52 WITCHCRAFT IN DORSET. 



for jaundice, which fell under my notice in a parish in Dorsetshire 

 a few weeks since, but which I find upon enquiry to be generally 

 known and practised in the neighbourhood. The patient is made 

 to eat nine lice upon a piece of bread and butter. In the case 

 referred to, I am bound to state for the credit of the parish, that 

 the animalcules were somewhat difficult of attainment ; but that, 

 after having been duly collected by the indefatigable labours of the 

 village doctress, they were administered with the most perfect 

 success." 



KUPTURE : 



It was believed that if a young maiden ash (i.e., not polled) 

 were split and a ruptured child drawn through it he would become 

 healed.* 



EPILEPSY : 



Mr. Eoberts, in his History of Lyme Regis, p. 261, states that in 

 April, 1826, a respectable looking woman was engaged in collecting 

 a penny from each of thirty young women, unmarried, the money 

 to be laid out in purchasing a silver ring, to cure her son of 

 epileptic fits. The money was to be freely given, without any 

 consideration, or else the charm would have been destroyed. 



Mr. G. W. Floyer, writing to the Dorset County Chronicle, gives 

 the following version of the same charm as prevailing in the Isle 

 of Purbeck. He says it is customary for a young man to collect 

 thirty pennies from the maidens of his acquaintance; or in the 

 case of a maiden from the bachelors of her acquaintance, to change 

 them for half-a-crown out of the money presented in the offertory, 

 then to have the coin beaten out and made into a ring. The ring 

 is then worn as a trustworthy charm against epilepsy. 

 FITS : 



The same correspondent also states that at a certain village in 

 Purbeck a mother came to the clergyman to ask if he would have 

 any objection to her daughter's stealing a cup from him 1 She had 



* See the Additional Glossary to the Dorset Dialect, by the late Rev 

 W. Barnes, wherein the author states that he has known of two trees 

 through which children have been so drawn, 



