THE DEVONSHIRE ASH-TREE CHARM. 
133 
cured of the rupture by being drawn through the cleft of the said 
ash tree and nothing else. R. G." 
The foregoing letter drew forth the following, which appeared 
in the same Magazine in the succeeding September, vol. 74, p. 909. 
" Mr. Urban : — The Ash-tree described by your Correspondent, 
p. 512, grows by the side of Shirley-street (the road leading to 
Birmingham from Hockley-house), at the edge of Shirley-heath, in 
Solihull parish. The upper part of the gap formed by the chizzel 
has closed ; but the lower part remains open . . . and the tree is 
healthy and nourishing. Thomas Chilling worth, son of the owner 
of an adjoining farm, now about eighty-four, was, when an infant 
of a year old, passed through a similar tree, now perfectly sound, 
which he preserves with so much care that he will not suffer a 
single branch to be touched, for it is believed the life of the patient 
depends on the life of the tree, and the moment this is cut down, 
be the patient ever so far distant, the rupture returns, and a morti- 
fication ensues, and terminates in death, as was the case in a man 
driving a waggon on the very road in question. Rowe's son was 
passed through the tree in 1792, at the age of one or two. It is 
not, however, uncommon for persons to survive for a time the 
felling of the tree. In one case the rupture returned suddenly, 
and mortification followed. These trees are left to close of them- 
selves, or are closed with nails. The Wood-cutters frequently meet 
with the latter. One felled on Bunnand's farm was found full of 
nails. This belief is so prevalent in this part of the country, that 
instances of the trees that have been employed in the cure are 
common. The like notions obtain credit in some part of Essex. 
. . . Another R. G." 
8. As practised in Hampshire : — 
White, in his Natural History of Selborne (ed. 1813), of which 
the first edition was published in 1788, says, " In a farm yard, near 
the middle of this village [Selborne, Hants], stands, at this day, a 
row of pollard-ashes, which, by the seams and long cicatrices down 
their sides, manifestly show that in former times, they have been 
cleft asunder. These trees, when young and flexible, were severed 
and held open by wedges, while ruptured children, stripped naked, 
were pushed through the apertures, under a persuasion that, by such 
a process, the poor babes would be cured of their infirmity. As 
soon as the operation was over, the tree, in the suffering part, was 
