some morning to her for the purpose. Some hold the opinion that the intended remedy will be powerless, unless the child be carried over a river, or brook, to the woman's residence!!]

Aubrey gives the following receipt to cure an ague. Gather cinquefoil in a good aspect of 2 to the D, and let the moone be in the mid-heaven, if you can, and take ***** of the powder of it in white wine. If it be not thus gathered according to the rules of astrology, it hath little or no virtue in it. See his Miscellanies, p. 144, where there follow other superstitious cures for the thrush, the toothache, the jaundice, bleeding, &c.

In the Muses Threnodie, p. 213, we read that "Many are the instances, even to this day, of charms practised among the vulgar, especially in the Highlands, attended with forms. of prayer. In the Miscellaneous MS. cited before, written by Baillie Dundee, among several medicinal receipts I find an exorcism against all kinds of worms in the body, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, to be repeated three mornings, as a certain remedy. The poor women who were prosecuted for witchcraft administered herbs and exorcized their sick patients."

The Pool of Strathfillan (or St. Fillan) has been already noticed, under the head of Wells and Fountains. In Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, v. 84, the minister of Logierait, in Perthshire, speaking of superstitious opinions and practices in the parish, says: Recourse is often had to charms for the cure of diseases of horses and cows, no less than in the human species. In the case of various diseases, a pilgrimage is performed to a place called Strathfillan, forty miles distant from Logierait, where the patient bathes in a certain pool, and performs some other rites in a chapel which stands near. It is chiefly in the case of madness, however, that the pilgrimage to Strathfillan is believed to be salutary. The unfortunate person is first bathed in the pool, then left for a night bound in the chapel, and, if found loose in the morning, is expected to recover. There is a disease called Glacach by the Highlanders, which, as it affects the chest and lungs, is evidently of a consumptive nature. It is called the Macdonalds' disease, "because there are particular tribes of Macdonalds who are believed to cure it with the charm of their touch, and the use of a certain set of words. There

must be no fee given of any kind. Their faith in the touch of a Macdonald is very great." Ibid. iii. 379. The minister of Applecross, in the county of Ross, speaking of the superstitions of the parish, says: "There are none of the common

calamities or distressful accidents incident to man or beast but hath had its particular charm or incantation: they are generally made up of a group of unconnected words, and an irregular address to the deity, or to some one of the saints. The desire of health, and the power of superstition, reconciled many to the use of them; nor are they, as yet, among the lower class, wholly fallen into disuse. Credulity and ignorance are congenial; every country hath its vulgar errors; opinions early imbibed and cherished for generations are difficult to be eradicated." Ibid. i. 507: "The minister of Meigle parish, having informed us that in the churchyard of Meigle are the remains of the grand sepulchral monument of Vanora, called also Vanera, Wanor, and Guinevar, the British Helena," adds: "The fabulous Boece records a tradition prevailing in his time, viz. that if a young woman should walk over the grave of Vanora, she shall entail on herself perpetual sterility."

Brand, in his Description of Orkney, pp. 61, 62, tells us, as has been already mentioned, that when the beasts, as oxen, sheep, horses, &c., are sick, they sprinkle them with a water made up by them, which they call Fore-spoken Water. They have a charm also whereby they try if persons be in a decay, or not, and if they will die thereof, which they call Casting of the Heart. "Several other charms also they have, about their marriage, when their cow is calving, when churning their milk, or when brewing, or when their children are sick, by taking them to a smith (without premonishing him) who hath had a smith to his father, and a smith to his grandfather.... They have a charm whereby they stop excessive bleeding in any, whatever way they come by it, whether by or without external violence. The name of the patient being sent to the charmer, he saith over some words (which I heard), upon which the blood instantly stoppeth, though the bleeding patient were at the greatest distance from the charmer. Yea, upon the saying of these words, the blood will stop in the bleeding throats of oxen or sheep, to the astonishment of spectators. Which account we had from the ministers of the country."

["That the inhabitants of the south of Scotland were formerly exceedingly superstitious is well known, but that which I am about to relate is of a darker shade of benighted credulity than has I think taken place elsewhere in this country, so near the middle of the nineteenth century.

"A highly respectable yeoman, who occupies an extensive farm in the parish of Buittle, near Castle Douglas, Kirkcudbrightshire, not more than two years since, submitting to the advice of his medical attendant, permitted one of his arms, which was diseased, to be amputated, and though the operation was skilfully performed, his health recovered very slowly. A few weeks after the amputated limb had been consigned to the family burial-place, a cannie old woman in the neighbourhood, being consulted as to the cause of the decline of the farmer's health, recommended that his arm should be forthwith raised from the grave, and boiled till the flesh could be separated freely from the bones, and that a certain bone of one of the fingers of the hand should be taken from the others, which if worn by the former owner, either in his vest pocket, or sewn into his dress, on the same side from which the limb was cut, all pain or disease would be thereby soon dispelled, and robust health return to the suffering individual.

