578 MEDICINE-MEN OF THE APACHE. 
This is from Brand:! “ Devonshire cure for warts. Take a piece of 
twine, tie in it as many knots as you have warts, touch each wart with 
a knot, and then throw the twine behind your back into some place 
where it may soon decay—a pond or a hole in the earth; but tell no one 
what you have done. When the twine is decayed your warts will dis- 
appear without any pain or trouble, being in fact charmed away.” 
“Tn our time, the anodyne necklace, which consists of beads turned 
out of the root of the white Bryony, and which is hung round the necks 
of infants, in order to assist their teething, and to ward off the con- 
vulsions sometimes incident to that process, is an amulet.” ” 
“Rowan, ash, and red thread,” a Scotch rhyme goes, “ keep the devils 
frae their speed.” * 
For the cure of secrofula, grass was selected. From one, two, or three 
stems, aS many as nine joints must be removed, which must then be 
wrapped in black wool, with the grease init. The person who gathers 
them must do so fasting, and must then go, in the same state, to the 
patient’s house while he is from home. When the patient comes in, 
the other must say to him three times, “I come fasting to bring a 
remedy to a fasting man,” and must then attach the amulet to his 
person, repeating the same ceremony three consecutive days. * 
Forlong says: ‘*On the 2d {of May], fearing evil spirits and witches, 
Scotch farmers used to tie red thread upon their wives as well as their 
cows, Saying these prevented miscarriages and preserved the milk.” ° 
In Scotland ‘they hope to preserve the milk of their cows, and their 
wives from miscarriage, by tying threads about them.” ® 
Brand gives a remedy for epilepsy: ‘If, in the month of October, 
a little before the full moon, you pluck a twig of the elder, and cut the 
cane that is betwixt two of its knees, or knots, in nine pieces, and these 
pieces, being bound in a piece of linnen, be in a thread so hung about 
the neck that they touch the spoon of the heart, or the sword-formed 
sartilage.”7 
Black says:’ ‘*To cure warts a common remedy is to tie as many 
knots on a hair as there are warts and throw the hair away. Six knots 
of elderwood are used in a Yorkshire incantation to ascertain if beasts 
are dying from witcheraft. Marcellus commended for sore eyes that a 
man should tie aS many knots in unwrought flax as there are letters in 
his name, pronouncing each letter as he worked; this he was to tie 
round his neck. In the Orkneys, the blue thread was used for an evil 
purpose because such a colour savored of Popery and priests; in the 
northern counties it was used because a remembrance of its once pre- 
1 Pop. Ant., vol. 3, p. 276. 
2 Salverte, Philosophy of Magic, vol. 1, p. 195. 
3 Black, Folk-Medicine, London, 1883, p. 197. 
‘Pliny, Nat. Hist., lib. 24, cap. 118. 
5 Forlong, Rivers of Life, vol. 1, p. 451. 
® Pennant, quoted by Brand, Popular Antiquities, vol. 3, p. 54. 
7Tbid., p. 285. 
8 Folk-Medicine, London, 1883, pp. 185, 186. 
