194 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



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 1751, 

 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 that, by 

 such a process, the poor babes would be cured of their 

 infirmity. As soon as the operation was over, the tree, in 

 the suffering part, was plastered with loam, and carefully 

 swathed up. If the parts coalesced and soldered together, 

 as usually fell out, where the feat was performed with any 

 adroitness at all, the party was cured ; but, where the cleft 

 continued to gape, the operation, it was supposed, would 

 prove ineffectual. Having occasion to enlarge my garden 

 not long since, I cut down two or three such trees, one of 

 which did not grow together. 



We have several persons now living in the village, who, 



n 