"Two neighbours, on hearing this advice, volunteered to superintend the resuscitation and boiling of the arm in question, and without delay proceeded with the sexton to the parish churchyard, where a strong peat fire was soon kindled, and a large pot, full of water, placed over the flame. So soon as the limb was raised out the grave, it was plunged into the scalding water in the pot, and allowed to remain there, till by boiling, the occult joint was easily separated from the rest.

"The grave-digger in this instance takes praise to himself for having returned to the grave all the remaining bones, flesh, and extract, as carefully as if it had been a common burial.

66

Subsequently the unfortunate yeoman informed the writer of this brief memorandum, that although he had kept the old knuckle-bone carefully in his vest pocket, as foolishly directed, for a considerable time, he was not sensible of any beneficial effect received by his so doing.

"In the eastern corner of the ivy, covered walls of the ruin of the old parish church of Buittle, the curious visitor

may see the course of the darkening smoke of the fire used in this unhallowed incantation."-JOSEPH TRAIN.]'

"For warts," says Sir Thomas Browne, " we rub our hands before the moon, and commit any maculated part to the touch of the dead." Old women were always famous for curing warts; they were so in Lucian's time.

Grose says: "To cure warts, steal a piece of beef from a butcher's shop and rub your warts with it; then throw it down the necessary-house, or bury it; and as the beef rots, your warts will decay." See more superstitions relating to warts in Turner on the Diseases of the Skin, and in La Forest, L'Art de soigner les Pieds, p. 75.

[Devonshire cure for warts.—Take a piece of twine, tie in it as many knots as you have warts, touch each wart with a knot, and then throw the twine behind your back into some place where it may soon decay-a pond or a hole in the earth; but tell no one what you have done. When the twine is decayed your warts will disappear without any pain or trouble, being in fact charmed away!]

"After

I extracted the following from a newspaper, 1777: he (Dr. Dodd) had hung about ten minutes, a very decently dressed young woman went up to the gallows, in order to have a wen in her face stroked by the doctor's hand; it being a received opinion among the vulgar that it is a certain cure for such a disorder. The executioner, having untied the doctor's hand, stroked the part affected several times therewith."

I remember once to have seen, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, after a person executed had been cut down, men climb up upon the gallows and contend for that part of the rope which remained, and which they wished to preserve for some lucky

[For this most singular instance of superstition, the publisher is indebted to the kindness of his friend Dr. Train, whose well-directed and untiring energy in the pursuit of legendary lore has been recorded in several of the pages of Sir Walter Scott.

The Publisher avails himself of this occasion to acknowledge the interest Dr. Train has taken in this edition of Brand, and to thank him for several interesting contributions, as well as for permission to make extracts from his valuable History of the Isle of Man.']

purpose or other. I have lately made the important discovery that it is reckoned a cure for the headache.

Grose says, that "a dead man's hand is supposed to have the quality of dispelling tumours, such as wens, or swelled glands, by striking with it, nine times, the place affected. It seems as if the hand of a person dying a violent death was deemed particularly efficacious; as it very frequently happens that nurses bring children to be stroked with the hands of executed criminals, even whilst they are hanging on the gallows. A halter, wherewith any one has been hanged, if tied about the head, will cure the headache. Moss growing on a human skull, if dried, powdered, and taken as snuff, will cure the headache.

"The chips or cuttings of a gibbet, or gallows, on which one or more persons have been executed or exposed, if worn next the skin, or round the neck in a bag, will cure the ague, or prevent it.'

I saw, a few years ago, some dust, in which blood was absorbed, taken, for the purpose of charming away some disease or other, from off the scaffold on the beheading of one of the rebel lords in 1746.

In the Life of Nicholas Mooney, a notorious highwayman, executed at Bristol, April 24th, 1752, with other malefactors, we read, p. 30: "After the cart drew away, the hangman very deservedly had his head broke for endeavouring to pull off Mooney's shoes; and a fellow had like to have been killed in mounting the gallows, to take away the ropes that were left after the malefactors were cut down. A young woman came fifteen miles for the sake of the rope from Mooney's neck, which was given to her; it being by many apprehended that the halter of an executed person will charm away the ague, and perform many other cures."

In the Times newspaper of August 26, 1819, in an account of the execution of a Jew, named Abraham Abrahams, on Penenden Heath (copied from the Maidstone Gazette), we read: "After the body had hung some time, several persons applied for permission to rub the hand of the deceased over their wens, which by the vulgar is stupidly believed to be a cure for those troublesome swellings: but the Jews in attendance told them they could not suffer the body to be touched by any but their own people, it being contrary to their customs."