FOLK LORE.
The Christmas Thorn.—In my neighbourhood (near Bridgewater) the Christmas thorn blossoms on the 6th of January (Twelfth-day), and on this day only. The villagers in whose gardens it grows, and indeed many others, verily believe that this fact pronounces the truth of this being the day of Christ's birth.
S. S. B.
Milk-maids in 1753.—To Folk-lore may be added the following short extract from Read's Weekly Journal, May 5, 1733:
"On May-Day the Milk-Maids who serve the Court, danced Minuets and Rigadoons before the Royal Family, at St. James's House, with great applause."
Y. S.
Diseases cured by Sheep (Vol. iii., p. 320.).—The attempted cure of consumption, or some
complaints, by walking among a flock of sheep, is not new. The present Archbishop of Dublin was recommended it, or practised it at least, when young. For pulmonary complaints the principle was perhaps the same as that of following a plough, sleeping in a room over a cowhouse, breathing the diluted smoke of a limekiln, that is, the inhaling of carbonic acid, all practised about the end of the last century, when the knowledge of the gases was the favourite branch of chemistry.
A friend of mine formerly met Dr. Beddoes riding up Park Street in Bristol almost concealed by a vast bladder tied to his horse's mouth. He said he was trying an experiment with oxygen on a broken-winded horse. Afterwards, finding that oxygen did not answer, he very wisely tried the gas most opposite to it in nature.
C. B.
Sacramental Wine (Vol. iii., p. 320.).—This idea is a relic of Roman Catholic times. In Ireland a weakly child is frequently brought to the altar rails, and the priest officiating at mass requested to allow it to drink from the chalice of what is termed the ablution, that is, the wine and water with which the chalice is rinsed after the priest has taken the communion, and which ablution ordinarily is taken by the priest. Here the efficacy is ascribed to the cup having just before contained the blood of Our Lord. I have heard it seriously recommended in a case of hooping-cough. Your correspondent Mr. Buckman does not give sufficient credit for common sense to the believers in some portion of folk lore. Red wine is considered tonic, and justly, as it contains a greater proportion of turmic than white. The yellow bark of the barberry contains an essential tonic ingredient, as the Jesuit's bark does quinine, or that of the willow salicine. Nettle juice is well known as a purifier of the blood; and the navelwort, like Euphrosia, which is properly called Eyebright, is as likely to have had its name from its proved efficacy as a simple, as from any fancied likeness to the region affected. The old monks were shrewd herbalists. They were generally the physicians of their neighbourhood, and the names and uses of the simples used by them survive the ruin of the monasteries and the expulsion of their tenants.
Kerriensis.
"Nettle in Dock out" (Vol. iii., pp. 133. 201. 205.).—I can assure A. E. B. that in the days of my childhood, long before I had ever heard of Chaucer, I used invariably, when I was stung with nettles, to rub the part affected with a dock-leaf or stalk, and repeat,
"Nettle out, dock in."
This charm is so common in Huntingdonshire at this day that it seems to come to children almost instinctively. None of them can tell where they first heard it, any more than why they use it.
Arun.