THE DEVONSHIRE ASH-TREE CHARM. 
139 
wisht old place sure enough, and full of adders as can be.' . . . . 
The farmer offers me a speedy remedy ... for he transfers to my 
hand the ashen bough or sprig that he was carrying in his own, and 
initiates me, on the spot, into the pagan rites of charming adders. 
. . . He tells me, that the moment I see an adder I have nothing 
to do but to draw a circle with an ash rod round it, and that the 
creature will never go out of it ; nay, if a fire were kindled in a 
ring, it would rather go into the fire itself than pass the circle. 
He believed, also, that an animal bitten by this venomous reptile 
may be cured by having a kind of collar woven of ash twigs 
suspended round his neck." 
3. Ash Trees and Warts : — Mr. J. 0. Halliwell, in his Nursery 
Rhymes and Nursery Tales of England (London, F. Warne and 
Co., Fifth Edition, p. 288), says, "Whoever will charm away a 
wart must take a pin and go to an ash tree. He then crosses the 
wart with a pin three times, and, after each crossing, repeats : 
' Asli-tree, ashen-tree, 
Pray buy this wart of me ! ' 
After which he sticks the pin in the tree, and the wart soon dis- 
appears, and grows on the tree instead. This must be done 
secretly 
" Another. — Take a bean-shell, and rub the wart with it; then 
bring the bean-shell under an ash-tree, and repeat : 
1 As this bean-shell rots away, 
So my wart shall soon decay ! ' 
This also must be done secretly." 
A writer in the Athenceum for August 11th, 1849 (No. 1137, p.813) 
says, " It has been, and I believe is still, very prevalently believed, 
that by the use of the proper charm warts (in Norfolk called rets) 
may be removed from the hands, and transferred to an ash tree. 
The charm as practised by me when a boy of eight or nine years 
old, under the directions of a charwoman who worked in the house, 
was as follows : 
"To go secretly to an ash- tree, taking a bill-hook or other sharp 
instrument, and to repeat the following verse or rhyme thrice, 
cutting or chopping the tree at the same time in one spot — 
1 Ashen tree, ashen tree, if you and I can agree 
You shall have my rets of me.' 
