Be this as it may, remedies derived from the dead were, and still are, popular. The Saxons of the Seven Cities cure wens and scrofula by drawing a silken thread through a corpse’s hand and then binding it round the patient’s neck. They hold that a silken band out of a grave is a protection against epilepsy. Earth from a sucking infant’s grave is put upon the mother’s breast to dry up her milk. Gout is healed by rubbing a rag from a dead man’s clothes on the suffering parts and hanging it all night upon a tree. Against cramp, a string wherewith a corpse has been measured is worn on the body next to the skin. A drunkard’s craving for drink is stayed by giving him some of what he best loves, poured over a silver coin which has been placed in a corpse’s mouth. Diseases of the eyes are cured by going early on a fine Sunday morning in spring to a pious man’s grave, and washing the eyes in the dew that lies upon it. Herbs grown in the churchyard, and gathered on Good Friday when the bells are sounding for service, are good against every kind of sickness.[165.1] Among the Poles and Masurs it is believed that to smell a flower growing in the churchyard causes permanent loss of the sense of smell.[165.2] The Negro population of Barbados resorts to the touch of a dead hand for all swellings and chronic pains, and believes that to wash the eyes in rum which has been used to wash a corpse is to be safe from disease of the eyes for the future.[165.3] In the Abruzzi the hand of a dead priest has potency against scrofulous tumours, and a certain remedy for headache is to rub the forehead and temples with the tears of a dying man.[165.4] A prescription in Middle Silesia, against epilepsy and against toothache is a ring smithied from a coffin-nail found in a grave.[165.5] In the Netherlands an aching tooth is rubbed with a bone from the churchyard; or, in the province of Namur, the sufferer goes to bite a cross erected on the wayside where a violent death has occurred.[166.1] The bone, among the Masurs and generally in Prussia, is replaced by the index-finger of a corpse.[166.2] In old French belief it should be a tooth, if possible the tooth of a man who has come to a violent end, as by hanging; and the best time for its application is on Holy Saturday when the bells are ringing. Other French prescriptions are: for fever, to hang round the neck a human bone taken from the graveyard, or the hem torn (not cut) from a winding-sheet; for colic or lapsus ani, to cut the hem from a winding-sheet, pass it under the loins and wear it as a girdle; for hydrophobia, pills made of the head of a man who has been hanged.[166.3] In Silesia water left on tombstones will send freckles away. At Gernsbach, in the neighbourhood of Spire, to smear a goitre with the wick of a lamp that has burnt in a dying man’s room will heal it.[166.4] To cure a Bosnian drunkard, extinguish in brandy one of the candles burning at the head of a corpse before the funeral, and give him the brandy to drink. Even a bit of the wick when the candle is put out in the ordinary course, given in brandy, will be sufficient; or indeed brandy bought with a coin which has been used to close the eyes of the dead.[167.1] The last is doubtless a degenerate form of a superstition akin to that of the Transylvanian Saxons adduced just now. In the Lettish prescription the corpse’s mouth is to be washed out, and the water given to the tippler. After drinking it, we are told, he can never drink again, which is quite likely.[167.2] The reasoning which has given rise to all these beliefs perhaps applies also to the tradition in Wales, Ireland and the Isle of Man that it is unlucky to disturb old burial-places and old churches, and utilise their materials. Professor Rhys relates an example in which a farmer in the Ronnag, a small valley near South Barrule, in the Isle of Man, carted earth from an old burial-ground and used it to manure his fields. His cattle died, and every one attributed it to this cause. The farmer himself was convinced at last, and desisted from the desecration.[167.3] A similar story is told of a cattle-dealer in the parish of Templepatrick, near Belfast, who attempted to use the soil of an ancient fort as a top-dressing for his land.[167.4] We may compare with these instances a curious Manx curse: “May a stone of the church be found in the head of thy dwelling!”[167.5] It would seem as if that which had been part of, or had become by contact united with, the dead, or had been part of the subject of a taboo, were still, notwithstanding severance, in indissoluble connection with the remainder, and thus capable of communicating its evil effects or of bringing into similar connection any other object. Too much stress, however, cannot be laid on this conjecture at present. The question needs further investigation.
