58 ENGLISH BOTANY. 



things that the exalted bird may have failed to notice. Serpents are twined round 

 the trunk, and from the roots there spring two limpid fountains, in one of which 

 Wisdom lies concealed, and in the other a knowledge of things to come. Three virgins 

 constantly attend on this tree to sprinkle its leaves with water from the magic 

 fountains, which falling on the earth, produce honey. Man, according to these 

 legends, was formed from the wood of this tree. Ancient writers of all nations state 

 that the serpent entertains an extraordinary respect for the Ash. Pliny says that if a 

 serpent be placed near a fire and surrounded by ash twigs, be will rather run into the 

 fire than pass over the twigs ; and Dioscorides asserts that the juice of the Ash mixed 

 with wine is a cure for the bites of serpents. Evelyn mentions that in some parts of 

 England, the country people believe that if they split young Ash-trees and make 

 ruptured children pass through the chasm, it will cure them ; and the Rev. W. G. Bree 

 relates an instance within his own knowledge of this extraordinary superstition. As 

 lately as 1847, a poor woman applied to a farmer for permission to pass a sick child 

 through one of his Ash-trees ; the object was to cure the child of the rickets. Gilbert 

 White, in his "Natural History of Selbourne," speaks of a row of pollard Ashes still 

 standing on his farm in his time, which retained the marks of splits that had been 

 made for the purpose of passing children through them, and he relates that several 

 persons were then living in his parish who had been submitted to the operation in 

 infancy. He thus describes it as practised in Hampshire : — " Whilst the tree was 

 young and flexible, its stem was severed longitudinally ; the fissure was kept open, 

 and the child stripped naked was passed three times head foremost through the 

 aperture. After this the tree was swathed up and plastered with clay. It was 

 believed that if the severed portions of the tree united, the child and the tree 

 gradually recovered together ; if the cleft continued to gape, which could only happen 

 from some great negligence or want of skill, it was thought that the operation had 

 proved ineffectual." The same charming writer gives us an account of another 

 strange superstition formerly prevalent in some parts of the country, thus : — " Near the 

 church stood, about twenty years ago, a very old grotesque hollow pollard Ash, which 

 had for ages been looked upon with veneration as a Shrew Ash. Now a Shrew Ash is 

 an Ash whose twigs and branches, when gently applied to the limbs of cattle, will 

 immediately relieve the pain that a beast suffers, from the running of a shrew-mouse 

 over the part affected ; for it is supposed that a shrew-mouse is of so baneful and 

 deleterious a nature, that wherever it creeps over a beast, be it a horse, cow, or sheep, 

 the suffering animal is afflicted with cruel anguish and threatened with the loss of the 

 limb. Against this accident, to which they are continually liable, our prudent 

 forefathers always kept a Sinew Ash at hand, which, when once medicated, would 

 retain its virtue for ever. A Shrew Ash was made thus : into the body of a tree a 

 deep hole was bored with an auger, and a poor devoted shrew-mouse was thrust in 

 alive, and plugged in, no doubt with many quaint incantations long since forgotten. 

 As the ceremonies necessary for such a consecration are no longer understood, all 

 succession is at an end, and no such tree is known to subsist on the manor or 

 hundred." The fruit of the Ash is called a key. There is a proverb in the midland 

 counties, that if there are no keys on the Ash-trees, there will be no king within 

 the year, in allusion to the Ash-tree being never totally destitute of keys. Lightfoot 

 says, that in many parts of the Highlands of Scotland, at the birth of a child, the 

 nurse or midwife puts one end of a green stick of this tree into the fire, and while it 

 is burning, gathering in a spoon the sap or juice which oozes out at the other end, 

 administers this as the first spoouful of food to the newly-born baby. Many poets 



