222 NATURAL HISTORY 



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 pf 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, 

 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. 1 



1 " Much nearer to the metropolis than Selborne," says Mr. Bennett, 

 in a note to this passage, " and in days later than those alluded to by 

 White, the ceremony described by him has been practised. The ash 

 resorted to for the charm, in the instance referred to, is in the hedge of 

 an orchard belonging to a house near Enfield, in which some of my 

 earlier years were spent. A man living in the neighbourhood, and at 

 the time when I was best acquainted with it (1810) about sixty years 

 of age, was indicated as the individual on whose behalf recourse had 

 been had to the observance. The tree had healed, and the cure had, of 

 course, been performed." 



He adds : " Is it worth the remark that, as ashes seem seldom to fail to 

 grow together after having been split, so also does it rarely happen that 

 infants affected with umbilical hernia fail to be relieved from it at a 

 very early age ; and that, consequently, the charm-tree would, almost 

 beyond the probability of an exception, accord in its healing with that 

 of the infant whose fate was thus supposed to have been mysteriously 

 connected with it ?" ED. 