The other class of prescriptions consists of such as the following. An English cure for boils mentioned by Mr. Thiselton Dyer was to poultice for three days and nights, and then to place the poultices, cloths and all, in the coffin of a body about to be buried.[168.1] In Germany, when a sucking babe dies, the mother puts a bottle of her milk in the coffin, and then the breast dries up without making her ill.[168.2] To the same end a South Slavonic mother sticks in the infant’s shift over the breast two pins, probably to be taken from her own. The coffin-lid must not be nailed at the head and foot, else the mother will bear no more, or if she bear, it will be a difficult labour.[168.3] In Silesia, to destroy lice, bugs and moths, it is recommended to catch a few specimens, bottle them up in a quill and secretly by a waning moon lay the quill in the coffin of a spotless maiden.[168.4] The population of North Carolina is mainly of German descent. There, by the same process of logic, it is forbidden in making garments for the dead to bite the thread, lest the teeth rot.[168.5] The Transylvanian Saxons spit into an open grave to heal sore throat.[168.6] In East Prussia, as in West Sussex, a child is cured of a certain nightly offence by being taken to an open grave to repeat it.[168.7] In Donegal, warts are got rid of by throwing some clay from under your right foot in the path by which a funeral is going, and by saying: “Corpse of clay, carry my warts away.” This must be done three times, and as the corpse decays in the grave the warts will vanish.[169.1] As might be expected, to bring warts into contact with a corpse is a specially efficacious means of getting rid of them. In the Obererzgebirge warts or any other superficial ailments are rubbed with a piece of linen, which is then laid in the coffin with a corpse.[169.2] To recover from the ague in the Netherlands the sufferer’s garter used to be tied round a gallows.[169.3] When a death occurs in Poland, if anything has been stolen from the family, a similar object, or a piece of the same stuff, is laid in the coffin; and as it decays the thief withers away and dies. It is even enough, in case of robbery, to lay a portion of the stolen goods in the churchyard.[169.4] We considered in the last chapter the identification of the thief with the property stolen, and no more need be added on the subject.
The principle which underlies all these practices dictated the sympathetic treatment of wounds by washing and keeping clean and bright the instrument inflicting them—a treatment taught by Paracelsus, believed in by Bacon and proclaimed as a valuable discovery by Sir Kenelm Digby, who learned it in France. Though long since discredited by science, it is still in use among the peasantry of England, and can be traced backwards into savagery. A few instances will suffice to exhibit the vast area over which it is found, and the different modes of its application. In Sussex a few years ago Mrs. Latham saw it actually in use. A man had been accidentally wounded by a sword-stick, and the whole time he was confined to his bed the sword-stick was kept hung at his bed’s head, and was polished at stated intervals day and night, and anxiously examined lest a spot of rust be found thereon; for that would have been a token that the wounded man would die.[170.1] In Suffolk, if a horse be lamed by treading on a nail, the nail must be found, cleaned and kept bright and well greased; and in dressing a human wound the old plaster must be buried, not burnt, else the wound will not heal.[170.2] Similar treatment of a wound by a tool or weapon was practised within the memory of living men by the descendants of the Dutch settlers in the Hudson River.[170.3] About Schaffhausen and Solothurn it is held that if one be pricked with a needle, the wound will heal the sooner if the needle be at once plunged into wax.[170.4] In the Tirol, in order to prevent a wound from giving trouble, the weapon that has caused it is immediately stuck into ash-wood.[170.5] About Siena a nail which has inflicted any hurt is gently warmed over the fire with a clove of garlic in oil prepared from herbs gathered on Saint John’s day, and it is then used to sprinkle the oil about.[170.6] In Esthonia, if you cut your finger, you are advised to bite the blade of the knife, and the wound will then cease to bleed.[170.7] Among the Galician Jews, if a child fall on the floor, the pain will pass away, provided water be poured on the floor, at the spot where the child came in contact with it.