolibock, Origin 11/ Ch'Utiitivii, pp. 15, 154 : "As scjgn as tlie change wiuj 
mode, tbe father woald take Che place previously held hy the mother, and be, 
iuBtead oi ahe, vould be regarded as Che parent. Hence, ou the hirth aS a child, 
thu (atfacr wonld natnraJly be very careful what be did,andwhat beate, forfeax 
Che child shoald be injured." See also Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 76. 
t Irith Popular and Mediral SajHT/titittw, p. IB. 
t W.H. P. 2fi October, 1878. 

and also obnoxious to a person with tho evil eye* " Amazing 
toughness of popular tradition ! " says Mr. Kelly, writing of the 
Highland practice. " Some thousands of years ago the ancestors 
of this Highland nurse had known the Fraxinus omus in Arya, 
or on their long journey thence through Persia, Asia Minor, and 
the South of Europe, and they had given its honey-like juice 
as divine food to their children; and now their descendant, 
imitating their practice in the cold North, but totally ignorant 
of its true meaning, puts the nauseous sap of her native ash 
into the mouth of her hapless charge, because her mother, and 
her grandmother, and her grandmother's grandmother, had done 
the same thing before her."t 

In the parish of Culdaff, county Donegal, an infant at its 
birth is forced to swallow spirits, and is immediately afterwards 
suspended by the upper jaw on the nurse's forefinger. J It is a 
general belief that it is unlucky to take a baby downstairs before 
it goes up, and many have been the devices to save the in&nt 
from the unluck which might follow it. A nurse in the West 
Riding placed a chair on the dressing-table, and climbed with 
the baby to the top, exclaiming, " There, bless its little heart, it 
shall not go downstairs first." A nurse in the West of Scotland 
found a substitute in going up three steps of a ladder, but, near 
Glasgow, the mother was sometimes compelled to go up also. § 

The German peasant will not lend anything out of his house 
until his new-bom child is baptized. Here, of course, the fear 
is that evil may be brought on the child through some magic 
tampering with a lent article. Every one knows how unlucky 

♦ Grohman, Ih/rol and the Ih/roUse, p. 66 ; Choice Notes {Iblh-Zore^t p. 24 ; 
Napier, Folk-Lore, p. 30. 

f Kelly, Indo-European Folh-Lorcy p. 145. 

J W. H. P. : " Many children die when one or two days old of the trismus 
nascentinm, or jaw fall, a spasmodic disease pecnliar to tropical climates ; here, 
however, it is probably a dislocation caused by the above-mentioned barbarous 
practice." 

§ Notes and Queries , 5th S. vol. x. pp. 206, 265 ; Napier, Iblh-Lore, p. 31 : 
*' The late Mortimer Collins going at the age of thirteen to see a newly-born cousin 

it is to cut a child's nails before it is a year old (then will ho 
be a thief), how undesirable it Is that the upper teeth should bo 
out before tlie lower, and that until the cliild is three months old 
it should be allowed to look into a looking-glass. A common— 
superstition is, that a newly-born cliild should not be weighed, 
but in New England they say you may weigh it if you like, but 
by no means measure it. To measure it is to measure it for its - 
coffin. 

In Scotland it was thought unlucky to name a child before its 
baptism ; if any one inquired the baby's name tlie answer was, 
" It has not been out yet." As the doctrine of the damnation of 
the unbaptized was thoi'oughly accepted, every effort was made 
to have the christening as soon as possible, and Mr. Napier says 
he has known of an instance in which the baby was bom on a 
Saturday and carried two miles to chiu-ch next day. It was 
dangerous to risk a week's delay. To decline the present of bread 
and cheese and salt from the christening party was tantamount 
to wishing evil to the child. It is lucky for the child to cry at 
baptism, otherwise he is too good to live. It is thought unlucky 
in "Worcestershire to have a boy and girl christened at the same 
time, they wiU not have issue ; and if the girl is christened 
before the boy she will be masculhie and he feminine in 
character as they grow up.* It is said in Ulster that it makes 
a " crowe " of a child, i. e., dwarfs it, if a man puts Ins leg over 
the child's head. As an antidote to sickness the Chinese stain 
the foreheads of their children with cinnebar or vermilion on the 
fifth day of the fifth month, and a medicated cake prepared at 
noon of the day is in high repute for the cure of diseasea-f 

(Mr, Honry Fruwde, the Loniion manager of the Oxford University Presa), insiatei! 
Dti carrying him npstaire in accordance with the old legend." JVotei and Qam^, 
Oth S. Tol. s. p. 276. 

• Milk-Lore, pp. 30 ft leq. ; JVn(M and Qseriei, 6th S. Tol. ill p. 424 ; Cflunee 
Koti-t (liilk-Lore), p. 26. 

t W. H. P, 26 Oct. 1878 ; Dennys, li-lk-Zm-e i>/ China, p. 70. 

A Durham precaution against whooping-cough was followed by 
fatal results in the end of the year 1879. In order to secure her 
newly-born child against whooping-cough the mother's ^^ Mends " 
compelled her on the day after the birth to sit up in bed with the 
child in her arms whilst they combed her hair, so as to &11 over 
the infant The woman was thought to be progressing satis&c- 
torily till then, but the next day she died.* 

A curious Irish remedy for sore throat is to apply salt herring 
to the feet. The touch of a woman's dress is thought in China 
to be efficacious in cases of swelling. The garment shotdd be 
applied three times. If you just place your shoes with the toes 
just peeping from beneath the coverlet, Lancashire people will 
tell you you need not fear cramp. Many people I know carry 
brimstone about their person as a remedy for cramp. To carry 
a raw potato or a loadstone in the pocket is a general charm 
against rheumatism. Leaning against a pair of bellows is said 
in West Sussex to be a fine thing for rheumatism. A coal-rake 
will keep away nightmare ; at least, two years ago, when a 
husband and wife were charged at Bradford with quarrelling, 
the woman stated the reason why she kept a coal-rake in her 
bedroom was that she suffered firom nightmare, and had been 
informed it would keep the nightmare away. Water in which 
flint arrowheads have been bathed are said in Cornwall to cure 
diseases. Pebbles of hard chalk found on the. Ulster coast are 
worn to ward off illness, and to go between the sun and the sky 
to a place where the dead and the living cross (a ford), and lift a 
stone fi*om it with the teeth, is thought in the North-East of 
Scotland a cure for toothache. The adder stone used to be worn 
by children of people of good education for whooping-cough. To 
rub the patient's head, in case of ringworm, with a silver watch, 
was sometimes recommended, or the diseased part might be 
measured and then rubbed with a shilling. To put on in jest 

♦ Dv/rham County AdvertUer, 12 December, 1879. 

mourning garments will cause the thoughtless wearer, if a New 
England superstition be right, to die within the year of the same 
disease of which the person died for whom the moumiDg is 
worn. In South Hampshire the snuff of a tallow-candle is given 
upon sugared bread and butt«r to ague patients to eat. Change 
of air is ordered by all doctors, but occasionally their patients 
do not understand them. They understand that any change of 
air will be beneficial, if the trouble is whooping-eongh, for 
example; they say it will "break the cough." Thus, I have 
known, in Glasgow, of children being taken to gasworks and to 
distilleries, and I have heard of an Ulster mother putting a can 
of coal tar under the patient's bed to cause " a change of air." 
A curious custom in en. Clare, vouched for by a corre- 
spondent of the East Anglican, was to send the town band 
frequently to play in the evening in the cottage of a young 
woman affiicted with St. Vitus' dance, with the view of curing 
her. Some recollection of the tarantula is here." 

In Staffordshire, hanging an empty bottle up the chimney is 
thought a usefitl thing in cases of illness. To cure colic, in 
Towednaek, in Cornwall, they advise you to stand on your head 
for a quarter of an hour. For poison this was a common remedy 
in olden times, the belief being that the poison would run out by 
the eyes — "Man hieng den kranken an den beinen anf, and 
riss ihm nach einer weile ein aug aus, im glauben, das gift werde 
durch diese ofiiung fliessen : ' tamen intoxicatus Albertus in 
Austria, et din per pedes suspensus, oculum pordens cvasit.'" 
The Saxons said, if a man had eaten wolf's-bane, and had been 
duly placed on his head, some one should strike him many 
scarifications on the shanks, then the venom departs out through 
the incisions.* The common remedy for nose-bleeding, viz., 
slipping a key down between the clothes and the skin, has been 
said to be a relic of a symbolic act of the Norse, and connected 

' Grimm, vol, ii. p. S84 ; Cockftyne, vol. H. p. IGB. 

with Thor, but whether assisted by faith in legend or not, the 
application of the cold metal is generally successful, as it causes 
a stoppage of the bleeding by acting in a reflex manner on the 
nerves, and producing contraction of vessels distributed in the 
neighbourhood of these nerves. 

