"Notes on some Wiltshire Superstitions." 331 



sacrameat half-crown, of which to make the ring. She begged 

 very hard that I would let her have it, and was much hurt at my 

 refusal, which she seemed to attribute partly to inhumanity and 

 partly to want of faith. 



Passing a child on the 1st of May at sunrise through a Maiden 

 Ash Tree, to cure rupture. — An old woman in this parish, J. W., 

 who works at the vicarage, told me that her son, now a guard 

 on the Great Western Railway, and a little over thirty, was born 

 ruptured. When the child was nearly a year old her husband went 

 into the wood on the road between Calne and Chippenham, and 

 split a " maiden ash " tree — a tree which had never been pruned — 

 about as thick as a broom stick, and tied it up again with withy, 

 The next day. May 1st, the child was passed at sunrise, with its 

 head towards the sun, through the tree, which was tied up again. 

 The tree grew well afterwards, and the child was cured of its 

 rupture. She mentioned several other children with whom this had 

 been done. It seems that if the tree does not thrive, the child is 

 not cured. 



A boy in our school, now between ten and eleven years of age, 

 H. H., was, in like manner, on the 1st of May, carried out in a 

 blanket, and at sunrise, with his face to the sun, passed through a 

 " maiden ash," which his father had split and tied up the night 

 before. The parents had tried trusses, and sent the child to Bath 

 more than once. The ash tree grew well, but was cut down by 

 inadvertence when the wood was thinned three years ago. The 

 boy's mother says that the rupture does not get better, and this she 

 attributes to the circumstance that the tree was cut down, " It was 

 not giving us a fair chance." 



Many similar instances could, no doubt, be easily collected. 

 Gilbert White speaks of the belief in this curative power of the 

 ash as having been prevalent in the last century at Selborne, in 

 Hampshire. In his " History of Selborne," Letter Ixx., dated 

 1776, he says : — " In a farm yard, near the middle of this village, 

 stands at this day a row of pollard-ashes, which, by the seams and 

 long cicatrices down their sides, manifestly show that in former 

 times they have been cleft asunder. These trees when young and 



