507 



CIjc CreaSurt) at 2Sntang, 



than almost any other tree, for it would 

 seem that in England it unites the honours 

 usually attributed to the rowan tree, or 

 mountain ash of Scotland, with those pe- 

 culiar to itself. Or perhaps the supposed 

 powers of keeping witches at a respectful 

 distance of the mountain ash — 



* Rowan tree and Red Thread 

 Keep the witches at their speed — 

 have heen attributed to it from the simi- 

 larity of the leaves of the one to those of 

 the other, thus giving rise to the name of 

 ash for very dissimilar trees. 

 | One of the most remarkable, and perhaps 

 . the most ancient, usages to which the Ash 

 was appropriated, was that of passing chil- 

 dren who were ruptured through a cleft in 

 ! the bole of a young tree. Evelyn says : 'I 

 have heard it affirmed with great confi- 

 dence, and upon experience, that the rup- 

 ture to which many children are obnoxious 

 ' t is healed by passing the infant through a 

 wide cleft made in the bole or stem of a 

 growing ash tree; it is then carried a 

 second time round the ash, and caused to 

 repass the same aperture as before. The 

 rupture of the child being bound up, it is 

 : supposed to heal as the cleft of the tree 

 closes and coalesces.' In this case, where 

 both parents were living, the father pre- 

 sented the child, and the mother received 

 it. In the Museum of Natural History in 

 "Worcester is a portion of a young ash 

 which was probably submitted to this 

 1 operation not many years since, and which 

 s did not heal as it grew, but retained an 

 , oval aperture in the stem. That this 

 : superstition lingered until very recently 

 i we know, as the Rev. T. Bree describes a 

 case as having occurred in Warwickshire. 

 A superstition prevailed among the old 

 leeches that a shrewmouse, on creeping 

 over the limbs of man or the lower animals, 

 was the cause of cramp and paralysis. To 

 cure this, a hole was made with an auger 

 in the bole of an ash tree, and a poor live 

 shrew was fastened in with the plug of 

 | wood that had been abstracted. It is even 

 now a not quite exploded belief that a 

 shrewmouse running over the foot, will 

 cause lameness, the antidote for which 

 was the application of a twig of 'shrew 

 ash.' Thus Gilbert White says: 'We have 

 ] several persons now living in the village, 

 who, in their childhood, were supposed to 

 be healed by this superstitious ceremony, 

 derived down, perhaps, from cur Saxon 

 ancestors, who practised it before their 

 conversion to Christianity.' The same 

 author describes the preparation of the 

 ' shrew ash ' as follows :— At the south cor- 

 ner of the plestor, or area, near the church, 

 there stood, about twenty years ago, a 

 very old, grotesque, hollow 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 gently applied to the limbs 

 of cattle, will immediately relieve the pains 

 which a beast suffers from the running 

 of a shrewmouse over the part affected ; 

 for it is supposed that a shrewmouse is of 



so baneful and deleterious a nature, that 

 whenever it creeps over a beast, be it horse, 

 cow, or sheep, the suffering animal is 

 afflicted with cruel anguish, and threaten- 

 ed with the loss of the use of the limb. 

 Against this accident, to which they were 

 continually liable, our provident fore- 

 fathers always kept a shrew ash at hand, 

 which, when once medicated, would main- 

 tain its virtue for ever. The manner of 

 preparing the shrew ash was by means of 

 the shrewmouse as already described, in 

 which doubtless some strange invocations 

 were used ; but as we do not know them in 

 these degenerate days, we may suppose 

 the charm is lost. Not so, however, that 

 attributed to the even-leaf from the Ash, 

 that is, where the leaf terminates with two 

 opposite pinrias instead of the usual single 

 terminal leaflet. In Wiltshire and Glou- 

 cestershire it is not at all uncommon for 

 the lucky finder of the often much coveted 

 even-leaf to invoke it as follows :— 



'Even-ash, I do thee pluck, 

 Hoping thus to meet good luck ; 

 If no luck I get from thee, 

 Better far be on the tree." 



This simple charm keeps away witches ; 

 and we can only say that in our younger 

 days we have travelled with an even-leaved 

 ash on many an eerie night, and we never 

 saw a witch. 



Evelyn says that 'the chymists exceed- 

 ingly recommend the seed of ash to be 

 an admirable remedy for stone.' But 

 whether by power of magic or nature, I 

 determine not '—doubtless from the power 

 of its roots to rive rocks, and the facility 

 with which this tree will grow in stony 

 places. Be this as it may, it is, though a 

 very old remedy, now discarded; and, in- 

 deed, of the many virtues the Ash was once 

 supposed to possess (and we have not 

 named them all), it now boasts none but 

 the utilitarian one of being a most useful 

 timber tree. However, in this relation we 

 must not forget to mention that the root 

 of the ash yields a most curious veined or 

 camleted wood in which superstition, ere 

 now, has traced extraordinary figures. 

 Thus Evelyn quotes one Jacobus Gafferel- 

 lus for the assertion, in his book of Un- 

 heard-of Curiosities, that ' of a tree found in 

 Holland, which being cleft, had, in several 

 slivers, the figures of a chalice, a priest's 

 alb, his stole, and several other pontifical 

 vestments.' [J. B.] 



FREE. Not adhering to anything else ; 

 not adnate to any other body. 



FREMONTIA. A remarkable and beau- 

 tiful Galifornian bush, belonging to the 

 Sterculiacece. Along with the hand-plant of 

 Mexico (Cheirostemon), it differs from the 

 others in that group in the flowers having 

 no petals ; and from the latter it is readily 

 recognised by the bell-shaped calyx, which 

 remains attached, and does not fall away 

 when the flower withers. 



F. calif ornicavf as first discovered by Col. 

 Fremont (whose name it bears), in one of 

 his Calif ornian expeditions in the northern 



