The author of "Sylvan Sketches," (1825), informs us, on the authority of Lightfoot, that "in the Highlands of Scotland, at the birth of an infant, the nurse takes a green stick of ash, one end of which she puts into the fire, and while it is burning receives in a spoon the sap that oozes from the other, which she administers to the child as its first food." The infant Zeus, of the Greeks, was first fed by the Melian nymphs with honey "the fruit of the ash," and with goat's milk. Kelly says:—
"There was a positive, as well as a mythic, reason why the Greeks should give the ash a name signifying sweetness, because the Fraxinus ornus, a species of ash indigenous in the south of Europe, yields manna from its slit bark. They may also have conceived that honey dropped upon the earth as dew from the heavenly ash, for Theophrastus mentions a kind of honey which fell in that form from the air, and which was therefore called aeromelia."
Weber and Dr. Kuhn refer to a passage in one of the sacred books of the Hindoos, in which an analogous practice is referred to. It reads, "The father puts his mouth to the right ear of the new-born babe, and murmurs three times, 'Speech! speech!' Then he gives it a name, 'Thou art Veda;' that is its secret name. Then he mixes clotted milk, honey, and butter, and feeds the babe with it out of pure gold." Referring to this subject, Kelly exclaims:—
"Amazing toughness of popular tradition! Some thousands of years ago the ancestors of this Highland nurse had known the Fraxinus ornus in Arya, or on their long journey through Persia, Asia Minor, and the south of Europe, and they had given its honey-like juice as divine food to their children; and now their descendant, imitating their practice in the cold North, but totally ignorant of its true meaning, puts the nauseous sap of her native ash into the mouth of her hapless charge, because her mother, and her grandmother, and her grandmother's mother had done the same thing before her. 'The reason,' we are told by a modern native authority, 'for giving ash-sap to new-born children in the Highlands of Scotland, is, first, because it acts as a powerful astringent; and secondly, because the ash, in common with the rowan, is supposed to possess the property of resisting the attacks of witches, fairies, and other imps of darkness.'" Mr. Kelly regards the astringent argument as evidently not the reason why the practice was first adopted, but an excuse, and a bad one, for its continuance. In many places mothers yet pass their infants through split ash trees in the belief that it will cure them of, or protect them from, the rickets or rupture.
Brand regards the Christian pastoral crook, as well as the "lituus or staff with the crook at one end, which the augurs of old carried as badges of their profession, and instruments in the superstitious exercise of it," as originally intimately connected with the divining rod. He refers to Hogarth's "Analysis of Beauty," in which the great satirical artist gives an engraving of what he terms a "lusus naturæ," which represents a "very elegant" branch of the ash tree. Brand seems to endorse Mr. Gostling's opinion, as expressed in the "Antiquarian Repertory," who says, "I should rather style it a distemper or distortion of nature; for it seems the effect of a wound by some insect, which, piercing to the heart of the plant with its proboscis, poisons that, while the bark remains uninjured and proceeds in its growth, but formed into various stripes, flatness, and curves, for want of the support which nature designed it. The beauty some of these arrive at might well consecrate them to the fopperies of heathenism, and their rarity occasions imitations of them by art. The pastoral staff of the Church of Rome seems to have been formed from the vegetable litui, though the general idea is, I know, that it is an imitation of the shepherd's crook." Gostling's paper is accompanied by engravings of "carved branches of the ash." Brand speaks of one of these curious "freaks of nature," which he saw in the possession of an old woman at Beeralstown, in Devonshire, as "extremely beautiful." He was very anxious to purchase it, but the old lady refused to "part with it on any account, thinking it would be unlucky to do so."
Several modern writers on comparative mythology class the wish or divining rod amongst the numerous forms which the stauros, as a phallic emblem, has presented itself. The Rev. G. W. Cox, in his "Mythology of the Aryan Nations," is very explicit on this point. He says,—"The wooden emblem carries us, however, more directly to the natural mythology of the subject. The rod acquired an inherent vitality, and put forth leaves and branches in the Thyrsoi of the Dionysiac worshippers and the Seistron of Egyptian priests. It became the tree of life, and reappeared as the rod of wealth and happiness given by Apollôn to Hermes, the mystic spear which Abaris received from the Hyperborean Sun-god, and which came daily to Phoibus in his exile laden with all good things. It was seen as the lituus of the augur, the crooked staff of the shepherd, the sceptre of the king, and the divining rod which pointed out hidden springs or treasures to modern conjurors. In a form which adhered still more strictly to the first idea the emblem became the stauros or cross of Osiris, and a new source of mythology was thus laid open. To the Egyptians the cross thus became the symbol of immortality, and the god himself was crucified to a tree which denoted his fructifying power.... It is peculiar neither to the Egyptians nor Assyrians, neither to Greeks, Latins, Gauls, Germans or Hindus." Mr. Cox includes among its various forms the "trident of Poseidon or Proteus, and the fylfot or hammer of Thor, which assumes the form of a cross pattée." Increase of wealth by natural fruition evidently lies at the root of many of the myths which relate to hidden treasures, whether buried in the interior of mountains or elsewhere, as well as to the properties of magic purses, festive tables, cornucopiæ, etc.
The following paragraph appeared in the newspapers in March, 1866. It appears, from it, that in the eastern counties the bible has superseded the "wish-rod" as an instrument of divination:—
"Novel Use for the Bible.—At the Norwich assizes, on Wednesday, the case of Creak v. Smith was tried. It was an action for slander, the slanderous words imputed to the defendant being as follows:—'You are the thief, and no other man. You have robbed the fatherless and the motherless, and got in at the window. I can prove it by the turn of the Bible.' One of the witnesses for the plaintiff explained what was meant by the expression, 'I'll prove it by the turn of the Bible.' He said that the defendant had told him that a friend of his, having asked him whether he had ever heard anything about the Bible being turned, bade him come to his house and he would show him what it was. That evening, when this person went home, he told his wife what he had said to defendant, and she went through the ceremony, which was done by holding a Bible by a string, twisting it round, and as it was turning calling out the names of all in the house until she came to the plaintiff's name last of all, when it turned round the other way, showing that he was the guilty man. This ceremony was performed by her a second time by the husband's bedside, with the same triumphant result.—The jury gave a verdict for 20s. damages."
Since most of the above was written I have read the following, in Mr. Robert Hunt's "Drolls, Traditions, and Superstitions of Old Cornwall," which seems to throw a doubt upon the antiquity of the divining rod, at least as far as Cornish mining is concerned. The statement, however, in no way invalidates the fact that the hazel, ash, and other trees were held in great veneration from the most remote antiquity either in Cornwall or elsewhere:—
"It may appear strange to many that having dealt with the superstitions of the Cornish people, no mention has been made of the Divining Rod (the Dowzing Rod, as it is called), and its use in the discovery of mineral lodes. This has been avoided, in the first place, because any mention of the practice of 'dowzing' would lead to a discussion, for which this work is not intended; and in the second place, because the use of the hazel-twig is not Cornish. The divining or dowzing rod is certainly not older than the German miners, who were brought over by Queen Elizabeth to teach the Cornish to work the mines, one of whom, called Schutz, was some time Warden of the Stannaries. Indeed there is good reason for believing that the use of this wand is of more recent date, and consequently, removed from the periods which are sought to be illustrated by this collection. The divining rod belongs no more to them than do the modern mysteries of twirling hats, of teaching tables to turn, and—in their wooden way—to talk."