Fasting spittle is generally supposed to be poisonous, and yet 
it is credited with great virtues. To spit three times in the face 
of a man with an evil eye will counteract its influence ; rubbing 
warts night and morning with fasting spittle will remove them. 
The new shilling which is to cure ringworm should be spat on 
fasting. Galen says that a person killed a scorpion simply by 
spitting. " Two old-fashioned ladies we know (they are Scotch 
by the way)," writes a correspondent, *'hoId firmly to the belief 
that it is very hurtful to swallow the saliva that is in the mouth 
on first waking. They would not do it on any accouni" In 
Madagascar this first spittle in the morning is called r6ra mafa- 
itra, *^ bitter or disagreeable saliva," and has medicinal virtue in 
healing a sore ear or eye. Marcellus says that to cure gout the 
patient before getting out of bed in the morning should spit on 
his hand, and rub aU his sinews therewith, saying, " flee, gout, 
flee." ♦ 

For pains in the joints the loechbook prescribes this incanta- 
tion, " Malignus obligavit ; angolus curavit, dominus salvavit," 
and to spit on the joint. " It will soon be well with him." But 
as Dalyell says the most noted application of the human saliva 
by the ancients was for the restoration of sight. Hilarion cured 
a woman in Egypt by spitting in her eyes. Vespanian so cured 
a blind man of Alexandria. Captain Cook attempted to do so in 
the north-west coast of America. The fasting spittle of a woman 
after her first child, or of a woman who has borne only sons, 

* Lancashire Folh-Lore, p. 69 ; English Folk-Lore, p. 166 ; Gregor, Folk- 
Lore of Northern Counties, p. 47 ; Dalyell, Darker Superstitions of Sootlandj 
p. 46 (Galen, de Simplidum Medicamentorum Facultatihus, lib. x. c. 16) ; Miss 
M. L. B. ^3 Oct. 1878 ; Folk-Lore Record, vol. ii. p. 36. 

cured, Pliny says, bloodshot eyes.* Philagrios, in the fourth 
century, disapproved of uttering barbarous names when one spat 
into the drug pot, for without the names the spittle would be 
quite as efficacious in the medicine. Spittle was an ingredient 
in a holy salve of the Saxons.f 

To cure warta a common remedy is to tie as many knots on a 
hair as there arc warts and throw the hair away. Six knots of 
elderwood are used in a Yorkshire incantation to ascertain if 
beasts are dying from witchcraft. Marcellus commended for 
sore eyes that a man should tie as mauy knots in unwrought 
6ax as there are letters in his name, pronouncing each letter as 
he worked, this he was to tie round hia neck.J Grimm says, 
"gichtsegen werden in ungehleichter leiuwand mit leinenen fdden 
ohne knoten auf der brust getragen."5 When Marduk wishes 
to comfort a dying man, his father Hea says, " Go — 

" Take a woman's linen kerchief 
bind it roaod thy left hand ! looee it from the left bond I 
Knot it with seven knots : do so twice ; 
Sprinkle it with bright wine : 
bind it ronnd the head of (be sick man : 
bind it ronod his hands and feet, like manacles and tetters. 
Sit round on hia bed : 
sprinkle holy water over him. 
Hd shall hear the voice of Haa. 
Davkina shall protect Mm t 
And Mardnk, Eldest Son of heaven, shall find him a happy habitation." || 

The Jewish phylactery was tied in a knot, but moro generally 
knots are found in use to bring about some enchantment or dia- 
onchantment. Thus in an ancient Babylonian charm we have — 

whether any soIvgdC sanative ur medicament li 

known of old." — p. 71. 
t CocliaynB, vol. i. p. xvi. ; vol. iii. p, 26. 
{ Henderson, pp. 139, 219 ; Cockayne, voL i, 
g Grimm, Deutuclu: Mt/f&olagie, vol. ii. p. 97( 
11 Ri'crrd. i.f thr Pu.f , vol. iii. p. 141. 

" So many cares are confidently 
I: interesting topic of investigation 
Q modem ocniists was not 

mom err- X 

*' Merodoch, the son of Hea, the prince, with his holy hands cntsthe knots." 

That 18 to say he takes off the evil influence of the knots.* 

So, too, witches sought in Scotland to compass evil by tying 
knots. Witches, it was thought, could supply themselves with 
the milk of any neighbours' cows if they had a small quantity of 
hair from the tail of each of the animals. The hair they would 
twist into a rope, and then a knot would be tied on the rope for 
every cow who had contributed hair. Under the clothes of a 
witch who was burnt at St. Andrews, in 1572, was discovered 
^^ a white claith, like a coUore craig, with stringis, whereon was 
mony knottis vpon the stringis of the said coUore craig." When 
this was taken from her, with a prescience, then wrongly inter- 
terpreted, she said, " Now I have no hope of myself." " Belyke 
scho thought," runs the contemporary account, " scho suld not 
have died, that being vpon her," but probably she meant that 
to be discovered with such an article in her possession was 
equivalent to the sentence of death. So lately as the beginning 
of the last century two persons were sentenced to capital punish- 
ment for stealing a charm of knots, made by a woman as a 
device against the welfare of Spalding of AshintiUy. Owing to 
a supposed connection which the witches knew between the 
relations of husband and wife and the mysterious knots, the 
bridegroom, formerly in Scotland and to the present day in 
Ireland, presents himself occasionally, and in rural districts, 
before the clergyman, with all knots and fastenings on his dress 
loosened, and the bride, immediately after the ceremony is per- 
formed, retires to be undressed, and so rid of her knots. 

"What admission we owe unto many conceptions con- 
cerning right and left," says Sir Thomas Browne, " requireth 
circumspection. That is, how far we ought to rely upon 
the remedy in Kiranides, that is, the left eye of an hedge- 

* Chambers, Popular Rhymes , p. Ill ; Kelly, Curiosities, p. 230 ; Dalyell, 
pp. 302, 307 ; Irish Popular and Medical Superstitions, p. 4. 

hog fried in oil to procure sleep, and the right foot of a frog in 
deer's skin for tlie gout, or that, to dream of the loss of right or 
left tooth presagetli tlie death cf male or female kindred, 

aoeordiug to the doctrine of Artemidorus And, lastly, 

what substance there is in that auspicial principle and fujida- 
mental doctrine of orialation that the Ifft hand is ominous, and 
that good things do pass sinistroualy upon us, because tlio le/l 
hand of man respected the right hand of the gods which handed 
their fevours unto us."* Let us first see what can bo said in 
folk-Ioro for the right hand, and then consider the evidence in 
favour of the left. 

When black hellebore was to be gathered, the person clad in 
white, and bare-footed, who had to offer the sacrifice of bread 
and wine, plucked the hellebore with tlie right hand, and then, 
covering it with his robe secretly, conveyed it to tlie loft hand. 
Pulling a plant while resting on the right knee was held in tlie 
Orkneys, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, as par- 
taking in divination. To have warta on the right hand betokened, 
in the West of Scotland, future riches ; and in Nottinghamshire 
a mole ou tlie upper side of the right temple of a woman, above 
the eye, signified good and happy fortune by marriage. It is a 
Dorsetshire belief that the bishop's right hand is lucky at a con- 
firmation and the left unlucky. | 

To secure yourself from toothache, yon will bo told in Sussex 
to be careful always to put on the right stocking before the left, 
and to put the right leg into the trousers before tlie left But 
in Shropshire, aud elsewhere, exactly the contrary 13 enjoiued-t 
After all does it come to this ignonimous ending, that tlie 
one preservative is exactly as valuable as tlie other ? In the 

• Vulgar Errort, 1668, p. 2(4. 

t Pliny, Nat. SU. lib. xjtiv. ell; Pettigrew, Supal-rtiiimw, p. 23 l DalTell, 
p. 127 ; Napier, p. 97 ; Engliih lUk-Lore, p. 280 ; NoUi and Queriei, 1st S. 
Tol. vi. p. 601 ; Ouiief Notet {mk-Lore), p. 29, 

X Nnten and Qiuriei, 5th 9,. tqI. iii, p. 16G. 

early part of this century the Mexicans took medicine with the 
right hand if they were to benefit the liver, and with the left 
hand if for the kidneys. To hold the chin in the right hand 
during divine service was of old thought superstitious, and the 
canon law declared against the remedy of holding the left thumb 
in the right hand as also superstitious.* In Madagascar the 
right foot must always be used on first entering a house, espe- 
cially a royal house. To hear the cuckoo for the first time for 
the year on the right hand is accounted lucky in Cornwall, and 
to pull off the right stocking, when the cuckoo is heard, and 
search on the sole of the right foot for the hair which should be 
there, is enjoined in Ireland and in Rome. The ancient Irish, 
if Gerald Cambrensis is to be trusted, did not dip the right 
arms of ^their children into the water at baptism ; they thought 
thus to secure extra strength to the unhallowed hand. For the 
cure of toothache Martins recommended that the bone of the 
right thigh should be used to rub the aching part. The pain 
would cease, t Burton says of the stone called " chelidonius," 
found in the stomach of a swallow, " if it is lapped in a &ir 
cloth, and tied to the right arm, will cure lunatics, madmen, 
make them amiable and merry." J 

It is, however, from the left arm that an Aberdeenshire man 
would direct blood to be let on the first attack of epilepsy. It 
was on his left arm that the sorcerer of Sistrans always carried 
the consecrated host which he had stolen. Pliny teUs of a wasp 
or beetle, caught with the left hand, being used medicinally ; to 
plait a cord with the left hand would keep out Scotch witches.§ 

♦ Hardy, TraveU in Measico, 1825-8, p. 417 ; Dalyell, pp. 128, 447. At the 
latter reference citations from Martin de Aries, St. Angnstine, and Gratian 
(Decretalia, causa xxvi. quaest. 2), will be found. 

t Folk-Lore Record, vol. ii. pp. 37, &c ; Choice Notes, p. 90 ; Brand, Popular 
Antiquities, p. 339 ; Martins, p. 32. 

X Anatomy of Melancholy , p. 435. 

§ Gregor, p. 46 ; Tales and Legends of Tyrol, p. 69. Tying a garter round 
the left leg below the knee is said to keep off cramp. 

