PECULIAR ATTRIBUTES OF THE SEVENTH SON.
Allow me to offer a Note on that part of MR. COOPER'S communication (Vol. iii., pp. 148, 149.) which relates to the alleged power of the "seventh son" to cure the "king's evil". This superstition is still extant in this part of Cornwall. I have recently been told of three seventh sons, and of one ninth son, who has been in the habit of touching (or, as it is here called, "striking," which seems to mean nothing more than stroking) persons suffering from the disease above referred to.
The striker thrice gently stokes the part affected by the disorder, and thrice blows on it, using some form of words. One of my informants, who had been so "struck" when a child, has a charm, or rather an amulet, which has just, for the first time, been opened at my instigation. It is a small bag of black silk, and is found to contain an old worn shilling of William III., bored and stitched through in a piece of canvas. This was presented to the patient at the time of the operation, and was to be kept carefully as a preservative against the malady.
In Bristol, about forty years ago, there lived a respectable tradesman who was habitually known as Dr. Peter P——, with no better title to his degree than that he was the seventh son of a seventh son.
Those who have read Mr. Carleton's tragic tale, The Black Prophet, will remember that, in Ireland, the seventh son of the seventh son is supposed to be—
"Endued
With gifts and knowledge, per'lous shrewd!"
And in Keightley's Fairy Mythology (p. 411. note, ed. 1850) are given some tradition of that gifted Welsh family, the "Jones' of Muddfi," whose forefather had married the "Spirit of the Van Pool."
"She left her children behind her, who became famous as doctors. Jones was their name, and they lived at a place called Muddfi. In them was said to have originated the tradition of the seventh son, or Septimus, being born for the healing art; as for many generations seven sons were regularly born in each family, the seventh of whom became the doctor, and wonderful in his profession. It is said, even now, that the Jones' of Muddfi are, or were until very recently, clever doctors."
I have heard this tradition of the Jones' of Muddfi corroborated by a Welsh friend.
H. G. T.
Launceston.