English Folk-Lore Superstitions.
It would be as tedious as it would be useless to relate at any length the multitude of silly superstitions which make up the medicinal folk-lore of this and other countries. Methods of curing warts, toothache, ague, worms, and other common complaints are familiar to everyone. The idea that toothache is caused by tiny worms which can be expelled by henbane, is very ancient and still exists. A process from one of the Anglo-Saxon Leechdoms converted into modern English by the Rev. Oswald Cockayne may be quoted as a sample:—
“For tooth worms take acorn meal and henbane seed and wax, of all equally much, mingle them together, work into a wax candle and burn it, let it reek into the mouth, put a black cloth under, and the worms will fall on it.”
Marcellus, a late Latin medical author whose work was translated into Saxon, gave a simpler remedy. It was to say “Argidam, Margidum, Sturdigum,” thrice, then spit into a frog’s mouth and set him free, requesting him at the same time to carry off the toothache.
Another popular cure for toothache in early England was to wear a piece of parchment on which the following charm was written:—“As St. Peter sat at the gate of Jerusalem our Blessed Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, passed by and said, What aileth thee? He said Lord, my teeth ache. He said, Arise and follow me and thy teeth shall never ache any more.”
Sir Kenelm Digby’s method was less tempting. He directed that the patient should scratch his gum with an iron nail until he made it bleed, and should then drive the nail with the blood upon it into a wooden beam. He will never have toothache again, says this sage.
For warts the cures are innumerable. They are all more or less like this: Steal a piece of meat from a butcher’s stall or basket, bury it secretly at a gateway where four lanes meet. As the meat decays the warts will die away. An apple cut into slices and rubbed on the warts and buried is equally efficacious. So is a snail which after being rubbed on the warts is impaled on a thorn and left to die.
A room hung with red cloth was esteemed in many countries to be effective against certain diseases, small-pox especially. John of Gaddesden relates how he cured Edward II’s son by this device. The prejudice in favour of red flannel which still exists, for tying a piece of it round sore throats is probably a remnant of the fancy that red was specially obnoxious to evil spirits. The Romans hung red coral round the necks of their infants to protect them from the evil eye. This practice, too, has come down to our day.
Among other charms and incantations quoted by Mr. Cockayne in his account of Saxon Leechdoms we find that for a baby’s recovery “some would creep through a hole in the ground and stop it up behind them with thorns,” “if cattle have a disease of the lungs, burn (something undeciphered) on midsummer’s day; add holy water, and pour it into their mouths on midsummer’s morrow; and sing over them: Ps. 51, Ps. 17, and the Athanasian Creed.” “If anything has been stolen from you write a copy of the annexed diagram and put it into thy left shoe under the heel. Then thou shalt soon hear of it.”