[171.1] These superstitions are not a whit more civilised than those of the races we call savage. Dr. Boas mentions a tribe of North American Indians who are very careful to keep the arrow that has wounded a friend concealed, and as far from the fire as possible; for he would be very ill if, while still covered with blood, it were put into the fire.[171.2] Melanesians keep the arrow, when extracted, in a damp place, or in cool leaves; then the inflammation will be little and soon subside. A story is told by Dr. Codrington of a man who aimed at another with a ghost-shooter, that is to say, a magically prepared arrow which does not actually reach the foe, but is only believed to do so by being directed towards him. In this case the man’s next of kin, his sister’s child, happened to come between him and the object of his aim, and he felt sure he had hit it full. To prevent inflammation of the imaginary wound he put the contents of his ghost-shooter into water, and the child took no hurt. If a Melanesian have really shot another, and can get back the arrow, he puts it into the fire. To heat the wound he will keep the bow near the fire; and the bowstring will be kept taut and occasionally pulled, to bring on tension of the nerves and tetanus in the wounded man. Or a bundle of certain leaves, tied on the bow will produce a fatal result. Nor is this all. The assailant and his friends will drink hot and burning juices, and chew irritating leaves; they will burn pungent and bitter herbs to produce an irritating smoke. The wound by his arrow has set up such union between the shooter and his victim that these proceedings are expected to react upon the latter.[172.1] The Zulus are said to have the like belief. They think that if the corpse of a slain enemy swell up, they themselves will suffer pain in the intestines. If they have time, therefore, they tear out the entrails of their fallen foes; if not, they pierce the navel with an assegai, as was done to the body of young Bonaparte, the Imperialist Pretender.[172.2]
“A hair of the dog that bit you” is a remedy which has passed into a proverb. In dealing with witchcraft we had occasion to note some instances of its application, as when the dust of a witch’s footprint is rubbed on the bespelled animal. The Abruzzians hold the bite of a cat to be venomous; and their prescription for it is a bit of the same cat’s fur applied with pounded garlic. So, for a serpent-bite a portion of the skin of the creature is put on the wound; but, as Signor Finamore remarks, the question is to get it.[172.3] In Sicily the sting of one of the small scorpions found in damp places in the island is healed by scorpion-oil prepared from the same scorpion. The mode of preparing the oil is to decapitate the animal and plunge it into a vessel of oil, which is then closed tightly.[172.4] In Devonshire a person who is bitten by a viper is advised at once to kill the creature and rub the wound with its fat; and the flesh of a rattlesnake is accounted the best cure for its own bite in the Northern States of America.[172.5] In Belgium a dog’s bite is to be healed by inducing a bitch to lick the sore.[173.1] The reason for the treatment is obscure in some of these cases; but we shall probably be right in referring its origin to the desire to set up union between the victim and the animal inflicting the wound, by means of a detached portion of the latter’s substance. This view is strengthened by the treatment directed, in the neighbourhood of Masulipatam, for a scorpion which has stung a man. The brute is to be caught by slipping a noose over its tail, and tied to something to prevent its wandering. For the more it wanders, the more the poison will wander in the man’s body; while to kill it may have the effect of killing its victim. Here the union by means of the injected poison is already complete, and the scorpion is dealt with accordingly.[173.2]
