THE DEVONSHIRE ASH-TREE CHARM. 
141 
following infallible recipe for the cure of Ague : — ■ Of course you 
know what a maiden ash-tree is. Well, if you are troubled with 
the ague, you go to a grafter of trees, and tell him your complaint ; 
(every grafter notices the first branch of a maiden ash). You 
must not give him any money, or there will be no cure. You go 
home, and in your absence the grafter cuts the first branch.' Upon 
this I asked her "How long it was before the patient felt any 
relief?' ' Relief!' said the old lady, 1 why he is cured that instant 
the branch is cut from the tree. G. P." 
5. Ash Keys and Children: — Mrs. Latham, in her Monograph on 
West Sussex, says, " When a poor child has in vain been whipped 
and scolded for the nightly repetition of a certain involuntary 
offence, in the last resort one of the two following remedies may 
be tried : Upon the day appointed for the funeral of a person not 
of the same sex as the child, while the first part of the burial 
office is being read within the church, the child is to be taken to 
the open grave and is there to do that which constituted the 
original offence." . . . The second remedy " consists in the child's 
first going alone to fix upon an ash-tree suitable for the purpose of 
the charm, and going afterwards upon another day, without divulg- 
ing its intention, to gather a handful of the ash-keys, which it 
must lay with the left hand in the hollow of the right arm. Thus 
are they to be carried home and then they are to be burnt to ashes. 
The charm is completed by the child performing the same ceremony 
over the embers on the hearth, which in the former remedy it was 
to go through at the open grave." p. 49. 
6. Ash Her ding-sticks : — Aberdoniensis, writing to Notes and 
Queries, 1st s., iv., 380, says, "The herd boys in the district 
of Buchan, in Aberdeenshire, always prefer a herding stick of ash 
to any other wood, as in throwing it at their cattle it is sure not to 
strike on a vital part, and so kill or injure the animal, which they 
say a stick of any other wood might do. . . . " 
7. Ash-ivood Fires : — According to Halliwell — 
" ' Burn ash- wood green, 
'Tis a fire for a queen : 
Burn ash- wood sear, 
'Twill make a man swear.' 
