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Wxt c^0ft-cliyr^ ^uu% 
 
 FOB COLLBCTING AND PBINTING 
 
 RELICS OF POPULAR ANTIQUITIES, &c. 
 
 BSTABLISHBD IN 
 
 THE YEAR MDOCCLXXVIII. 
 
 Alter ef Idem. 
 
 PUBLICATIONS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE FOLK-LORE SOCIETY, 
 
 XII. 
 
^ V 
 
( 
 
 FOLK-MEDICINE 
 
 A CHAPTER IN 
 
 THE HISTORY OF CULTURE. 
 
 WILLIAM GEOEGE BLACK, 
 
 F.S.A.ScoT. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PUBLISHED FOR THE FOLK-LORE SOCIETY BY 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G. 
 
 Oo 1883. 
 
 E,V. 
 
 -4 
 
KzP\3>ixS{su 
 
O. B. B. 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 
 
 BY 
 
 HEE SOK 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031044468 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 " Folk-Medicine " comprehends charms, incantations, and 
 traditional habits and customs relative to the preservation of 
 health and tJie cure of disease, practised now or formerly at 
 home and abroad ; an attempt has been made in the following 
 pages also to classify the explanations of the cause of disease 
 which come to light in folk-lore. I would refer to Chapter XIII. 
 for my reasons for diifering from certain conclusions to which 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer has given the weight of his authority 
 on subjects intimately associated with several classes of Folk- 
 Medicine. 
 
 Through the courtesy of many correspondents," known and 
 unknown, I have been enabled to make use of notes which in 
 several instances have not before appeared in print. I have 
 endeavoured in every case to indicate my authority for the folk- 
 lore -embodied in my text, and should I in any case have failed 
 to do so I must ask my readers to believe that there has been 
 no intentional neglect. A list is appended of the chief works 
 consulted. When the MS. left my hands no part of Grimm's 
 gi'eat work, Deutsche Mythologie, had been translated, otherwise 
 I should, of course, have availed myself of English words. As 
 it is, I have added in most cases a second reference to the trans- 
 
lation by Mr. Stallybrass, when a quotation has been made 
 from the first volume ; the second volume of Mr. Stallybrass's 
 translation has been too recently issued to allow of my making 
 use of it in the same way. M. Lenormant's La Magie chez les 
 Chalddens has also been translated since I first referred to its 
 pages. The publications of the Folk-Lore Society have been of 
 great service, and also the works of Dr. Tylor and Sir John 
 Lubbock. 
 
 Special acknowledgment for notes, books, references, and 
 counsel, must be made to Dr. Tylor, Mr. A. Lang, l^rofessor 
 Veitch, and Professor Young, of Glasgow University ; Professor 
 Lindsay, of the Free Church College, Glasgow ; Miss Guernsey, 
 Kochester, U.S.A.; Mr. W. H. Patterson, Belfast; and the 
 Eev. G. S. Streitfeild, Louth. 
 
 Mr. Gomme and Mr. Robert Guy, Glasgow, have read all the 
 proof sheets and revises, and have favoured me with many sug- 
 gestions. To Mr. Gomme I am, in common with all the other 
 members of the Folk-Lore Society, under great obligations for 
 unfailing courtesy ; but I trust he will allow me to bear special 
 testimony to his untiring desire to promote the best interests of 
 the study of Folk-Lore. The fault of any errors or mis-state- 
 ments must entirely rest upon myself; that there are such I 
 cannot but believe ; that there were not more is due to the care- 
 ful and valued criticism of Mr. Gomme and Mr. Guy. 
 
 WILLIAM GEORGE BLACK. 
 
 1, Alfred Terrace, Glasgow. 
 7th May, 1883. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. 
 J I. INTKODITCTION : OBIOIN OF DISEASE 
 
 J II. Transference of Disease , 
 
 4 III. Sympathy and Association of Ideas 
 
 IV. New Birth and Sacrifice .... 
 
 V. Our Lord and the Saints in Folk-Medicine . 
 VI. Charms connected with Death or the Grave 
 
 ^ VII. Colour 
 
 V Vin. (1) Number— (2) Influence of the Sun and Moon 
 ^ IX. Personal Cures ...... 
 
 ^ X. Animal Cures ...... 
 
 ^ XI. Specific Charms : (1) Magic Writings — (2) Rings 
 t XII. Domestic Folk-Medicine ..... 
 
 ^y XIII. The Place of Folk-Medicine in the Study of Civiliza. 
 
 TION ....... 
 
 1 
 
 34 
 
 49 
 
 65 
 
 75 
 
 95 
 
 108 
 
 118 
 
 136 
 
 148 
 
 165 
 
 178 
 
 204 
 
FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTEODtrCTION. 
 
 |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 woU 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. 
 
2 KOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 afBrm 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 voyages and tales, that it is easy to excuse even a man 
 interested in the 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, hke 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 burn 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 
 
INTEODUCTION. 3 
 
 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 
 chaiige 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, t 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 ad- 
 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 appears 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 Sttidy of Sociology, 7th edition, p. 105. 
 t lUd. p. 102. 
 
 b2 
 
4 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 be 
 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 modern 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^s de I'education, la 
 disposition naturelle a I'erreur, les fausses idees, la credulite, la 
 prevention pour I'antiquit^, I'autorite, I'exemple, et plusieurs 
 autres, que les dialectriciens connoissent," f 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 oflPered 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, Origin of Civilization, p. 29 j Gill, Mytlis and Songs from the 
 SoutJi Paoific, p. 35 ; Chapman, Travels in Africa, toI. i. p. 47 ; Philip 
 Sotith Africa, vol. i. p. 118 ; Cameron, Across Africa, vol. i. p. 116 ; Christian 
 Express (Lovedale, S.Africa,) October, 1878, p. 11. 
 
 ■f D'lharace, Ih-reurs populaires sw la Medecine, 1783, p. iu, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 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 spears, 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 sufferings," 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.! 
 The disease spirit having been thus created, we are not surprised 
 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.f 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, Folk-Lore of CUna, 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 Panchanana, the Five-faced, and 
 is punishing the child for insulting his image."— Tylor, Primitwe Oultwe, 
 vol. ii. p. 150. 
 
 t Tylor, Primitive Oultwe, vol. ii. pp. 113, 114, 116. 
 
 % Conway, JDemmology cmd Devil-Lore, vol. i. p. 98 ; Grimm, Deutsche 
 gie, vol. i. p. 123 j Stallybrass, vol. i. p. 149. 
 
6 rOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 false, may the child in my womb be born 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 bora, 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 dreadful a monster as that 
 which appeared in a dream to a Chinese emperor who flourished 
 about 700 A.D. One day when ho was ill, he dreamt he saw a 
 blue half-naked devil coming into his palace. He stole the 
 empress's perfume bag, and also the emperor's flute, which was 
 made of precious 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 one 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 buU. 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 n^ 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 hundred 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, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 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 off the goddess 
 of small pox. So too among the Betsohvaria, 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 Quadrupedibus 
 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 \7all 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."t 
 
 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. 
 
 * Dennys, Folh-Lore of China,, p. 84. 
 
 f Tylor, Primitive Culture, toI. ii. pp. 115, 116; South African Follt-Lore 
 Journal, vol. i. p. 34 ; Cockayne, LeeoMoms, vol. i. pp. 329-331. 
 
 % Grimm, DentscTie Mythologie, vol. ii. p. 989, et seg[. ; Tylor, Primitive 
 CitUure, vol. i. p. 267 ; 2 Samuel xxiv. 16 ; 2 Kings xix. 35. 
 
8 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 fiiries 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 reality — 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 difficult 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 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the Assyrians from the primitive population of Babylonia.* 
 Among the Finns, whose language resembles the agglutinative 
 language of the early 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 enchantes dans la 
 composition desquels ils faisaient entrer des substances reellement 
 pharmaceutiques ; ils ^taient les seuls medecins de la nation, "f 
 
 " Les Kirghises," says M. Lenormant, whose citations and 
 remarks on this point are particularly interesting, " s'addres- 
 sent de m^me d 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 etre 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 envoie Tchemen, d^mon dont le nom est une forme alt^r^e de 
 Schaitan. On retrouve a peu pres la meme opinion chez les 
 Tchouktchis ; ces sauvages ont recours, pour delivrer les 
 malades, aux plus bizarres conjurations. "| Grimm quotes 
 from a Finnish song, — " einen alten frau, neun knaben 
 geboren werden; werwolf, schlange, risi (?) eidechse, naeht- 
 mar, gliedschmerz, gichtschmerz, milzstechen, bauchgrimmen. 
 Diese krankheiten sind also gesohwister venderblicher uinge- 
 hauer ; in dem lied wird dann die letze derselben hervorgehoben 
 nnd beschworen."§ That a person was bewitched, however, 
 sometimes needed proof, but Cotta, in his Tryal of Witchcraft, 
 
 * Beoords of the Past, vol. i. p. 131 ; vol. iii. pp. 139, 147. 
 
 f Lenormant, La, Magii chez leg ChaUiens, p. 219 (quoting Lonnrot, Abliand- 
 lung uber die magisclie Mediom der Fkmen). 
 
 % Lenormant, IMd. p. 188 {LevcMne, Description des hordes et des steppes 
 des Xirghiz-Kazaks, pp. 356, 358 ; Nomelles Annales des Voyages, 5° serie, t. U. 
 
 p. 191). 
 § Grimm, Deutsche Mythdlogie, vol. ii. p. 972 ; Lenormant, iii(?.pp. 232,233. 
 
10 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 inefficacy 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.-f 
 
 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 diseases. 
 Dr. William Eamsay, a court physician of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, 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 leute Wiirmer, those who " in 
 den menschen krankheiten verursachen." The connection 
 
 * Cited by Spalding, Mizaietkan Demonology, p. 64. 
 
 t Hodgson, Abor. of India, p. 170, cited by Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i. 
 pp. 114, 115, 378, 278-9. 
 
 X Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii.pp. 115,196; Eamsay's EX/iij-SoXoyia, p. 79 
 (1668). Eamsay supports Ms theory with many quaint tales, citing Boisardus, 
 De Divinatione, Sec. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 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 
 deity 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 thirsty, 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."$ 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, DffutsoJie MytTiologie, vol. ii. p. 968. Taylor, iVeji) 
 Zealand and its Inhabitants, p. 34. Lubbock, Origin of Oimlization, p. 30. 
 
 t Records of the Past, vol. iii. p. 140. 
 
 J Mason, Karens, in Jow. As. 8oc. Bengal, 1866, 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 
 blitzersehlagnen preisen die Osseten gliicklich und glauben, Elias (Ilia) habe ihn 
 zu sich genommen ; die hinterblieben erheben freudengeschrei, singen und tanzen 
 um den leichnam, alles stromt herzu, scUiesst sich dem reihen an und singt : ' O 
 Ellai, EUal eldaer tschoppei' (O Elias, Elias, herr derfelsengipfel)." — Grimm, 
 Deutsche Mythologie, vol. i. p. 145. Stallyirass, vol. i, p. 174. 
 
1 2 FOLK-MBDICINE. 
 
 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. Frlihmorgens zahlt 
 man alle striche auf der asche, und stillschweigends, ohne unter- 
 wegs zu griissen, hintenbringt sie einer der klugen frau, dienun 
 mittel versehreibt," and " in der asche driicken sich die spuren 
 der geiste ab, wie man auch den erdmannlein asche streut.''^ 
 
 Some tribes of Indians have tried to appease the anger of 
 oflfended 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 Eoman deities by the identification of 
 
 * Strcmge Stories from a Chinese Studio, vol. ii. p. 131. 
 
 t Grimm, Deutsche MytTiologie, vol. ii. p. 975. Tor another use of ashes 
 " wenn man erkennen soli dass einer bezaubert sey," see Joh. Agrioola in 
 Cliirurg. par. v. p. 671, quoted in Martins, Be Magica Naturali, p. 40. 
 
 t Franklin, Journey to the Polar Sea, vol. ii. p. 216 ; Tylor, Primitive Old- 
 twe, vol. ii. p. 192 ; Notes and Queries, 1st S. vol, iii. p. 387 ; CJwice Notes 
 (^FoVi-Lore'),-^, 7. 
 
 § Dalyell, Barher Superstitions of Scotland, p. 304 ; Hibhert, Shetland 
 Islands, p. 431. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 the Virgin Mary with the highest virtues of the ancient queens 
 of Heaven. " La plus grande partie de la magie du moyen 
 %e," says Lenormant, " a ce caractere et perp^tue les rites popu- 
 laires et superstitieux du paganisme, a I'^tat d'op^rations myste- 
 rieuses et diaboliques de sorcellerie." This is seen all over the 
 world, as in Ceylon since the conversion of the island to Budd- 
 hism, " les anciens dieux du civaisme sont 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 even those natural diseases better than 
 physicians 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 under head § xix. " magia effectorea est admiran- 
 dorum operum realium, auxilio Diaboliproductio," discriminates 
 as follows : — 
 
 " Est autem ilia ipsa, respectu subjectorum circa quse occu- 
 pata est, partim utilis, partim inutilis s. noxia, quamvis utraque 
 ad hominum tarn temporalem quam aetemam tendat perniciem. 
 Ad priorem classem spectat curatio vulnerum, morborum, 
 abactio Spectrorum (wenn ein Teufel den andern austreibet) 
 aliorumque malorum averruncatio. Ad posteriorem, tempesta- 
 
 * Lenormant, Z» Magie cjiez les Clialdeens, pp. 69-70. 
 
14 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 turn horrendarum ventorumque tumultuantium exeitatio, frugum 
 perditio, hominum pecorumque Isesio, &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 
 part 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,' ' 111 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 Physioa emhihens ; i. Doctrinam de Magia, ii. 
 Thearemata Miscellanea, 1661. See Ramsay, E\/iti/So\oyta, pp. 54 et sec^. 
 
 t Lichtenstein, Travels in 8. Africa, vol. ii. p. 266 j Stevenson, Travels in S. 
 America, yoI. i. p. 60; Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, pp. 32, 224, 371. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 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 
 that 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 favourite one. 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 " I'esprit 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. Often 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 
 
 * Laneasliire Folk-lore, p. 164 ; Journal Anthropological Institute, toI, iii. 
 p. 267. See also Gregor's Folli-Lore of NorthrEast of Scotland, p. 35. 
 f Lenormant, La Magie eJiez les CTialdeens, p. 222. 
 
16 FOLK-MEDIOINE. 
 
 to crawl from the grave of a bewitched man in the direction 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 supernatural. 
 
 Something which has belonged to the person on whom magic 
 is to be practised being obtained, a rag of his clothes, a nail- 
 paring, 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 chiefs 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 tuhu, and thence, of course, 
 on repeated entreaty, passes naturally into the first owner of the 
 tuhu. 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, Across Africa, toI i. p. 116 ; Oldfield. Tr. Etli. See. vol. iii. p. 246, 
 quoted by Tyler, Primitive Oultwe, vol. i. p. 106. 
 
 t Williams, Polynesian Researclies, vol. ii. p. 228 ; Lubbock, Origin of 
 Civilization, p. 245 ; Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 129. 
 
INTRODUCTION, 17 
 
 become bald. And why ? With the light we receive from the 
 superstitions of other nations we can look further, 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 V^I. 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 themes or endis of needles."! 
 
 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- 
 t ccerer was burning his rubbish (nahak), and shell trumpets, 
 wihich 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." t 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, Da/rlier Superstitions, p. 365. 
 t Pitcaim, I. ii. 218 ; Spalding, Eliiabethan Demonology, pp. 113, 114. 
 % Turner, Polynesia, pp. 18, 19, 424 ; Tylor, Marly History of Mankind, p. 128. 
 
 C 
 
18 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 besought to stop their incantations by blowing of trumpets, but 
 another conception is probably involved. We can seldom be 
 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 
 shell, 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 following 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 suffering from a swollen face. 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 us 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, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 19 
 
 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 expelled 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 be always secure in their command of the supernatural. A 
 Tauna rubbish burner sometimes discovers that an enemy is 
 burning Ms 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 afHict me thus 
 because I let out their secrets. Henceforth I shall never divulge 
 them again !' " 
 
 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- 
 
 * la China children wear bells with a conciliatory purpose, because when once 
 upon a time a rash ofScial ordered the tabooed bell of Canton to be rung, a thou- 
 sand male and female infants died within the city before the sound had died 
 away, therefore bells are to be worn by infants that the tingle may conciliate 
 the dreadful bell-demon. — Dennys, Folh-lore of China, p. 37. 
 
 C2 
 
20 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 
 punee, 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 Unquendi 
 et inimicitiis preeviis."* Nothing is more common in the trials of 
 the seventeenth century than such accusations against the un- 
 happy woman who came before the court. Full details will be 
 found in the case of Sir George Maxwell of PoUok-f 
 
 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, f 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 WitcTies of Renfrevesliire, 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." 
 
INTKODDCTION. 21 
 
 knocked to pieces ; and the third time, a wooden imago. The 
 editor, in a note, says, " Taoist priests are generally credited 
 with the power of cutting out human, animal, or other figures, 
 of infusing vitality 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 invidi^ malignl reddit^ 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 Caldeleugh 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 it.f 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, strange Stories from, a Chinese Studio, vol. i. pp. 49-61. 
 
 t Citing many authors. — Martins, p. 38. 
 
 J Dennys, Folh-lore of China, p. 49 ; Caldeleugh, 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, -p. 12. "Some persons eies are very offensive: non 
 possum dicere quare ; there is aliquid divinum in it, more than every one under- 
 stands." — Aubrey, Remains of Gentilisme {Folh-Lore Society's ed.), p. 80. 
 
22 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 some years back, Sir, a maast flourishin' tree. Ivvry mornin', 
 as soon as he first oppans the door, that he may not cast his e'e on 
 onny yan passin' by, 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 
 friend by a spiteful old woman. He had dismissed her son, a 
 good-for-nothing lout, and as she, in revenge, overlooked his 
 churn 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 the 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 Red coral was among the Romans, 
 as among ourselves, tied round the neck of infants to protect them 
 
 * Carr, Oi'aven Olossaiij, vol. i. p. 137, cited by Harlaud and Wilkinson, 
 LaneasMre Folk-lore, p. 69 (foot-note). 
 
 t Mrs. P., 30 October, 1879 ; Baring Gonld, Life tf Rev. R. S. Sanher, p. 
 152. Reference most here specially be made to the second part of Mr. Story's 
 
INTRODUCTION. 23 
 
 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 dwining, 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 caiTy, 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, whicli 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, Folh-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, Folh-lore of North-EaBt of 
 Scotland, p. 8. 
 
24 FOLK-MEDICINE, 
 
 suspected witch who was scored above the mouth, and that, 
 unfortunately for her, with a horseshoe, till the blood came. 
 The Edinburgh Annual 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 hved 
 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 healing up is of a truth hindered, f 
 
 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 arriA^al 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 Athole 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 gi'adual 
 
 * Hdinbivrgli Annual Reguter, 1814, chronicle portion, p. cxxxi. ; Napier, 
 FoVinLore, p. 37 ; Glasgow Weekly Herald, August 5, 19, 26, 1876. 
 t Trial of Jonet Irving, 6 March, 1616 ; Bea. Ork. f. 60 j Dalyell, p. 7. 
 j Martius, p. 38, quoting Joh. Agricola. 
 § Seton, St. Kilda, Past and Present, 1878, pp. 228, 229. 
 
JNTBODDCTION. 25 
 
 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'Aeunha 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, The JVaturalist on the Biver Amazon ; ■ Cruise of H.M.S 
 Galatea, cited by Mr. Seton, pp. 232, 233. 
 
26 FOLK-MEDICmE. 
 
 arose from dread of the 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 dishke of 
 spirits of lepers, beggars, and other outcasts. " Selon las 
 Tch^remisses," Hexthausen (quoted by Lenormant) says, " lea 
 3.mes 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, clones ainsi dans leur tombe, ils n'en pourront 
 sortir." t 
 
 In Madagascar, among the S^kalava, 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 dweltf 
 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. Kose, of 
 Peacedale, Rhode Island, who in the previous year dug up the 
 body of his own daughter, and burned her heart, because, it 
 was behoved, she was wasting away the lives of other members 
 of his family. The people of Morzine, in Savoy, in 1857, 
 
 * CastrSn, 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 ; Hexthausen, Mvdes sur la situation 
 int&rieure de la Russie, t. i. p. 419 ; Lenormant, La Magie ohez les Chaldeens, 
 pp. 187, 188 ; Folk-Lore Record, vol. ii. p. 41. Vampire stories are also illus- 
 trative of this superstition, 
 
INTEODUCTION. 27 
 
 believed themselves to be actually possessed by the spirits of 
 dead persons whilst they suffered the epidemic called hystero- 
 demonapathy.* The natives of the Transvaal, after mutilating, 
 roasting, and partially eating the body of an enemy, mix blood 
 and clay and smear their faces 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 
 threshold. Passing over a hidden grave was said, in Aberdeen- 
 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 wiU also be with the dead before the year is 
 out. Ulster men also speak of dead men's pinches, small dis- 
 coloured marks on the skin, resembling pinches or bruises, 
 which come in the night in some mysterious way.f 
 
 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. 52 ; CornMU Magazine, 
 April 1865, " The Devils of Morzine." 
 
 t Oi/ristian Express (South Africa), January, 1879, « Transvaalia," by Rev. 
 A. Kropf, p. 8 ; Tylor, Primitive Oultwre, vol. li. p. 175. 
 
 % Gregor, Folh-lore of NoHTi-East of SeotUnd, 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 a grave," &c. Madagascar Revisited, p. 271 ; FollirLore Record, vol. 11. p. 43. 
 
28 rOLK-MEDICINB. 
 
 " 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 the 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 
 drowned, 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 regards 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-spii-it is a rash defiance of deity which 
 would hardly pass unavenged. $ He regards the drowning man 
 as an otfering to the spirit of the sea, or river, or lake ; a spirit 
 
 * Turner, History of the Most Remarhahle Providences, Lond. 1677, p. 77, 
 cited in JVotes and Queries, 1st S. vol. ii. p. 4. 
 
 f Dennys, Folh-Lore of Chma, p. 22 ; see also Giles, Strange Stories from a 
 Chinese Ltudio, Tol. ii. p. 200. 
 