Ill tlie Medieina de Qitadrupedibus of Sextu8 Placitus, as in the 
Anglo-Saxon (but not in the Latin MS. Harl. 4986, nor 
edition, 1538), is the following :—" For flux of blood when to 
all men the moon is seventeen nights old, after the setting of 
the sun, ere the uprising of the moon, como to the ti'ee wliich is 
hight morbeam, or mulberry tree, and from it take an apple, 
that is a berry, with tliy left hand with two fingers, that is, with 
the tlmmb and the ring finger a white apple, or berry, which 
as yet is not ruddy," and so on. In a fit of convulsion, or 
shortness of breath, \a hold the left thumb with the right hand 
was thought advice not to be despised, and a New England 
recipe speaks of rubbing a wart seven times with the third finger 
of the loft hand at a new moon. Wlien gout was to be cured 
Alexander of Trallea directed that it was with the thumb and 
third finger of the left hand that the henbane was to be dug up, 
when the moon was in Aquarius or Pisces, before the charm was 
said. This was the charm : — " I declare, I declare holy wort, 
to thee ; I invite you to-morrow to the house of Fileas, to stop 
the rheum of the feet of M. or N., and say, I invoke Thee, tlie 
great name Jehovah, Sabaoth, the God who steadied the earth, 
and stayed the sea, the filler of flowing rivers, who dried up 
Lot's wife, and made her a pillar of salt, take the breath of thy 
mother earth and her power, and dry the rheum of the foot or 
hands of N. or M."* 

In Madagascar, when mourning for a deceased relation is 
laid asido, the youngest son or daughter, by the custom known 
as mitendrilo, puts a little grease on the left side of the neck by 
the little finger of the left hand. To cure a burnt finger Wor- 
cestershire people tell you you should keep it secret, spit on the 
finger, and press it behind the left ear. For erysipelas on man 
or horse, the leeches would have a charm sung thrice nine 
times, at evening and morning, over the man's head, and into 
the horse's left ear as it should in running water, with its head 

* Cnoknjne, Tol. i. p. S31 ; Brnnit. p. S02 ; Cockayne, vol, i. pp. xix. xs. 

against the stream. When a horse was elf-shot, among other 
things his owner should prick a hole in its left ear in silence.* 

If when one hears a dog howl he is disturbed (as if he is at 
all superstitious he should be), then should he take his left shoe 
off, spit upon the sole, place the shoe on the grate with the sole 
upwards and place his hand on the place he sat on when the dog 
howled. This simple ceremony, it is gratifying to know, will 
not only save him from harm but stop the howling of the dog. 
Marcellus in the fourth century of the Christian era said to 
escape pain in the stomach one should always put on his left 
shoe first and wear on gold leaf, 

L*MeRIA 
three times written-t When the Highland shepherds kept the 
dogs from passing between the pair that were to be married 
they also looked narrowly to see that the bridegroom's left shoe 
was without buckle or latchet, that all the secret influences of 
witches might be frustrated. So, too, whether the marriage was 
at court or in a country kitchen, it was the bride's left shoe 
which was flung, with ^^ many other pretty sorceries. "J The 
sole of the left shoe of a person of the same age but of opposite 
sex to the patient if reduced to ashes and administered to the 
patient will cure St. Anthony's fire.§ Nephrite, Boyle says, 
should be bound on the pulse of the left hand.|| 

Sometimes there is a discrimination between the parts affected 
and right and left% Thus in Worcestershire to cure nose- 

* Folk-Lore Record^ vol. ii. p. 39 j Miss E. S. 8 March, 1879 ; Cockayne, ?oL 
iii.p.71; vol. ii. p. 291 . 
•f English Folk^Lore, p. 101 ; Cockayne, vol. 1. p. xxxi. 

X '* The Bride was now laid in her Bed, 
Her left leg Ho was flnng ; 
And Geordy Gil was fidgen glad 
Because it hit Jean Gnn." 

Alla?i Ramsay, 1721; Brand, pp. 398, 399, 401. 

§ " I have seen it applied with success, but I suppose its efficacy is due to some 
astringent principle in the ashes.*' — Choice Notes (Folk-Lore), p. 37. 
II Boyle, Sonu! Coiisi deration* y &c. p. 206. 

bleeding from the right nostril the healer will make a bow to the 
sufferer and press the little finger of his right hand, and if it is 
the left nostril that bleeds he will bow and press the little finger 
of the left hand. For pain and pricking in the eye the Saxons 
bound the right eye of a hound over the right eye of the man 
if it was that eye which troubled him, or the left eye over the 
man's left eye if necessary ; and if a man chanced to swallow 
an insect of male kind the proper charm was to be sung into his 
right eye, whereas if he had swallowed an insect of female kind 
it should be sung in his left ear.' 

Had I any intention to go at length into plant charms it 
would not of course have been in so backward a place that I 
should have put anything relating to a subject so important ; 
and even as regards the few, but perhaps representative, notes 
which follow I may remind the reader that in dealing with such 
charms as are connected with plants there is peculiar need of 
caution. To suppose that because the use of a certain herb is 
recommended by a woman credited with superstitious practices, 
the use of the herb must be superstitious, would be to draw a 
conclusion little warranted by the facts. At the same time to 
accept all herbal prescriptions as containing the sum of know- 
ledge of more than one generation of healers would not only be 
likely to lead to conclusions as erroneous, but to ignore the fact 
that in many cases the herb was only the accompaniment of 
magical words. There may have been merit in the plant in this 
case, or there may not have been. It was not necessary that it 
should have healing virtues ; its merit lay in its emphasising the 
charm. This is not the place to consider how far the leeches old 
and new are right in recommending the plants they name, nor 
would I feel justified in undertaking such considerations at any 
time. It will be sufficient if I indicate the nature of the majority 
of the plant remedies on which reliance has been placed, and 

* Miss E. S. 8 March, 1879 ; Cockayne, vol. i. p. 371 ; vol. iii. p. 11. 

the customs which were associated with them. Completeness I 
cannot and do not claim. 

" O, who can tell 
The hidden powre of herbes and might of magic spell ? " 

says Spenser. 

" Elder," says Sir Thomas Browne, ^^ is become a famous 
medicine in quinsies, sore throats, and strangulations.'* Cul- 
pepper speaks of it curing the bites of adders and mad dogs. 
Blochwick mentions a cross of elder and the sallow " mutually 
inwrapping one another" being hung round children's necks, 
and an amulet against erysipelas made of elder on which the 
sun never shined. "If the piece betwixt the two knots be 
hung about the patient's neck it is much commended. Some 
cut it in little pieces and sew it in a knot in a piece of a man's 
shirt, which seems superstitious." The green piece of the inner 
bark of the elder was used in the northern counties for anointing 
the eyes, and was obnoxious to witches.* In Denmark the elder 
is good against toothache or fever : " Der fieberkranke steckt, 
ohne ein wort dabei zu sprechen, einen fliederzweig in die erde. 
Da bliebt das fieber am flieder haften, and hangt sich dann 
an den, der ziifallig liber die statte kommt " Again, " besonders 
ist flieder heilsam des iiber bienenstocken wachst ; man schalt 
seinen bast nach oben (nicht nach unten) zu, and gibt den 
kranken den absud zu trinken."| 

A labourer's wife who suffered from ague was recommended 
by a charmer to bid her husband tie a handful of common 
groundsel in her bosom while he (the charmer) said certain 
incantations. Watercress laid against warts was said by the 
Saxon leeches to work a cure. An Irish cure for sore throat is 
to tie cabbage-leaves round the throat, and the juice of cabbages 

* Vulgar Errors, vol. i. p. 215 (1862) ; English Physician Enlarged, 1684, 
p. 2 ; Blochwick, Anatomic of the Elder, 1665, p. 54 ; Pettigrew, Superstitions 
connected with Medicine and Surgery, pp. 61, 79 ; Henderson, pp. 219 et seq, 

t Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, voL ii. p. 979. 

taken with honey was said in England to cure hoarseness or loss 
of voice.* A chestnut bogged or stolen is a preservative against 
rheumatism. So is a potato, and I know a gentleman who 
carries one always with him. He told me that he did not know 
whether it was superstition or not, but whenever by accident he 
left his potato at home he was sure to feel a twinge of rheu- 
matism. Some recommend a double hazel nut to be carried in the 
pocket against toothache. Scalds are cured in Derbyshire by 
putting raw potato on the scalded part ; and hot boiled potato is 
applied to corns. 

A certain cure against deafoess was said to be ants' eggs 
mixed with the juice of onions dropped into the ear. This was 
a Scotch recipe. In England we have the juice of onions 
recommended, but no mention made of ants' eggs. It was 
generally thought in the West of Scotland that a poultice of 
peeled onions, laid on the stomach, or underneath the armpits, 
would relieve one who had taken poison. Cogan, in his Haven 
of Healthy says that for a cough onions should be roasted under 
hot embers and eaten with honey, and pepper and butter, morn- 
ing and evening.t 

Of the fame of vervain all old writers speak ; and to carry it 
about on you was to secure you from the barking of dogs and 
the bites of snakes. To bind it to the head would cure head- 
ache. When it was gathered the gatherer was to say, according 
to a MS. of Elizabeth's reign, — 

" All-hale, thou holy herb, Vervin, 

Growing on the ground ; 
In the Mount of Calyaiy 

There wast thou found ; 
Thou helpest many a grief 

And stanchest many a wound. 

♦ Notes and Queries , 6th S. vol. i.p. 605; Cockayne, vol. i. p. 119; Culpepper, 
p. 50 ; Floyer {Tcmohstone of Medicine, 1687) says the ashes of cabbage "are 
very caustick: the seed is bitter and acrid. The juyce cures warts."— vol. i. p. 218. 

f Domestic Annals of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 66 ; Culpepper, p. 176 ; Napier, 
Folh-Lare, p. 127 ; Cogan, p. 59. 

