THE ASH. 



135 



middle of the last century stood in the village of 

 Selborne; At the south corner 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 on 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 imme- 

 diately relieve the pains which a beast suffers 

 from the running of a shrew-mouse over the part 

 affected : for it is supposed that a shrew-mouse 

 is of so baleful and deleterious a nature, that 

 wherever it creeps over a beast, be it horse, cow, 

 or sheep, the suffering animal is afflicted with 

 cruel anguish, and threatened with the loss of the 

 use of the limb. Against this accident, to which 

 they were continually liable, our pro\ddent fore- 

 fathers always kept a shrew-ash at hand, which, 

 when once medicated, would maintain its virtues 

 for ever. A shrew-ash was made thus : — Into 

 the body of the tree, a deep hole was bored with 

 an auger, and a poor devoted shrew-mouse was 

 thrust in alive, and plugged in, no doubt with 

 several incantations, long since forgotten. As 

 the ceremonies necessary for such a consecration 

 are no longer understood, all succession is at an 

 end, and no such tree is known to exist in the 

 manor or hundred." 



Lightfoot says, that in many parts of the High- 

 lands of Scotland, at the birth of a child the 

 nurse puts one end of a great stick of this tree 

 into the fire, and while it is burning, receives into 

 a spoon the sap or juice which oozes out at the 

 other end, and administers this as the first spoon- 

 ful of food to the new-born infant. 