 J Tylor, Primitive CfuUnre, vol. i, pp. 97-99, 
 
INTEODUCTION. 29 
 
 which, if not propitiated in some such manner, 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 every 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 Chinese, 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, 
 refased to aid Mordaunt in saving the sailor from drowning, 
 " Are you mad," he said, " you that have lived sae lang ni 
 Zetland, to risk tJie 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 Acootmt of Sootlamd, Tol. xiv. p. 210. 
 
30 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 w^ho 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 funeral a fi-ee fight took place between the two 
 parties of fi-iends, each desiring that its corpse should be the 
 first to enter the graveyard, since it was behoved that the last 
 buried would have to act as servitor to the other {i.e. the /aire 
 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 modern 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 balaSeedJiy a wart on the thumb of the left hand, care 
 should evidently be taken. So, too, if one treads on himgry 
 grass — which is said to grow up where persons dining in a 
 field have not thrown some of the fi-agments to the fairies — 
 he will be seized with what the Irish call feargartha or fair- 
 gurtka, hungry disease, an intolerable hunger and weakness-l 
 
 * JVem Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. xxi. p. 114. 
 
 t Folk-lore of tlie West of Scotland, p. 63. 
 
 + W. H. P. (Belfast), 26 October, 1878 j Folh-Lore Mecord, vol. iv. p. 109. 
 
INTKODUCTION. 3 1 
 
 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 
 spirit, f 
 
 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 he 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 thankftd spared can go about his work with 
 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, Folh-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. 
 % Giles, Strange Stories, vol. i. p. 189. 
 § "Wirt Sykes, British GoUim, pp. 355-6. 
 
32 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 Romanus 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 yon 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 you f eede ; 
 Burne Francomsence (a gum not evil sented). 
 
 Put Henbane unto this, and Onyon seed. 
 And with a tunnel to the tooth that's hollow, 
 
 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, Compendiwn JEristoriari0ii,t. ii.p. 625, cited inDalyell's Darlier 
 Superstitions of Scotland, pp. 365, 366. 
 
 t " The Englishman's Doctor j or, the School of Saleme," Notes and Queries, 
 5th S, vol. vi. p. 97. The Latin runs, 
 
 " Sic dentes serva, porrorum collige grana, 
 Ne careas jure (thure ?) cum hyoscyamo nre, 
 Sicque per embotnm fumum cape dente remotum." 
 
 Vv. 240-2. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 33 
 
 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 Beisht (a 
 beast), Bdshtyn, is used for the toothache, " from the opinion that 
 the pain arose from an animal in the tooth," and in Gaelic 
 cnuimh, a worm, gives half the name of toothache, which is 
 cnuimh jhiacall* The remedies for " toothworms " 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 burn 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 suflPerers conse- 
 quently receive little sympathy. 
 
 * Choice JVotes {Folh-Lore), p. 62 ; Notes and Queries, 5th S. vol. v. pp. 2i, 
 155, 476 ; vol. vi. p. 97 ; Folh-Lore Record, vol. ii. p. 36 ; Kelly, Mawc Bic- 
 tionwry ; McLeod and Dewar, Gaelic Dictionary ; Shortland, Traditions and 
 /Superstitions of the New Zealanders, pp. 108-110. 
 
 t Cockayne, Saxon Leechdoms, vol. ii. p. 51. For instances of this supersti- 
 tion, see also Derhysliire Gatherer, p. 204. 
 
 D 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 TRANSFERENCE OF DISEASE. 
 
 JHEN disease was recognised, though tardily, to have 
 positive existence, and the fact reahsed 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 paius 
 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.f To inhale the cold breath of a duck 
 
 * " Per qnam Naturae peritus morbnm mediis Ileitis ex homine aliorsnm trans- 
 fert, ut sanitas exinde sequatur." — Martins, p. 27. / 
 
 f "Sunt occulti interaneorum morbi, de quibus mirujai proditur. Si catuli, prius- 
 quam videant, appliceutur triduo stomacho maxime ac peetori et ex ore aegri suc- 
 tum lactis aceipiant, transire vim morbi, postremo/exanimari dissectisqne palam 
 fieri aegri causas." " Quod praeterea traditur in torminibus mirnm est, anate 
 apposita ventri transire morbum anatemque einori." — Pliny, 30, 7. " So hat 
 man noch bis in den letzten jahrhnnderten junge welfe angelegt und saugen 
 lassen."— Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, vol. ii. p. 980. See also vol. iii. p. 34,S. 
 
TEANSFERENCE OF DISEASE. 35 
 
 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 ease 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.f 
 
 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, SuperHitions connected ivith the Practice of Medicme and 
 Surgery, p. 77. Madame de Scudery mentions a similar cure for fever in a letter 
 of date 20 October, 1677, to the Comte de Bussy. Speaking of an abbe of fame, 
 " On dit qn'il ne fait que prendre pour toutes figvres de Purine des malades dans 
 laquelle il fait dnrcir un oenf hors de sa coque, apres quoi il le donne a manger a 
 un clmn <iui prend en mSme terns lafiivre du malade, qui par ce moien en guerit. 
 C'est un question de fait que je n'ay pas eprouvS." — Notes and Queries, 5th S. 
 Tol. viii. p. 126. 
 
 t Pettigrew, p. 78. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 (1.875)," 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, Lecolidoms, vol. i. p. xxx. ; Jour. Srit. Arch. Assoc, vol. xxxiv^ 
 p. 328 ; "W. H. 7 September, 1880 ; Kev. G. S. S. 24 November, 1878. 
 
TRANSFERENCE OP DISEASE, 37 
 
 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 ; (h) 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, immediately 
 the torments returned sharper than before." Urimm 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 aun lass mich !' 
 
 * Jfotes a7id Queries, Sth S. vol. ix. p. 64 ; vol. iii. p. 345 ; gee also Hender- 
 son's FoVi-LoTe of the Northern Counties, p. 141. 
 
38 FOLK-MEDCCINE. 
 
 * Hollerast hebe dich auf, rothlauf setze dich drauf, ich hab dich 
 einen tag, habe dus jabr 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 fijllowing 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 yarn, 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 sti'ing, then to slip his hand out of the 
 knot, and run into the house without looking behind him.l 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, Usefulness of Hxperimental Philosophy, pp. 226, 227 ; Pettigrew, 
 p. 77 ; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, toI. ii. p. 979. 
 
 t A common prohibition, see Herbarvum, Apuleii; Cockayne, Lecchdoms, vol. i. 
 p. 99. 
 
 X Miss C. F. G. (Rocliester, U.S A.),28 November, 1879. 
 
 § Science Gossip, 1865, p. 85 ; Folk-Lore Record, toI. i. p. 158, 
 
TEANSFERENCE OF DISEASE. 39 
 
 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 thiat possibly the beams first so em- 
 ployed were of oak ; some say that to drive a nail into an oak 
 tree is sufiicient 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 An 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 Magia, p. 32 ; Gf. Daniel Beceri, Microcosm, Med. lib. i. c. 14, 
 pp. 75, et seq. 
 f Tylor, Prvmitive Guliwre, vol. ii. p. 137. 
 
40 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 Dayaeks, 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 bpshes, and from the same spot 
 to take another, which has been left there from the same motives 
 by a previous visitor and sufferer. 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 
 
 * Journey to Persia, p. 230. 
 
TRANSFERENCE OF DISEASE. 41 
 
 same nature, may perhaps serve 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.t 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 cliarm 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 country 
 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 (i.e. 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 Witches of Renfrmshire, p. xxiii. 
 t W. H. P. (Belfast), 6 November, 1878. 
 
42 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 version bids the suflPerer wrap up in a parcel as many grains of 
 
 barley as there are warts, and lay the parcel on the public road. 
 
 Whoever finds and opens it receives the warts. A stiU simpler 
 
 plan is to go to a point where four roads meet, lift a stone, 
 
 rub the warts with the dust from below the stone, repeating the 
 
 words — 
 
 " A'm ane, the wart's twa, 
 The first ane it comes by 
 Tacks the waits awa'." 
 
 The warts will soon vanish.* In Shietland a person affected 
 
 with ringworm takes on three successive mornings ashes between 
 
 the forefinger and thumb, before taking food, and, while holding 
 
 them to the part affected, says — 
 
 " Ringworm, ringworm red I 
 Never mayst thou spread or speed 
 But aye grow less and less 
 And die away among the ase (asliei).^ 
 
 There seems here no intention of transferring the ringworm 
 to any other person, but simply that the ashes may in some way 
 receive and dispose 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 Foih-Lore, p. 157 ; Hunt, Rmnances 
 and Drolls, second series, p. 211 ; Gregor, Folh-Lore of North-East of Scot- 
 land, p. 48. 
 
 t Choice Notes ( Fblk-Lm'c), p. 38. 
 
 + But this possibly from a sympathetic feeling, that as the apple decays the 
 warts will go. 
 
 § Wirt Sikes, British Goblins, p. 352. 
 
 II Dyer, English Folk-Lore, p. 171. 
 
TRANSFERENCE OF DISEASE. 43 
 
 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 j 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 
 crept 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's 
 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 successful ? ' 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' suffijred 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 her 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 follow.f In Donegal, the 
 words are preceded by throwing a stone after the corpse in the 
 
 * " Fairj' Superstitions in Donegal," Vhiv. Mag. Aug. 1879, pp. 2U, 215. 
 + Dyer, English Folk-Lore, p. 167. 
 
44 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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.t 
 
 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 was 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 
 Eobert Kerr " was maid haill."| 
 
 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. 
 
 * Border Mag. August, 1863, "Wart and "Wen Cures," and Folh-Lore Record, 
 vol. i. p. 223. See also Choice Notes {Fulli^Lore), p. 261 ; Aubrey, p. 118. 
 f Hunt, Homwnoes and Broils, second series, p. 210. 
 j Dalyell, Darker Supe^'stitions of Scotland, pp. 104, 105. 
 
TRANSFEKENCE OF DISEASE. 45 
 
 Katherlne 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 oat, to a dog, may be found in the witch 
 prosecutions of the time. 
 
 One instance given by Dalyell, 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 Ooupar, 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 Weill, 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 saiffed.' " 
 Nothing could be clearer than this. The madness of the 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 River settlement, on the Eastern fron- 
 tier of Cape Colony, according to a correspondent of Notes and 
 Queries, in order to cure the bite of a snake, pluck a few 
 
46 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 the 
 following account of the various observances which an epileptic 
 patient has to go through at St. Tegla's Well, halfway between 
 Wrexham and Euthin, shows. The patient repairs to the well 
 after sunset, and washes himself in it ; then, having made an 
 offering by throwing into the water fourpence, 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 the birds staggering about from the 
 effects of the fits which had been transferred to them.f 
 
 * Dyer, English Fnlh-Lore, p. 137. 
 
 t AroJi. Camb. first series, vol. i. p. 184, quoted in British Goblins, p. 329.- 
 
 % Wirt Sikes, British Goblins, p. 350. 
 
TRANSFERENCE OF DISEASE. 47 
 
 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 
 off 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, Fulh-Lore of North- East of Scotland, p. 187. 
 t Lancashire Folli-Lore, p. 79. 
 
48 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 different 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. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 SYMPATHr AND ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 
 
 N Australia, according to the accounts of some 
 travellers, a native doctor, v^hen his aid is sought 
 by a sick man, fasteiis one end of a string to the 
 part of the patient's body which appears to be the 
 seat of suffering, 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 
 2Tie 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 offers 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 
 
60 FOLK-MBDIOINE. 
 
 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 royal crown. " Man," as Mr. Tylor 
 has said, " as 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."| 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, Letter's and Notes on the Mannerg, Customs, and Condition of tlw 
 North Aitierican Indian, vol. ii. p. 92. 
 
 t Dennys, FoUt-Lore of China, p. 52 ; Folk-Lore Record, vol. ii. " Malagasy 
 Folk-Lore," p. 21. 
 
 J Tylor, Primitive Oiiltnre, vol. i. p. 104 ; see also p. T6. 
 
SYMPATHY AND ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 5 1 
 
 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 Gitanilla, 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 §hare 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 leeohes 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.J It is a little 
 startling to find that in 1866, at Bradwell, a woman stated at 
 
 * Cited in Dyer's English Folk-Lore, p. 144. 
 
 t Hunt, Momances and Broils, second series, p. 215. A versified proverb runs — 
 " The beauteons adder hath a sting, 
 Vet bears a balsam too." 
 Krom this, viper bugloss (^Echivm vulgare), from its supposed resemblance to a 
 snake, was thought to be effectual against bites. — Annie Pratt, Wild Mmvers, 
 vol. i. p. 62. 
 % Dennys, FoVh-Lore of China, p. 51. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 FOLK-MEDICINB. 
 
 the inquest held on the body of a child of five years of age, who 
 had died from hydrophobia, that, at the 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 something 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 case, 
 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 off or 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 Gaxette, October 12, 1866. 
 
SYMPATHY AND ASSOCIATION OP IDEAS. 53 
 
 says Pettigrew, " is to be traced back to the time of Paracelsus, 
 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 be 
 lost, the patient was in the lowest depth of misery from the ex- 
 cessive pain he sufiered, 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 he 
 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 Kenelm 
 asked next for a basin of water as if he would wash his hands, 
 and into this he put a handful of the powder he kept in the 
 cabinet on his table, and when it was dissolved he added the 
 piece of blood-stained cloth. 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 
 
54 FOLK-MEUICINB. 
 
 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 hare done it. 
 Anoint the sword which pierced him with this weapon salve, and wrap it 
 close from air, till I have time to visit him again." 
 
 And in the next scene (sc. 2, act v.) the following dialogue 
 ensues between Hippolito and Miranda — 
 
 HiPPOLlTO : O, my wound pains me. 
 MiEANDA : I am come to ease yon. (^She immraps tlie sword.) 
 Hip. i Alas ! I feel the cold air come to me ; 
 
 My wound shoots worse thap ever. (^S7ie roipes and anoints the 
 smord.) 
 Miranda : Does it still grieve yon ? 
 
 Hip. : Now methinks there's something 
 Laid just npon it. 
 Miranda : Do you find no ease ? 
 
 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 
 
SYMPATHY AND ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 55 
 
 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 io 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, Swperstitions oomieoted mtli tlie Practice of Medicine and 
 Sv/rgery, p. 163. 
 
56 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 were formerly in the habit of paring the nails of the fingers and 
 toes of persons suffering from hectic and consumptive diseases. 
 The parings were put in a rag cut from the patient's clothes, 
 and waved three times round Iiis head, with the cry Deas soil. 
 After this the rag was buried in some unknown place. Among 
 medical men, " the Galenist 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. 72-75 ; Boyle, Usefulness of Experimental 
 PMlosoj)hy, 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 Folk-Lore, p. 78. The practice is com- 
 mon in England. 
 
SYMPATHY AND ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 57 
 
 find more cruelly, to cure ague, string nine or eleven snails on 
 a thread, the patient sajdng, 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 
 authority 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 Souli 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 sufferer 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 sufierer 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 
 
 * Eev. G. S. S. 16 October, 1878. 
 
 t Eev. G. S. S. ; English FolTi^Lore, p. 165 ; FoVc-Lm-e Reeord, vol. i. p. 221 ; 
 Miss E. S. 8 March, 1879. 
 
58 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 tlirow stone and stick privately into a pond, which should be 
 left 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 burns, let the ague burn 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.f 
 
 " In time of common contagion," says Sir Kenelm 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 Choicr Notes (JPolh-Lore), p. 36. 
 
SYMPATHY AND ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS, 59 
 
 not go far wrong if we conclude that it is to the older explana- 
 tion that the more modern 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 teU 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 beliefs. 
 
 First, of spiders. Burton says he first saw the spider cure 
 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 I Beware of the fever ! 
 For it is not, like that of our cold Acadian climate. 
 Cured by wearing a spider hung round one's neck in a nutshell." 
 
 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 
 
60 FOLK-MEDICINB. 
 
 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 
 Gratias!" 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 Notes 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." f In the 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, Tol. i. p. XXX. At p. 43, vol. iii. there is another spider chann. It 
 is an incantation against a watery eruption, and was to he 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 Notes and Queries, 2nd S. vol. iii. p. 437. 
 
SYMPATHY AND ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 61 
 
 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.| 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-Lore, p. 95 ; Folh-Lore Reom'd, vol. i. p. 45 ; Miss C. T. G. 
 Nov. 1879. 
 
 t Dyer, English Folh-Lore, p. 154. 
 
 t Miss E. S. 8 March, 1879. 
 
 § " Fairy Superstitions in Donegal," University Magazine, August, 1879, p. 
 219 ; Lancashire Folh-Lore, p. 156. 
 
62 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 many of his patients.* The following account of a cure in the 
 middle of the last century is quaint — " A ^irl at Graddesden, 
 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 cure 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 Graddesden 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 roimd 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 and Queries, 5th S. vol. iv. p. 83. 
 
 f Choice Notes {Folh-Lore), p. 22, from the quaint old work by William 
 Ellis, farmer, at Little Gaddesden, near Hempstead, Herts, published at Salisbury 
 in 1750. Cf. Digby, A Late Dlsoowse touching the Cwi-e of Wounds, S{c., p. 77. 
 
SYMPATHY AND ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 63 
 
 forelegs of a mole, and one of its hind legs, in a bag to secure 
 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 born in the first years of this cen- 
 ' tury, said, " My grandmother was that afHicted 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. ' Grood 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 pm'est 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 iEthiopicus," were 
 much used internally, as well as externally, in cases of dropsy 
 
 • Choice Notes, p. 10 ; Notes and Queries, 6th S. vol. iv. p. 184 ; Dyer, 
 English Folh-Lore, pp. 156, 175. 
 
 t Sir Thomas Browne, Yvlgar Hrrors, 1658, p. 2ii ; Gregor, FolTi-Lore of 
 No^-th-Mast of Scotland, p. Hi. 
 
 X "Fairy Superstitions in Donegal," University Magazine, August, 1879, 
 p. 21i. 
 
 § Martins, p. 32. 
 
64 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 and small-pox. Laid on the back of the neck alivCj or dried, 
 they were supposed to stop bleeding at the nose.* 
 
 Although, as Dalyell 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 figm-e are bm-ned. 
 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, Pizzurnus 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, Pharmaoopmia ; Pettigrew, p. 783 ; Cf . Boyle, Mxperimental Philo- 
 sophy, vol. i. p. 215 (quoting Henricus de Heer, Oiserv. Medio, oppido. rarif. ■ 
 p. 191). 
 
 f Doolittle, Chinese,\ol. i. p. 152 ; DaljeW, DarJter Superstitions, pp. 335, 361 ; 
 Sprenger, Malleus Malefioarum-, p. 11. q. 1. e. 12, p. 314 ; Pizzurnus, Enchiridion 
 Exoraisticum, lib. i. p. hi. c. 5, p. 54 ; " In modern India the pilgrim coming for 
 cure wUl 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. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 NEW BIKTH AND SACRIFICE. 
 
 T a period of the world's history, of which we know 
 only that it must hare 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 afficted 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 diificult to 
 disprove as, T venture to think, it would be to establish. 
 
 For the spiritual new birth, as practised by the Hindus, it is 
 
66 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 yoni, 
 through which the person to be regenerated may go. Per- 
 forated rocks are considered as emblems of yoni, 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 day in 
 Cornwall, at the " holed stone," near the village of Lanyon. 
 Through this M^n-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 affiicted 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.^ 
 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, Sindu Mythology, pp. 151, 175. 
 f Hunt, Romanaeti and Drolls, first series, p. 191. 
 
 J Jov/rnal of Brit. Aroh. Assoc. toI. xxxiii. art. " On some Megalithic Monu- 
 ments in Western Cornwall," pp. 295, 296. 
 § Hid. art. " Notes on the Mfin-an-tol and Chywoon Quoit, Cornwall," p. 176. 
 II Hunt, first series, pp. 191-192. 
 
NEW BIRTH AND SACRIFICE. 67 
 
 relief from sickness and disease is that mentioned by White in 
 his Natural History of Selhorne. In a farmyard near the 
 middle of Selborne, 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 sympathetic 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 it.f So, too, in Corn- 
 
 * White, Natural History of Selhorne, 1789, p. 202. 
 
 t Reports and Trans, of Devonshire Assoc. 1876, viii. p. 54 ; see also 
 G-entlemari's Mag. Oct. 1804; Brand, Popular Antiquities, p. 737 ; Pettigrew, 
 s, p. 75. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 > FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 
 
 * Follt-Lore Record, vol. i. p. 40. 
 t Grimm, Deutsche Mytliologie, vol. ii. p. 976. 
 
 J FoUirLore Record, vol. i. p. 43 j also Henderson, Folk-Lore of the Northern 
 CovMties (1879), p. 17. 
 § Notes and Queries. Cth S. vol. i. p. 16. 
 
NEW BIRTH AND SACKIFICE. 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 
 efifected, 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 transmission, was practised near 
 Bushire, 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, History of the Promnce of Moray (1827), p. 282, cited in Dalyell, 
 Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 121. 
 t Dalyell, p. 121. 
 J Gregor, FollirLore of NortTi-Haxt of Scotland, p. 124. 
 
 Dalyell, p. 394. 
 II Notes and Queries, 5th S. vol. xi. p. 6. 
 
70 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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-born, 
 he is passed seven times from one side to the other, while the 
 operators repeat these lines — 
 
 " In bramble, out cough, 
 Here I leave the whooping-cough." 
 
 " I have not a doubt," writes an Essex correspondent, " that 
 should whooping-cough make its appeai'ance here to-morrow, 
 the next day the victims would be subjected to the above treat- 
 ment."! In tlie 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 
 Oroker went through. | 
 
 It is a fact, which could, if need were, be proved from 
 many provincial stories, that sacrifice remains imbedded in 
 oar folk-lore. In order to avoid 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 FolJi-Lore, p. 171 j trans- 
 actions of Devonshire Association, 1877, vol. ix. p. 96 j Eev. 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. 
 
 I Croker, Legends of Killarney, p. 46. 
 