In the name of sweet Jeans 

I take thee from the gronnd. 
O Lord, effect the same 

That I do now go ahont." 

and also, — 

" In the name of God on Moont Oliyet 
First I thee f onnd ; 
In the name of Jesns 
I pnll thee from the gronnd."* 

The universal cure for nettle-stings is to rub with the docken 
leaf and say, — 

«• Ont nettle, 
In dock, 
Dock shall have 
A new smock." 

or,— 

'* Nettle ont, dock in. 
Dock remove the nettle-sting," 

or similar words. Dock-tea is sometimes recommended as a euro 
for boils* It is made from the root, well boiled, and is not of 
an agreeable flavour. Culpepper, two hundred years ago, said 
dock was strengthening to the liver, *^ yet such is the niceiy of 
our times, (forsooth,") he adds, " that women will not put it in 
the pot because it makes the pottage black. Pride and ignorance 
(a couple of monsters in the creation) preferring niceiy before 
health." St. Fabian's nettle is said to be a favourite remedy 
for consumption, and every book on folk-lore quotes the story 
of the mermaid of the Clyde who exclaimed when she beheld 
with regi*et the funeral of a young Glasgow maiden — 

** If thej wad drink nettles in March, 
And eat mnggins in May, 
Sae many braw maidens 
Wadna gang to clay.*' 

* Cockayne, Saxon LeeckdomSfyol. i. pp. 91, 93, 171 ; Harland and Wilkin- 
son, Lancashire Fblk'Loref p. 76. 

Katherine Oswald prescribed for the cure of " trymbliiig 
fevers" (agne), plucking a nettle by the root three successive 
mornings before sunrise. Tea made from young tops of nettles 
is a Derbyshire cure for iiettle-rasli.* 

If peony were always carried, he wlio bore it need never feel 
insanity ; or if a man were insane, to lay peony on him would 
soon restore him to health. A necklace made of beads turned 
from the root of the peony is used by "West Sussex children to 
aid them in getting tlieir teeth, and to prevent convulsions. 
Culpepper says peony is a herb of the sun, and under Leo, 
Physicians say male peony roots are the best, but Dr. Reason, he 
says, told him male peony was best for man, and female peony for 
women, and he desired to be judged by his brother. Dr. Expe- 
rieneo, " Tho roots are held to be of more virtue than the seed ; 
next, the flowers, and last of all, the leaves. The root of the 
male peony, fresh gathered, having been found by experience to 
cure the falling sickness, but the surest way is (besides hanging 
it about the neck, by which children have been cured) to take 
the root of the male peony washed clean, and stamped somewliat 
small, and laid to infuse in sack for twenty-four hours at the 
least ; ai^r strain it, and take it first and last, morning and 
evening, a good draft for sundry days together, before and after 
a fiiU moon." '' A mystical root, Baaras," Dalyell notes, " con- 
jectured to be a species of peony, a noted expulsor, grew near 
Jerusalem, whence jierhaps the repute of peony and its suspen- 
sion from the neck of epileptic children." t 

To the East both the ash and the mistletoe owe their abnost 
sacred merits. Taking the last first we find that persons in 
Sweden who are afflicted with the falling sickness carry with 
them a knife, having a handle of oak mistletoe, to ward off 

• MglUh Felk-Loi-e, p. 172; Culpepper, pp. 87, 171; Daljell [Tnal of 
Katharine Osirald, H November, 1629, Btc. Jut.'), p. 28 ; R. C. H. April, 1873. 

f Cockayne, rol. i. p. 171 ; Fnlk-Lore Record, toI. i. p. i\ ; Cnlpepper, p. 186 ; 
Daljell, Darker Superititiem, p. 612. 

attacks. A piece of mistletoe hung round the neck would ward 
off other sicknesses. We have Culpepper's authority for saying 
it is excellent good for the grief of the sinew, itch, sores, and 
toothache, the biting of mad dogs and venomous beasts, and 
that it purgeth choler very gently.* Grimm notes that it was 
with a branch of mistletoe Baldur was killed, — " Ein kraut," he 
continues, " von dem des tod eines des grossten, geliebtesten 
gotter abhing, muss fiir hochheilig erachtet worden sein, doch 
seine heiligkeit war wiederum deutschen und celtischen volkern 
gemein." t The Kadeir Taliasin says the mistletoe was one of 
the ingredients in the awen a gvybodeu^ or water of inspiration, 
science, and immortality, which the goddess Ked prepared in her 
cauldron. Witches were thought to have no power to hurt those 
who bore mistletoe round their neck4 Sir Thomas Browne 
speaks of the virtues of mistletoe in cases of epilepsy. 

To give a child ash sap, I have elsewhere noticed, was one of 
the first cares of a Scotch nurse, and sometimes weakly children 
were washed in dew from the leaves of the sacred tree. The 
sap tapped on certain days in spring is said to be drunk in 
Germany as a remedy for serpent bites. The English Physician 
has an explanation ^which was no doubt regarded as perfectly 
satisfactory. The saying that ash tree tops and leaves are good 
against the bites of serpents and vipers Culpepper supposes to 
have come from Gerard or Pliny, who both held that there is 
such antipathy between an adder and an ash tree that if an adder 
be compassed round with ash tree leaves it will sooner run through 
the fire than through the leaves. But this Culpepper does not 
believe. " The contrary," he says, " is truth, as both my eyes 
are witnesses." Apparently he tried the experiment, and found 

♦ Kelly, Curiosities, p. 186 ; Culpepper, English Physioian, p. 3. 
•f Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, yoI. ii. p. 1008. 

X Journal British ArchaologicaZ Association, vol. xxxiy. p. 484 ; Coles, Art 
of Simpling (1666), p. 67. 

the adder to prefer the leaves to the fire. For sore ears the 
Saxon leeches said, take a green ashen staffj lay it in the fire, 
then take the juice that issues from it, put it on some wool, 
wring it into the ear, and stop the ear with the same wool. 
The wood of the asii cut at certain holy seasons was held to he 
incorruptible and to heal wounds. The spear of Achilles if it 
wounded could also cure if only the ashen shafl was applied to 
the wound." " Kowan, ash, and red thread," a Scotch rhyme 
goes, " keep the devils frae their speed. "t It was from the ash 
tree Iggdrasil that the gods formed man. AvaiUng myself of 
Mr. Kelly's note on Iggdrasil and the Greek ash, I quote the 
following passage; — "The latter," he says, "was, like the 
former, a honey-dropping tree. Its name implies no less, for 
ntelia ash, and meli, melit, honey, have the same root, mel, which 
is found in many other words with the sense of sweet, pleasing, 
delightful. There was a positive as well as a mystic reason why 
the Gfreeks should give a name signifying sweetness, because the 
Fraxinus ornus, a species of ash indigenous in the South of 
Europe, yields manna from its slit bark. Tliey may also have 
conceived that honey dropped from tlie earth as dew from the 
heavenly ash, for Theoplirastus mentions a kind of honey which 
fell in that form from the air, and which was therefore called 
aeromeli. We now perceive the reason why the honey-giving 
nymphs of ash, and the honey-giving bees (melissai), were so 
assimilated in the minds of the Greeks that the nurses of the 
infant Zeus (Meliai) were called by them indifferently Meliat 

• Engliih Phytician Enlarged, p. 21 1 Cockayne, toI. ii. p. i3 ; Kelly, pp. 
H7,U8, 162. 

t Choice Note» (Ibli-Ziire'), p. 2i. The bay tree Bhared tbia power. " It is a 
tree of the sun, and under the celestial sign Leo, and resiatoth witcbcraft very 
potently, as also all the evils old Satnrn can do to the body of man, and they are 
not a few ; for it is the speecb of one, and I am mistaken if it were not Mizaldua, 
tbat neither witch nor deril, thnnder nor lightning, will hm't a man in a place 
where a bay tree is." —Culpepper, p. 25. 

and Melissai."* Martius says that ash wood is credited with 
healing wounds by its touch (Vulnera lignum fraxinum attactu 
sanare). Some, he continues, make a stick of the wood, when 
the sun and moon are in conjimction in Aries, by the mere 
touch of which stick any bleeding can be stopped, f 

Armstrong, in his poem on the Art of Preserving Healthy 
says, 

<' Mark where the dry champaign 
Swells into cheerful hills ; where Marjoram 
And Thyrne, the love of bees, perfume the air, 
There bid thj roofs, high on the basking steep, 
Ascend ; there light thj hospitable fires." 

The correspondent who drew my attention to this passage 
observed that doubtless the air of the hills had more to do with 
their salubrity than the presence of the thyme and marjoram, :( 
and it is not probable that the use Cornwall folk make of thyme 
occurred to the poet. A relation of mine was in the cottage of 
a wise woman at Penzance about two years ago, and found that 
she was still in the habit of prescribing in scroftJous cases gram- 
mar sows, sow-pigs, millepedes or woodlice, to be swallowed 
as a pill. According to the Penzance woman, the suflFerer must 
himself secure his medicine, but she had a comer in her little 
garden where nothing was grown but mint and thyme, and tliere 
the sow-pigs were reared. As a concession to modem feelings, 
patients are now allowed to wear this disagreeable medicine in a 
little bag round the neck, if they shrink from the heroic remedy 
of swallowing it.§ 

♦ Indo'Mi/rapean Tradition^ p. 144. 

t Martius, p. 32. 

% G. L. A. (Wimbledon), 17 January, 1879. 

