62 FOLK-LORE REMINISCENCES. 



has a distinct interest to Dorset, and I refer to it as it affords 

 three instances of a legend, a beverage, and a custom which 

 are still extant, and can apparently be traced back to the 

 hoary ages prior to Anno Domini. On page 32 of Elton a 

 quotation is given from the account written by Pytheas, the 

 Grseco-Phoenician traveller, about 320 B.C., of his journey 

 through Britain and especially along the Southern coasts. 

 After narrating the customs obtaining in growing and thresh- 

 ing wheat, he adds " they made a drink by mixing wheat 

 and honey," which is still known as " metheglin " in some 

 of our country districts ; and he is probably the first authority 

 for the description of the British beer which the Greek 

 physicians knew by its Welsh name, and against which they 

 warned their patients as a " drink producing pain in the 

 head and injury to the nerves." I have known metheglin 

 made at Stour Provost, and the old saying was " that if you 

 got drunk on metheglin you did not get sober for a week," 

 so that the old Greek physicians were not far wrong in their 

 warning against its potency. 



I fear that I have so prolonged the first part of this paper 

 that I can only deal with a few instances relating to animal 

 ailments. 



Some years since, in going over a farm I think it was at 

 Holwell, but as it was before I commenced recording these 

 matters I am not quite sure as to the locality I observed a 

 calf that had been prematurely born placed high up in the 

 fork of an ash bush in the hedge. I asked the farmer what 

 led him to place it there, and elicited the information that 

 if the dead calf was placed in the fork of a maiden ash (i.e., 

 an ash tree grown direct from the seed) and with its head 

 tow r ard the East that it would prevent other cows in the 

 herd from casting their calves. On further enquiry I gathered 

 from the late Mr. J. J. Young, of Pinford, that when he was 

 a boy the custom was quite common in the neighbourhood 

 of Glanvilles Wootton. Also, I heard of a farmer in the 

 neighbourhood of Wincanton who was a great believer in 

 this specific, and if a cow was observed to have been afflicted 



