THE HOUSE. 



horrid thing should happen to herself or the eow, she was a 

 miseraVle millnuaid for a week after. 



But we cannot do our ancestors the injustice to assert that 

 they submitted like cowards to the malice of the shretr. No, 

 They iuvented all sorts of devices to meet their dreaded enemy. 

 Here is one described by the historian of Selbome : — " At the 

 south comer of the plestor, or area near the church, there 

 stood about twenty years ago a very old grotesque pollard ash, 

 which for ages had been looked upon with no small veneration 

 as a shrew-ash. Now a shrew-ash is an ash whose twigs or 

 branches, when applied to the Umbs of cattle, will immediately 

 relieve the pains which a beast suffers from the running of a 

 shrew-mouse over the parts 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 horse, cow, or sheep, the 

 Buffering animal is afflicted with cruel anguish, and threatened 

 with the loss of the use of the Umb. Against this accident, to 

 which they were continually liable, our provident forefathers 

 always kept a shrew-ash at handj which, when once medicated, 

 retained its virtue for ever. A shrew-ash was made thus : 

 into the body a hole was bored with an auger, and a poor 

 devoted shrew-mouse was thrust in alive and plugged in, no 

 doubt with several quaint incantations long since forgotten^" 



That this banter of good old Gilbert White's was not unde- 

 served, may be fully proved from many an ancient Natural 

 History. Take, for instance, the "EEistory of Four-footed 

 Beasts and Serpents," published by TopsoU, in the year 1658. 

 Says this old-fashioned zoologist, speaking of the shrew, — " It 

 is a ravening beast, feigning itself gentle and tame, but being 

 touched it biteth deep and poisoneth deadly. It beareth a cruel 

 minde, desiring to hurt anything ; neither is there any creature 

 that it loveth, or it loveth him, because it is feared of all. The 

 cats, as we have said, do hunt it and kill it, but they eat not 

 them, for if they do they consume away and die. They go very 

 slowly ;,they are fraudulent and take their prey by deceit. Many 

 times they gnaw the ox's hoofs in the stable. The shrew which 

 by faUing by chance into a cart-road or track doth die upon the 

 same, being burned and afterwards beaten or dissolved into 

 dust and mixed with goose-grease, being rubbed or anointed 

 upon those which are troubled with the sweUing coming by the 

 cause of some inflammation, doiih bring unto them a wonderfnl 

 and most admirable cure and remedy. The shrew being slain 

 or killed hanging, so that neither then nor afterwards she may 