§ Miss M. L. B. 17 October, 1878. ''In the Eastern Counties they are called 
old'Sows and sow-bugs, and in other parts St. Anthony's hogs. Their Latin 
name is parcellio seaher. The Welsh have several names for this insect, — 
gwrach-a/'Coed^ i.e. the withered old woman of the wood ; gwrack-y-llvdw ; 

A poiBonous bean, Esore, is used by tlie natives of Calabar 
when an ulcer appears on tlie foot. One or two beans are laid 
on the Bore, because whatever witch may have had power to 
cause the ulcer she can have no power to continue her evil 
work when the beans are there, for her influence cannot 
penetrate tlieni." Black bean tree ia a cure for nettlerush in 
Berkshire. 

Silver tceed if steeped in butter-milk is said to remove freckles 
and brownness. Cork is thought to have the power of keeping 
off cramp if placed between the bed and mattress, or between the 
sheets. This is a Lincolnshire recipe. Sometimes cork garters 
are made by sewing together thin pieces of cork between two 
sick rihbons.f The excrescence found on a briar sore, and called 
Robin Redh-eaa^s cushion, is said in Sussex to be the finest thing 
known for whooping-cough. J Peas are thought in Germany 
good for all complaints, but particularly wounds, and bruises; 
children suffering from measles should be washed in wafer in 
which peas have been boiled. The leaves of the peach were, 
according to the TJiree Hundred Receipts of 1724, to he applied 
when children suffered from worms. Culpepper says, " Lady 
Venus owns this tree." The juice of the stalk of the dande- 
lion is used in Derbyshire to cure warts. A Donegal wise 
woman gives her patient nine leaves of dandelion, or heart 
fever grass, as she calls it, and directs him to eat three leaves 

girmch-y-twed. Q-mrack meana a witherod old woman, bo also dooa grammnTi 
so tliat gritmmiir is bnt an English eqaiTalcnt of grerach. Other Welsh names 
are mochyn-j-co«d, i.e. the little pig o£ the wood ; and tyrchjn Ilwyd, i.e. the 
little grej hog."— W, N., GirnitTiituin, 17 October, 1878. 

• Chrittian EjipreM CLoreJale, South Africa), Oct. 1878, p. 1 1 ; H. C, H. 25 
Apri], 1879. 

t Pratt, WM Fhmert, toI. ii. p. ,12. 

J fhlk-Lore Ileeord,voVi. p. iS. '• I recollect a growth of this kind of onnanal 
size being giron to a little girl, who had whooping-coogh, as a plaything. On 
seeing it the nurse ejtclttimad, ' I am glnd to see that. I have beea wiahing for one 
for screral days to hang round Miss Maij'b neck.' " 

on three successive mornings. She gathers the dandelion 

herself.* 

Eyebright {Euphrasia) made into powder, and then into an 
electuary with sugar, " hath," says Culpepper, " powerful effect 
to help and restore the sight decayed through age, and Amoldus 
de villa nova saith, it hath restored sight to them that have been 
blind a long timebefore."t It was thus the Archangel Michael 
opened Adam's eyes, 

** Michael from Adam's eyes the film removed 
Which that false fruit, which promised clearer sight 
Had bred ; then purged with euphrasy and rue 
The yisual nerre for he had much to see." 

Shenstone in his Schoolmistress says, 

^ Euphrasy may not be left unsung, 
That gives dim eyes to wander leagues around.** 

The Tyrolese agree with Milton as to the merits of rue, saying 
that it confers fine vision, and used with agrimony, it is pre- 
scribed in Posen for serpent bites. In England, six oimces of 
rue, cleaned picked and bruised, boiled in ale, with certain quan- 
tities of garlic, treacle, and scraped tin in a clean covered pot, 
over a gentle fire, has been recommended for the bite of a mad 
dog. When the compound was strained, eight or nine spoonfuls 
of it were to be given to the man or woman three mornings 
fasting, within nine days of the bite. Some of the ingredients 
might, when convenient, be with advantage bound on the 
wound.^: 

♦ Kelly, pp. 299, 300; Three Hmdred ReoeipU, p. 113 ; English Ph/ysieian 
Enlargedy p. 180; R. C. H. 25 April, 1879; "Fairy Superstitions in Donegal," 
University Mag. August 1879, p. 217. 

t English Physician Enlarged^ p. 97. " Ignored by the faculty, the Herbal 
became the guide of the quack ; and in Culpepper's famous Herbal it bad become 
a fit companion for the Astrological Almanac. This was the dotage of that 
ancient partnership between Botany and Medicine which in Dioscorides was young 
and sound." — Earle, English Plant Names ^ p. xxviii. 

t Conway, Demonology^ vol. ii. p. 324 ; R. S. H. April, 1879. 

The celebriiy of mugwort (artemisia vulgaris) is great. 
Cockayne gives a poem descriptive of this eldest of worts : 

" Thon hast might for three 
And against thirty, 
For yenom availest 
For plying vile things.'' 

The Herbarium Apuleii says, mugwort puts away madness, 
and in whatever house it is no evil crafts can have power, and 
evil eyes will be turned away.* The roots used to be collected 
on St. John's day. 

A poultice made of rotten apple is applied in Lincolnshire to 
cure eyes affected by rheumatism or weakness; it is in the 
commonest possible use. A charm for the bite of a mad dog, 
communicated by Professor Marecco, was to be written on an 
apple, or a piece of fine white bread. It begins, " King of 
Glory, come in peace."t 

Crowsfoot is mentioned as used for the cure of a kenning, or 
keming, white spot on the eye. J In use it is to be accompanied 
by a muttered incantation. Yarrow worn in a little bag upon 
the stomach was the secret against agues of a great lord, who 
himself confided this to Boyle. The lord was very curious of 
receipts, and would sometimes pay highly for them, and a very 
famous physician of Boyle's acquaintance informed him that the 
yarrow had been used with strange success. § Common fumi* 
tory, which John Clare says " superstition holds to Fame," 
was used when gathered in wedding hours, and boiled in water, 
milk, and whey, as a wash for the complexion of rustic maids. 
Amaranth, 

" which once 
In Paradise, fast by the tree of life, 
Began to bloom.'* 

* Cockayne, vol. iii. p. 30 ; vol. i. p. 103. 

t Rev. G. S. S. 24 October, 1878 ; Henderson, Folk-Lore of the Northern 
CountieSf p. 179. 
J Polwhele, Traditions and Reoollectionttf vol. ii. p. 607. 
§ Boyle, Some Considerations, ^o, vol. i. p. 211. 

has medicinal merits, for its flowers are said to stop bleeding at 
the nose, or of a wound. 

A broth of tripe boiled in water, with spices and vegetables, 
was considered, Scarron says, a remedy against rheumatism. 
Fuller's teazle {dipsacus fullonum) is thought, in some parts of 
England, a certain remedy for ague. Leaves of ivy steeped in 
water for a day and a night were thought to cure sore and 
smarting eyes. Cups made from ivy were recommended for 
use in cases of spleen, or of whooping-cough. " Cato saith, That 
wine put into such a cup will soak through it, by reason of the 
antipathy that is between them."* Laurel was deemed a pre- 
servative a£:ainst epilepsy, and thence an antidote to madness. 
Fumigatinlbyres with juniper is supposed to ward off disease 
in Aberdeenshire, and the English Physician says of juniper, 
*^ this admirable solar shrub is scarcely to be paralleled for his 
virtues." f 

Kolb, who became one of the first " wonder doctors " of the 
Tyrol, when he was called to assist any bewitched person, made 
exactly at midnight the smoke of five difierent sorts of herbs, 
and while they were burning the bewitched was gently beaten 
with a martyr-thorn birch, which had to be got the same night. 
This beating the patient with thorn was thought to be really 
beatin^r the hag who had caused the evil. J A Derbyshire cure 
for chilblains is to thrash them with holly. 

To bite the first seen fern that appears in spring ofi* by the 
ground is said, in Cornwall and elsewhere, to cure toothache, 
and to prevent its return during the remainder of the year ; as 
to fever, "eine art angang ist es, dass die drei ersten kom oder 
schlehbliithen, deren man imjahr ansichtigwird,heilmittel wider 
das fieber abgeben." § The first blackberry seen will, Cornish 

♦ Scarron, Adieu au Maxau et a la Place Royaly complete works, vol. iv. 
p. 32 ; English FoUt-Lore^ pp. 21, 22 ; Culpepper, p. 136. 
t Dalyell, p. 139 ; Culpepper, p. 136. 

X Comtesse you Gunther, Tales and Legends of the Tyrol, pp. 105-106. 
§ Grimm, De^iUche Mythologies Tol. ii. p. 978. 

people say, banish warts. The bracken, witches are 'said to 
detest, because it bears on its root the letter C, the initial of the 
holy name.* The root of the yellow irisy chopped up and 
chewed, is said to be an Argyleshire cure for toothache. Broom 
tree is a cure for dropsy in Derbyshire. For chilblains, sore 
eyes, and chapped hands, the juice of leek squeezed out and 
mixed with cream is said to be a cure. To escape a curtain 
lecture, or, as the Saxon more rudely puts ir, " against a 
woman's chatter," one should taste at night, fasting, a root of 
radish, and chatter will not be able to harm him.f To cure a 
woman of dumbness, on the other hand, we have the authoriiy 
of one of the C. Mery Talys that an aspen leaf is the proper 
thing to put under her tongue.! 

* " A friend suggests, however, that the letter intended is not the English C 
hut the Greek Xi ^^ initial letter of the word xpt<n-oc, which really resembles 
very closely the marks in the root of the bracken, or PterU aquilina,** — Hender- 
son, p. 226. '* For thigh aches (sciatica) smoke the thighs thoroughly with 
fern." — Cockayne, vol. iL p. 66. 

t Cockayne, vol. ii. p. 343. 