NEW BIRTH AND SACRIFICE. 71 
 
 Sickness, prosperity and misfortune ; the meaning desired to be 
 conveyed in this offering 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 with 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 offerings 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 doubtful 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 doTvn 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 
 
72 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 in its conception an offering 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 offerings 
 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 
 dreadful, 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 burnt-offering. 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 JEsculapius, 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 corners 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 
 
NEW BIRTH AND SACRIFICE. 73 
 
 cut 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. 3i (or Stallybrass, vol. i. p. 41); Dennya, pp. 68, 69; 
 "Romance of Chinese Social Life," Temple Bar, Jnly, 1880, p. 319; Dyer, Englisli 
 Folh-Lore, p. 93 ; Dalyell, p. 86 ; Levens, 1664, Patlmay to Health, cited in 
 Notes and Queries, 1st S. vol. ii. p. 435; Mitchell, Past m the Present, pp. 146, 
 265, 274. 
 
74 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 Romans. 
 
 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 
 sufferings. 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, f 
 
 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, fiesh, or 
 liver," &c.| 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 Queries, 5tli S. vol. vii. p. 37 ; vol. vi. pp. 
 424, 185 ! Grimm, vol. ii. p. 986. 
 
 f Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. ii. p. 29, citing 
 Mitchell, Superstitions of North- West Highlands; Gregor, p. 186. 
 
 % Grimm, vol. i. p. 37 (or Stallybrass, vol. i. p. 46) j Cockayne, vol. i. p. xvii. 
 
 § Follt^Lore Journal, S. Africa, vol. i. pp. 35, 36 (Rev. Roger Price on Tlie 
 Ceremony of Diphehu). 
 
 II Tylor, Primitive Oultwe, vol. ii. pp. 363-365. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 OUB LORD AND THE SAINTS IN FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 j|T would be wrong to charge our forefatliers, 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 offered 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 through God's wark. 
 
 And must be laid through God's help ; 
 
 The mother Mary, and her dear Son, 
 
 Lay thir soirs that are begun."* 
 
 * Domestic Annals of Sootland, vol. i. p. 323. 
 
76 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 river Jordan. 
 The river stood, 
 So shall thy blood. 
 
 {Namie of person.') 
 In the name of the Father," &c. 
 
 or in prose : " Jesus that was in Bethleem born, 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 + , and of thy Cosyn 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 river Jordan ; 
 There He digg'd a well. 
 And turned the water against the hill, 
 So shall thy 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 Grod. 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 and Broils, second series, pp. 209-214 ; Brand, Popular 
 Antiqmties, p. 729. 
 
OUR LORD AND THE SAIKTS IN FOLK-MEDICINE. 77 
 
 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 thou cut, what thou cuttest, 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 poptJar 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 ? 
 Pain 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 Petter 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 Queries, 
 says that he once endeavoured to combat the general belief of 
 country folks that this charm is in the Bible. He said, in 
 
 * La/ncaslvlre 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." 
 
78 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 Reverence, that 
 is just the charm. Ifs in the Bible, but you cwiHt find it." 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 south-countryman, living 
 in a glen some twenty miles 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 inquiiy, 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. • 
 
 w^as 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 Mlk-Zore, p. 76 (citing Carr's Gloua/ry, vol. ii. p. 264) ; Hunt, 
 Romances and Drolls, second series, p. 215 ; Choice JVotes {Folk-Lore'), pp. 
 62, 168 ; Journal of the British Arohaologieal 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," — 
 FoVi-Lore Beoord, vol. i. p. 40. 
 
OUR LOKD AND THE SAINTS IN FOLK-MEDICINE. 79 
 
 sprained his leg. Our blessed Lord and Saviour blessed it, and 
 said — 
 
 " Bone to bone, and vein to vein, 
 O vein turn to thy rest again. 
 M. N. so shall thine. In the name," &c. 
 or — 
 
 " Onr 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 our Lord His Name." 
 
 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 different 
 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 + Sother Emanuel + Sabaoth + Adonay + 
 Unde 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 Liher 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 
 » Gkoice Notes, p. 167 ; Notes and Queries, 1st S. vol. iii. p. 258 ; vol. iv. p. 
 500 ; Chambers, Fireside Stories, p. 37 ; Grimm, Deutsche Mytlwlogie, vol. ii. 
 pp. 1030-1031. 
 
80 • FOLK-MEDIOINE. 
 
 and water — the blood of Redemption and the water of Baptism. 
 In the name of the Father + may the blood cease. In the name 
 of the Son + may the blood remain. In the name of the Holy 
 Ghost + 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, 
 Sicut Christus f uit in se, 
 Sanguis mane in tna vena, 
 Sicut Christus in sua, pena ; 
 Sanguis mane fixus 
 Sicut Christus quando crncifixus." 
 
 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.t 
 
 For a Burn. " As I passed over the River Jordan I met with 
 Christ, and He said to me, ' Woman, what aileth thee ? ' ' 0, 
 
 * Brand, Popular Antiquities, p. 729; LanoasMre Folk-Lore, p. 77; Cockayne, 
 Saxon Leeohdoms, vol. i. p. 393. 
 
 f Hunt, Romances and Broils, second series, p. 214; East 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 God will take it back againe." 
 
OUR LORD AND THE SAINTS IN FOLK MEDICINE. 81 
 
 my Lord, my flesh doth burn.' 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 Poljierro ; Hunt, second series, p. 213 ; Dj'er, English 
 Folh-Lm-e, 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 myseU, ' 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.' "—Pall Mall Qazette, 23 November, 1868. 
 
 G 
 
82 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 "When Jesus went up to the cross to be crucified the Jews 
 asked him, sajdng, ' 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 written 
 on long narrow scrolls of paper, filled with scraps of verses 
 separated by drawings, worn in Sumatra. 
 
 " + 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 iia 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 Tirgin bom, 
 And he was prick'd by a thorn, 
 And it did never bell (throb) nor swell, 
 As I trust in Jesus 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, 
 Happy man that Christ was born."f 
 
 * Brand, Popular Antigmties, p. 766 ; Marsden, History of Sumatra,-p. 189 ; 
 Pettigrew, Medical Superstitions, p. 67. 
 
 t Hunt, second series, p. 213 ; Variety in Choice Notes (JFolTi^Lore), p. 12 
 Dyer, English FoVi-Lore, p. 173 ; Wast Anglican, vol. ii. ; Henderson, Folli- 
 Lore of Northern Counties, p. 171. 
 
OUE LOED AND THE SAINTS IN FOLK- MEDICINE. 83 
 
 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," &o. 
 
 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 iUis that euer may be, 
 In Chiystis name I conjure ye, 
 I conjure ye, baith mair and less. 
 By all the virtues 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 ruthfnl rood, 
 Fnrth of the flesh and of the bane. 
 And in the erth, and in the stane, 
 I conjure 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 Defensative 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 Superstitions, p. 59. 
 g2 
 
84 folk-medicine. 
 
 " 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 wiU 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 Prater. 
 
 " ! adoorable {sic) Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, dying on 
 the Sacred Tree for our lives ; ! Holy Cross of Christ, see me 
 in thought; ! Holy Cross of Christ, ward off from me all 
 shai'p 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 ; 
 ! 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- 
 
OUK LORD AND THE SAINTS IN FOLK-MEDICINE. 85 
 
 like ascension, to which He liked to bring me to the right way 
 to Heaven, true as Jesus Christ was born on Christmas Day in 
 the stable, true as Jesus Christ was crucified on Good Friday, 
 true as the three wise kings brought their oiferings 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 Nioodemus and Joseph who took 
 our Lord down from the Cross and buried Him. ! 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 sufifer, 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. 
 
 * JVotes and Queries, 5th S. vol. iii. p. 465 ; Hunt, Romances and Drolls, 
 second series, p. 240 ; Clwioe Notes {FoVi^Lore^ p. 11 ; Miss E. S. 8 March, 
 1879. See Aubrey, Remames of Gentilisme, p. 51. 
 
86 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 Grood 
 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 G-loucestershire a few hairs from the donkey's cross are sewn 
 
 * Hunt, second series, p. 211 ; Choice Notes {Folli^Lore), p. 11 ; Athenceum, 
 11 August, 1849; Jiyar, English Foll(^Lore,y. 162; Sikes, British GoUins, 
 p. 267. 
 
OUR LORD AND THE SAINTS IN FOLK-MEDICINE. 87 
 
 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 banc 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 fiiite le mauvais D6mon, pour le faire trembler et 
 fr^mir, il suffit, comme I'dcrit Gruaccius, du nom de J^sus on de 
 Marie, du signe de la croix, de I'approche des saintes reliques 
 ou des objets b^nits, des exorcismes, adjurations on injonctions 
 des prStres ; c'est ce qu'on vait tous les jours dans le cas de 
 energumenes, et Guaceius en rapporte maints exemples tires 
 des jeux nocturnes des Sorcieres, ou, au signe de la croix form^ 
 par I'un des assistants, au nom de J^sus simplement prononce, 
 Diables et Sorcieres disparaissent tous ensemble. Les Ineubes 
 au eontraire — ."| 
 
 * Mrs. P. 30 November, 1879 ; JVotes and Queries, 5th S. toI. 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 JVotes and Queries, 5th S. vol. i. pp. 325, 375, 376 (citing Cureton, Ancient 
 Syriac Doovments, 1864 ; Jones, Nem and Full Method of Settling the Canonical 
 Autliority of the Nevi Testament, 1827, vol. ii. p. 2). 
 
 % " Ulterius mains Daemon, ut ex Peltano et Thyreo scribit Gnaccins, Com- 
 pend. Malef. lib. i. c. 19, fol. 128, ad prolatiouem nominis Jesu aut Marise ad 
 f ormationem signi Crucis, ad approximationem sacrarum EeUquiarum, sive rerum 
 benedictamm, et ad exorcismos, adjurationes, aut praecepta sacerdotnm, aut 
 f ugit aut pavet, concutiturque, et stridet, ut conspicitur quotidie in energnmenis, 
 et constat ex tot historiis, quas recitat Guaceius, ex quibus habetur, quod in noc- 
 tumis Indis Sagamm facto ab aliquo assistentium signo Cmcis, aut pronuntiato 
 nomine Jesu, Diaboli et secum Sagae omnes dispamerunt. Sed Incubi — ," &c. 
 De la Dimonialiti, Sec. par. C. E. P. Louis Marie Sinistrari d'Ameno traduit 
 par Isidor Liseux, pp. 128 et seq. 
 
88 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 Eeference 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 incontynent," 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. 
 draughtys of your chales. The preest grantyd hym, and tornyd 
 hym to the skoler, and sayd : syr, I shall serue you as sone as I 
 have sayd masse. The skoler than taryed styll 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, profferyng him to drynk of the chales. 
 Thys skoler lokyed upon hym, and musyd and sayd : why, master 
 parson, wherfore profer ye me the' chales? Mary, quod the 
 prest, for the gentylman told me ye were dysseasyd with the 
 chyncough, and prayd me therfor that for a medeoyne 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 
 
OUR LORD AND THE SAINTS IN FOLK-MEDICINE. 89 
 
 gyve you drynk of the chales for the chyiicough," &c.* The 
 parish monthly nurse of Ohurcham, Gloucestershire, used in- 
 variably after public baptism to wash out the mouth of the 
 infant w^itli 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 aud holy water added. The patient should then sing the 
 psalm Beati immaculati, and Exurgat, and Salvum me fac, deus, 
 and drink the preparation out of a church-hell. The priest, 
 when all was finished, sang over him, Domine, sancte pater 
 omnipotens.l 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 
 
 * CJwiee Notes, p. 216; Notes and Querien, 1st S. vol. iii. p. 220; A C. Mery 
 Taki {SJMUpere Jcst-Booltg), 1864, pp. 60 etsei- 
 
 t Notes and Queries, 5tli S. vol. i. p. 383 ; Hunt, second series, p. 213 ; Napier, 
 Folio-Lore, p. liO. To prepare a holy salve if one have not enough butter: "Hallow 
 some water with the Tiallowmg of the haptismal 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. 
 
 % Leechbook, i. ch. Ixiii. ; Cockayne, vol. ii. p. 139. 
 
 § Fulh^Lore Record, 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." 
 
90 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 
 the patient either buried the heart where two lairds' lands met, 
 or kept it under lock and key. " Grhen ony thing be oot o'ts 
 place," said the operator during the ceremony, " may the Al- 
 miehty in's mercies fesst back."f 
 
 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, 1st S. vol. ix. p. 239 ; Choice Notes (^Fulh-Lore), p. 218; 
 Notes and Queries, 1st S. vol. iii. p. 258 ; vol. viii. p. 146 ; Choice Notes (JFoll- 
 Lore), pp. 168-169. 
 
 + Gregor, Folk-Lore of North-East of Scotland, p. 43. 
 
 f Among others the following saints are invoked against diseases: St. Anthony 
 against inflammation ; St. Apollonia and St. Lucy against the toothache ; St. 
 Benedict against the stone and poison ; St. Blaise against bones sticking in the 
 throat, fires, and inflammation ; St. Christopher and St. Mark against sudden 
 death ; St. Clara against sore eyes ; St. Genow against the gout ; 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. Quintan against coughs ; St. Euffiu against 
 madness ; St. Wolfgang against lameness.— &c Brand, p. 197. 
 
OUR LORD AND THE SAINTS IN FOLK-MEDICINE. 91 
 
 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, r^cita avec lui 
 les pseaumes Exsurgat Deus et Qui habitat, et I'Evangile de 
 Saint Jean." Auerhan, in the Life of Wagner, complains that 
 the Gospel 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 spouses must bear the names of John and Joan. Mrs. 
 Whitcombe, Bygone Days in Devon and Cornwall, p. 147, cited by Dyer, 
 3nglish Folh-Lore, 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. 
 
 } Brand, p. 183 ; Dalyell, Darlter Superstitions of Scotland, p. 114. 
 
 § De la Demonialiti, p. 157 ; Mfe of Wagner, c. xxv. ; Dr. Faustus, sc. i. 
 lines 150-153. "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. 
 
92 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 " Then haste thee to some solitary grove, 
 And bear wise 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 the 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-minrg sutra to him.* St. John the Evangehst was 
 said to have drunk poison without hurt, so drinks consecrated 
 to him were believed by Teutonic tribes to prevent all danger 
 of poisoning. + 
 
 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 pf 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; Burton, Anatomy of Mela/noholy, p. 298; Weaker, 3pidemies 
 of the Middle Ages, p. 124 ; Giles, Strange Stories, vol. i. p. 6. 
 
 t Grimm, De^itselie Mythologie, 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 travellers. 
 
OUR LORD AND THE SAINTS IN FOLK-MEDICINE. 93 
 
 behalf of small-pox patients, — " In the name of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, 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 ! thou illustrious bishop and 
 martyr, pray for me a sinner, and defend me by thy interces- 
 sion from this disease. Amen." * 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 suffer 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. George was thought in 
 the Philippine Islands to protect one's rest against the scorpions.| 
 
 * Miss Busk, Valleys of Tirol, p. 38 (note) ; Scot, Disooverie of Witchcraft, 
 p. 137 ; Brand, p. 189 ; Pettigi-ew, p. 82. 
 
 t Husenbeth, JSmblems of Saints, p. VI; Notes and Queries, 5th S. toI. 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 housekeeper, " The orison of St. Apollonia, say you ? 
 That might do something if my master's distemper lay in his teeth, but, alas I it 
 lies in his brain." See also Homily against Peril of Idolatry. 
 
 X Pettigrew, pp. 42, 78. 
 
94 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 St. Veronica's aid was invoked in Anglo-Saxon spells,* and St. 
 Marchutiis and St. Viotricius for convulsions. Like Dr. Pane- 
 grossi, when lie saw the remarkable cure effected by the Blessed 
 John Berchmans, " When such physicians interfere, we have 
 nothing more to say."* 
 
 * For the miraculouB cure of the Emperor Tiberius at the sight of St. 
 Veronica's portrait of Christ, see Journal of the British Arclueological Asso- 
 ciation, Tol. xxxvii. p. 239, art. " Apocryphal Legends." 
 
I 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CHAEMS CONNECTED WITH DEATH OB THE GRAVE. 
 
 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 whose supply of the vital flame 
 is small, still among the living. 
 
 In November, lb76, 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 Launceston, 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 
 
96 FOLK-MEDIOINE. 
 
 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 Devonshire. 
 A friend of the patient was directed to go into a churchyard on 
 a dark night (the 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 fiirchten 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. Grrose 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), i^. 8 ; Trans. Devonshire Association, 1867, Tol. ii. 
 p. 39. 
 
 t Maidstone Gazette, 12 September, 1848 ; Henderson, FolU-Lore of Northern 
 Counties, p. 192 ; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, vol. ii. p. 996. 
 
CHARMS CONNECTED WITH DEATH OR THE GRAVE. 97 
 
 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 they 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 Neil], who was convicted, in 
 March 1631, of consulting with Satan regarding the destruction 
 of Sir George Home. First of all Neill got '' fra the devill of 
 ane inchantil dead foill " to be put in Sir George's stable 
 " under the hek [oi' 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 ofSootlcmd, vol. iii. p. 54 ; Boyle, Works, vol. iv. p. 767 ; 
 Stamford Mero'U'ry,-% October, 1858 ; Floyer, Touchstone of Medicines, vol. i. 
 p. 154 ; Dalyell, p. 380. 
 
 f 'Deimjs,Foni-Loreof CMna,-p.5\; Irish Popular and Medical Superstitions, 
 p. 3. " Having restored the corpse to the grave the strip of skin is next stretched 
 upon 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 
 
98 FOLK-MBDICINE. 
 
 In North Hants a tooth taken from the mouth of a corpse is 
 often enveloped in a little bag, and worn romid 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 
 ears, 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-delivered 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, preferi'ed 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 grabern der heiligen wurde in ma. 
 unmittelbares heilvermogen beigemessen und alles was mit 
 
 hollow of a sacred stone, and then, folding it up in the form of a cross, places it 
 over the beating heart of the credulous girl, who, under her dictation, mutters 
 other incantations." 
 
 » Martins, Be Magioa, p. 32. 
 
 t Giles, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, vol. ii. p. 378 ; Macieth, iv. 
 i. 30 ; Spalding, JElaaietlmn Bemonology , p. 113 ; Napier, Folk-Lore, p. 31. 
 
CHARMS CONNECTED WITH DEATH OE THE GEAVE. 99 
 
 ihnen in beriihrung stand gewahrte hilfe, sogar der trunk des 
 liber knochen, kleider, holzsplitter und erde gegossnen was- 
 sers. Easen und thau 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. Undo contigit ut pulverem 
 ipsum, ubi corpus ejus in terram corruit, multi auferentes et in 
 aquam mittentes suis per haec infirmis multum commodi 
 afferrent, qui videlicet mos adeo increbuit, ut paulatim ablata 
 exinde terra fossam ad mensuram staturae verilis reddiderit ; de 
 piilvere pavimenti in quo aqua lavacri illius effusa est, multi 
 jam sanati infirmi ; habeo quidem de ligno, in quo caput ejus 
 occisi a paganis infixum est ... . tunc benedixi acquam et 
 astulam roboris praefati immittens obtuli 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 vfhich a corpse had been 
 washed was administered with the view of curing him of fits. 
 
 Some Afighanistan Buddhist graves have repute for curing 
 diseases, as that at lohpan, near Gundamuck, where at the ziaret 
 of Shaik Eaheen 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. $ Pliny 
 
 ♦ Grimm, Deutsche Mytlwlogie, vol. ii. p. 985. See the whole passage, 
 t Simpson, •' Ancient Buddhist Remains in Afghanistan," Fi'aser's Magazine, 
 new series, No. cxxii. February, 1880, pp. 197, 198. 
 % Dalyell, p. 129. 
 
 h2 
 
100 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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.t 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 scafibid in the Old Bailey for the purpose of having a 
 wen touched with the hand of a man who had just been 
 
 * Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxviii. c. 6, 12. 
 
 f Dennys, p. 51. 
 
 % Dalyell, p. 126 ; 1616, Bee. OrJt. 
 
 § " A miracle of miracles wrought by the blood of Charles I. upon a mayd 
 at Detford, four miles from London, 1649," quoted in Lccky's England m tlie 
 Jligktcenth Cmtiiry, yol. i. p. 69. 
 
 II Dennys, p. 67. 
 
CHAEMS CONNKCTED WITH DEATH OR THE GRAVE. 101 
 
 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 af33icted with running 
 tumours from his birth. Scot, in the Discoverie of Witchcraft, 
 says, " To heal the king or queen's evil, or any other sore- 
 ness of the throat, tirst 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 coffin 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 east4 If one who is suffering from any disease can 
 attend the funeral of a suicide, and manage to throw a white 
 handkerchief on the coffin, 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 cmd Drolls, second series, p. 164. 
 
 t Notes and Queries, 1st S. vol. ii. p. 36 ; Choiee Notes {Folh-Lore-), p. 10. 
 
 { Folk-Lore Record, vol. i. p. 48. 
 
 § Notes and Queries, 5th S. vol. i. p. 204. 
 
102 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 the parish of Eeay in Caithness, and 
 there to lay their distempered children in the interval in order 
 to ascertain the probability of their recovery, but a full descrip- 
 tion or further enlightenment he declined to give his readers.f 
 
 I have above noticed the " verier " 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 refsrence 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 SterRng 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 hold 
 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. J 
 
 * Dyer, English Folh-Lore, p. 164. 
 
 t Brand, Description of Orkney, p. 154. 
 
 % Harrison, Description of England, (N. Shah. Soo. ed.), bk. ii. oh. xxiii. 
 p. 350 ; Hunt, second series, p. 51 ; Collinson, Sistory of Somerset, vol, iii. p. 
 J 04- ; Dalyell, Darker Svj>entitions of Scotland, pp. 82, 83, 84. 
 
CHARMS CONNECTED WITH DEATH OR THE GRAVE. 103 
 
 Pi'obably the best kitown 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 Oaradoe, 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 ora pro we, the 
 cold struck into his body, and after 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 Grunpowder Plot Conspirators, and later James II. 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 ; Rec. Just; Dalyell, p. 84. 
 
104 FOLK -MEDICINE. 
 
 " A drink of the Borgie, a bite of the weed, 
 Seta a' the Cam'slang folk wrang in the head." 
 
 The weed is tlie 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. EUan, 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. Oonvall'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 running 
 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. 
 
 X "I myself knew a case of a man, provided with a pretty little house, 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 Stvdio, vol. ii. p. 110. 
 