Folk-leechcraft thus provides us with further illustration of the theory lying at the foundation of the story-incident of the Life-token. A severed portion of the body, or any of its issues, or anything once in contact with it, though now detached, is none the less believed to continue in real, if unapparent, connection with it. Whatever, therefore, is undergone by the one, is undergone also by the other. For the purposes of healing, as of injury, to affect the one is to affect the other. It is curious that a large number of the remedies prescribed are of a character that, judging from the examples of witchcraft in the last chapter, one would suppose calculated to inflict injury rather than to heal. To hang in the chimney things which have become united with the patient’s body, or to put them into a coffin, if done with malicious intent, would certainly result in evil to the victim. We must, however, be at all times prepared to find tradition inconsistent. In the cases referred to, the disease is thought of, rather than the patient, as identified with the object operated on; and the intention is to destroy the disease by causing it to waste away. Probably the prescription was at first applied only to excrescences and other diseased growths, like warts, tumours and wens. These alone were touched by the dead hand, or by the cloth, or the spider, which was to be enclosed in the grave, or hung in the chimney. The remedy having been tried for them, would be extended to other ailments, without adverting to the reason of its primitive limitation. So far as regards objects committed to the keeping of the dead, a comparison of love-charms comprising the same process will have suggested an alternative explanation, namely, that they are brought thus into permanent contact with the corpse for the purpose of putting them under the influence of the departed spirit. This is a less materialistic explanation, and one that will have weight with students who can estimate the importance, in savage life, of the worship of the dead. It is possible that there may be an element of truth in it, as well as in the explanation which regards the objects as merely intended to be affected by the physical decay and corruption of the corpse. But, either way, is clearly necessary the postulate that the disease in the patient’s body is capable of being affected by the influence, whatever it may be, on the objects in contact with the dead,—that in them, and by means of them, the patient himself is actually in contact also.
CHAPTER XI.
SACRED WELLS AND TREES.
In the light of the results thus obtained by an examination of certain of the methods of witchcraft and folk-medicine, we next approach a group of rites known in one form or other from shore to shore of the Old World, and the principle of which has regulated religious observances alike in North and South America. These rites are very numerous in the British islands; and it will be convenient to start from some of the most modern forms found in Great Britain. Professor Rhys, in a paper read a year or two ago before a joint meeting of the Cymmrodorion and Folklore Societies, quotes a correspondent as saying of Ffynnon Cae Moch, about half-way between Coychurch and Bridgend, in Glamorganshire: “People suffering from rheumatism go there. They bathe the part affected with water, and afterwards tie a piece of rag to the tree which overhangs the well. The rag is not put in the water at all, but is only put on the tree for luck. It is a stunted but very old tree, and is simply covered with rags.” In another case, that of Ffynnon Eilian (Elian’s Well), near Abergele in Denbighshire, of which Professor Rhys was informed by Mrs. Evans, the late wife of Canon Silvan Evans, some bushes near the well had once been covered with bits of rags left by those who frequented it. The rags used to be tied to the bushes by means of wool—not woollen yarn, but wool in its natural state. Corks with pins stuck in them were floating in the well when Mrs. Evans visited it, though the rags had apparently disappeared from the bushes. The well in question, it is noted, had once been in great repute as “a well to which people resorted for the kindly purpose of bewitching those whom they hated.” The Ffynnon Cefn Lleithfan, or Well of the Lleithfan Ridge, on the eastern slope of Mynydd y Rhiw, in the parish of Bryncroes, in the west of Carnarvonshire, is a resort for the cure of warts. The sacred character of the well may be inferred from the silence in which it is necessary to go and come, and from the prohibition to turn or look back. The wart is to be bathed at the well with a rag or clout, which has grease on it. The clout must then be carefully concealed beneath the stone at the mouth of the well. The Professor, repeating this account of the well, given him by a Welsh collector of folk-lore, says: “This brings to my mind the fact that I have, more than once, years ago, noticed rags underneath stones in the water flowing from wells in Wales, and sometimes thrust into holes in the walls of wells, but I had no notion how they came there.” The Rev. Elias Owen, writing on the Holy Wells of North Wales, relates that the patients who came to the Ffynnon Awen, or Muses’ Well, in the upper part of Llanrhaiadr, near Denbigh, buried under a stone close to or in the well the pieces of wool they had used in washing their wounds.[176.1]
