Notes on certain Superstitions prevalent in the Vale of Gloucester, 
read to the Cotteswold Club, at the Tewkesbury Meeting, May 
9th, 1854, by Joun Jonus, Gloucester. 
The favor with which the papers upon Archeological 
subjects were received, at the last Cirencester Meeting of the 
Club, induces me to offer it one of the same character. 
The rapidity with which the superstitions of our land are 
beginning to disappear, and the interest they possess in an 
ethnological or psychological point of view, render it desirable, 
that those which can still be procured, should be preserved in 
a tangible form. 
The nature of the superstitions to which I would direct 
_ your attention, may be most briefly exemplified by the relation 
of two somewhat remarkable instances, which have fallen 
under my notice within the last few years. 
Calling upon a person who had just removed to a new 
residence, I found him in his garden, and amongst other 
alterations, ordering a bed of parsley to be immediately 
- removed from the place where it then grew to another. This 
~ order, it appears, had before been given more than once, and as 
the person addressed still seemed to pay no attention to it, he 
_ was asked the reason, and at once replied that he had no 
intention of doing anything of the kind. He was quite 
_ willing to root it up and destroy it entirely, but transplant it 
he would not, and said, moreover, that he did not know 
anyone who would willingly take upon himself the consequences 
of such an act. Such effect had his remonstrances, and so 
contagious is superstition of this kind, that the bed was 
allowed to remain undisturbed, and I have no doubt that, if in 
_ the same possession, it so remains to the present day. 
We, of course, cannot ascertain, or expect to know all that 
_ the ancients believed of the properties and virtues of sacred 
