154 JOURNAL OP THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
VI. "Passing Through" not Eestricted to Ash Trees. 
Returning now to the charm with which we started, there seems 
reason to believe that, whilst the Ash is commonly, it is not exclu- 
sively, the tree through which the patient is passed. It will be 
remembered, perhaps, that Mr. Grose, in the passage already quoted, 
says, " If a tree of any kind is split, and weak, ricketty children 
drawn through it, and afterwards the tree is bound together so as 
to make it unite, as the tree heals and grows together, so will the 
child acquire strength." (See p. 135 above.) 
Again, a writer in the Athenceum of October 17th, 1846 (No. 
990, p. 1068), speaking of the practice of passing children through 
ash-trees, says, " We are assured by a most intelligent correspondent 
that a similar custom prevails in India (with other trees, however) 
[the italics are not in the original], where the father passes the child 
and the mother receives it." 
Nor is a tree, or an artificial aperture, absolutely indispensable 
when a cure is to be effected. " To cure blackheads, or pinsoles, as 
they are sometimes called," says Mr. Parfitt, "the person affected 
. ... is to creep hands and knees under or through a bramble 
three times with the sun ; that is, from east to west. The bramble 
however must be of peculiar growth ; that is, it must form an arch, 
rooting at both ends, and if it reaches into two proprietors' lands 
so much the better. Thus, if a bramble grows on the hedge of one 
owner, and a branch of which the end takes root extends into the 
field of another, the best form for working the charm is provided. 
This was related to a friend of mine by an old man, who when 
young had practised it, he being at that time badly affected with 
these troublesome 'boils.' After passing three times under such a 
bramble the blackheads gradually left him, and he has been quite 
free from them ever since. This story is from the neighbourhood 
of Rockbear [near Exeter]." {Trans. Devon. Assoc., ix. 96, 1877.) 
Indeed, the vegetable kingdom may be entirely dispensed with, 
for Dr. Borlase, in his Antiquities, Historical and Monumental, of 
the Count// of Cornwall, 2nd Edition, London, mdcclxix., says, 
<' Another Relick of . . . Druid fancies and incantations, is doubt- 
less the custom of . . . drawing children through a round hole 
made in flat rocks, to cure the Rickets." (p. 143.) 
"In the Tenement of Lanyon [in the parish of Madron] stand 
three Stones-erect on a triangular Plan. . . . The middle Stone is 
