86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Every morning while fasting, the subject is to chew a piece of grass and 

 give it to a jay to eat; when the bird- dies, the cure ensues. 



In northern Europe the fays, or fairies, were vested with the dreaded 

 power of inflicting disease. Fairies were supposed to be evil spirits 

 which might be propitiated by giving them a gracious appelation. 



By giving diseases and other evils a good name when speaking of them, 

 the danger of bringing them upon oneself by his words, is turned away. For 

 this reason, fairies were called Eumenides by the ancients, and "good people" 

 by the Celts. 10 



Morier 11 mentions a general superstition which he found also, in 

 Persia that to relieve disease or accident the patient has only to deposit 

 a rag on a certain bush, and from the same spot take another which has 

 been previously left from the same motives by a former sufferer. 



There are certain minor ailments which even in the present day, the 

 experienced grandmother thinks herself quite as capable of administer- 

 ing to as the most respected doctor. In olden times children suffering 

 from skin eruptions or from general ill-health were taken to certain an- 

 cient dames, who, by means of incantations and exorcism, were able to 

 drive out the devil from the body of the child. 



In the small villages of Eussia when a child is suffering from a cutaneous 

 disease of the face, it is taken to an " old woman ' ' who mumbles some words 

 and spits several times into the mouth of the child. 12 



Incantations were one of the strongest weapons of defense against 

 all the maladies. A person afflicted with ring worms, for example, takes 

 a little ashes between the forefinger and thumb on three successive morn- 

 ings, and, before having taken any food, holds the ashes to the part af- 

 fected and says : 



Ringworm, ringworm red, 



Never may'st thou either spread or speed; 



But aye grow less and less, 



And die away among the ase. 13 



After scalding oneself, instead of giving way to vigorous profanity, 

 or counting up to one hundred, as Benjamin Eranklin suggested, the 

 custom was to blow upon the injured part and repeat : 



There was two angels came from the North, 

 One brought fire and the other brought frost; 

 Out fire, in frost, 

 In the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. 



There is a fashion even now among the lesser civilized folks to men- 

 tion the name of a saint or of a divinity, or say something " good " when 



10 J. G. Campbell, ' ' Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scot- 

 land," 1900. 



"Morier, "First Journey through Persia," 1812, p. 230; and "Second 

 Journey through Persia," 1818, p. 239. 



"Kahn, "Biochemical Studies of Sulf ocyanates, " 1912. 



13 Ashes. 



