NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 195 



in their childhood, were supposed to be healed by this 

 superstitious ceremony, derived down perhaps from our 

 Saxon ancestors, who practised it before their conversion to 

 Christianity. 



At the fourth corner of the Plestor, or area, near the 

 church, there stood, about twenty years ago, a very old, 

 grotesque, hollow pollard-ash, which for ages had been 

 looked on with no small veneration as a shrew-ash. Now 

 a shrew-ash is an ash whose twigs or branches, when gently 

 applied to the limbs of cattle, will immediately relieve the 

 pains which a beast suffers from the running of a shrew- 

 mouse over the part affected ; for it is supposed that a 

 shrew-mouse is of so baneful and deleterious a nature, that 

 wherever it creeps over a beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, 

 the suffering animal is afflicted with cruel anguish, and 

 threatened with the loss of the use of the limb. Against 

 this accident, to which they were continually liable, our 

 provident forefathers always kept a shrew-ash at hand, 

 which, when once medicated, would maintain its virtue for 

 ever. A shrew-ash was made thus : Into the body of the 

 tree a deep hole was bored with an auger, and a poor 

 devoted shrew-mouse was thrust in alive, and plugged in, 

 no doubt, with several quaint incantations long since 

 forgotten. As the ceremonies necessary for such a con- 

 secration are no longer understood, all succession is at an 

 end, and no such tree is known to subsist in the manor 

 or hundred. 



As to that on the Plestor, 



" The late Vicar stubb'd and burnt it," 



when he was way-warden, regardless of the remonstrances of 



the bystanders, who interceded in vain for its preservation, 



urging its power and efficacy, and alleging that it had been 



"Religione patrum multos servata per annos." 



