BOURKE. ] MEDICAL USE OF MAGICAL CORDS. ayy) 
eminent value still survived in the minds of those who wore it, uncon- 
sciously, though still actively, influencing their thoughts. In perhaps 
the same way we respect the virtue of red threads, because, as Con- 
way puts it, ‘red is sacred in one direction as symbolising the blood 
of Christ.’ ”! 
“To cure ague [Hampshire, England] string nine or eleven snails on 
a thread, the patient saying, as each is threaded, ‘Here I leave my 
ague.’ When all are threaded they should be frizzled over a fire, and 
as the snails disappear so will the ague.”? 
Dr. Joseph Lanzoni scoffed at the idea that a red-silk thread could 
avail in erysipelas; ‘‘ Neque filum sericum chermisinum parti affectie 
circumligatum erysipelata fugat.” The word “chermesinum” is not 
given in Ainsworth’s Latin-English Dictionary, but it so closely re- 
sembles the Spanish ‘“ carmesi” that I have made bold to render it as 
“red” or “ scarlet.” 3 
“Red thread is symbolical of lightning,” and is consequently laid on 
churns in Ireland ‘to prevent the milk from being bewitched and yield- 
ing no butter.” ‘In Aberdeenshire it is a common practice with the 
housewife to tie a piece of red worsted thread round the cows’ tails 
before turning them out for the first time in the season to grass. It 
secured the cattle from the evil-eye, elf-shots, and other dangers.”4 “It 
[blue] is the sky color and the Druid’s sacred colour.’ “In 1635, a man 
in the Orkney Islands was, we are led to believe, utterly ruined by nine 
knots cast on a blue thread and given to his sister.” 
“In a curious old book, 12mo., 1554, entitled A Short Description of 
Antichrist, is this passage: ‘I note all their Popishe traditions of con- 
firmacion of yonge children with oynting of oyle and creame, and with 
a ragge knitte about the necke of the younge babe. ”® 
A New England charm for an obstinate ague. “The patient in 
this case is to take a string made of woolen yarn, of three colors, and 
to go by himself to an apple-tree; there he is to tie his left hand loosely 
with the right to the tree by the tri-colored string, then to slip his hand 
out of the knot and run into the house without looking behind him.” 7 
The dust “in which a hawk has bathed itself, tied up in a linen 
cloth with a red string, and attached to the body,”® was one of the reme- 
dies for fevers. Another cure for fever: “Some inclose a caterpillar in 
a piece of linen, with a thread passed three times round it, and tie as 
many knots, repeating at each knot why it is that the patient performs 
that operation.”® 
“To prevent nose-bleeding people are told to this day to wear a skein 
of scarlet silk thread round the neck, tied with nine knots down the 
front; if the patient is a man, the silk being put on and the knots tied 
' Folk-Medicine, London, 1883, p. 113. 5 Black, Folk-Medicine, p. 112. 
2 Thid., p. 57. © Brand, Pop. Ant., vol. 2, p. 86. 
3 Ephemeridum Physico-medicarum, Leipzig, 7 Black, Folk-Medicine, p. 38. 
1694, vol.1, p. 49. 5 Pliny, Nat. Hist., lib. 30, cap. 2°, 
4 Black, Folk-Medicine, p. 112. 9 Thid, 
