Œstridæ—Bot-flies.
The larvæ of Bots, Œstris ovis, found in the heads of sheep and goats, have been prescribed, and that, from the tripod of Delphos, as a remedy for the epilepsy. We are told so on the authority of Alexander Trailien; but whether Democritus, who consulted the oracle, was cured by this remedy, does not appear; the story shows, however, that the ancients were aware that these maggots made their way even into the brain of living animals.[1007] The oracle answered Democritus as follows:
Take a tame goat that hath the greatest head,
Or else a wilde goat in the field that’s bred,
And in his forehead a great worm you’l finde,
This cures all diseases of that kinde.[1008]
The common saying that a whimsical person is maggoty, or has got maggots in his head, perhaps arose from the freaks the sheep have been observed to exhibit when infested by their Bots.[1009]
The following “charme for the Bots[1010] in a horse” is found in Scots’ Discovery of Witchcraft, printed in 1651: “You must both say and do thus upon the diseased horse three days together, before the sun rising: In nomine pa†tris & fi†lii & Spiritus†sancti, Exorcize te vermen per Deum pa†trem & fi†lium & Spiritum†sanctum: that is, In the name of God the father, the sonne, and the Holy Ghost, I conjure thee O worm by God, the Father, the sonne, and the Holy Ghost; that thou neither eate nor drink the flesh, blood, or bones of this horse; and that thou hereby maiest be made as patient as Job, and as good as S. John Baptist, when he baptized Christ in Jordan, In nomine pa†tris & fi†lii et spiritus†sancti. And then say three Pater nosters, and three Aves, in the right eare of the horse, to the glory of the holy trinity. Do†minus fili†us spirit†us Mari†a.”[1011]
There is a popular error in England respecting the Œstrus (Gasterophilus) equi (hæmorrhoidalis), which Shakspeare
has followed, and which has been judiciously explained by Mr. Clark. Shakspeare makes the carrier at Rochester observe: “Peas and oats are as dank here as a dog, and that’s the next way to give poor jades the bots.”[1012]
The larvæ of this insect, says Mr. Clark, are mostly known among the country people by the name of wormals, wormuls, warbles, or, more properly, Bots. And our ancestors erroneously imagined that poverty or improper food engendered them in horses. The truth, however, seems to be, that when the animal is kept without food the Bots are also, and are then, without doubt, most troublesome; whence it was very naturally supposed that poverty or bad food was the parent of them.[1013]
A cow with its hide perforated by Warbles, in England, was said to be elf-shot: the holes being made by the arrows of the little malignant fairies. In the Northern Antiquities, p. 404, we find the following:
“If at such a time you were to look through an elf-bore in wood, where a thorter knot has been taken out, or through the hole made by an elf-arrow (which has probably been made by a Warble) in the skin of a beast that has been elf-shot, you may see the elf-bull naiging (butting) with the strongest bull or ox in the herd; but you will never see with that eye again.”
In the Scottish history of the trials of witches, we find the following: Alexander Smaill offended Jonet Cock, who threatened him, “deare sail yow rewe it! and within half ane howre therafter, going to the pleugh,—befoir he had gone one about, their came ane great Wasp or Bee, so that the foir horses did runne away with the pleugh, and wer liklie to have killed themselves, and the said Alexander and the boy that was with him, narrowlie escaped with their lyves.”[1014] Possibly the incident is not exaggerated, as a single Œstrus will turn the oxen of a whole herd, and render them furious.
Spencer, in his Travels in Circassia, speaks of a poisonous Fly, known in Hungary under the name of the Golubaeser-fly, which is singularly destructive to cattle. The Hungarian peasants, to account for the severity of the bite
of this insect, tell us that in the caverns, near the Castle of Golubaes, the renowned champion, St. George, killed the dragon, and that its decomposed remains have continued to generate these insects down to the present day. So firmly did they believe this, that they closed up the mouths of the caverns with stone walls.[1015]