CHAEMS 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 Grloria 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, 1st S. vol. viii. p. 265. Another yersion mentions only one 
 straw, but says, "repeat the verse, ' Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,' " 
 kc— English FoU-Lore, p. 150. 
 
 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. 
 
106 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 mnmps," explained the little girl, raising lier 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 
 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 after 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 Greorge Eeule 
 he ordered Eeule'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 atmidnycht, 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 each patient got 
 
 * "Fairy Superstitions in Donegal," Ifidv. Mag. Aug. 1879, p. 219. 
 
CHARMS CONNECTED WITH DEATH OR THE GEAVE. 107 
 
 but one spoonful 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, 
 Bouesbaye straight, 
 As the water runs by the stave. 
 Good for boneshave." f 
 
 * Dalyell, pp. 84 et seq.; Witches of Renfrewshire, p. 22 (Mackenzie, § x.); 
 Henderson, Follt-Lore of the Northern Cov/nties, p. 141 ; Richardson, Folly of 
 Pilgrimages in Ireland, 1727, p. 65. 
 
 f Pettigrew, p. 64. 
 
CHAPTEK VII. 
 
 COLOUR. 
 
 |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. Red, 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. Red 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."t " 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 
 successful, apparently, was his mode of treatment, that the 
 
 * Cf . " Pari quoque ratione herbarum succos, qui succos sive humores humani 
 corporis colore referebant, in illius hnmoris peccantis purgationem adhibe- 
 bant. Hinc croceis plantarum liqnoribus bileiu flayam, atris, purpnrascen- 
 tibus aut coeruleis nigram, albis pituitum, rnbris sanguinem, lactescentibna lac et 
 sperma valebant curare."— Heucherus et Fabricius, De Vegetaliius Magicis, 
 Wittenberg, 1700. 
 
 f Uhiglish Phynoian Mnla/rged, p. 13. 
 
COLOUK. 109 
 
 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." Bed pills were administered by Chiao-no, in a 
 Chinese tale ; in one case, to cure a wound, the pill was passed 
 round and roimd 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."-f It was because 
 evil spirits would be frightened, probably, that red was used so 
 hberally 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 mith the History and Practice of 
 Medicine cmd Swrgery, pp. 18-19. 
 
 f Dennys, Follt-Lore of China, p. 54 ; Giles, Strange Stories from a Chinese 
 Studio, vol. i. pp. 40, 44, 45. 
 
110 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 in a painted tomb. Near his final resting-place a lofly and 
 elaborately carved monument was erected to Ms memory ; this 
 was called the tiki, which was also thus coloured."* The 
 guardians of the ryot's fields in Sbuthern India — the four 
 or five standing stones — are daubed with red paint,t and 
 Shashti's proper image is a rough stone smeared with the same 
 colomr.J 
 
 Red was also, we learn from Meralla, a sacred colour iu 
 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 Dalyell, 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 handkerchiefs. 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.jj 
 
 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 Nero Zealanders, p. 95 ; Lubbock, Origin of 
 Civilisation, p. 306. 
 
 t To give them eyes to watch ? In China " on a certain day after the death 
 of a parent the surviving 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 tlie departed spirit theporoer of remaining near to, and matching 
 over the fortunes of, tlwse left iehvnd." — Giles, vol. ii. p. 224 (foot note). 
 
 % Tylor, Primitive Oulture, vol. ii. p. 150. 
 
 § Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 273 ; Simpson, " Ancient Buddhist Remains in 
 Afghanistan," Fraser's Magazine, new series, vol. cxxii. February 1880, p. 197. 
 
 II Dalyell, Ba/rher Superstitions of Scotland, p. 365 ; Dennys, p. 76 ; Sikes, 
 British GobUns, p. 239. 
 
COLOUE. Ill 
 
 to lake of the clove wort {Ranunculus acris) " 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. Eed 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 within a recent period there were exposed for 
 sale in a shop in Fleet Street red tongues — i.e., tongues of red 
 cloth — to tie round the throats of patients suifering from scarlet 
 fever." A shrewmouse, wrapped in clay or a red rag, and 
 waybroad " delved up without iron ere the rising of the sun," 
 bound with orosswort in a red fillet round the head, were 
 Saxon remedies.! 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 hsemor- 
 
 * Branch, Contemporary Remem, October, 1876 ; Cockayne, Samon Leeelb- 
 dome, Tol. i. p. 101 ; Napier, Folh-Lore, p. 96 ; Cf. Giles, vol. i. p. 324 ; Grimm, 
 D&utsohe MytJiologie, toI. i. p. 147 (Stallytrass, toI. 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 o-ed cord the feet of those destined to be man and ■wiie.—IUd. pp. 121, 141 . 
 
 t Notes and Queries, 5th S. vol. xi. p. 166 ; Cockayne, vol. i. xxxi.-ii. 307. 
 
112 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 rhage to its blood-red colour, and Boetius de Boot relates a mar- 
 vellous story thereaiient.* 
 
 In Gruinea 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 Oarinthia, 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. J 
 
 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 cohmr. In Christianity it is the colour of the Virgin, and 
 therefore holy ; and yet it is remarkable that the mention of it 
 in connection with Folk- Medicine is scanty. 
 
 In 1635 a man in the 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 ; Be Lapid. et Rem. lib. ii. cap. 102, quoted by Pettigrew, 
 p. 82. 
 
 t Tylor, Prindtwe Culture, vol. ii. p. 123 ; Croker, Researehes in the Smith 
 of Ireland ; Dalyell, p. 86. 
 
 J Clwice Notes (^FoU-Lore), p. 24 ; Kelly, Indo-Eu-ropean Tradition and 
 Folli-Lore, p. 147 ; Cf. Grimm, Beutsclie Mythologie, vol. i. p. 148. 
 
COLOUR. 1 1 3 
 
 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." f 
 
 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 handcuffs." In German folk- 
 
 * Rec. OrU. p. 97, quoted in Dalyell, p. 307 ; Henderson, FoVt-Lore of tlie 
 Northern Counties, p. 20. 
 t Conway, Demonology and Devil Lore, vol. ii. p. 284 ; N. and Q. 6th S. vol. iii. 
 
 p. 465. 
 
 I 
 
114 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 
 blosMn help !" and Schartlin's curse was " blau feuer !" * 
 
 Eily McGarvey, a Donegal wise women, employs a green 
 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 Oustoms of Scotland in, 
 Matters Criminal, 1678 ; Renfrewshire Witches, p. 48 ; Grimm, Deutsche 
 Mythologie, vol. i. p. 148 ; " Blue Clue in Hallow'een Divination," Brand, 
 Poimlar Antismties, p. 209 (foot-note). MlJi-Zoi-e Record, vol. ii. p. 204. 
 
COLOUR. 115 
 
 senting youth, were chosen, for " combine the two and you have 
 youthful constancy." * 
 
 Tiuning 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. Bridal- 
 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."f 
 
 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 ; 
 8. And take a black cloth, 
 
 4. Wrap it round his left hand. 
 
 5. Then all the evil spirits 
 
 6. And the sins which he has committed 
 
 7. Shall quit 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, August, 1879, 
 p. 217 ; Brand, pp. 320, 360. Cf. " Green, indeed, is the colour of Lovers," 
 Love's Lalowr's Lost, act i. 2 ; Antiquary, vol. iii. p. Ill ; Gregor, Folk-Lore 
 of Nort}>^Eagt of Scotland, p. 87. 
 
 t Dennys, p. 64 ; Martins, p. 31 ; Brand, p. 362; Conway, voL 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 humed and the ashes swallowed, the other 
 is placed above the patient's door." — Credulities Past and Present, p. 180. 
 
 J Beaords of the Past, vol. iii. p. 140. 
 
 i2 
 
116 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 Euthven 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. 
 Caldcleugh 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 
 modern tales of darkness. In North Hants to cure a stye 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.f 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 unlucky to meet a black cat at 
 any time.l 
 
 One Gerner, according to the Kirk Session Eecord of St. 
 Cuthbert's, gave " drinkes of black henis aiges and aquavite to 
 
 » Grimm, vol. i. p. 44 (Stallybrass, vol. i. p. 54); Caldclengh, Travels, vol. ii. 
 p. 212. 
 
 f Turner, Diseases of the Skin, p. 79. 
 
 % Gregor, p. 124. Burial of a black cat's head, see Aubrey's Memains 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 znr Katze," vol. ii. pp. 918-919. 
 
COLOUR. 117 
 
 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 VT. 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 
 Kecord, 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 efficacy. The intention here was kindly 
 enough, and if the remedy was not successful we must re- 
 member — 
 
 Seven 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 ; Follt-Lore Record, vol. ii. p. 205. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 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 
 spoonfuls 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. After the milk has stood for three hours 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 Folk-Lore, vol. i. p. 167 ; W. H. P. (Belfast), 26th Nov. 1878 ; 
 N. and Q. 5tli S. vol. x. p. 126 ; Manchester Guardian, August, 1876 ; Hunt, 
 Romances and Drolls, i&mnd. sm.6S, ^. 218; Cf. Gregor, FollirLore of North- 
 East of Scotland, p. 132. 
 
NUMBER. 119 
 
 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 several! tymes in thehapper 
 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 sufferer, 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 
 (FoteniUla 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 from 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 lier 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 painful 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 j Hunt, 2nd S. p. 213 ; Clwice Notes {Folk-Lore), p. 36 ; 
 see swpra, New Birth. 
 X Hunt, 2nd S. p. 218. 
 § N. and, Q. 1st S. vol. ii. p. 36 ; Choice Notex {FolU Lore), p. 11. 
 
120 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 iiine.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 Oumnor, — 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 (Pizzurnus) 
 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 
 
 * Leeclidoms, vol. iii. pp. 380,381, also cited in W. de Gray Birch's "On Two 
 Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in the British Museum," p. 22 (Reprinted from Ti'ans. 
 of the Royal Society of Idteratiire, xi. part iii. new series). 
 
 f Another remedy for epilepsy is for the sufferer to creep head-foremost down 
 three pairs of stairs three times a day for three successive days. — Dyer, Domestic 
 Folli-Lore, p. 153, 
 
NUMBEE. 121 
 
 times repetition of a certain verse as a remedy which experience 
 had found to be effectual.* Three handfulls of dust saved the 
 unburied soul from wandering by the Styx, 
 
 Quamqnam festiuas, non est mora longa, licebit, 
 Inj.ecto ter pulvere cnrras. 
 
 In the west of Ireland in order to procure a woman's safe 
 delivery it was customary to count over her nilie 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 never return to the sick man again. "$ 
 
 * Pizzamns, MnoMridiim ExoreiHicvm, p. iii. c. 5, p. 55 ; Pliny, Hist. Nat. 
 lib. xxviii. § 12 ; DalyeU, pp. 392, 395 ; Marcellus, Ermpiricus de Medicamentis, 
 § 8, p. 278 ; the Apnlian prayer (Pettigrew, p. 78) runs thus : — 
 
 Alme vithe pellicane, 
 
 Oram qui tenes Apnlam, 
 
 Littnsque polyganioum 
 
 Qui Morsus rabidoa levas, 
 
 Irasque canum mltigas. 
 
 Tu, Sancte, Kabiem asperam 
 
 Rictusque canis luridos, 
 
 Tu ssevam prohibe luem. 
 
 I procul hinc Rabies 
 
 Procul Mnc furor omnis abesto. 
 Five and seven are the favourite 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-thrpe and eighteen with 
 reference to numbers five and seven respectively. Dennys, Folk-Lore of 
 Chma, p. 40. 
 t Irish Papular mid Medical Superstitimis, p. 13. 
 
 i Assyrian Talismans and Exorcisms, translated by H. F. Talbot. Reooi-ds 
 of the Past, vol. iii. p. 143. At p. 147 is a Babylonian charm against a magicianj 
 of whom Hea says to the sick man " by means of the number he enslaves thee." 
 
122 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 
 fasting." 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. If 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, fastened 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 braggoty 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 Folk-Lore, p. 23 : " He that would live for aye, must eat 
 sage in May," is another saying. 
 
 \ Choice Notes {Folh-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 cases. 
 
NUMBER. 123 
 
 And from six double to five 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 Cltaramfor 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, "f 
 
 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 brothers, 
 &c. &c. &c. t 
 
 Thus the verses are continued under tetter having "no 
 brother " is imperatively ordered to begone. 
 
 There is a divinity in odd numbers 
 Either in nativity, chance, or death. 
 
 * Hawker, Footprints of Former Men m Far Cornwall, p. 177. 
 f Braggaty = spotted, mottled. 
 J Hunt, 2nd S. p. 214. 
 
124 FOLK-BIEDICINB. 
 
 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 ! 
 
 First day shiver and burn, 
 Tremble and quake ! 
 
 Second day shiver and learn, 
 Tremble and die ! 
 
 Third day never 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 ease, 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 Oornishmen 
 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. Galen is cited to the effect 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 
 
 * Pettigrevif, p. 70. 
 
 f Mead, Influcnoe of S/wn and Moan upon Hmnan Bodies. — Worfts, p, 132. 
 
INFLUENCE OP THE SUN AND MOON. 125 
 
 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 wiU be great danger on 
 those days. If it be twenty days old he wiU be long abed and 
 recover. If it be twenty-one, twenty-two, or twenty-three, he 
 wiU lie long in sickness and sufiier and recover. If it is twenty- 
 four he wiU keep his bed. If it is twenty-five he is perilously 
 bestead. If he is attacked when the moon is twenty-six, twenty- 
 seven, twenty-eight, or twenty-nine days, he wiU 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, Yol. i. p. 45 ; Miss 0. F. G. 28th Nov. 1879, " In Mada- 
 gascar the waning of the moon is an nnfavourable time for any important 
 undertaking. Among the Antankarana the dead aie only buried immediately 
 after the new moon appears." — F. L. Meem-d, vol. ii. p. 32 ; Cf . Grimm, Deutsclie 
 Mythohigie, toI. ii. p. 596. 
 
 ■f Cloekayne, vol. iii. p. 183. 
 
126 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 Gralen, 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 blaunche 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, JJe Magia Natv/rali, ejusgue usu medieo ad magioe et magiea 
 curcmdmn, 1700, Erfurt, pp. 21 et seq. " That birtha and deaths chiefly happen 
 about the new and full 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, Woi'Jts, pp. 145, 146. 
 
 f Tor, 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. — Folk-Lore Record, vol. ii, 
 p. 158. 
 
INFLUENCE OF SUN AND MOON. 127 
 
 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, 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 used."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."! 
 
 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 field. Barkis is dying. " ' He's a going 
 out with the tide,' said Mr. Peggotty to me, behind his hand. 
 
 * Mead, p. 132 ; F. Z. Becord, vol. ii. p. 158 ; Napier, p. 97 ; Invocation of 
 Moon, cf. Aubrey, Bemains of Gentilisme, pp. 83, 131 ; Dennys, Follt-Lore of 
 China, p. 117 ; Nork. Mythologie der Volhtagen imd VolUsmdrohen, p. 920 ; 
 Grimm, vol. ii. pp. 587-596 ; Livingstone, South Africa, p. 236 ; Lnbbock, 
 Origin of (MmUsation, pp. 317-318. 
 
 t See also Aubrey, p. 188. % Mead, ibid. p. 146. 
 
128 FOLK-MEDIC]NE. 
 
 " 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 born, 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 boj-, 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 corner 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 districts : — 
 
 There are four corners to her hed, 
 
 Pour 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 f amilj.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 
 
 * IrM Popular cmd Medical Svperstitions, p. 15. 
 t Lancashire Font-Lore, p. 69 (foot-note). 
 
INFLUENCE OF SUN AND MOON. 129 
 
 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 
 this man life ; may Merodoch, the eldest son of the deep, give 
 him 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 sun 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.f 
 
 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, satisfactory : 
 " One is hot, the other cold ; one diurnal, the other nocturnal ; 
 one dry, the other moist ; their houses are opposite ; one mas- 
 
 * Conway, Demonology and Devil Lore, vol. i. p. 260 ; Records of the Past, 
 vol. i. p. 135, "Babylonian lixorcisms," translated by Prof. Sayce. 
 
 t Lenormant, La Magie chez les Cliald6ens, p. 224 ; Miss C. F. G. 28th Not. 
 1879 ; London Times, June 11, 1877 ; Conway, vol. i. p. 250. 
 
 J Pettigrew, p. 19. 
 
 E 
 
130 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 culine, the 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 vrhich wormwood is one), and sends them to 
 -3i]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 diseascf 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 tlie 
 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 Physietan, enlarged, pp. 266-267. See "On the 
 Influence of tlie Stars," Martius, De Magla A'aturali (cited siqn-a). 
 
 t Dictionaiy of Bohtlingk and Rath, cited in Conway, Demvmlogy, vol. i. 
 pp. 254-255. 
 
 X Dalyell, Darker Suiicrstitions qf Scotland, p. 456. 
 
INI'LUENCE OF SUN AND MOON. 131 
 
 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 left 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 loose on different sides. Three 
 times this stocking was passed round each member 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.t 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 part."f 
 
 * Dalyell, p. 457 ; Gregor, Folk-Lore of North-East of Scotland, p. 44. 
 
 f " I have conversed with an old woman, a native of Ayrshire, who had seen 
 the custom put in practice when she was a girl." — J. (Glasgow), Notes and 
 Queries, 2nd S. vol. iii. p. 59. 
 
 t Les Contes et Discours d'Entrapal, 1732, vol. i. p. 85. 
 
 k2 
 
132 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 The importance of time in birth, in disease, and other inci- 
 dents of life, was suggested by consideration of planetaryinfluenee. 
 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 born 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 aD 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. | 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, Folh-Lore of China, p. 8 ; Giles, Strange Stories from a Chinese 
 StVidio, vol. ii. p. 67. 
 
 t Harlaud and Wilkinson, La/naashire Folh-Lore, p. 105; Dennys, Folh- 
 Lore of China, p. 27. 
 
 } Hunt, Romances and Drolls, first series, p, 195 : "If, however, the child 
 was 'misbegotten,' or if it was the offspring of dissolute persons, the stone 
 would not move, and consequently no cure was effected." 
 
INFLUENCE OF SUN AND MOON. 133 
 
 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 eases 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 churn 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 FolltrLore, p. 152. 
 t Miss S. 8 March, 1879. 
 
 X "Fairy Superstitions in Donegal," University Mag. August, 1879, p. 218 ; 
 Pizzurnus, Enchiridion, iii. lib, 1 , c. 5, p. 54 ; Dalyell, p. 420 ; Cockayne, vol. ii. 
 
 p. lis. 
 
134 rOLK-MEDlCINE. 
 
 well at Trinity Gask was sought on the first Sunday of June. 
 There appears to have been some old ehai-m 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 
 Rome, he saw one of the students shaving himself on a 
 Monday. 
 
 " ' Mor a smoh, lath Teh Tuan 
 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 notliing 
 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, further 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 Scotlwrtd, 1793, vol. v. p. 82 ; Dalyell,p. 80 ; Slialte- 
 speare Jest Boohs, 1864, pp. 58, 59. 
 
 f Crrker, Legends of Killnrney, 1879 ed. p. 74. 
 
INFLDBNCE OF SUN AND MOON. 135 
 
 tunes in Chapell Uny " widderschynnes," and widderschynnes 
 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 Mareellus (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- 
 barium 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.| 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, Momanees and Broils, second series, p. 55 ; Jones, Finger Ring 
 Lore, p. 147. 
 f Cockayne, vol. i. pp. 9), 137. \ Cockayne, vol. ii. p. 16.3, 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PERSONAL CURES. 
 
 INDEE 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 anything 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 G-rimm of 
 the reputation a fifth son enjoys in France,! 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, FoVt-Lm-e of North-Mast of Scotland, p. 47 ; "Fairy Superstitions 
 in Donegal," University Mag. August, 1879 Notes and Qiwries, 5th S. Tol.xii. 
 p. 386. 
 
 t Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, yol. ii. p. 964, " Nach franz abergl. 22 ist es der 
 fvinfste sohn." Cures were brought (temp. Charles II.) by Valentine Great- 
 sakes, see letter to Boyle, or by John Leverett, neither of whom seems to have 
 been of peculiar birth. — Pettigrew, pp. 155, 156. 
 
PERSONAL CUBES. 137 
 
 land in former days can cure simply by breatliing upon the part 
 affected, as allowing the patient to touch his fleur-de-lis. Of all 
 the rnarcous of the OrManais, he of Ormes, says Le Journal 
 du Loiret, 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 is efiicacious, 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 performed 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 Modernes of 1733 it is re- 
 corded : " On me disoit, il y a quelque tems, que les septiemes 
 fiUes avoient le privilege de guerir 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. | The touch of a child who has never seen 
 his father cures swellings, Grimm says, and Bernard's Super- 
 
 * Choice Notes (^Folh-Lore), p. 59 ; Gent. Mag. 1731, Tol. i. p. 543. 
 
 f Notes and Queries, 5th S. vol. ri. pp. 144, 176 ; Superstitions Anciennes ct 
 Modernes : Prejugis Vulgaires qui ont induit les Peuples it des tf sages et a des 
 Pratiques contraires & la Religion, book xvi. p. 107. 
 
 ± Gregor, p. 45 ; Hunt, Romances and Drolls, second series, p. 212. 
 
i;58 I'-oiJC-MnraciNE. 
 
 stitions notes : " Mais ce rare privilege ne subsiste dans I'imagi- 
 iiation des personnes qui veulent railler, non plus que ceini 
 de gu^rir les louppes, lequel on attribue aux enfans posthumes." 
 According to the Swedes, " Das erstgeborne mit zahnen auf clio 
 welt kommne kind kann bosen biss heilen." * In Essex, a 
 child, known familiarly 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 mai'ries 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 better." 
 
 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 Aneienncs et 
 Modernei, book xvi. p. 107 (in reference to seventh daughters, siipra). To 
 guard against whooping-cough Donegal peasants will wear a lock of hair from 
 a posthnmous child. 
 
 f Henderson, FoUt-Lvre of the Northern Counties, p. 307 ; Gregor, p. 49 ; 
 Smith, Parish of Logierait, ap. Stat. Aoct. vol. v. p. 84 ; Dalyell, Barker 
 Superstitions, p. 61. 
 
