July 21. 1855.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



3^ 



LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 21, 1855. 



floiti. 



THE FOLK LOBE OF A CORNISH VILLAGE : CHABMS, 

 OMENS, ETC. 



'\Continued from Vol. xi., p. 499.) 



The domestic treatment of disease among our 

 poor consists chiefly of charms and ceremonies ; 

 and even when material remedies are employed, 

 as much importance is attached to the rites which 

 attend their employment as to the agents used. 

 In many cases we may notice remnants of the old 

 doctrine of signatures, and thtf idea of sympathies 

 and antipathies between separate and dissimilar 

 bodies. In the cure of haemorrhages, the pre- 

 ference is given to medicines of a bright red 

 colour ; and safFron-water, the brightest coloured 

 decoction they are acquainted with, is admini- 

 stered to throw out eruptions of the skin. The 

 nettle-rush is treated by copious draughts of net- 

 tle-tea. The fisherman, whose hand is wounded 

 by a hook, is very careful to preserve that hook 

 from rust during the healing of the wound. 



The following instances will illustrate the super- 

 stitious character of the household medicine of the 

 poorer of our population. 



If the infant suffers from the thrush, it is taken, 

 fasting, on three following mornings, " to have its 

 mouth blown into" by a posthumous child. If 

 afflicted with the hooping cough, it is fed with the 

 bread and butter of a family the heads of which 

 bear respectively the names John and Joan — a 

 serious thing for the poor couple in time of an 

 epidemic. Or if a piebald horse is to be found in 

 the country, the child is taken to it, and passed 

 thrice under its belly. The mere possession of 

 such a beast confers the power of curing this 

 disease. The owner of a piebald horse states, that 

 he has frequently been stopped on the road by 

 anxious mothers, who inquire of him in a casual 

 way, what is good for the hooping cough ; and 

 the thing he mentioned, however inappropriate or 

 absurd, was held to be a certain remedy in that 

 particular case. 



The passing of children through holes in the 

 earth, rocks, or trees, once an established rite, is 

 still practised in various parts of Cornwall. With 

 us, boils are cured by creeping on the hands and 

 knees beneath a bramble which has grown into 

 the soil at both ends. Children affected with 

 hernia are still passed through a slit in an ash 

 sapling before sunrise fasting ; after which the 

 slit portions are bound up, and as they unite so the 

 malady is cured. The asti is indeed a tree of many 

 virtues : venomous reptiles are never known to 

 rest under its shadow, and a single blow from an 

 ash stick is instant death to an adder ; struck by 

 a bough of any other tree, the reptile is said to 



No. 299.] 



retain marks of life until the sun goes down. The 

 antipathy of the serpent to the ash is a very old 

 popular fallacy. (Pliny, Hist. Mundi, lib. xvi.) 



The mountain ash, or care, has still greater re- 

 pute among our country folk in the curing of ills 

 arising from supernatural as well as ordinary 

 causes. It is dreaded by evil spirits ; it renders 

 null the spells of the witch, and has many other 

 wonderful properties. The countryman will carry 

 for years a piece of the wood in his pocket as a 

 charm against ill-wish, or as a remedy for his 

 rheumatism. If his cow is out of health, and he 

 suspects her to be overlooked, away he runs to the 

 nearest wood and brings home bunches of care, 

 which he suspends over her stall, and wreathes 

 round her horns : after which he considers her safe. 



Boys, when stung by nettles, have great faith 

 in the antidotal properties of the dock; and whilst 

 rubbing it into the part in pain, repeat the words, 

 " Out nettle, in dock — nettle, nettle stung me." 



The cures for warts are many and various. A^ 

 piece of flesh is taken secretly, and rubbed over 

 the warts ; it is then buried ; and as the flesh de- 

 cays, the warts vanish. Or some mysterious 

 vagrant desires them to be carefully counted, and 

 marking the number on the inside of his hat, 

 leaves the neighbourhood — when the warts also 

 disappear. 



There are a few animals the subject of super- 

 stitious veneration, and a much greater number 

 whose actions are supposed to convey intimations 

 of the future. In some instances it would seem 

 that they are considered more in the light of cause 

 than prognostic ; yet as the doctrine of fatalism, 

 in a restricted sense, runs through the popular 

 belief, we may consider the conduct of the inhos- 

 pitable housewife who drives ofl" the cock that 

 crows on the door-step, thereby warning her of 

 the approach of strangers, as only a fresh illustra- 

 tion of the very old fallacy that the way to avert 

 the prediction is to silence the prophet. Here are 

 some of our superstitions connected with animals, 

 &c. : — 



The howling of dogs, the continued croaking of 

 ravens over a house, and the ticking of the death- 

 watch, portend death. The magpie is a bird of 

 good or ill omen, according to the number seen at " 

 a time : 



" One for sorrow ; two for mirth ; 

 Three for a wedding ; four for death." 



A crowing hen is a bird of ill luck. An old 

 proverb in use here says : 



" A whistling woman, and a crowing hen, are two of 

 the unluckiest things under the sun." 



The first is always reproved, and the latter got rid 

 of without loss of time. Pluquet, in his book on 

 the superstitions of Bayeux, gives this identical 

 proverb : 



" Une poule qui chante le coq, et une fille qui sif3e, ' 

 poirtent malheur dans la maison." 



