226 SUPERSTITIONS OF SELBORNE. 



XXVIII. 



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, 

 become so interwoven into our very constitu- 

 tions, that the strongest good sense is required 

 to disengage ourselves 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 175-1, 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 

 flexible, were severed and held open by wedges, 

 while ruptured children, stripped naked, were 

 pushed through the apertures, under a persuasion 