PERSONAL CURBS. 139 
 
 from widow Smith, 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."t 
 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 the 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 
 
 * Choice Notes, p. 181 ; Miss G. S., 8 March, 1879. 
 
 t " Fairy Superstitions in Donegal,'' Letitia McLintock, Umversity Mag. 
 August, 1879, p. 220. 
 
 X Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folli-Lore, p. 77; Hunt, Romances 
 and Drolls, second series, p. 208. 
 
140 FOLK-MBDICINE. 
 
 frenacies, madness, falling evil : persoiies 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- 
 stitions. 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 Notes and Queries, 6th S. vol. i. 
 pp. .S64:-366 ; Folli^Lore Record, vol. iv. pp. 116, 117. For Drwmmond' s Case, 
 in the kirktoun of Anchterairdanr, 3 July, 1629, Rec. 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 Notes 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. 
 
PERSONAL CURES. 141 
 
 sovereigns, was more ancient in the family of the former or 
 the latter raised a discussion which, to modern eyes, seems 
 strongly disproportionate to its importance. The EngHsh 
 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 thai all the security of the patient lay in this 
 touch-piece, and that if it were lost the malady would return. 
 Charles II. 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 
 
142 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 suffering child, who was afterwards 
 to be Dr. Johnson, was among those presented to the queen. 
 " That many persons so touched, and labouring under a scro- 
 fulous disposition, should receive benefit, may not unfaii-ly be 
 admitted, and an explanation — it is probably afforded by the 
 beneficial effect 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 sufferers, 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, 
 Hiiiisell: best knows ; but strangely-visited people, 
 All swoln and ulcerous, 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 
 
PERSONAL CURBS. 143 
 
 bearing the effigy of Charles I. were still used in tlie 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 
 Holyrood, " and their solemnlie offred, and after the ofiringe 
 heallit 100 persons of the cruelles or kingis eivell, yonge and 
 old." f 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 EngUsh 
 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 carries 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. Kemigius is said to have seen people near Bordeaux 
 who cured fractured limbs and dislocated joints merely by touch- 
 
 * Pettigrew, SuperHitions connected mth Practice of Surgery, pp. 153-154. 
 I take this opportunity of here acknowledging my incessant obligations to the 
 notes of Mr. Pettigrew on this subject, and also to Mr. Lecky's Sistori/ of 
 England in the Eighteenth Century. Mr. Lecky's volume needs no praise of 
 mine, but the ample and accurate fashion in which he has treated of the Touching 
 (vol. i. pp. 67 ct sccx.) would of itself secure the meed of approbation from 
 students of culture which his whole work has received from the public generally. 
 
 f New Stat. Account of Scotland, vol. xv. p. 85 ; Lecky, vol. i. p. 223 ; Bal- 
 four, The Order of King Charles intring Edinhurghe, MS. p. 23 (Advocates' 
 Libraiy) ; Dalyell, p. 62. 
 
 % The Boyal Martyr ; or, The Life and Eeath of King Charles I. 1727, 
 p. 174. 
 
144 FOLK-MEDICINE, 
 
 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 
 probably to be found in the diiferent 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 iia twenty -three years cm'ed fifty-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 
 jierson who had been bitten was brought to be treated the stone 
 was applied to the woiind, and when presumably it had dropped 
 off 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 The 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 ground were so feeble, and rational 
 explanations of natural phenomena, or of newly-observed facts, 
 were so difficult 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, Darlier Siojierstitions, p. 320 ; Martin, Western Islands, p. 22 ; 
 Eemigius, Damonolotreia, lib. iii. c. i. § 13. 
 
PEESONAL CURES. 145 
 
 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 bddzahar, which is our present word 
 bezoar, and is, without question, the substa;nce 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 DjS,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 bezoard, bazehard, bezaar, &o., is originally 
 derived from the Persian bdd-i-zoJir, 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 bdd-zehr, or pdn-zehr, in Turkish. I have stated 
 above that the term bezoar, or rather bdd-zohar, in the meaning 
 of ' a concretion found in animal organs,' did not occur, so far 
 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 
 
146 FOLK-MEDICINB. 
 
 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 eiBcacy 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 infaUible 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 difierent 
 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.J In de la Pryme's 
 Z>ia7-«/, 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 (^evi York), 8 May, 1880, p. 528. 
 
 t Kelly, Syria and tlie Boly Land, p. 127, quoted in Henderson's Follt^Lore 
 of the Northern Counties, p. 165. For other healing stones, see Henderson, 
 pp. 145, 156; Gregor, p. 39. 
 
 } Sykes, BritUh Goblins, pp. 367-368. 
 
PERSONAL CURBS. 147 
 
 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."* 
 
 * Diai-y of A. do la Pryme, p. 90. 
 
 l2 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 ANIMAL CURES. 
 
 |HE consideration of what appears at first to be simply 
 animal cures is rendered 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 effect 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 off 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 Leeohdoms, vol. i. p. 365; Gregor, Folh-Lore of the North- 
 Emt of Scotland, p. 127, 
 
ANIMAL CURES. 149 
 
 cancer would be healed ; and if the ashes of a dog be given to 
 a man torn by a mad dog it " casteth out all the venom and 
 the foulness, and healeth the maddening bites." Floyer says 
 that " mad dog's liver is given against 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 modem 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 came 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 
 had caused the wound or of some other dog, the presumption is 
 they were the hairs of the 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, the fever was not transferred but 
 neutralized.* The tongues of dogs were said in France as in 
 Scotland to cure ulcers, but whether by licking or medical 
 application I have no means of knowing.f In China 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. It also seems to have been 
 given as a kind of Lethe draught to what in England are called 
 changlings. (" 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 
 me dog's blood to drink, so that I should forget all about my 
 previous state of existence.")! It is to this association of some- 
 thing "uncanny" about a dog that we owe the dislike to its 
 howKng. The dog can see more than can be seen by men. In 
 
 * Cockayne, vol. i. pp. 363, 371 ; Floyer, Touchstone of Medicine, vol. ii. 
 p. 91 ; Sister Dora, p. 170 ; Notes a/nd Queries, Sth S. vol. iv. p. 463. 
 t Errev/rs Populadres etpropos mlgwhres, vol. ii. p. 178. 
 % Giles, Strcmge Stories from a Chinese Studio, vol. i. pp. 62, 184. 
 
150 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 Rabbi Bechai'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 : — 
 
 " Obscoeniqne canes, importunaeque Yolucres 
 Signa dabant.'' 
 
 " Bemerkenswerth scheint," G-rimm says, " dass hundegeis- 
 tersichtig sind und den nahenden gott, wenn er noeh menschlichen 
 auge verborgen bleibt, erkennen. Ala Grimnir bei Geirrodr 
 eintrat, war ' eingi hundr svk 61mr, at k hann mundi hlaupa,' der 
 konig Hess den schwarzemantellen fangen, ' er eigi vildo hun- 
 dar arada.' Aueh wenn Hel umgeht, merken sie die hunde." 
 Grimm says above that although " nur hausthiere waren offer- 
 bar, obgleich nicht alle, namentlieh 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 
 
ANIMAL CUEES. 151 
 
 some German on the way in which the dog looks when he barks, 
 for if he looks upward a recovery wiU 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 
 trpng, 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 eat must be black, and only one hair plucked 
 from its tail, and with its tip the pustule should be nine times 
 rubbed.f 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? J A corre- 
 spondent assures me that when she was recently suffering from 
 shingles a friend offered, and in perfectly good faith, to operate 
 at once upon the cat's tail.§ The singular remedy of cutting 
 off 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 and Queries, 5th S. vol. iii. p. 204 (citing Rablinieal IMeratwe, 
 or the Traditions of tlie JereSf^ij 3 . P. Stehelin, 1748); Dyer, English Folli- 
 Lore, p. 102 ; Chapman, Homer, Odyssey, book xvi. ; Grimm, Deutsche Mytli- 
 ologie, vol. ii. p. 555 ; Hunt, Romances and Drolls, second series, p. 166 ; Wuttke, 
 VolksalergloMbe, p. 31 ; Tylor, Primitive Culture, Tol. i. p. 107. The dogs see 
 the Mother-of-God of Kevlaar when she comes to the sick son, — 
 
 " Die mutter schant Alles in Traume 
 And hat nicht Mehr geschant ; 
 Sie erwachte ans dem Schlummer 
 
 Tlie Htmde iellten so la/ut." 
 
 Heine. 
 
 t Notes and Queries, 5th S. vol. ii. p. 184 ; Choice Notes, p. 12 j Notes and 
 Queries, 1st S. vol. ii. p. 36. 
 X Dyer, English Folk- Lore, p. 166 ; Conway, Bemonology and Devil Lore. 
 § See Chapter VII. On Colour in I"olk Medicine ; also Pettigrew, p. 79. 
 II Henderson, FolTtrLore oftlie Nm-thern Counties, p. 149. 
 
152 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 land injunction to rheumatic patients is to take the eat 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 fi'om 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 ihem.* 
 If a woman, among the old L'ish, 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, f De la Prym.e mentions a repulsive 
 draught which, when aU 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, 
 
 * Jfotes and Queries, 6th S. vol. i. p. 204 ; see Lovell, Sistory of Animals, 
 p. 79 (quoted in Folh-Lore Record, vol. i. p. 219). 
 
 t IrisTi Popular and Medioal Superstitions,!^. 10 ; Rev. G. F. S., 16 October 
 1878. 
 
 J Sclimidt iiber Ost Mongalen, p. 229, cited by Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie 
 vol. ii. p. 980 ; Notes and Queries, 5th S. vol. i. p. 287. 
 
ANIMAL CURES. 153 
 
 &e., and this it was that cured him ;" it is added, ** he coveted 
 strong ale mightily." Floyer 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 wiU be followed by satisfactory results. 
 Jamieson says, " I recollect a friend of mine that rode a piebald 
 horse, that he used to be pursued by people running after him 
 bawling, 
 
 ' Man wi' the piety horse, 
 What's gude for the kink horse.' 
 
 He always told them to give the bairn plenty of sugar candy." 
 Among other writers the cure is mentioned by the latest writer 
 on West of Scotland superstitions, f 
 
 The skin of a wolf was reputed a complete preventive against 
 epilepsy both in England J and on the Continent, as Grrimm, 
 '' Anderwarts wird angerathen gegen die epilepsie sich mit einer 
 wolfhaut zu giirten."§ The hoof of an ass's right foot was 
 reputed to have a similar virtue when mounted in a ring. 
 Jones mentions that several such rings are in the Waterton 
 collection, || and Burton of old said, " I say with Eenodoeus 
 they are not altogether to be rejected." IT Sinistrari mentions 
 wolf and ass together when he refers to "la connaissance que 
 nous avons de plusieurs herbes, pierres et substances animales 
 qui ont la vertu de chasser les Demons, comme la rue, le miUe- 
 pertuis, la vervaine, la germandree, la palma-christi, la cent- 
 
 * Diary of A. de la JPi-yme, p. 38 ; Floyer, Touchstone of Medicine, vol. ii. 
 p. 97 ; see also Boyle, Some Considerations touching the Usefulness of Experi- 
 mental Philosophy, 1664, Works, vol. i. p. 142. 
 
 t Napier, Folh-Lore, page 96. For a recent example see Chamibers' Jownal, 
 fonrth series, part 200 (September, 1880), p. 639. Here the person consulted 
 was only driTing the piebald horse, so that the association was still more difficult 
 to follow than had he been riding. 
 
 X Chambers, Bomestio Annals of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 53. 
 
 § Dffatsehe Mythologie, vol. ii. p. 981 ; see also p. 980. 
 
 II Jones, Finger Smg Lore, p. 163. 
 
 ^ Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 466. 
 
154 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 aur^e, le diamant, le corail, le jois, le jaspe, la peau de la UU du 
 loup ou de Vane, les menstruea des femmes, et cent autres." 
 His conclusion is curious, "pour quoi il est dcrit: a eelui qui 
 sautient I'assaut du Demon, il est permis d'avoir des pierres, au 
 des herbes, mais 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 wolf's head under the pillow will 
 secure sleep, and so on.l The native Irish are said to have 
 hung round the necks of their children the beginning of St. 
 John's Grospel, 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 Herbarum), gives 
 such sovereign virtue to a bay leafgathered 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 coHc, 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 h^e's brain in wine 
 
 * De la Demonialite, traduit du Latm,par Isidore Idseux, pp. 144, 145. 
 f Conway, Demonology and Devil Lore, vol. i. p. 143. 
 J Cockayne, Saxon LeecMoms, vnl. i. p. 361. 
 
 § Brand, Popular Antig^mties, p. 339 ; Aubrey, Remains of Gcntilisme, 
 p. 115 (foot-note) ; Cockayne, vol. i. p. xxxii.; p. xyiii. 
 
ANIMAL CUEES. 155 
 
 was good for over-sleeping in the opinion of the Saxon leeches ; 
 for sore eyes, also, the lung of a hare bound fast thereto, and for 
 " foot-swellings and scathes, a hare's lung bound as above and 
 beneath, wonderfally the steps are healed." * " Thus much," 
 says Oogan, " will I say as to the commendation of the hare, 
 and of the defence of hunter's toyle, that no one beast, be it 
 never so great, is profitable to so many and so diverse uses in 
 Physicke as the hare and partes thereof, as Matth. [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."t 
 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 the 
 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 frog is not drowned in the river; 
 The medicine Tiare lives for ever."t 
 
 The devil's mark was said to sometimes resemble the impres- 
 sion of a hare'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 born, and as a charm the woman who unfortunately 
 saw the hare was recommended to make a small rent immedi- 
 ately in some part of her dress. § 
 
 As the snake is the symbol of health, twined around the staflp 
 of Eseulapius or Hygia, it is not surprising that its part in folk 
 medicine is not unimportant. In China the skin of the white 
 
 * Choiee Notes (JFolh-Lore), p. 12 ; Eagt Anglican, vol. ii. ; Cogan, JSamen 
 of Sealtli, p. 119 ; Cockayne, Saxon Zeeohdoms, vol. i. p. 343. 
 
 f Cogan, Haven of Health, p. 118. 
 
 { Giles, Strange Stories from a Ohmese Studio, vol. ii. p. 168 (footnote). 
 
 § Delrio, 1. v., sect. 4, num. 28, cited by Sir George Mackenzie, Witelies of 
 jRenfr&mshvre, p. 17 ; Irish Popular and Medical Superstitions, p. 9. 
 
156 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 spotted snake 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 repellent, 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 aicross the 
 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 piUow. 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 
 
 * Dennys, Folk-Lore of China, p. 103. 
 
 t Dyer, EmglUh Folh-Lore, pp. 167, 168 ; Clrnoe Notes iFolli-Zore) p 16S 
 iMtes and Queries, 1st S. vol. iii. p. 268) ; lUd. p. 36 {Notes cmd Qveries 
 vol. iii. p. 405). ' 
 
ANIMAL CUKES. 157 
 
 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 Youghal, 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 effect in stopping. In Keogh's 
 Zoologia Medicinalis Hihernica a similar infiision is recommended 
 as useful in the extreme in many diseases which are enumerated, f 
 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 gradua,lly 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 off 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 Nates, p. 11 ; Pitcairn, I. ii. 217 j Spalding, Eliaabethan Demon- 
 ology, p. 115. 
 t NoUs amd Queries, 5th S. vol. x. p. 324. 
 % Miglish Folk-Lore, p. 150. 
 
158 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 huiig in the smi. To cure a child it appears from 
 the Holyrood Kirk 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 diffiei'ent parts of the 
 
 animal-l 
 
 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 part. 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, 157 ; History 
 of Animals as they are used in Physih and Chinrgery, 1689, p. 34 ; Pliny, 
 Hist. Nat. XXX. c. 4 ; Folh-Lore Record, vol. i. p. 218. 
 
 t Dalyell, p. 115 (Halyrudhous, K. S. E. 1647). See also Henderson, p. 154 : 
 " 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. 
 
 I Cockayne, vol. ii. p. 106 ; Henderson, Nortliern Counties, p. 159 ; Cockayne, 
 vol. i. p. 339. 
 
ANIMAL CUBES. 159 
 
 good periapt, and so also a bone from the heart of a living stag 
 when inserted 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 parts of the animal thus : " Its horns to the 
 maker of spoons ; its 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 mess, for ftdl faith, of course, 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 to say. Li Aberdeenshire, where this cure 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.f In Lancashire it was administered to 
 young children for another purpose.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 the mouse plugged up 
 in it.§ 
 
 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 
 
 * FollifLore Record, vol. ii. p. 25. 
 
 t Notes cmd Queries, 5th S. vol. x. p. 273 ; Gregor, p. 46. 
 
 X.Lcmeashi/re Folk-Lore, p. 75. 
 
 § " In recent times in Ireland milk in which a mouse has been boiled was 
 administered to procure barrenness." — Irish Popular and Medical Svperstitions, 
 p. 5. 
 
1 60 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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, says 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 
 bulfalo, 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 propriety be 
 called miscellaneous is that recommended for earache by a 
 
 * ZancasJdreFolJt-Xore, p. 155; Floyer, T<mcJistone of Medieine,'Vol,u.^.Si: 
 " It seems that among the Indians and Norwegians the hoof of tlw 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 rubhing his ear with it." Jones, 
 Finger Hing Lore, p. 153. In Father Jerome MeroUa 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 ofE with a sharp scimitar. Pettigrew, 
 p. 61. 
 
 t Miss C. F. G. 22 March, 1880. 
 
ANIMAL CUEES. 161 
 
 Demerara lady to a correspondent. To boil a coekroach in oil, 
 and then stuiF 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 alive, — 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 wen."t In the 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, f A paw cut from a 
 live mole is thought in Sussex to be good for toothache. In 
 Aberdeenshire 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 difficulty of labour, and is given in powder. ^ 
 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 Enghsh doctors shud ken," 
 
 * W. H. P. 26 Oct. 1878 (also I^otes and Queries, 5th S. vol. 1. p. 383) ; 
 Chambers, JDomegtie Annals of Scotland, vol. hi. p. 55. 
 
 t Cockayne, Saxon LeecMoms, vol. ii. pp. 307, 43. 
 
 % Eev. G. S. S. 10 Oct. 1878 ; R. C. C. 25 July, 1879 ; W. M. B. T. July, 
 1879. 
 
 § Folh-Lore Record, vol. i. p. 40 ; Gregor, p. 123. 
 
 II W. H. P. 26 Oct. 1878. 
 
 ^ Touchstone of Medicine, vol. ii. p. 91. 
 
 M 
 
162 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 and no doubt they should. Warts, they say in the North, should 
 be rubbed with eel's blood.* 
 
 The Delphic oracle recommended Demokrates to get some 
 worms from a goat's brain, and in the Medicina 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 carduus 
 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 11. 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 should be rubbed, see Folh-Ltyre 
 Mecord, vol. i. ; pig's blood (p. 218) ; lizard's blood (p. 219) ; tortoise's blood 
 (ibid.) 
 
 f Cockayne, yol. i. p. xx. pp. 351, 363. 
 
 { Chambers, Domestic Aimals of Scotlamd, vol. iii. p. 55. 
 
 § Across Afrioa, vol. i. p. 100. 
 
 II Mrs. J. (Dublin), 29 December, 1879. 
 
ANIMAL CUKES. 163 
 
 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 variety 
 of ways to a variety 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 
 cruelty. 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's Diary, ed. 1848, vol. ii. p. 224 ; vol. iv. p. 329 ; Bataud et Corbie, 
 Zes Pigeons devoliere et de colombier, 1824. I have not myself seen this work ; 
 extracts were sent to me by a correspondent. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 ai-e esteemed for the same 
 purpose.! The owl, however, is generally thought an uncaimy 
 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 Tliracians 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. J 
 
 * JVotes and Queries, 1st S. vol. v. p. 341 ; 1st S. vol. iv. p. 517 ; 
 JVotes, pp. 43, 47. 
 
 t Dyer, Engluh Folk-Lore, p. 154 ; Notes and Queries, 5th S. Tol. i. p. 504. 
 
 X Dalyell, footnote, p. 150 ; Cockayne, vol. i. pp. xviii. xix. ; Mannhardt, Die 
 GdUenmelt der Deutsohen vnd JVordiscIien VSUie?; cited in Kelly, Curiosities 
 of Indo-European Tradition, p. 98. 
 
CHAPTEE XL 
 
 SPECIFIC CHAEMS. — (1) MAGIC WKITINGS. 
 
 protect her child from fairies the Scotch mother leaves 
 ati 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 eiBcacious in averting all 
 evils, but especially useful 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 Eome in the time of Gregory the Great, 
 and containing Latin, Greek, and Hebrew words, was to be 
 
 * Napier, Folli-Lore, p. 40 ; Dennys, Folh-Lore of China, p. 51 ; Pettigrew, 
 p. 70. 
 t Records of the Past, vol. iii. pp. 139, 143, 148. 
 
166 FOLK-MBDICINB. 
 
 written on parchment, and hung round the neck of him who had 
 need of it. Marcellus 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 afford 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 Koalfa, and the doctor who 
 prepared the potion was suitably rewarded for his science.! 
 Chinese physicians, if the drug be not ready that is required, 
 write the prescription, and let the patient swallow its ashes or 
 dfink an infusion 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. 
 
 * DeuUahe Mytlwlogie, toI. ii. p. 996, citing Meibom scrvpt. vol. i. p. 186 ; 
 Cockayne, vol. iii. p. 67 ; vol. i. p. xxix. 
 
 t Astley, Collection of Voyages, toI. ii. p. 35, cited in Lubbock's Origin of 
 Oiviliination, p. 25. 
 
 I Letters from. Tripoli, vol. i. pp. 168, 245 ; Clapperton, Jawrnal of a Second 
 Mxpedition, cited by Dalyell, p. 220. 
 
 § Tylor, History of Man, pp. 128-129. Is an indication of this prescription- 
 burning to be found 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 Straiige Stories from a Chinese Studio 
 (xcil. " Smelling Essays "), vol. ii. pp. 139 et seq. 
 