X A, C. Mery Ihlyf, p. 87 {Shakespeare Jest Books),

IE have now discussed the theories of Folk-Mediolne in 
some detail. Beginning with primitive conceptions 
of the origin of diseases and death, we saw how natu- 
rally a theory of Transference of Disease might arise, 
and what influence has been exercised by Association of Ideas — 
exemplified, in one way, in a doctrine of Sympathy, and in 
another in Symbolic new birth. The curious group of myths 
which have collected around the persons of our Lord and the 
Saints was then noticed. Connected quite as much with this 
Christian mythology — I trust I shall not be misunderstood in 
using this term — as with pre-Christian mythology there is an 
important set of factors, regarded here imder the names of 
Colour, Number, and Influence of the Sun and Moon. In per- 
sonal cures we have perhaps examples of personal fetish — occa- 
sionally illustrations of adapted theology; cures associated 
with animals, or the habits of animals, serve to remind us of the 
survival of belief in animal-fetishes in modem societies ; and in 
collecting and comparing Magic writings and notes on rings, 
and those miscellaneous charms (which have been indicated as 
presently falling under a general title of " Domestic Folk-Medi- 
cine "), materials have been provided for future conjecture as to 
the meaning which is to be attached to many beliefs and super* 
stitions as yet but roughly classable, 

I cannot but be conscious that in suggesting as the three 

FOLK-MEDICINE IN THE STUDY OF 0IVILI8ATION. 205 

primitive explanations of disease, — (1) the anger of an offended 
external spirit ; (2) the supernatural powers of a buman enemy ; 
and (3) the displeasure of the dead, and especially in placing 
these suggestions in the above order, — I may seem to have 
ignored the conclusions to which Mr, Spencer believes he can 
point aa the result of study of primitive man. Mr, Spencer, 
using tlie phrase ancestor- worship in its broadest sense as com- 
prehending all_ worship of the dead, bo they of tlie same blood or 
not, concludes that ancestor- worshij) is the root of every reli- 
gion (ITie Data of Sociology, p. 440). He says " it becomes 
manifest that setting out with the wondering double which the 
dream suggests ; passing to the double that goes away at death ; 
aih'ancing from this ghost, at first supposed to have but a transi- 
tory second life, to ghosts which exist permanently and there- 
fore accumulate, — the primitive man is led gradually to people 
surrounding space with supernatural beings which inevitably 
become in his mind causal agents for everything nnfamihar." 
{Ibid. p. 450.) Mr. Spencer finds then that, generally, all 
primitive theories attribute disease and death to the spirits of 
the dead. 

With this theory I must disagree. The order of explana- 
tions may not, taking humanity as a whole, be the same every- 
where, — although in all probability it is generally the same, — 
and I have expressly stated my doubts if we can rank one theory 
above another in importance, or assign to tliis or that greater 
or less influence ; but, so far as all our knowledge goes at 
present, I cannot accept Mr. Spencer's arguments as convincing, 
so far as Folk-Medicine is concerned. There is abundant proof 
of the fear of the dead, of their worship, of their propitiation, of 
belief in their malice and their love ; but I do not think that any 
dogmatic assertion e.in be safely made that from fear of dreams 
or of disembodied spirits iirose all primitive man's tlieories of 
disease and death ; much less, then, his apprehension of a 
Supreme Power, or, speaking generally, his religion. 

Mr. Spencer is very desirous that we should recollect how 
many difficulties present themselves when we endeavour to 
place ourselves m the position of totally uneducated, untrained, 
almost unknowing beings ; and it is certainly well, from time 
to time, to point out the great care which is necessary in 
framing imaginary yet rational theories for primitive man. In 
all Mr. Spencer advances on this point every student of civilisa- 
tion will agree with him. Too great caution is impossible. To a 
great extent Mr. Spencer is entitled to credit for analysing and 
classifying savage beliefs in a spirit of the most impartial kind. 
At the same time, without expressing any opinion upon Mr. 
Spencer's theory of religion, or the Evolutionist arguments 
with which he builds up his Castle Doubting, I am unable to 
regard his first step, his initial premises, as either actually or 
possibly accurate. 

Primitive man presents himself to us in two aspects. Men- 
tally he is a child, physically he is a hardy savage ; for, as the 
doctrine of the survival of the fittest may here be rigidly and 
accurately applied, it is clear that under pristine conditions of 
life only the most healthy could attain manhood. Primitive 
man is a healthy animal, with a brain capable of development 

judge accurately of man's primitive conceptions of things. If 
we omit either the hardihood of the body or the infancy of the 
mind we are not likely to escape hasty and erroneous conclu- 
sions. 

What, then, does this twofold aspect teach regarding such a 
theory of mental evolution as that of Mr. Spencer? First of 
all, that we must be cautious what physical ailments we ascribe 
to man. Here is a healthy savage, what are likely to be the 
conditions pressed upon him. Hunger and repletion, no doubt ; 
but what else ? apoplexy and epilepsy, delirium, insanity ? 
Surely not. Even among ourselves these are comparatively 
rare experiences. I grant that the more rare the more likely 

. would they be to make strong suggestive impressions upon the 
mind of primitive mau, but I demur to any doctrine that man's 
earliest conceptions were in the least degree likely to be 
materially due to those disorders. Greatly they may have 
modified, or eveu entirely altered, his first conceptions, but the 
savage, primarily and necessarily healthy, was neither apoplectic 
nor epileptic. I argue, as does Mr. Spencer, from the presumed 
state of man's nature when intellect dawned. 

Primitive man again has a mind like a child's mind — that is 
to say, he has a mind like a looking-glass, which reflects all and 
retains nothing. It will show the image of this or that, but 
remove the object and its image vanishes. Mr. Spencer himself 
cites instances of this state of mind in savage communities. It 
is illustrated by Mr. Oldfield's difficulties with the Australians. 
If he asked a question they immediately assented, A native 
brought him some specimens of a species of eucalyptus : " Being 
desirous of ascertaining the habit of the plant, I asked, ' A tall 
tree?' to which his ready answer was in the affirmative. Not 
feeling quite satisfied I again demanded, 'A low hush?' to 
which ' Yes' was also the response." The Daniaras have great 
difficulty iu counting beyond five, because no other hand remains 
to secure the units already counted. Many mstances of primi- 
tive man's feeble grasp of thought, as illustrated in such people, 
as may be presumed approximately to represent him might be 
collected.* I shall assume, therefore, that admittedly man, so 
far as we can learn from his history aa written in himself, is 
mentally fairly represented by a very young civilised child. 

The conclusions to which Mr. Spencer would point, then, are 
that to this strong, childlike savage the first explanation of 
disease, of death, and the suggestion of higher powers and 
religion, are due to dreams and epileptic fits. The healthy 
savage delays all conjectures about hfe or deatli till he sees his 

• Seo Lubbock, Origin ■>/ Cicdixation, pp. 8, 9 ; Spender, Data of Sacialo^, 
pp. 9i et ic'j. 

brother writhe in convulsions ; he thinks of nothing till he has 
pondered over the dreams, which he cannot disassociate from 
reality, caused by hunger or overfeeding. These are a couple 
of untenable propositions. The case of the child is itself an 
illustration of the error. Take a child of three years old that 
can run, and play, and speak, ask it about its dreams, draw any 
picture you like of what it may have seen, get its brothers of six 
or seven to ask questions in their own way, and to all the reply 
will be alike indicative of the mind of primitive man— either 
there will be a blank denial of dreams and all such things, or a 
ready "Yes" to suggestions the most preposterous. On the 
other hand, show such a child a picture, and he will pick out 
the image which he has learnt to associate with the living dog 
by his side ; better still, play music to him, sing to him, and he 
from day to day will have stronger and truer recollections of 
every rhythm and every tune. 

Did primitive man, living in nature, on Nature's purest, 
roughest products, ignore altogether his world of wind, sea, and 
sky, and find the first wakening of his dormant mind in dreams 
and illnesses ? I do not, of course, say that a child may not 
have very real dreams which he thinks about. He may believe 
them to be so real that he can form no idea of their non-reality. 
This is quite conceivable ; all the same, he does not betray in 
his daily play indications of a life apart from that of his nursery. 
His dream-life may be the very counterpart of his waking-life, 
but it does not exercise over him the eflFect which the dream-life 
of many modem savage ti'ibes exercises over them. This may be, 
because, before the dream-interpretation-faculty is properly con- 
ceived, the mind of the civilised child is distracted to other 
things. But here is the admission that a dream-interpretation- 
faculty takes time to develop — is, then, during all the time of 
development, primitive man to be blind and insensible to external 
nature, and to the influence of his brother man ? I claim, there- 
fore, that the mythologist, to use Mr, Spencer's term, far more 

accurately grasps the ideas and feelings of tlie somi- civilised 
than does the Spencerean thinker. Mr. Spencer misses the first 
step; if that be allowed, then, indeed, one may do what he 
pleases in adjusting the data of sociology. No thinker or writer 
of the present age can form a true, that is an absolutely true, 
idea of primitive man from such tribes and peoples as have so 
far lagged behind in the race of life that they represent to us 
conditions of existence which we call prehistoric, so far as the 
history of mankind at large is concerned. Mr. Spencer assumes 
that we can judge of the past by the present in the very par- 
ticulars which others might think the most liable to alteration, 
possibly to mental variations corresponding with the physical, or 
at least social inferiority — not impossibly degradation — of the 
peoples among whom they are now found. Professor Max 
Miiller has said, " the naore we go hack, the mora we examine the 
earliest germs of every religion, the purer, Ibelieve, we shall find 
the conceptions of the Deity." Mr, Spencer regards this asser- 
tion as due to a perversion of thought, cau.ted by looking at fects 
in the wrong order. I am not called upon here to examine the 
primitive conceptions of God, but I have no doubt, speaking 
from ray own study of the data of sociology as embodied in folk- 
medicine (but not confined to this data alone), that the primary 
intnition of man was conception of external nature power. I 
put this very broadly, for I think that if primitive man saw his 
brother struck by lightning he believed his fall was due to some 
cause, similar to that which made his brother fall if he were 
struck, or if a branch felled him. The cause was external; 
it might be invisible ; he did not reason ; he did not ask, What 
relation has this external force which made my brother fall to me 
and to him ? Like a child, he received the impression of some- 
thing beyond himself — like himself in the results which followed 
— unlike himself in being invisible- 
Mr. Spencer finds an argument against Nature, recognition in 
the fact that " the famihar Sim excites in the child no awe 

whatever." " Recalling his boyhood/* continues he, " no one 
can recall any feeling of fear drawn out by this most striidng 
object in Nature, or any sign of such feeling in his companions. 
Again, what peasant or what servant-girl betrays the slightest 
reverence for the Sun ? Gazed at occasionally, admired, per- 
haps, when setting, it is regarded without even a tinge of the 
sentiment called worship." &c.* 

