WILD CREATURES OF GARDEN AND HEDGEROW 



which they do to such a remarkable extent 

 that one can understand how in the ignorant 

 days long gone by, when people believed in 

 witchcraft, magic was called in to account for 

 it. 



In the days when everybody believed in 

 witches the poor little shrew was regarded 

 as a very evil creature. If a shrew chanced 

 to run over the leg of a horse or cow when one 

 of these beasts was lying out in the field, the 

 animal would certainly go lame afterwards; 

 while if a horse or cow was bitten by one (fancy 

 a tiny shrew biting a horse !) it would at once 

 swell up and die. Some of the remedies for the 

 bite of a shrew were still more extraordinary, 

 one being to take the body of a shrew which had 

 died on a cart road, bum it, beat the ashes 

 into dust, mix them with goose grease, then 

 rub it on the swelling, which would at once 

 be cured. The body of a shrew that had been 

 killed hanging in the air effected more cures 

 than one killed on the ground. An ointment, 

 too, could be made from the tail cut off a 

 live shrew, but the tail was no use if taken 

 from a dead animal ! The most strange idea 

 of all was the belief in a shrew-ash. A twig 

 from a shrew-ash would cure all sorts of ills, 



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