BOURKE. ] MEDICAL USE OF CORDS. 573 
in full vigor, as I know personally. Three years ago my second 
child was suffering from the troubles mcident to retarded dentition and 
had to be taken to the mountains at Holly Springs, within sight of 
Carlisle. I was begged and implored by the women living in the place 
to have the child taken to“ a wise woman” to be “measured,” and was 
assured that some of the most intelligent people in that part of the 
country were firm believers in the superstition. When I declined to 
lend countenance to such nonsense I was looked upon as a brutal and 
unnatural parent, caring little for the welfare of his offspring. 
‘In John Bale’s Comedye concernynge thre Lawes, 1538 . . . 
Hypocrysy is introduced, mentioning the following charms against bar- 
reuness: 
And as for Lyons, there is the length of our Lorde 
In a great pyller. She that will with a coorde 
Be fast bound to it, and take soche chaunce as fall 
Shall sure have chylde, for within it is hollowe all.” | 
When a person in Shetland has received a sprain ‘it is customary to 
apply to an individual practiced in casting the ‘wrested thread, 
This is a thread spun from black wool, on which are cast nine knots, 
and tied round a sprained leg or arm.” It is applied by the medicine- 
man with the usual amount of gibberish and ineantation.2 These 
“wresting or wrested threads” are also to be found among Germans, 
Norwegians, Swedes, and Flemings.* 
Grimm quotes from Chambers’s Fireside Stories, Edinburgh, 1842, 
p. 37: “* During the time the operator is putting the thread round the 
afflicted limb he says, but in such a tone of voice as not to be heard by 
the bystanders, nor even by the person operated upon: “The Lord rade, 
and the foal slade; he lighted, and he righted, set joint to joint, bone to 
bone, and sinew to sinew. Heal in the Holy Ghost’s name!”4 
“ Kily McGarvey, a Donegal wise woman, employs a green thread in 
her work. She measures her patient three times round the waist with 
a ribbon, to the outer edge of which is fastened a green thread. ; 
She next hands the patient nine leaves of ‘heart fever grass. or dande- 
lion, gathered by herself, directing him to eat three leaves on successive 
mornings.”° 
Miss Edna Dean Proctor, the poet, told me, June 9, 1887, that some 
years ago, while visiting relations in Illinois, she met a woman who, 
having been ill for a long time, had despaired of recovery, and in hope 
of amelioration had consulted a man pretending to occult powers, who 
prescribed that she wear next the skin a certain knotted red cord which 
he gave her. 
Ou a previous page the views of Forlong have been presented, show- 
ing that there were reasons for believing that the sacred cords of the 
' Brand, Pop. Ant., vol. 2, p. 69. 
? Notes and Queries, Ist series, vol. 4, p. 500. 
3 See also Black, Folk-Medicine, London, 1883, p. 79. 
*Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, vol. 3, p. 1233. 
5 Black, Folk-Medicine, London. 1883, p. 114. 
