134 



THE ASH. 



suffering part was plastered with loam, and care- 

 fully swathed up. If the parts coalesced and 

 soldered together, as usually fell out, where the 

 feat was performed with any adroitness at all, the 

 party was cui'ed ; but where the cleft continued to 

 gape, the operation, it was supposed, would prove 

 ineffectual. Having occasion to enlarge my gar- 

 den not long since, I cut do^Yii two or three such 

 trees, one of which did not grow together. We 

 have several persons now living in the tillage, 

 who in their childhood were supposed to be 

 healed by this superstitious ceremony, derived 

 do^™, perhaps, from our Saxon ancestors, who 

 practised it before their conversion to Christiani- 

 ty." The same custom was known to Evehm, 

 who half believes in the efhcacy of the ceremony."* 

 If we may credit Phillips, the present enlightened 

 age is not exempt from the same silly belief. 

 He says: In the south-east part of the kingdom, 

 the country people split young Ash trees, and 

 make their distempered cliildren pass through 

 the chasm in hopes of a ciu'e.f They have also a 

 superstitious custom ftf boring a hole in an Ash, 

 and fastening in a shrew mouse ; a few strokes 

 -with a branch of this tree, is then accounted a 

 sovereign remedy against cramp and lameness in 

 cattle, which are ignorantly supposed to proceed 

 from this harmless animal.' Such a tree was 

 named from the unfortunate victim ^* a shrew- 

 ash." AVhite thus describes one which about the 



* Hunter's Evelyn's Sylva, vol, i. p. 151. 



+ A writer in the Go.rdt/iers' Chronicle for April, 1846, states, 

 that there is novr livino- in Sussex a man, who when an infant, about 

 50 years a2:o, was passed through an Ash tree, at Todhurst, as 

 a remedy for hernia. ^ Syka Florifera, vol. i. p. 8. 