This is an unfortunate illustration, for if there is one particu- 
lar respect in which the modem child greatly differs from the 
primitive man it is in the diflFerent conditions of his daily life. 
Mentally the conceptions of the one may justifiably be taken to 
illustrate those of the other. In ways of life they are very 
different. When, for example, does the civilised child see the 
Sun either rise or set ? To what extent again is he dependent 
upon its warmth ? What does winter mean more than nursery 
fires? What does night mean save bed-time? There is no 
analogy whatever between the conditions of life of the civilised 
child and the savage. The savage knows thai when that distant 
shining ball appears, there is light ; when it apparently has slid 
or climbed across the sky there is no light, i,e.y dark. This is 
siu-ely the most primitive of conceptions. The savage does not 
theorise about this, nor build up myths ; he receives the facts of 
light and darkness, but in his reception of those facts is the 
unconscious exercise of thought, far anterior surely to concern 
about his dreams (only themselves, as a rule, to come when the 
sun is gone), far more ancient than speculations as to the 
nervous convulsions of friend or foe. It is not necessary to our 
argument to think of the savage as given to "imaginative 
fictions." It would rather seem as if the need of an assumption 
of " imaginative fictions " would be required in the arguments 
of those who, as it were, put their hand over the first lines of 
the History of Culture, and begin with the second paragraph. 
Certainly the savage is characterised by lack of imagination, 

* Data of Sociology, Appendix B, p. t. 

but his imagination, when it jis touched, is most truly touched 
by facts which appeal suggestively to him. I am far from 
denying the great importance attached by men, apparently 
representative of primitive man, to dreams, ghosts or spirits of 
the dead. I have recognised this as the third primitive theory of 
the origin of disease and death, but so far as the real primitive 
man is concerned, I conjecture, even putting altogether out of 
account the possibilities of peculiar spiritual revelation— incon- 
ceivable to us now, if confined to the leaden facts of Mr. 
Spencer — that primitive man was influenced, first of all, by 
either the facts of external animate and inanimate nature 
(not human), the facts of human life, as seen in the coeval 
actions of his healthy brothers, the one acting and re-acting, 
modifying, transforming, the other from time to time, and as 
the capacities, the surroundings, the health, the circumstances of 
individual man varied. After this I admit the importance of 
the ghost theory fully, and the possibility of this theory so 
affecting the first conceptions, that any one arguing from mere 
latter facts, and ignoring the necessary conditions of the actual 
primitive man*s life, might very well assume the pure nature, 
and the simple fellow-man influences to be unreal and imaginary. 
They are not, however, necessarily unreal or untrue, because 
they cannot now be completely proved by the arguments Mr. 
Spencer would alone employ. 

For these reasons I adhere to my first classification of the 
theories of the origin of disease and death which I believe to 
have affected primitive man. The data given on an earlier page 
need not here be repeated, but I would point out, as a necessary 
warning, that such data as have been collected in the case of the 
first two theories are not relied upon as proving any conclusion 
advanced here. Even if they were entirely satisfactory as 
evidence of a state of socieiy similar to that of primitive man, 
which might furnish safe evidence as to his mental conceptions, 

p2 

I would not ground any ar^ruments upon them.* We may 
entirely transcend the mere facts of bricks and stones when we 
visit a great mansion, but we may be sure that they are there. 
We can safely assume that a great river is fed by many tribu- 
taries, although we only see it widening into an ocean. In a 
word, we need not, must not, forego assumptions in reason when 
we examine facts. 

In the above remarks I refer to Mr. Spencer's system of 
philosophy only in so far as it seems to me inconsistent with a 
correct study of Folk- Medicine, and of the place of Folk- 
Medicine in the history of civilisation. 

Turning to Folk- Medicine itself, — ^in the chaptei*s which precede 
I have endeavoured to show the nterest and importance which 
attaches to study of folk-medicine. Charms, spells, and amulets, 
trifling and unimportant in themselves and in reference to 
modem medicine, take an altogether difierent aspect when 
viewed together as a whole, in illustration of that mental 
progress of society which is more correctly indicated by the 
word " culture " than by *^ civilisation." They cease to be merely 
melancholy or ludicrous facts, absurd and humiliating ; they are 
really far more than this, they are like leafless trees in winter, 
naked and unsheltering, but still useful in pointing out tlie way 
which the snow has concealed. By their help we recover the 
road before the night conceals all. 

It is not surprising that the collection of scraps of super- 
stitious lore should have been ridiculed. It is more wonder- 

* Even Mr. Spencer does not seem to regard primitive man as accaratelj 
represented hj the peoples upon whose superstitions and belief he grounds his 
theory : — '* To determine what conceptions are truly primitive, would be easy if 
we had accounts of truly primitive men. But there are sundry reasons for 
suspecting that existing men of the lowest types, forming social groups of the 
simplest kinds, do not exemplify men as they originally were. Probably most of 
them, if not all of them, had ancestors in higher states ; and among their belie& 
remain some which were evolved during those higher states ... It is quite 
possible, and, I believe, highly probable, that retrogression has been as frequent 
(IS progression.*'— i>ato of Sociology, p. X06, 

ful that SO much ancient lore remains imbedded in the com- 
mon speech and thought of every-day life. It is remarkable 
that in the present day we should so often be able to trace a 
custom or a saying to times of remote antiquity. Tlie conclusion 
to which the possibility of tracing our culture back to early days 
seems to point is, that intellectually as well as physically we 
may still approximately study the past in the present. We 
know that in Scotland cave-life is still to be found at Wick Bay, 
and that beehive houses are still inhabited in the Hebrides ; and 
in the same way we know from the collections of folk-lore which 
have of lale been made, that there are men and women lidng 
in this year in our civilised communities whose reasoning power 
on some subjects has never progressed beyond limits which we 
find adequately indicated in the tales of barbarous or semi- 
barbarous (but not necessarily primitive) tribes. Mental train- 
ing and civilisation alike travel irregularly; in some cases 
rapidly, in others very slowly. Thus there is the possibility in 
civilisation of the luxury of all the world in London, and the 
most primitive barbarity in the north of Scotland ; and in culture 
there is the possibility of hundreds and thousands of educated 
brains co-existing with men whose thinking powers are still 
dormant. But the two cases of civilisation and culture are not 
quite parallel. There is one great difference. We should not 
expect to find modem cave-dwellings on any part of the Thames 
banks, but we may find in one house, under one roof, a student 
of the most recent science, and a boor who still hunts for the 
fern which is to make him invisible, and who respectfully salutes 
a magpie. The better-educated portion of the world is naturally 
the authority as to the less educated portion ; this, in the nature 
of things, must always be ; none the less, the judgment under 
those circumstances to be pronounced we may be justified in 
regarding as one-sided. It is here, then, that one instance of 
the value of the study of folk-lore appears. The current thoughts 
of the real body of the people are by it ascertained ; we learn 

by it the nature of the foundation on which conjectures and 
hypotheses are based. We may get no clear statement of this 
or that belief; we are like school-boys who do not write essays 
in their first year, but begin by learning signs, then combine 
signs into words, and then words into sentences. To learn 
the signs is the first and most important part of the task ; this 
learned, all else will follow in due course. Thus, to collect 
the proverbs, sayings, the superstitions of any town or country 
people is the first task ; when so much progress has been made 
a broader view can be taken of all which those represent. Finally, 
two advantages result from the inquiry — in the first place, there 
is something learnt by the study of the living present of what 
was regarded as tlie dead past, the tables are turned for the 
moment upon the better-educated portion of the community, and 
we see the nation at large as it is, not as it appears to a class of 
peculiar education and training ; in the second place, we can 
look back upon the intellectual history of our people with some 
certainty that that history is not entirely unreadable. 

