“Tom Potts was but a serving man,
And yet he was a doctor good,
He bound a handkerchief on the wound,
And with some kind of words he staunched the blood.”
What these same kind of words were among old Germans and Romans may be learned from the following: Jacob Grimm had long been familiar with a German magic spell of the eleventh century—ad stringendum sanguinem, or stopping bleeding—but, as he says, “noch nicht zu deuten vermochte,” could not explain them. They were as follows:—
“Tumbo saz in berke,
Mit tumbemo kinde in arme,
Tumb hiez der berc
Tumb hiez daz kint,
Der heiligo Tumbo