SPECIFIC CHAEMS — MAGIC WRITINGS. 167 
 
 According to the curious -treatise of Conrad of Wittenberg, 
 Doctrina de Magia, 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, Rotas, Hax, Pax, Max, Deus Adimax. In the second 
 class, "Nomen Dei et SS. Trinatatis, quod tamen invanum 
 assumitur, contra acerrimum summi Legislatoris interdictum, 
 Exod. 20. Similiter Heptalogus Christi, Evangelium Johannis, 
 quod vel coUo appenditur, vel pani et butjrro inscriptum aegrotis, 
 potissimumvero a rabido cane -vulneratis,deglutiendum pf-aebetur, 
 Deum immortalem, quanta superstitio ! quantae ineptiae !"* The 
 following charms are taken from Blumler's Amuletorum Histo- 
 ria. Against nose bleeding, " Cum trina formatione crucis, una 
 cum trina recitatione Orationis Dominieae, 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 nostrornm, visibilium et invlslbilmm, ille ab hac domo, et habitan- 
 
 K . I tibns in ea, expellat omnem diaboli neqnitiam &c. Ipsa purificet et 
 santificet. Ecce crucem X Christi fugite partes adrersa. Vicit Leo de 
 tribu Inda, radix David. Agios x Acheas X Agios Yschyrios X Agios 
 Atheneos X Eleemosynos, Kyrie-Eleison." 
 
 Of running charms, as they may be called, we have several 
 examples in these interesting treatises, but Abracadabra with 
 two sister charms will be enough in this place to illustrate the 
 nature of the superstition. 
 
 • Doctrina de Magia, -Wittenberg, 1661, § xix ; Pazig {De Incantationibm 
 Magicis, 1721, p. 22) says, "Morbi in corpore hnmano causas naturales, nuUam 
 vero verbornm magicorum veris agnoscunt. Herbis potius aliisque rebus attri- 
 bnendnm est, quod benefici ex ignorantia et malitia adscribnnt vocibus. Et 
 quamyia etiam Diabolus interdum hoe fnco ludit homines, nihilominus tamen 
 ille Naturae vim inferre nequit, sed abutitur tantum tnrpissjme naturalibus 
 mediis." 
 
168 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 (1.) ABRACADABRA " Quod ad vocis huiua briginem attinet, com- 
 ABRACADABR posita videtur iuxta quosdam, ex Chaldaicis 
 
 ABRACADAB tribns vocibus Sanctae Trinitatia 
 
 ABRACADA Alii ab Abraxas deducnnt, de quo videatur 
 
 A B R A C A D Seldenus. Indaeiexplicantper AZ^«raJ3«M8 
 
 A B R A C A ut dispergantur Jiostes ex Psalmo Dauidico." 
 
 ABRAC 
 
 ABR A 
 
 ABR 
 
 AB 
 
 A 
 
 (2.) S D P N Q C N "I.e., Sospitante, Deo, Perdet, Nemo, Qniu, Capiet 
 
 D S N Q C N Nemo, et Nemo, Capiet, Quin Nemo Perdet, Deo Sospi- 
 
 P N Q C N taute. Similis medicina ad sedandum narium proflu- 
 
 N Q C N uium, praecribitur, a Marcello, his verbis repetendo 
 
 Q C N subter diminnendis." 
 CN 
 N 
 
 (3.) SICYCVMA 
 
 CYC VM A 
 
 r CVMA 
 
 C VMA 
 
 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. 
 
 * Martinus Frider Blumler, Amnletorum Sistoriam, ^-c. cioioccx. pp. 18, 
 19, 20. 
 f Cockayne, vol. iii. p. 43. 
 
SPECIFIC CHARMS — MAGIC WEITINGS. 169 
 
 " Wen, wen, 
 Little wen ! 
 
 here shalt thou not build 
 nor any holding have, 
 but thou shalt forth 
 eyeu to the nearest town 
 where thou hast poor (?) 
 any brother, 
 he shall lay for thee 
 a leaf at thy head 
 (?) under the footsole, 
 (?) under the eagle's feather 
 (?) under 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 thou become 
 That thou 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 Aurum, 
 Haec quicumque secum portat tria nomina regum, 
 Salvitur a morbo, Domini pietate, caduco,' 
 
 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 PatTvway to Health, by Peter Levens, London, 1664 ; Notes and 
 Queries, 1st S. vol. ii. p. 4.35 j Choice Notes {Follt^Lore), p. 267 ; see also 
 Blvmlcr, p. 19. 
 
170 FOLK-MEDICINE, 
 
 execution, he was to be hung, in January, 1748-9, similar lines 
 were found in a linen purse that he carried — 
 
 " Sancti tres E«ges 
 Gaspar, Melchior, Balthaaar 
 Orate pro nobis nunc in hora 
 Mortis nostras I" 
 
 " Le billets ont touche aux trois tetes de SS. Roys k Cologne, 
 lis sont pour les voyagers, contre les malheurs de chemins, 
 maux de teste, mal-caduque, fievres, 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 wonderftd 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 
 FEBKA FCGE 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. 5 ; Pettigrew (citing Skippon), 
 p. 69. 
 
SPECIFIC CHARMS — MAGIC WKITINGS. 171 
 
 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 Practises 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 Avoman in Chelsea had a sealed paper to guard her 
 
 against toothache. Her priest, evidently another " curious 
 
 mind," prevailed on her to open it, and aU inside was found to 
 
 be— 
 
 " Good deyil, cure her, 
 And take her for your pains." 
 
 A quack doctor, at Orewkerne, 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 lihrow 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."| 
 
 * LoMcasTwre Folh-Lore, p. 87 ; Cockayne, toI. i. p. xxxiii. (Wier, Opera, 
 p. 403). 
 t Cotta, Short BUcmerie, p. 49. 
 j Notei and Queries, 6th S. vol. vi. p. 144. 
 
172 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 (2) Rings. 
 
 It is one of the 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 Good 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 Kynge's offerings to the crosse on Good 
 Friday, out from the countyng- house for medycinable rings of 
 gold and sylver, dylyvered to the jeweU 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 Boleyn 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 furnish a good 
 
 * Brand, Popular Antifimties, p. 79 ; Pettigrew's Superstitions connected 
 with the History and Practice of Medicine and Surgery, pp. 87, 88 ; Maskell, 
 Monibmenta Hitimlia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, toI. iii. p. 335 ; Proc. Soc. Ant. 1st 
 S. vol. ii. p. 292. The last two references are given on the authority of Notes 
 and Queries, 5th S, vol. ix. p. 435 ; see p. 514, same volume. 
 
SPECIFIC CHAEMS — EINGS. 173 
 
 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 
 Apuleii, before sunrise, or shortly before the light go, the wort 
 proserpinaca (knot-gras — polygonum- avicidare), and scratch it 
 round about with a golden ring, " and say that thou wilt take it 
 for leeehdom 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 In 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. In 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, Mnger Ring Lore, p. 141. 
 
 f Cockayne, Saxon Zeechdoms, vol. i. p. 113 ; see also p. 351. 
 X Jones, p. 141 ; " Fairy Superstitions in Donegal," T/niversity Mag. August, 
 1879, p. 216. 
 § Kelly, Indo-MiropeoM Tradition and Folk-Lore, p. 186. 
 
174 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 cenoe 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. J 
 
 Sacrament rings hold a high place in the esteem of English 
 villagers. The manner in which the money necessary for their 
 making is collected differs, as might be expected, but the general 
 features are always the same. Thus in Cornwall a paralytic or 
 rheumatic woman would collect thirty 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 round, 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, Sutory of hie Life and Times, p. 63 ; Boyle, Some Considerations 
 touehing the Usefulness cf Mao-perimental Philosophy (second edition, 1664), 
 vol. i. p. 209. 
 
 t See Cockayne, Introduction, vol. i. p. 18 iMontfauoon, plates 159, 161, 163). 
 
 j Boyle, Some Considerations, vol. i. p. 208 ; Jones, Mnger Ring Lore, p. 113 
 (note), p. 151. 
 
 § Hunt, Romances and Drolls, second series, p. 212. 
 
SPECIFIC CHABMS — EINGS. 175 
 
 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 
 account speaks of five sixpences collected from five diiferent 
 bachelors, none of whom shaU 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. Grrimm speaks 
 
 * Notei and Queries, 1st S. vol. viii. p. 146 ; Choice Notes (Folh-Lore), pp. 17, 
 36 ; Brand, p. 743 ; Notes and, Queries, 5th S. toI. it. p. 508. The suggestion has 
 been made that the nnmher " twelve " has reference to the number of the Apostles. 
 
176 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 of rings made from nails from which men have been hanged 
 as being worn by gouty patients on the ring finger ot the right 
 hand.* 
 
 The touch of the ring finger is generally believed to have a 
 healing effect. 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 Levinus Lemnius hath confirmed." Hence 
 Levinus Lemnius in Lipothymies, or swoundings, "used the 
 frication of this finger with saffron 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 fi-om 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 wiU cure any disease. 
 Boyle quotes Monardes as to the Indian belief that the touch of 
 a bloodstone will stop bleeding. The virtues of jewels are not, 
 however, much known among our own countryman, 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 commonly worn in Lan- 
 
 * Lcmoashvre Folh-Lore, p. 75 ; Pettigrew, Medical Superstitions, p. 61 ; 
 Dennys, Follt-Lore of China, p. 48 ; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, vol. ii. p. 
 978. 
 
 t Pseudoxia Epidemica (1658), p 234 ; Napier, Folk-Lore, p. QQ ; Lanca- 
 shire FollirLore, p. 75. 
 
SPECIFIC OHAEMS — KINGS. 177 
 
 cashire for the cure of rheumatism. Elsewhere, a cord round the 
 loins is worn to ward ojfF toothache. Is it possible that there is 
 any connection between this belt and the cord which in Burmah 
 is hung_ round the 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 declared 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 Culture, vol. ii. p. 124. 
 
 • H 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 DOMESTIC FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 LTHOUGrH 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 which 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 fires 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 child- 
 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 
 
 * Livinius, in Erasmus' Colloquies^ p. 27, says : "Do not slight my present; it 
 is the eagle stone ; it ia good for woman with child ; it is good to bring on their 
 labour." See also Tyler, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 147 ; Diary of A. dela 
 Pryme, p. 90 ; Noel du Fail, Les Contes et Diwo^irs d'Entrapel, vol. i. p. 82. 
 
DOMESTIC FOLK-MEDICINE. 179 
 
 relation.* Li course of the progress of civilization, however, 
 the father became weary of the senseless confinement and limited 
 regimen which his position as begetter of his child was supposed 
 to entail. The Tamil jokes the Korovan on his eating assafoetida 
 when 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 Ireland a tradition remains. The 
 husband does not indeed pretend to suffer the pains of labour, 
 but the nurses boast that they possess the power of transferring 
 the sufferings to him or to any other person they please. 
 Literally, in earlier times when the nurse announced to the 
 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 the only sufferer, 
 she boasts of being able to give the mother's pain to any man, 
 particularly, my informant says, to old bachelors, f 
 
 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 Highlands was given ash- 
 sap at once, because it is a powerful astringent and also a guard 
 against witches ; and in the Lowlands bathed in salted water, 
 made to taste it three times, because the water was strengthening 
 
 * Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation, pp. 16, 154 : "As soon as the change was 
 made, the father would take the place previously held by the mother, and he, 
 instead of she, would be regarded as the parent. Hence, on the birth of a child, 
 the father would naturally be very careful what he did, and what he ate, for fear 
 the child should be injured." See also Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 76. 
 t Irish Popular and Medical Superstitions, p. 13. 
 t W. H. P. 26 October, 1878. 
 
 n2 
 
180 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 and also obnoxious to a person with the 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 ornus 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.^ 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 infant 
 from the unluck which might follow it. A nurse in the West 
 Biding 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-born 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 Tyrolese, p. 66 ; Choice Notes {Folk-Lore'), p. 24 ; 
 Napierj Folk-Lore, p. 30. 
 
 f Kelly, Indo-European Follt-Lore, p. 145. 
 
 J W. H. P. : " Many children die when one or two days old of the trismus 
 nascentium, or jaw fall, a spasmodic disease peculiar to tropical climates ; here, 
 however, it is probably a dislocation caused by the above-mentioned barbarous 
 practice." 
 
 § NutcK and Queries, 5th S. vol. x. pp. 205, 255 ; Napier, Folh-Lme, p. 31 : 
 " The late Mortimer Collins going at the age of thirteen to see a newly-born cousin 
 
DOMESTIC FOLK- MEDICINE. 181 
 
 it is to cut a child's nails before it is a year old (then will he 
 be a thief), how undesirable it is that the upper teeth should be 
 cut before the lower, and that until the child is three months old 
 it should be allowed to look into a looking-glass. A common 
 superstition is, that a newly-born child 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 the answer was, 
 " It has not been out yet." As the doctrine of the damnation of 
 the unbaptized was thoroughly accepted, every effort was made 
 to have the chiistening as soon as possible, and Mr. Napier says 
 he has known of an instance in which the baby was born on a 
 Saturday and carried two miles to church 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 will not have issue ; and if the girl is christened 
 before the boy she will be masculine 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 his 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 diseases, f 
 
 (Mr. Henry Frowde, the London manager of the Oxford University Press), insisted 
 on carrying him upstairs in accordance with the old legend." Ifoteg and Queries, 
 5th S. vol. X. p. 276. 
 
 * Folk^Lore, pp. 30 et seq. ; Notex and Queries, 5th S. vol. iii. p. 424 ; Clwiee 
 Notes (Folh-Zore), p. 25. 
 
 t W. H. P. 26 Oct. 1878 ; Dennys, Folh-Lore of CMma, p. 70. 
 
182 FOLK-MEDIOINE. 
 
 A Durham precaution against whooping-cough was followed by- 
 fatal results in the end of the year 187 9. In order to secure her 
 newly-born child against whooping-cough the mother's " friends " 
 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 fall over 
 the infant. The woman was thought to be progressing satisfac- 
 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 should 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 eoal-rake in her 
 bedroom was that she suffered fi'om 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 from it with the teeth, is thought in the North-Bast 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 
 
 * Durham Cminty Advert iier, 12 December, 1879. 
 
DOMESTIC FOLK-MEDICINE. 183 
 
 mourning garments will canse 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 mourning is 
 worn. In South Hampshire the snuff of a tallow-candle is given 
 upon sugared bread and butter 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-cough, 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 aurious custom in co. Clare, vouched for by a corre- 
 spondent of the East Anglican, was to send the town band 
 irequontly to play in the evening in the cottage of a young 
 woman afflicted 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 useful thing in cases of illness. To cure colic, in 
 Towednack, 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 auf, and 
 riss ihm nach einer weile ein aug aus, im glauben, das gift werde 
 durch diese ofhung fliessen : ' tamen intoxicatus Albertus in 
 Austria, et diu per pedes suspensus, oculum perdens evasit.' " 
 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. 984 ; Cockayne, vol. ii. p. 155. 
 
184 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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. Gralen 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, " hold firmly to the belief 
 that it is very hurtful to swallow the saHva that is in the mouth 
 on first waking. They would not do it on any account." 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 all his sinews therewith, saying, "flee, gout, 
 flee." * 
 
 For pains in the joints the leechbook prescribes this incanta- 
 tion, " Malignus obligavit ; angelus 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, 
 
 * LancasMre FoVi-Lore, p. 69 ; English Folh-Lore, p. 166 ; Gregor, Folh- 
 Lore of Northern Cownties, p. 47 ; Dalyell, Ban-her Swperstitions of Sootlmd, 
 p. 46 (Galen, de Sim^Uovum Medioammtornm Faoultatiius, lib. x. c. 16) ; Miss 
 M. L. B. 23 Oct. 1878 ; Folh-Lore Recm-d, vol. ii. p. 36. 
 
DOMESTIC FOLK-MEDICINE. 185 
 
 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 warts a common remedy is to tie as many knots on a 
 hair as there are 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 many knots in unwrought 
 flax as there are letters in his name, pronouncing each letter as 
 he worked, this he was to tie round his neck.| G-rimm says, 
 "giehtsegen werden in ungebleichter leinwand mit leinenen faden 
 ohm knoten auf der brust getragen."§ When Marduk wishes 
 to comfort a dying man, his father Hea says, " Go — 
 
 " Take a woman's linen kerchief 
 bind it round thy left hand ! loose it from the left hand ! 
 Knot it with seven knots : do so twice : 
 Sprinkle it with bright wine ; 
 bind it round the head of the sick man : 
 bind it round his hands and feet, like manacles and fetters. 
 Sit round on his bed : 
 sprinkle holy water over him. 
 He shall hear the voice of Hea. 
 Davkina shall protect him ! 
 And Marduk, Eldest Son of heaven, shall find him a happy habitation." |{ 
 
 The Jewish phylactery was tied in a knot, but more generally 
 knots are found in use to bring about some enchantment or dis- 
 enchantment. Thus in an ancient Babylonian charm we have — 
 
 * Cockayne, vol. ii. p. 323 ; Dalyell, p. 77. " So many cures are confidently 
 averred and recorded, that it would be a most interesting topic of investigation 
 whether any solvent sanative or medicament lost to modem oculists was not 
 known of old." — p. 74. 
 
 t Cockayne, vol. i. p. xvi. ; vol. iii. p. 25. 
 
 X Henderson, pp. 139, 219 ; Cockayne, vol. i. p. xxix, 
 
 § Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, vol. ii. p. 978. 
 
 II Records of the Past, vol. iii. p. 141. 
 
186 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 " Merodoch, the son of Hea, the prince, with his holy hands cuts the knots." 
 
 That is to say he takes off the evil influence of the knots.* 
 
 So, too, witches sought in Scotland to compass evil by iying 
 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 collore craig, with stringis, whereon was 
 mony knottis vpon the stringis of the said collore 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 Ashintilly. 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 lep eye of an hedge- 
 
 * Chambers, Popular Rhymes, p. Ill ; Kelly, Ouriosities, p. 230 ; Dalyell, 
 pp. 302, 307 ; Irish Popular and Medical Superstitions, p. 4. 
 
DOMESTIC FOLK-MEDICINE. 187 
 
 hog fried in oil to procure sleep, and the right foot of a frog in 
 deer's skin for the gout, or that, to dream of the loss of right or 
 left tooth presageth the death cf male or female kindred, 
 
 according to the doctrine of Artemidorus And, lastly, 
 
 what suhstance there is in that auspicial principle and funda- 
 mental doctrine of arialation that the left hand is ominous, and 
 that good things do pass sinistrously upon us, because the left 
 hand of man respected the right hand of the gods which handed 
 their favours unto us."* Let us first see what can be said in 
 folk-lore 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 oifer the sacrifice of bread 
 and wine, plucked the hellebore with the right hand, and then, 
 covering it with his robe secretly, conveyed it to the left hand. 
 PulUng a plant while resting on the right knee was held in the 
 Orkneys, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, as par- 
 taking in divination. To have warts on the right hand betokened, 
 in the West of Scotland, future riches ; and in Nottinghamshire 
 a mole on the 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, f 
 
 To secure yourself from toothache, you will be 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 the left. But 
 in Shropshire, and elsewhere, exactly the contrary is enjoined. % 
 After all does it come to this ignonimous ending, that the 
 one preservative is exactly as valuable as the other ? In the 
 
 * Vulgar Errors, 1658, p. 244. 
 
 t Pliny, Nat. His. lib. xxiv. c. 11 ; Pettigrew, Superstitions, p. 23 ; Dalyell, 
 p. 127 ; Napier, p. 97 ; English Folh-Lore, p. 280 ; Notes and Queries, 1st S. 
 vol. vi. p. 601 ; Choice Notes {Folk-Lore), p. 25. 
 
 X Notes and Queries, 5th S. vol. iii. p. 465. 
 
188 FOLK- MEDICINE. 
 
 early part of this century the Mexicans took medicme 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 ofi" 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 Kome. The ancient Irish, 
 if Gerald Oambrensis 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 Martius recommended that the bone of the 
 right thigh should be used to rub the aching part. The pain 
 would cease, f Burton says of the stone called " chelidonius," 
 found in the stomach of a swallow, "if it is lapped in a fair 
 cloth, and tied to the right arm, will cure lunatics, madmen, 
 make them amiable and merry." | 
 
 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 tells 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, Tra/vels m Meooioo, 1826-8, p. 417 ; Dalyell, pp. 128, 447. At the 
 latter reference citations from Martin de Aries, St. Augustine, and Gratian 
 {Decretalia, causa xxvi. qvMest. 2), will be found. 
 
 f Folli^Lore Reom-d^ Tol. ii. pp. 37, &c ; Clioioe Notes, p. 90 ; Brand, Popular 
 Antiquities, p. 339 ; Martius, p. 32. 
 
 % Anatomy of Melancholy, Tp. iS5. 
 
 § Gregor, p. 45 ; Tales and Legends of Tyrol, p. 69. Tying a garter round 
 the left leg below the knee is said to keep ofE cramp. 
 
DOMESTIC FOLK-MEDICINE. 189 
 
 In the Medicina de Quadrupedtbus of Sextus 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, come to the tree which is 
 hight morbeam, or mulberry tree, and from it take an apple, 
 that is a berry, with thy left hand with two fingers, that is, with 
 the thumb 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, to 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 left hand at a new moon. When gout was to be cured 
 Alexander of Tralles 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 feet or 
 hands of N. or M."* 
 
 In Madagascar, when mourning for a deceased relation is 
 laid aside, 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 
 
 * Cockayne, vol. i. p. 331 ; Brand, p. 502 ; Cockayne, vol. i. pp. xix. xx. 
 
190 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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*M©RIA 
 three times written.f 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."| 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- 
 
 * FoUi-Lore Eeeord, vol. ii. p. 39 ; Miss E. S. 8 March, 1879 ; Cockayne, vol. 
 iii. p. 71 ; vol. ii. p. 291. 
 f English Fdllt^Lore, p. 101 ; Cockayne, vol. i. p. xxxi. 
 % " The Bride was now laid in her Bed, 
 Her left leg Ho was flung ; 
 And Geordy Gil was fidgen glad 
 Because it hit Jean Gun." 
 
 Allan Bwmsay, 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." — Clioice Note.t {Folk-Lore), p. 87. 
 II Boyle, Some Consiileration!!, &c. p. 206. 
 
DOMESTIC FOLK-MEDICINE. 191 
 
 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. lii. p. 11. 
 