To collect odd phrases and scraps of folk-lore and string them 
together for the benefit of the curious is not to investigate folk- 
lore; it is rather to bring ill-deserved ridicule upon a study 
which has not for its object the pastime of a leisure hour, but 
the investigation of the greatest problem which man can solve — 
the growth of his mental faculties. If students of folk-lore had 
any less end in view they could not ask for their pursuit serious 
consideration; and they would deserve neither sympathy nor 
assistance in their work. It is as a serious contribution to the 
history of man's life in this world from the dawn of his intel- 
lectual being that each work based on investigation of primitive 
habits and primitive phases of thought must be regarded. It 
does not appear to be vain to believe that by such inquiry there 
is more probability of ultimate knowledge of this difficult sub- 
ject being reached, than by almost any other way, if it is pos- 
sible, as I believe it is, to go back by the aid of folk-lore to 

ages, and, wliat is of more importance, to stages of life and 
thought which can otherwise in no way be reached. Bit by bit 
very slowly the work will go on ; and it is as a small contribu- 
tion to this work that the notes of which this book is composed 
have been collected. 

In one respect this volume may be said to depart somewhat 
widely from the lines indicated by the three masters of research 
in the field of sociological inquiry, — Mr. Spencer, Dr. Tylor, 
and Sir John Lubbock. I have drawn more examples of the 
various branches of folk-medicine from the folk-lore of our own 
country than from that of foreign and savage lands. I quite 
admit that even the most ignorant countryman in the British 
Isles is very far in advance of primitive man ; he has wants, he 
has luxuries, he has desires, he has ambitions which only 
become realizable by the human race after very long preliminary 
training. But in a way which seems to me very remarkable 
many of our countrymen are in civilization but not of it. So 
far as their social life is concerned, so far as their life is depen- 
dent upon or united with the life of others, they are representa- 
tive and typical only of their class of modern society. But this 
is only one aspect of their life. So far as their mental position 
is not dependent upon habits forced from without they are 
beyond the sphere of modern thoughts. For example, a man 
such as I refer to may go to church all his life as his fathers did, 
and hear nothing save the parson " a bummin' awaay loike a 
buzzard-clock." He will vote for church and state, and drift 
witli the stream of external things which came he knows not 
whence and goes he knows not where. Mentally he has two 
conceptions. It is difficult to make clear the vast depth between 
the notions which he has simply received, as water is received 
by an empty vessel, and the notions which are of his own inves- 
tigation, laboured out as a savage burns out his canoe from a 
tree trmik. The one stage is illustrated by the same Northern 
Farmer : — 

2 1 6 FOLE-MEDICINE. 

" I niver know'd whot a mean'd but I thawt a' ad summat to saaj, 
An' I tbawt a said a owt to 'a said an' I coom*d awaaj." 

He receives the external opinion of things ; he conforms to 
custom with its rule stronger than iron ; like the Thibetan he 
turns his wheel of prayer, and, when he has done what he thinks 
custom requires him to do, he comes away. The other stage, 
that of laboured thought, is illustrated by the country explana- 
tions of current things in a matter-of-fact way; as that the 
dancing light of muddy swamps is borae by a radiant something, 
by-and-bye personalized and named Will o* the Wisp. If there 
is a light, something must carry it ; as it moves, it must be a 
person who carries it. 

A high degree of comparative culture is seen to be compatible 
with the simple uninquiring, unmeaning receptiveness of the 
lowest races of men. The process which results in the ultimate 
survival of the fittest goes on more slowly now than ever before. 
It must be borne in mind also that one stimted human plant 
exercises incalculably more influence upon his species than any 
analogy from vegetable life can illustrate. Thus with the sur- 
vival of incomplete forms of thought, of aberrated minds, of 
stunted mental trees, we have also to consider the effect of their 
human influence, for only to the observer can the peculiar in- 
capacity of mind make itself apparent. We have all seen blind 
men whose pride or whose sensitiveness had taught them so well 
to simulate the ways of seeing men, that, had we not known, we 
could scarcely have told that they saw no sun, and read no book ; 
in the same way there are hundreds, there have been thousands, 
of our own countrymen whose mental incapacity it is almost 
impossible to detect. It could not be detected by their habits, 
by their accustomed forms of life, by the food they ate, by their 
votes, by their church-going, but we can tell it by their tales, 
by their superstitions, by their proverbs, and by their charms. 

It is one of the natural results, fortunate or unfortunate from 
the venue of the bystander, of thus working backwards, that as 

we work we disinter facts which diiFer as much in their use and 
in their value as do gold and silver from lead and tin. Here we 
may come across a detail which is absent from a very ancient 
myth where we would have expected to find it, there we have an 
incident which illustrates the development of modem fact into 
modem fable. Thus there are two processes continually before 
us. On the one hand we accumulate links of that great chain 
which leads us from Piccadilly to the Garden of Eden, and on 
the other we see the development of new lines of thought 
as yet more in the domain of the politician than in that of the 
student of culture, although when comprehensively regarded they 
are of course matters for the same study. Li one word we 
see both how the nations grew, and how a nation grows. 

This then brings into view another aspect of the study of the 
history of civilisation. It is not only to amuse the curious I have 
said that culture is to be studied. To this I would add, neither 
is it alone for the edification of historians of mankind that stores 
of facts are to be laboriously accumulated, assorted, and described. 
It would be, after all, but a trifling work to provide merely a re- 
cord of man's progress in life, work, and thought, if nothing were 
to be learnt from it in the friture. Culture, rightly studied, must 
not only be a beacon which tells of clifis and sands safely passed 
but also an indication of the safe " water-lane " which lies before 
the watching sailor. It is sometimes objected to archaeology 
that its tendency is not to advance but to retard, that the 
objects on which it lavishes time, care, and money are of so 
little value to a working-day world that time, care, and money 
have alike all been wasted, — those boxes of precious ointment 
might have been sold and given to the poor ; as it is, they are 
spilt upon the ground, neither to the profit of the soil nor the 
real benefit of the lavisher. 

To this there is one short and speedy answer. Let it be 
admitted that more than once erudition and wealth have been 
frittered away on subjects which, if not entirely unworthy, were 

218 FOLK' MEDIOIKE. 

at least comparatively unimportant either to man's mental or 
man's physical well-being. There remains, however, an im- 
portant residuum, and, apart altogether from the mere benefit 
to history and art of archaeological research, there have been again 
and again many positive advantages of which the world would 
otherwise have been ignorant. To what do we owe the llenais- 
sance of Italy and southern Europe, — ^to what in our own day 
do we owe the Gothic revival, — to what do we owe the hundred 
arts which make our life of to-day more beautiful to those who 
have leisure and wealth, and more varied — if not more happy — 
to the unfortunate poor, than has been any previous age in the 
world's history ? Without question, the answer to be returned 
must surely be that all this is owing in very great measure to 
intelligent study of the things of the past, — and intelligent study 
of the things of the past is archaeology. 

For the archaeology of the mind we may claim much the same 
arguments, while we admit a sensible distinction and difference. 

Few things are more significant of the strange halts and 
pauses which mentally a people makes than to note how super- 
stition springs up in the very midst of modern education. 
The same sun which encourages the wheat gives the tares fresh 
vigour. We all know how much the Evil Eye is feared ; how 
much, particularly in the east, a mother dreads to be too 
effusively congratulated on the beauty of her child, — how great 
in all primitive communities is the tendency to deprecate too 
much praise, too much gratification, lest ill-luck should follow — 
the avenger of good fortune. By-and-bye, a power in actually 
inducing evil is believed to be specially settled in particular 
persons, who are avoided, and feared, and propitiated like 
inferior deities. Their glance is a curse, their presence is a 
cloud. Their evil influence is warded off by mystic signs and 
amulets. Now the belief in the Jettatura, every one knows, 
still exists in many forms, and in many countries. 

To take another example which this indeed suggests. From 

personal evil influence, evil influence at last attaches to things. 
Objects blessed or cursed by witches, pins, animals, food, all 
may be cause of evil. Their very presence, associated in the 
past with death or disgrace, may become ominous of dismay 
and terror in the present. Of this we have ah example in such 
a belief as this, that it is unlucky to keep black-edged note paper 
in a house. It is clear what this means. Black-edged note 
paper is used when death is in a house, and then only. Hence, 
is not to keep it in a house almost as though one felt the dread 
shadow ; then, if this is felt, is it not indeed present ? But this 
must be a very modern superstition. Mourning note-paper is 
only of modern introduction. How strangely the mysterious 
past rules the utilitarian present. 

Again, it is matter of common report in the daily news- 
papers, that burglars are very often, if not always, found to have 
a piece of coal in their pocket. Why should this be used? 
Surely a modem ruffian, who knows something of dynamite and 
nitro-glycerine, and is better acquainted with the use of fire 
arms than most of those who either hunt him, or are assailed by 
him, cannot depend upon an amulet. Yet this seems certain. 
T do not know that coal has any folk-lore mystery, but I would 
hazard the suggestion that its colour may suggest, very dimly 
and remotely, to the burglar-mind, remote shadowy tales of 
invisibility. It is a curious physchological study in two ways, 
first, how the burglar comes to think of an amulet, and what he 
thinks it is or can do; and second, the burglar imagination, 
which throws a glamour of Asian romance over a chip of coal 
stolen from a passing cart. 

But what place can Folk- Medicine claim in the great book 
of culture? This question cannot but occur over and over 
again to those who have examined charms, spells, and amulets. 
We know that Mr. Spencer builds upon what he regards as 
primary foundations of thought all his philosophy. I have 
already stated my objections to his conclusion. I do not differ 

from him, however, regarding the importance of sociology, 
and it is as a contribution to the history of the coltore of 
societies that this book has been written. A separate theory of 
Folk-Medicine is impossible, for Folk-Medicine lias been built 
up out of very strange and varied materials ; but it is perhaps 
not altogether vain to hope that illustrations of num's intellectual 
history will be found by study of collections of classified facts, 
and that the investigation of spells and amulets, of superstitions 
and witcheries, may not be unworthy of systematic analysis.