Professor Rhys, in the paper just cited, mentions several wells wherein it was usual to drop pins; but the most detailed account was afterwards furnished by Mr. T. E. Morris, from a correspondent who supplied him with the following information relating to Ffynnon Faglan (St Baglan’s Well) in the parish of Llanfaglan, Carnarvonshire: “The old people who would be likely to know anything about Ffynnon Faglan have all died. The two oldest inhabitants, who have always lived in this parish (Llanfaglan), remember the well being used for healing purposes. One told me his mother used to take him to it when he was a child, for sore eyes, bathe them with the water, and then drop in a pin. The other man, when he was young, bathed in it for rheumatism, and until quite lately people used to fetch away the water for medicinal purposes. The latter, who lives near the well at Tan-y-graig, said that he remembered it being cleared out about fifty years ago, when two basins-full of pins were taken out, but no coin of any kind. The pins were all bent, and I conclude the intention was to exorcise the evil spirit supposed to afflict the person who dropped them in, or, as the Welsh say, dadwitsio. No doubt some ominous words were also used. The well is at present nearly dry, the field where it lies having been drained some years ago, and the water in consequence withdrawn from it. It was much used for the cure of warts. The wart was washed, then pricked with a pin, which, after being bent, was thrown into the well.”[177.1]
In England the custom is well known of throwing pins into the water or hanging rags torn from the devotee’s clothing upon the neighbouring bushes and trees.[178.1] But without pausing on English examples we pass at once to Ireland. There sacred wells and other places of pilgrimage are numerous and interesting. Mr. W. C. Borlase, quoting from the manuscripts of the late Mr. Windele of Cork, mentions the cromlech of Maul na holtora, in Kerry, as reputed to contain a well to which a legend of a sacred fish attached. It was a place of pilgrimage every Saturday. “The brambles are tied with rags, and there is a deposit of pins as offerings.” The ritual prescribed at this and similar places of pilgrimage is the performance of a circuit from point to point, right-hand-wise, or in the direction of the sun, the recital of a certain number of paternosters and aves, just as at the stations of the Cross in a Roman Catholic church, and finally the deposit of the offering of a rag or pins. A well at Finmagh, in Roscommon, in which a Druid was said to be buried, was regarded as a deity. Here, however, the offerings, thrust through a hole or cleft in the roof, were of gold and silver.[178.2] This is a rare case. Quite recently Professor Haddon and Dr. Browne found, in the Aran Islands, Galway, rags attached to sprays of the bramble or ivy at most of the holy wells. Buttons, fish-hooks, iron nails, shells, pieces of crockery and other things are deposited in the holy well at Tempulan-Cheathruir-aluinn, or the Church of the Four Comely Ones.[178.3] Turish Lyn, a pool in the stream a little below Kilgort Bridge, in County Derry, is still resorted to for the cure of various diseases. Among the offerings left on a bush beside the stream are enumerated a piece of cloth, a lock of hair and three stones picked up from the pool.[179.1] A number of other instances are cited by Mr. Gomme from various authorities.[179.2] What seems an analogous custom is declared by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey to be practised at the Large Skellig, off the coast of Kerry. This island contains the ruin of an ancient monastery, and is accounted a holy place. When workmen from the mainland have been employed on the buildings on the Skellig and are bidding farewell to the island, “they invariably cast some well-worn article of clothing, oftener than not a pair of shoes, at a solitary rock, known as the Blue Man, which stands abruptly out of the ocean.”[179.3]
In the Isle of Man there is a well called Chibber Unjin, or Ash-tree Well, which I mention for the sake of calling attention to an interesting detail of the rite. A patient visiting the well had to take a mouthful of water, retaining it in his mouth until he had made the circuit of the well, and then empty it upon a rag of his own clothing, which he afterwards tied on the hawthorn growing there.[179.4]