192 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 spreohen, einen fliederzweig in die erde. 
 Da bliebt das fieber am flieder haften, and hangt sich dann 
 an den, der ziifaUig iiber die statte kommt." Again, " besonders 
 ist flieder heilsam des iiber bienenstocken wachst ; man schalt 
 seinen bast nach oben (nicht naeh 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. 216 (1852) ; English Physician Enlarged, 1684, 
 p. 2 ; Blochwick, Anatomie of the Elder, 1665, p. 54 ; Pettigrew, Superstitions 
 connected with Medicine and Surgery, pp. 61, 79 ; Henderson, pp. 219 et seq. 
 
 t Grimm, Deutsche Mytlwlogis, vol. ii. p. 979. 
 
DOMESTIC FOLK-MEDICINE. 193 
 
 taken with honey was said in England to cure hoarseness or loss 
 of voice.* A chestnut begged 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 deafness 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 Health, 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 groond ; 
 In the Mount of Calraiy 
 
 There wast thou found ; 
 Thou helpest many a grief 
 
 And stanchest many a wound. 
 
 * Natesand Queries, 5th S. vol. i.p. 505; Cockayne, toI. i. p. 119; Culpepper, 
 p. 50 ; Moyer {Touehstone of Mediome, 1687) says the ashes of cabbage " are 
 very caustick: the seed is bitter and acrid. The juyce cures warts." — vol. i. p. 213. 
 
 t Domestic Annals of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 65 ; Culpepper, p. 176 ; Napier, 
 Folh-Lore, p. 127 ; Cogan, p. 59. 
 
 
 
194 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 In the name of sweet Jesus 
 
 I take thee from the ground. 
 O Lord, effect the same 
 
 That 1 do now go about."' 
 
 and also, — 
 
 " In the name of God on Mount Olivet 
 First I thee found ; 
 In the name of Jesus 
 I pull thee from the ground."* 
 
 The universal cure for nettle-stings is to rub with the docken 
 
 leaf and say, — 
 
 " Out nettle, 
 In dock, 
 Dock shall have 
 A new smock." 
 
 or,— 
 
 " Nettle out, 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 nicety 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 nicety 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 regret the funeral of a young Glasgow maiden — 
 
 " If they wad drink nettles in March, 
 And eat muggins in May, 
 Sae many braw maidens. 
 Wadna gang to clay." 
 
 » Cockayne, Saxn?i Leeohdoins,yo\. i. pp. 91, 93, 171 ; Harland and Wilkin- 
 son, Lancashire PblU-Lore, p. 76. 
 
DOMESTIC FOLK-MEDICINJi!. 1 95 
 
 Katherine Oswald prescribed for the cure of " trymbling 
 fevers " (ague), plucking a nettle by the root three successive 
 mornings before sunrise. Tea made from young tops of nettles 
 is a Derbyshire cure for nettle-rash.* 
 
 If peony were always carried, he who 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 their 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. Eeason, 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- 
 rience. " The 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 somewhat 
 small, and laid to infuse in sack for twenty-four hours at the 
 least; after strain it, and take it first and last, morning and 
 evening, a good draft for sundry days together, before and after 
 a fiill moon." " A mystical root, B aara s," Dalyell notes, " con- 
 jectured to be a species of peony, a noted expulsor, grew near 
 Jerusalem, whence perhaps the repute of peony and its suspen- 
 sion from the neck of epileptic children." f 
 
 To the East both the ash and the mistletoe owe their almost 
 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 
 
 * MgKsh Folh-Lore, p. 172 ; Culpepper, pp. 87, 171 j Dalyell {Trial of 
 -Katharine Oswald, 11 November, 1629, Reo. Jut."), p. 28 ; R. C. H. April, 1879. 
 
 t Cockayne, vol. i. p. 171 ; FoUirLore Eeoord, vol. i. p. 44 ; Culpepper, p. 186 ; 
 Dalyell, Sarfier Superstitions, p. 612. 
 
 02 
 
196 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 eholer 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 fur hochheilig erachtet worden sein, doch 
 seine heiligkeit war wiederum deutschen und celtischen volkern 
 gemein." f The Kadeir Taliasin says the mistletoe was one of 
 the ingredients in the awen a gwyhodeu, 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 neck. J 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 Physician, p. 3. 
 t Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, vol. ii. p. 1008. 
 
 X Journal British Arclimological Association, vol. xxxiv. p. 484 ; Coles, Art 
 of Simpling (1656), p. 67. 
 
DOMESTIC FOLK-MEDICINE. 197 
 
 the adder to prefer the leaves to the fire. For sore ears the 
 Saxon leeches said, take a green ashen staff, 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 ash cut at certain holy seasons was held to be 
 incorruptible and to heal wounds. The spear of Achilles if it 
 wounded could also cure if only the ashen shaft 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. Availing 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 
 melia ash, and meli, melit, honey, have the same root, mel, which 
 is found in many other words with the sense of sweet, pleasing, 
 dehghtful. There was a positive as well as a mystic reason why 
 the Greeks 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. They may also have 
 conceived that honey dropped from the earth as dew from the 
 heavenly ash, for Theophrastus 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 Physician Enlivrged, p. 21 ; Cockayne, vol. ii. p. i3 ; Kelly, pp. 
 147,148,152. 
 
 t Chmce Notes (JFolk-Lore), p. 24. The bay tree shared this power. " It is a 
 tree of the sun, and under the celestial sign Leo, and resisteth witchcraft very 
 potently, as also all the evils old Saturn can do to the body of man, and they are 
 not a few ; for it is the speech of one, and I am mistaken if it were not Mizaldus, 
 that neither witch nor devil, thunder nor lightning, will hurt a man in a place 
 where a bay tree is." —Culpepper, p. 25. 
 
198 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 conjunction in Aries, by the mere 
 touch of which stick any bleeding can be stopped, f 
 Armstrong, in his poem on the Art of Preserving Health, 
 
 " Mark where the dry champaign 
 Swells into cheerful hills ; where Marjoram 
 And Thyme, the love of bees, perfume the air, 
 There bid thy roofs, high on the basking steep, 
 Ascend ; there light thy 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 scroftilous cases graiij- 
 mar sows, sow-pigs, millepedes or woodlice, to be swallowed 
 as a pill. According to the Penzance woman, the sufferer must 
 himself secure his medicine, but she had a corner in her little 
 garden where nothing was grown but mint and thyme, and there 
 the sow-pigs were reared. As a concession to modern 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.§ 
 
 * lndo-£ki/ropean TraMtion, p. 144. 
 
 t Martius, p. 32. 
 
 % G. L. A. (Wimbledon), 17 Jauuai-y, 1879. 
 
 § Miss M. L. B. 17 October, 1878. "In the Eastern Comities they are called 
 old-sons and sow-bugs, and in other parts St. Anthony's hogs. Their Latin 
 name is porcellio sealer. The Welsh have several names for this insect,— ^ 
 groraolwy-aoed, i.e. the withered old woman of the wood ; gwrach-y-lludm ; 
 
DOMESTIC FOLK-MEDICINB. 199 
 
 A poisonous bean, Esere, is used by the natives of Calabar 
 when an ulcer appears on the foot. One or two beans are laid 
 on the sore, 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 them.* Black bean tree is a cure for nettlerush in 
 Berkshire. 
 
 Silver weed 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 ribbons, f The excrescence found on a briar sore, and called 
 Robin Redbreasts 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 water in 
 which peas have been boiled. The leaves of the peach were, 
 according to the Three Hundred Receipts of 1724, to be 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 
 
 gmraeh-y-twed. Gmrach meam a withered old woman, so also does grammar; 
 so that grammar is but an English equivalent of gmrach. Other "Welsh names 
 are mochyn-y-coed, i.e. the little pig of the wood ; and tyrchyn llwyd, i.e. the 
 little grey hog."— W. N., ComuTvmam, 17 October, 1878. 
 
 * Omstian HxpresB (Lovedale, South Africa), Oct. 1878, p. 11 ; R. C. H. 25 
 April, 1879. 
 
 t Pratt, WUd Flmers, vol. ii. p. 32. 
 
 X Folh-Lore Reoord, vol. i. p. 38. " I recollect a growth of this kind of unusual 
 size being given to a little girl, who had whooping-cough, as a plaything. On 
 seeing it the nurse exclaimed, ' I am glad to see that. I have been wishing for one 
 for several days to hang round Miss Mary's neck.' " 
 
200 FOLK-MEDICINB. 
 
 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 Arnoldus 
 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 visual nerve for he had much to see." 
 
 Shenstone in his Schoolmistress says, 
 
 " Euphrasy may not be left unsung, 
 That gives dim eyes to vrander 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. Li England, six ounces 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.J 
 
 * Kelly, pp. 299, 300; Three Hundred Meceipts, p. 113 ; English PJiysiciam, 
 Enlarged, p. 180; R. C. H. 25 April, 1879; "Fairy Superstitions in Donegal," 
 University Mag. August 1879, p. 217. 
 
 f English Physician Enlarged, p. 97. " Ignored by the faculty, the Herbal 
 became the guide of the quack ; and in Culpepper's famous Herbal it had become 
 a fit companion for the Astrological Almanac. This was the dotage of that 
 ancient partnership between Botany andMedicine which in Dioscorides was young 
 and sound." — Earle, English Plant Names, p. xxviii. 
 
 J Conway, Demonology, vol. ii. p. 324 ; E. S. H. April, 1879. 
 
DOMESTIC FOLK-MEDICINE. 20] 
 
 The celebrity of mugwort (artemisia vulgaris) is great. 
 
 Cockayne gives a poem descriptive of this eldest of worts : 
 
 " Thou hast might for three 
 And against thirty, 
 For venom availest 
 For plying vile things." 
 
 The Herlarium 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 tc 
 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 oi 
 Glory, come in peace. "f 
 
 Crowsfoot is mentioned as used for the cure of a kenning, oi 
 keming, white spot on the eye.f In use it is to be accompanied 
 by a muttered incantation. Yarrow worn in a little bag upor 
 the stomach was the secret against agues of a great lord, whc 
 himself confided this to Boyle. The lord was very curious oi 
 receipts, and would sometimes pay highly for them, and a verj 
 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, toI. iii. p. 30 j vol. i. p. 103. 
 
 t Eev. G. S. S. 24 October, 1878 ; Henderson, FoVi-Lore of the Northen 
 Cmmties, p. 179. 
 I Polwhele, Traditions and Recollections, vol. ii. p. 607. 
 § Boyle, Some Considerations, ^e. voL 1. p. 211. 
 
202 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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. " Oato 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 against epilepsy, and thence an antidote to madness. 
 Fumigating byres 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 different 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 
 beatine the hag who had caused the evil.| A Derbyshire cure 
 for chilblains is to thrash them with holly. 
 
 To bite the first seen fern that appears in spring off 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 korn oder 
 schlehbliithen, derenman imjahr ansichtigwird,heilmittel wider 
 das fieber abgeben."§ The first blackberry seen will, Cornish 
 
 * ScarroTi, Adieu au Maxais et b, la Place Royal, complete works, toI. iv. 
 p. 32 ; English Folh-Lore, pp. 21, 22 ; Culpepper, p. 136. 
 t Dalyell, p. 139 ; Culpepper, p. 136. 
 
 X Comtesse von Giinther, Tales and Legends of tlie Tyrol, pp. 106-106. 
 § Grimm, Deutsche Mytlwlogte, toI. ii. p. 978. 
 
DOMESTIC FOLK-MEDICUSTB. 20> 
 
 people say, banish warts. The bracken, witches are 'said t( 
 detest, because it bears on its root the letter C, the initial of thi 
 holy name.* The root of the yellow iris, chopped up anc 
 chewed, is said to be an Argyleshire cure for toothache. Broon 
 tree is a cure for dropsy in Derbyshire. For chilblains, sor( 
 eyes, and chapped hands, the juice of leek squeezed out an( 
 mixed with cream is said to be a cure. To escape a curtail 
 lecture, or, as the Saxon more rudely puts ir, " against i 
 woman's chatter," one should taste at night, fasting, a root o; 
 radish, and chatter will not be able to harm him.f To cure i 
 woman of dumbness, on the other hand, we have the authorit} 
 of one of the C. Mery Talys that an aspen leaf is the propei 
 thing to put under her tongue, t 
 
 * " A friend suggests, however, that the letter intended is not the English ( 
 hut the Greek x, the initial letter of the word xp"^Tot;, which really resembles 
 very closely the marks in the root of the bracken, or Pteris aguilina." — Hender 
 son, p. 226. "For thigh aches (sciatica) smoke the thighs thoroughly witl 
 fern." — Cockayne, vol. iL p. 65. 
 
 f Cockayne, vol. ii. p. 343. 
 
 J A. C. Mery Talys, p. 87 {Shaltespeare Jest Boolis'). 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE PLACE OF FOLK-MEDICINE IN THE STUDY OF CIVILISATION. 
 
 BE have now discussed the theories of Folk-Medicine 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 under 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 modern 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 CIVILISATION. 20^ 
 
 primitive explanations of disease, — (1) the anger of an offendec 
 external spirit ; (2) the supernatural powers of a human enemy 
 and (3) the displeasure of the dead, and especially in placing 
 these suggestions in the above order, — I may seem to havi 
 ignored the conclusions to which Mr. Spencer believes he cai 
 point as the result of study of primitive man. Mr. Spencer 
 using the phrase ancestor-worship in its broadest sense as com- 
 prehending all^worship of the dead, be they of the same blood oi 
 not, concludes that ancestor-worship is the root of every reli- 
 gion [The 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 ; 
 advancing 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 unfamiliar.' 
 (^Ibid. p. 450.) Mr. Spencer finds then that, generally, al 
 primitive theories attribute disease and death to the spirits ol 
 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 theorj 
 above another in importance, or assign to this or that greatei 
 or less influence ; but, so far as all our knowledge goes a 
 present, I cannot accept Mr. Spencer's arguments as convincing 
 so far as Folk-Medicine is concerned. There is abundant proo 
 of the fear of the dead, of their worship, of their propitiation, o 
 belief in their malice and their love; but I do not think that an] 
 dogmatic assertion can be safely made that from fear of dreami 
 or of disembodied spirits arose all primitive man's theories o 
 disease and death ; much less, then, his apprehension of i 
 Supreme Power, oi;, speaking generally, his religion. 
 
206 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 Mr. Spencer is very desirous that we should recollect how 
 many difficulties present themselves when we endeavour to 
 place ourselves in 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 Oastle Doubting, I am unable to 
 regard liis 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. 
 It is necessary to bear in mind these two aspects, if we are to 
 judge accurately of man's primitive conceptions of things. If 
 we omit either the hardihood of the body or the infancy of tho 
 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 
 
FOLK-MEDICINE IN THE STUDY OF CIVILISATION. 207 
 
 would they be to make strong suggestive impressions upon the 
 mind of primitive man, 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 even 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 difiiculties 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 bush?' to 
 which 'Yes' was also the response." The Damaras have great 
 difficulty in counting beyond five, because no other hand remains 
 to secure the units already counted. Many instances 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 as 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 life or death till he sees his 
 
 » See Lubbock, Origm of Civilization, pp. 8, 9 ; Spencer, Data of Sociology, 
 pp. 94 et seq. 
 
208 FOLK-MEDICINB. 
 
 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 effect which the dream-life 
 of many modern 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 
 
FOLK-MBDICLNE IN THE STUDY OF CIVILISATION. 209 
 
 accurately grasps <ihe ideas and feelings of tlie semi-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 more we go back, the more we examine the 
 earliest germs of every religion, tlie purer, I believe, we shall find 
 the conceptions of the Deity." Mr. Spencer regards this asser- 
 tion as due to a perversion of thought, caused by looking at facts 
 in the wrong order, I am not called upon here to examine the 
 primitive conceptions of God, but I have no doubt, speaking 
 from my own study of the data of sociology as embodied in folk- 
 medicine (but not confined to this data alone), that the primary 
 intuition 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 familiar Sun excites in the child no awe 
 
210 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 whatever." " Recalling his boyhbod," continues he, " no one 
 can recall any feeling of fear drawn out by this most striking 
 object in Nature, or any sign of such feeling iii his companions. 
 Again, what peasant or what servant-girl betrays the slightest 
 reverence for the Sun ? Grazed 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 modern child greatly differs from the 
 primitive man it is in the different 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 
 iipon 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 that 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., dark. This is 
 surely 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 fi-iend 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 argument's 
 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 chai'acterised by lack of imagination, 
 • Data of Sociology, Appendix B, p. t. 
 
FOLK-MEDICINE IN THE STUDY OF CIVILISATION. 211 
 
 but his imagination, when it is 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- 
 peivable 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 society similar to that of primitive man, 
 which might furnish safe evidence as to his mental conceptions, 
 
 p2 
 
212 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 I would not ground any areuments 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 chapters 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 
 modern medicine, take an altogether different 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 the 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 accurately 
 represented by the peoples upon whose superstitions and beliefs 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 beliefs 
 remain some which were evolved during those higher states ... It is quite 
 possible, and, I believe, highly probable, that retrogression has been as frequent 
 as progression."— Dato of Sociology, p. 106. 
 
FOLK-MTSDICINE IN THE STUDY OF CIVILISATION. 213 
 
 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. The conclusion 
 to which the possibility of tracing our culture back to early days 
 seems to point is, that inteUeetually 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 liv^ing 
 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 modern 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 
 
214 FOLK-MEDICINE. 
 
 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 the 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 theni 
 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 diflScult 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 
 
FOLK-MBDICINE IN THE STUDY OF CIVILISATION. 2 1 5 
 
 ages, and, what 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 iield 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 modem 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 
 with 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 trunk. The one stage is illustrated by the same Northern 
 Fanner ; — 
 
216 FOLK-MEDIOINE. 
 
 "I niver know'd whot a mean'd but I thawt a' ad summat to saay, 
 An' I thawt a said a owt to 'a said an' I coom'd awaay." 
 
 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 borne 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 stunted 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 
 
rOLK-MEDICINE IN THE STUDY OF CIVILISATION. 217 
 
 we work we disinter facts which differ 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 modern fact into 
 modem fable. Thus there are two processes continually before 
 us. On the one hand we accumtilate 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. In 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 woidd 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 future. Culture, rightly studied, must 
 not only be a beacon which tells of cliffs 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- MEDICINE. 
 
 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 woulj^ 
 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 Grothic 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 saro.e sun which encom'ages 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 toQ 
 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 
 
FOLK-MEDICINE IN THE STUDY OF CIVILISATION, 219 
 
 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 an 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 theh only. Hence, 
 is not to keep it in a house almost as though (me 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 ai-e very often, if not always, found to have 
 a piece of coal in their pocket. Why should this be used? 
 Surely a modern 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. 
 I 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 
 
220 FOLK-MEDICINB. 
 
 from him, however, regarding the importance of sociology, 
 and it is as a contribution to the history of the culture of 
 societies that this book has been written. A separate theory of 
 Folk-Medicine is impossible, for Folk-Medicine has been built 
 up out of very strange and varied materials ; but it is perhaps 
 not altogether vain to hope that illustrations of man's intellectual 
 history will be found by study of collections of classified facts, 
 and that the investigation of spells and amulets, of superstitious 
 and witcheries, may not be unworthy of systematic analysis. 
 
221 
 
 BOOKS OF REFERENCE. 
 
 Anthropological Institute, Journal of 
 
 Antiquary, the (magazine) 
 
 Aubrey, John, Eemaines of Gentilisme 
 
 and Judaisme, ed. by Jas. Britten, 
 
 1881 
 
 Birch, W. de Gray, On Two Anglo- 
 Saxon MSS. in the British Museum, 
 1876 
 
 Blumler, M. F., Amnletornm Historia, 
 Magdeburg, 1710 
 
 Boyle, Some Considerations touching 
 the Usefulness of Experimental 
 Philosophy, 2nd ed. 1664 
 
 Brand, John, Description of Orkney, 
 703 
 
 Popular Antiquities, 1877 ed. 
 
 British Archaeological Association, 
 Transactions of 
 
 Brown, Sir Thomas, Pseudodoxia Epi- 
 demica, 4th ed. 1658 
 
 Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy 
 
 Busk, Miss, Valleys of Tirol, 1874 
 
 Cameron, Across Africa 
 
 Catlin, Letters and Notes on North 
 American Indians, 2 vols. 
 
 Chambers, Domestic Annals of Scot- 
 land, 3 Tols. 
 
 Popular Rhymes of Scotland 
 
 Choice Notes, Eolk-Lore, 1859 
 
 Christian Express, Lovedale, South 
 Africa 
 
 Cockayne, Rev. 0., Saxon Leechdoms, 
 &c. 3 vols. 1 864 
 
 Cogan, HaTen of Health 
 
 Conrad, Elias, Disputatio Physica 
 exhibens i. Doctrinam de Magia ; 
 ii. Thearemata Miscellanea, 1661 
 
 Contemporary Review, Oct. 1875 
 
 Conway, M.D.,Demonology and Devil- 
 Lore, 2 vols. 
 
 Croker, T. Crofton, Ki'.lamey Legends, 
 1879 ed. 
 
 Culpepper, Nich., The English Phy- 
 sician enlarged, 1684 
 
 Dalyell, John Graham, The Darker 
 Superstitions of Scotland, 1835 
 
 Dennys, N. B., The Folk-Lore of China 
 and its affinities with that of the 
 Aryan and Semitic Races, 1876 
 
 Derbyshire Gatherer 
 
 Digby, Sir Kenelm, A Late Discourse 
 made in a Solemn Assembly of 
 Nobles and learned men at Mont- 
 pellier in France, touching the cure 
 of wounds by the powder of sym- 
 pathy, &c. 3rd ed. 1660 
 
 D'lharace, Erreurs populaires snr le 
 Medecine, 1783 
 
 Dorman, R. M., The Origin of Primi- 
 tive Superstitions, 1881 
 
 Dyer, Rev. T. F. Thiselton, English 
 Folk-Lore, 1878 
 
 Earle, John, English Plant Names, 
 1880 
 
 Floyer, Touchstone of Medicine, 2 
 
 vols., 1687 
 Folk-Lor« Journal, South African, 
 
 vol. i. 
 Folk-Lore Record, vols. i. ii. iii. iv. 
 
 (1878, 1879, 1880, 1881) 
 
 Giles, H. A., Strange Stories from a 
 Chinese Studio, 2 vols. 1880 
 
 Gill, Myths and Songs from the South 
 Pacific 
 
 Gould, Rev. S. Baring, Life of Rev. 
 R. S. Hawker 
 
222 
 
 SELECTED BOOKS OF REFERENCE. 
 
 Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, 
 
 1877 
 Gregor, Key. Walter, Folk-Lore of the 
 
 North-East of Scotland, 1881 
 Grimm, Jacob, Deutsche Mythologie 
 
 Vierte ausgahe besorgt von Elard 
 
 Hugo Meyer, 3 vols. i. (1875), ii. 
 
 (1877). iii. (1878). See Stallybrass 
 Grohman, Tyrol and the Tyrolese 
 Gunther, Countesse A. von. Tales and 
 
 Legends of the Tyrol, 1874 
 
 Harland, John, and Wilkinson, T. T., 
 
 Lancashire Folk-Lore, 1867 
 Harrison, Description of England. 
 
 New Shakspere Soc. ed., 1878 
 Hawker, Footprints of Former Men in 
 
 Far Cornwall, 1870 
 Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages 
 Henderson, Wm. Folk-Lore of the 
 
 Northern Counties, 1879 
 Heucherus et Fabricius. De Vegetabi- 
 
 libus Magicis, Wittenberg. 1700 
 Hunt, Robert, Popular Romances of 
 
 West of England, first and second 
 
 series, 1865 
 
 Irish Popular and Medical Super- 
 stitions 
 
 Jones, W., Finger Ring Lore 
 
 Keary, C. F., Outlines of Primitive 
 Belief, 1882 
 
 Keightley, Thomas, Fairy Mythology, 
 1860 
 
 Kelly, W. K., Curiosities of Indo-Euro- 
 pean Traditions and FoUc-Lore, 1863 
 
 Lecky, History of England in the 
 Eighteenth Century, vol. i. ii. 
 
 Lenormant, La Magie chez les Chal- 
 deens 
 
 Livingstone, D., South Africa 
 
 Lubbock, Sir John, The Origin of 
 Civilization and the Primitive Con- 
 dition of Man, 4th ed. 1882 
 
 Martins, Dissertatio De Magia Na- 
 
 turali, &c., Erfurt, 1700 
 Mead, Influence of Sun and Moon on 
 
 Human Bodies 
 
 Mitchell, Arthur, The Past in the 
 Present, 1880 
 
 Napier, James, Folk-Lore or Super- 
 stitious Beliefs in the West of Scot- 
 land, 1879 
 
 Nork,F., Mythologie undVolksmarchen, 
 1848 
 
 Notes and Queries 
 
 Pazig, De Incantationibus Magicis, 
 1721 
 
 Petti grew, Superstitions connected with 
 the Practice of Medicine and Sur- 
 gery 
 
 Pratt, Anne, Wild Flowers 
 
 Raufesay, Wm., 'EX/JtvSoXoyia, 1668 
 Records of the Past, vols. i. iii. 
 
 Scott, Sir W., Demonology and Witch- 
 craft 
 
 Seton, St. Kilda Past and Present, 1878 
 
 Shakespeare Jest Books, A. C. Mery 
 Talys, &c. 3 vols. 1864 
 
 Sinistrari, Le R. P., De la Demo- 
 nialite, traduit, du Latin, par 
 Isidore Lisenx, 1879 
 
 Spalding, T. A., Elizabethan Demon- 
 ology, 1880 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, Principles of Soci- 
 ology, 1877 
 
 Study of Sociology, 1878 
 
 Stallybrass, James S., Teutonic Myth- 
 ology (translation of Grimm's 
 Deutsche Mythologie), vol. i. 1880, 
 ii. 1883 
 
 Story, W. W., Castle of St. Angelo 
 and the Evil Eye, 1877 
 
 Sykes, Wirt, British Goblins 
 
 Tylor, E. B., Primitive Culture, 2 vols. 
 
 1871 
 Early History of Mankind 
 
 University Magazine, August 1879, 
 " Fairy Superstitions in Donegal " 
 
 Witches of Renfrewshire, a History of 
 the, New Edition with Introduction, 
 1877 
 
223 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Abgar's letter, king, 87 
 
 Ablution, 88 
 
 Adders, bite of, 122, 123, 192 
 
 Agate, 176 
 
 Ague, cause of, 27, 95 
 
 cures for, 35, 38, 39, 56, 57, 58, 
 
 59, 60, 81, 82, 86, 100, 122, 124, 152, 
 165. 170, 183, 192, 195, 201, 202 
 
 Alder, 57 
 
 Amaranth, 108, 201 
 
 Ancestor worship, 205 
 
 Animal Cwres, Ch. x. 148 
 
 disease transferred to, 44 
 
 diseases of, transferred, 47 
 
 Ants' eggs, 193 
 
 Apple, tree and fruit, 38, 42, 57, 201 
 
 Arrow-heads, flint, 182 
 
 Ash tiee, 38, 67, 195, 197, 198 
 
 sap, 179, 196 
 
 Ashes, 42, 72 
 
 Aspen leaf, 203 
 
 Ass, 122, 153, 158 
 
 Association of Ideas, Sympathy and, 
 Ch. III. 49 
 
 Asthma, 125, 189 
 
 " Biaras," 195 
 
 Bats, 164 
 
 Bay tree, 154, 197 * 
 
 Bean, 57, 199 
 
 Bear, 159, 160 
 
 Beetle, 61 
 
 Bells, 19 
 
 Birth hour, 124, 128, 132 
 
 Black (colour), 115, 219 
 
 thorn, 57, 202 
 
 Blackberry 202 
 
 Bleeding, to stop, 76,79,80, 97,111, 
 
 139, 176, 198 
 Blindness, 92, 185 
 Blood bread, 100 
 Bloodstone, 176 
 Blue, colour, 112 
 Boils, 42, 194 
 Borgie well, 103 
 Bramble, 70, 119 
 
 Briar rose, 199 
 
 Broom, 203 
 
 Burial, 29, 101 
 
 Burns, to cure, 80, 81, 189 
 
 Cabbage, 192, 193 * 
 
 Cake, children passed through, 69 
 
 Cancer, cause of, 31 
 
 to cure, 148 
 
 Cat, 44, 69, 116, 117, 151, 164 
 
 Caterpillar, 61 
 
 Cattle diseases, 55, 57, 63, 69, 74, 83, 
 
 104, 106, 112 
 Chader Well, 102 
 Charmers, 14 
 Cherry tree, 68 
 Chestnut, 193 
 Chilblains, 202, 203 
 Child-birth, 84, 90^, 93, 100, 128, 155, 
 
 178, 182 
 Churchyards, 95, 96 
 Club moss, 76 
 Coal as an amulet, 219 
 Cock, 46, 72, 112 
 Cockroach, 161 
 Coffin handles, 175 
 Colic, 154, 183 
 Mom; Ch. vil. 108 
 Confirmation, 89, 187 
 Consumption, cause of, 26, 96 
 cures for, 31, 56, 73, 
 
 100, 161 
 Convulsions, cure for, 41, 86, 87, 94, 
 
 148, 189, 195, 
 Coral, red, 22, 37 
 Corns, to cure, 1 93 
 CouTade, 178, 179 
 Cow, 69, 74, 96, 161 
 Crab, 161 
 
 Cramp, cause of, 27, 95 
 to cure, 86, 151, 156, 175, 182, 
 
 199 
 Crocodile, charm against, 50 
 " Crooke," the, 157 
 Cross, invoked, 83 ; sign of, 85, 128 
 buns, 86, 133 
 
224 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Crowsfoot, 201 
 Cuckoo, 164, 188 
 
 Dandelion, 199 
 
 Day? of birth, 132 
 
 Days, holy, 133, 134, 135 
 
 Dead, cause disease, 25, 205 
 
 forcing disease on the, 42, 101 
 
 touch of, 100 
 
 " Dead mea's pinches," 27 
 
 Deafness, to cure, 117, 161, 193 
 
 Death or the Grave, Charms con- 
 nected with, Ch. VI. 95. 
 
 Death, theories as to cause of, 3, 4, 
 183, 205, 
 
 Devil, causes diseases, 10, 13, 19 
 
 to appease, 117 
 
 to invoke, 117, 170 
 
 charm against, 197 
 
 Devil's mark, 113, 155 
 
 Diarrhoea, to cure, 165 
 
 Digby, Sir Kenelm, on sympathy, 52 
 
 Disease, cause of, 4, 14, 25, 30, 205 
 
 personified, 5, 7, 8 
 
 burial of, 55 
 
 Disease, Transference of, Ch. ii. 34 
 
 Docken, 194 
 
 Dog. 35, 117, 14fj 
 
 to cure bite of, 60, 51, 134, 196, 
 
 200, 201. See Hydrophobia. 
 
 howling of, 190 
 
 Domestic Folh-Medicine, Ch. xii. 178 
 
 Dow Loch. 103 
 
 Dreams, 129 
 
 Dropsy, to cure, 63, 174, 203 
 
 Drowning, charm against, 84 
 
 men, averrion to saving, 28 
 
 Dumbness, to cure, 203 
 
 Earache, to cure, 158, 160 
 
 Eel's blood, 162 
 
 Eel- skin, 161 
 
 Elder, 185, 192 
 
 Elf shots, 112 
 
 Elk's hoof, 160* 
 
 Enemy causes disease, 4, 14 
 
 Epilepsy, cause of, 126 
 
 to cure 46, 72, 96, 116, 120, 
 
 124, 126, 153, 162, 188, 195, 196, 202 
 Erysipelas, to cure, 106, 116, 139, 140, 
 
 189, 192 
 "Esere," 199 
 
 Evil Eye, 21, 112, 166, 184, 201. 218 
 Eyebright, 200 
 " Faire Claidth," 29 
 Eairies, 165 
 " Eeargartha," 30 
 
 Fern, 202, 203 
 
 Fever, cause of, 126 
 
 to cure, 35, 38, 58, 59, 62, 68, 
 
 90:, 111, 113, 114, 119, 148, 170, 
 173,174,192,202 
 
 Finger nails, 41, 56, 72, 181 
 
 Finger ring, 176 
 
 Fire, 69 
 
 Fir-tree, 38 
 
 Fish, transference of disease to, 36 
 
 Fits, to cure, 12, 84, 89, 95, 97, 99 
 
 Flagellation, 99, 177, 202 
 
 Flax, 185 
 
 Folk- Medicine : Origin of Disease, 1 ; 
 Transference of Disease, 34; Sym- 
 pathy and Association of Ideas, 49 ; 
 New Berth and Sacrifice, 65; Our 
 Lord and the Saints in, 75; Charms 
 connected with Death and the Grave, 
 95; Colour, 108; Number, 118; In- 
 fluence of Sun and Moon, 124; Per- 
 sonal Cures, 136 ; Animal Cures, 148 ; 
 Magic Writings, 165; Kings, 172; 
 Domestic, 178; Place of — in study 
 of Civilization, 204 
 
 Fox, 158 
 
 Freckles, 119, 199 
 
 Frog, 35, 63, 187 
 
 Fuller's teazle, 202 
 
 Fumitory, 201 
 
 Gallows, chips of, 100 
 
 Goat, brain, blood, horn and skin of, 
 
 162 
 Goitre, to cure, 101 
 Gold ring, 173 
 
 Good Friday Charms, 86, 133, 137 
 Gont,tocnre,38, 63, got, 131,164, 176, 
 
 184,187, 189 
 " Grammar-sows," 198 
 Grass in St. Edrin's churchyard, 96 
 Grave, earth from, 27t, 95 
 Green (colour), 114 
 Groundsel, 192 
 
 Hair, human, 16, 27, 72, 95, 185 
 
 Halter, 100 
 
 Hare, 31, 154 
 
 Harelip, cause of, 31, 155 
 
 Hazel, 122, 193 
 
 Headache, cause of, 11 
 
 to cure, 93, 96, 100, 156, 174 
 
 Hedge-hog, eye of, 186 
 Hellebore, 187 
 Hen, 116, 117, 158 
 Herring, 182 
 Hiccough, to cure, 85 
 
INDEX. 
 
 225 
 
 Hoarseness, to cure, 193 
 Holly, 202 
 Horse, 117, 152 
 
 shoe, 154 
 
 Hydrophobia, to cure, 60, 69, 96, 120, 
 144, 149, 154, 167 
 
 Images, made to cause disease, 19 
 
 to cure disease, 64 
 
 Inflammation, to cure, 105, 115, 119 
 Iris, yellow, 203 
 Ivy, 202 
 
 Jasper, 111, 154 
 
 Jaundice, to cure, 56, 60, 115, 148, 157, 
 
 159 
 Juniper, 202 
 
 Keogh family, blood of, 140 
 King Charles I., blood of, 100 
 King's Evil, to cure, 62, 100, 101, 140 
 Kings, touch of, 140 
 Knife, murderer's 97 
 Knots, 79, 120, 185 
 
 Lark, 164 
 
 Laurel, 154, 197*, 202 
 
 Leek, juice of, 203 
 
 Left and right, 186 
 
 Leg, to cure inflammation of, 158 
 
 Leprosy, to cure, 74, 100, 156 
 
 Life absorbed in instrument of deatli, 99 
 
 Lightning, llj 
 
 charm against, 197* 
 
 Linnet, 164 
 
 Liver complaint, to cure, 108, 135 
 
 Lizard, 162 
 
 Loadstone, 182 
 
 Lumbago, 137 
 
 Lunacy, cause of, 6, 135 
 
 to cure, 45, 73, 86, 91, 102, 110, 
 
 195, 202 
 
 "Macdonald's disease," 138 
 
 Mad stone, 144 
 
 Magic Writings, Ch. XI. (1), 165 
 
 Maple, 68 
 
 Marjoram, 198 
 
 Marriage name, 138 
 
 Mary Queen of Scots' body, 28 
 
 Measles, cure for, 157, 199 
 
 Mfin-an-tol, 66 
 
 Mice, fried, 159 
 
 Midsummer Day, 135 
 
 " Milner's thumbs," 147 
 Mistletoe, 173, 195, 196 
 Mole, on right temple, 187 
 
 paw of, 161 
 
 Moon, Inflimnoe of the Sun and, Ch. 
 
 YIII. (2), 124, 151 
 Moss, from skull, 96 
 Mouth, to cure sore, 122 
 Mugwort, 194, 201 
 Mulberry, 189 
 Mumps, cure for, 105 
 
 Nahak burners, 17 
 
 Names, importance of, 20, 58, 90, 138 
 
 Neck, to cure swollen, 95, 119, 156 
 
 Nettle rush, 199 
 
 Nettles, 194, 195 
 
 ifem Birth and Sacrifice, Ch. iv. 65 
 
 Nine (number), 57, 68, 69, 73, 79, 118 
 
 Noise, as a healer, 18 
 
 Nose-bleeding, to cure, 62, 64, 76, 97, 
 
 111, 167, 183, 191, 202 
 Nimler, Ch. vill. (1), 118 
 
 Oak tree, 37, 39, 68 
 
 Onions, T nice of, 193 
 
 Ophthalmic complaints, to cure. 63, 76, 
 
 119, 139, 144, 151, 157, 158, 161, 
 
 163, 170, 173, 191, 192, 200,201,202, 
 
 203 
 Our Lm'd and the Saints in i'olli- 
 
 Medicine, Ch. V. 75 
 Owl broth, eggs, &c. 164 
 Ox, 159 
 
 Palsy, to cure, 156 
 Paralysis, cause of, 14, 17, 159 
 
 to cure, 12, 159, 174 
 
 Peach, leaves of, 199 
 Pear-tree, 96 
 Peas, 199 
 Peony, 195 
 
 Personal Cures, Ch. IX. 136 
 Pig, bite of, 31 
 Pigeons, 163 
 Plant charms, 191 
 Pleurisy, to cure, 162, 163 
 Poison, 92, 183, 193 
 Potatoe, 182, 193 
 Psalms, 89, 91, 122 
 
 Queens, touch of, 143 
 Quinsy, to cure, 192 
 
 Kadish, 203 
 
226 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Rainbow causfes disease, 1 1 
 Rash, cause of, 27 
 
 to cure, 159 
 
 Red (colour), 108, 158 
 
 thread, 113, 197 
 
 Regeneration, 65. See Nem Birth 
 Rheumatism, to cure, 63, 70,99, 152, 
 
 154, 156, 174, 177, 182, 193, 201, 202 
 Rickets, to cure, 56, 125 
 Rings, 128, 153, 172 
 
 cramp, 175 
 
 Sacrament, 174 
 
 Ringworm, to cure, 42, 123, 139, 182, 
 
 184 
 "Robin Redbreast's cushion," 199 
 Rocks, perforated, 66 
 Rowan, 39, 197 
 Rue, 200 
 Ruptures, to cure, 67 
 
 Sacrament rings, 174 
 
 Saerifice, New Birth and, Ch . IV. 65 
 
 St. ApoUonia, 93 
 
 — Blaze, 92 
 
 — Convall's Chariot, 104 
 
 — Edrin's churchyard, 96 
 
 — George, 93 
 
 — Guthlac's belt, 93 
 
 — John (Baptist), 91 
 
 Gospel, 91, 154, 167 
 
 Well, Wembdon, 102 
 
 — Marchntus, 94 
 
 — Nacaise, 92 
 
 — Nun's Well 102 
 
 — Peter, 77, 92 
 
 — Thomas Becket, 93 
 
 — Veronica, 94 
 
 — Victricius, 94 
 
 — Anthony's fire, to cure, 38, 190 
 
 — Vitus dance, to cure, 170, 183 
 Salt, 131 
 
 Scalds, to cure, 81*, 193 
 Scarlet fever, to cure, 35 
 Sciatica, to cure, 107, 203* 
 Scorpions, charms against, 93 
 Scrofula, to cure, 66, 124, 198 
 Seven (number), 92, 121, 129, 132 
 Seventh son, 122, 133, 136 
 
 daughters, 137 
 
 Sheep, 117, 156, 157 
 Shingles, cause of, 10 
 
 to cure, 116, 117*, 151 
 
 Silverweed, 119, 199 
 Sleeping foot, to cure, 85 
 Sleeplessness, to cure, 154, 162, 187 
 Smallpox, cause of, 5, 7 
 
 ■ to cure, 7, 93, 108 
 
 Snails, 56, 157 
 
 Snakes and snake bites, 10, 45, 51, 58, 
 
 155, 158, 162, 196, 200 
 Sores, to cure, 75, 196 
 Special healers, 14, 104, 122, 133, 136, 
 
 137, 162 
 Specific Charms, Ch. xi. 165 
 Spider, 58, 59 
 
 Spine disease, to cure, 66 165 
 Spittle, 16, 184 
 Sprains, to cure, 78, 137, 161 
 Stag, 159 
 
 Stars, influence of, 129 
 Stings, to cure, 120 
 Stitch, to cure, 80 
 Stones, special powers in, 4,7, 104,110, 
 
 120, 144, 154 
 
 transmission through, 66 
 
 Stork, eggs of, 164 
 " Strangers' cold," 24 
 Straw, 57 
 
 rope, 69 
 
 Suicide, touch of hand of, 1 01 
 
 ghost of, 110 
 
 Swn, and Moon, Influence of, Ch. vill. 
 
 (2), 124 
 Sunday, ] 33 
 
 Swellings, to cure, 95, 113, 119, 161 
 Symbolic injury, 1 9 
 Sympathy and Association of Ideas, 
 
 Ch. III. 49 
 Sympathy with natural objects, human, 
 
 31,67 
 
 Taoist priests, 21 
 
 Tetter, to cure, 123. See Ringworm 
 
 Thorn, to cure prick, 82, 83 
 
 Throat, to cure sore, 106, 116, 182, 
 
 192 
 Thrush, to cure, 35, 104, 138 
 Thunder, charm against, 197 f 
 Thyme, 198 
 Tigretier, to cure, 92 
 Toad, 17, 31, 42, 58, 62, 63 
 Toad doctor, 61 
 Tooth from corpse, 98 
 Toothache, cause of, 11, 32 
 to cure, 14, 33, 35, 88, 63, 
 
 77, 89, 90*, 93, 98, 119, 139, 156, 
 
 161, 171, 177, 182, 187, 188, 192, 
 
 193, 196, 202, 203 
 Transference of Disease, Ch. II. 34 
 Trees, 37, 39, 67, 73 
 
 transmission through, 31, 67 
 
 Tripe, 202 
 
 Twin, a " left," 138 
 
 Ulcerations, to cure, 100, 139 
 Unbaptized children, 98 
 
INDEX. 
 
 227 
 
 VerTain, 135, 153, 193 
 Vulture's leg and toes, sinews of, 
 164 
 
 Warts^ cause of, 30, 31, 187 
 
 to cure, 38, 41, 43, 56, 86, 126, 
 
 127, 130, 138, 151, 152, 158, 162, 
 
 168, 173, 185, 192, 199 
 Watercresses, 192 
 WaterUlies, 12 
 Water-spirits, 12, 28, 116 
 Waters, Holy, 31, 39, 40, 46, 73, 88, 
 
 89, 92, 102, 103, 104, 133, 179 
 Weakness, to cure, 201 
 Wedding-ring, 173 
 Wells, See Waters, Holy, supra 
 Wens, to cure, 168. See Warts 
 
 White (.colour), 115 
 
 Whooping-cough, to cure, 35, 36, 61, 
 70, 88, 89, 90, ICl, 106, 111, 118, 
 119, 120, 138, 153, 157, 159, 182, 
 183, 199 
 
 " Widderschynnes," 130, 131 
 
 Willow, 38, 58 
 
 Wisewomen, See Special Healers and 
 
 Witchcraft 
 Witchcraft, witches, wizards, &c., 9, 
 
 10, 12, 14, 15, 19, 26, 69, 83, 89, 
 
 96,185, 188, 192, 197t, 199, 203 
 Wolf, 92, 153, 154 
 Woodbine, 68 
 Worms, to cure, 199 
 Wounds, to heal, 76, 79, 148, 193, 198, 
 
 199, 202 
 
 Tarrow, 201 
 
 Yellow (colour), 108, 115 
 
228 
 
 EERATA. 
 
 163. For " in January, five years, later Kate Joyce," &c., read " in January, 
 five years later, Kate Joyce," &c. 
 
 169. For " the little figure of the sick man," &c., ri'ad " the little finger of the 
 sick man," &c. 
 
 194. For "Glasgow," read " Port Glasgovr." 
 
 199. For " the excrescence found on a briar sore," read " the excrescence found 
 on a briar rose." • 
 

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