228 SUPERSTITIONS OF SELBORNE. 



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LETTER LXX, 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBORNE, January 8, 1776. 

 DEAR SIR, 



IT is the hardest thing in the world to shake 

 off superstitious prejudices : they are sucked in, as 

 it were, with our mother's milk ; and, growing up 

 with us at a time when they take the fastest hold, 

 and make the most lasting impressions, hecome so 

 interwoven into our very constitutions, that the 

 strongest good sense is required to disengage our- 

 selves from them. No wonder, therefore, that the 

 lower people retain them their whole lives through, 

 since their minds are not invigorated by a liberal 

 education, and therefore not enabled to make any 

 efforts adequate to the occasion. 



Such a preamble seems to be necessary before we 

 enter on the superstitions of this district, lest we 

 should be suspected of exaggeration in a recital of 

 practices too gross for this enlightened age. 



But the people of Tring, in Hertfordshire, would 

 do well to remember, that no longer ago than the 

 year 1751, and within twenty miles of the capital, 

 they seized on two superannuated wretches, crazed 

 with age, and overwhelmed with infirmities, on a 

 suspicion of witchcraft ; and, by trying experiments, 

 drowned them in a horse-pond. 



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 



