Superstitions. 177 



then drunk at stated times in water. Hares' brains are recom- 

 mended for infants prematurely born. Children suffering from 

 fits are, or rather were, passed through cloven ash-trees. Bread 

 baked on Good Friday will not only keep seven years, but 

 is a remedy for certain complaints. The seventh son of a 

 seventh son can perform cures. In fact, a pharmacopoeia of 

 such superstitions might be compiled. 



The New Forest peasant puts absolute faith in all traditions, 

 believing as firmly in St. Swithin as his forefathers did when 

 the saint was Bishop of Winchester ; turns his money, if he 

 has any, when he sees the new moon ; fancies that a burn is 

 a charm against leaving the house ; that witches cannot cross 

 over a brook ; that the death's-head moth was only first seen 

 after the execution of Charles I. ; that the man in the moon 

 was sent there for stealing wood from the Forest a superstition, 

 by the way, mentioned in a slightly different form by Eeginald 

 Pecock, Bishop of Chichester, in the fifteenth century.* And 

 the "stolen bush," referred to by Caliban in the Tempest (Act ii. 

 sc. 2), and Bottom in the Midsummer Night's Dream (Act vi. 

 sc. 1), is still here called the " nitch," or bundle of faggots. f 



Not only this, but the barrows on the plains are named after 

 the fairies, and the peasant imagines, like the treasure-seekers of 

 the Middle-Ages, that they contain untold wealth, and that the 

 Forest wells are full of gold.t 



I do not mean, however, to say that these beliefs are openly 



* The Repression of Over-much Blaming the Church, edited by Churchill 

 Babington, vol. i., part, ii., ch. iii., p. 155 



t Dr. Bell takes quite a different view of these passages in his Shak- 

 speare's Puck and his Folk-lore. Introduction to vol. ii. p. 6. The simple 

 explanation, however, seems to me the best. 



t See ch, xviii. p. 197. 



A A 



