CHAPTER XIV
CHARMS AND MEDICAL LORE
Charms for warding off unseen harm and danger, and for curing bodily ills were of course much more numerous, and more generally accredited in the early decades of last century than they are to-day. But even now some still survive, like the horseshoe, which people still pick up, and hang over doors and chimney-pieces ‘for luck’, unconscious of the fact that they are thus preserving an old superstitious device for counteracting the power of witches. Another curious survival is the placing of the poker against the top bar of the grate. People who do it tell you in all seriousness that it draws the fire up by creating a draught. It really is an ancient charm against witches, as Dr. Johnson explained to Boswell: ‘“Why, Sir, do people play this trick which I observe now, when I look at your grate, putting the shovel against it to make the fire burn?” Johnson. “They play the trick, but it does not make the fire burn. There is a better (setting the poker perpendicularly up at right angles with the grate). In days of superstition they thought, as it made a cross with the bars, it would drive away the witch.”’ Life of Dr. Johnson, Vol. II, p. 376. Again, many educated people habitually ‘touch wood’ if they have given vent to some expression of satisfaction over their own good health or fortune, or that of any member of their family. They say with a laugh, ‘I suppose I must touch wood,’ and do it with no conscious thought of averting the evil eye, but if the trick were omitted, the speaker would probably feel uncomfortable afterwards.
Devices to drive away Witches
The various devices for keeping off witches, and for defeating their craft can only here be illustrated by a few instances. To drive away witches by means of fire was part of the ceremony of saining once practised in Scotland at the birth of a child. A fir-candle was lighted and carried three times round the bed, or if this could not be done, it was whirled three times round the heads of the mother and child; a Bible and bread and cheese were placed under the pillow, and the following words were repeated: May the Almichty debar a’ ill fae this umman, an be aboot ir an bless ir an ir bairn. In the Shetland Islands when a woman suspected of witchcraft entered a house, the inmates—on her leaving—would throw a firebrand after her, at the same time saying: Twee-tee-see-de, doo ill-vam’d trooker. If ther’s a witch onywheäre aboot, an ye’r scar’d at she’ll oherlook ye, you mun goä an pull a dook o’ thack [handful of thatch] oot’n her hoose eavins, an bo’n it, then she can’t do noht to ye (Lin.). A red-hot iron thrust into the cream in the churn, or into the fermenting beer in the brewing-vat expelled the witch that was frustrating the labours of the dairy-maid, or the brewer. In 1882 a man living in Shropshire found in a crevice in one of the joists of his kitchen chimney a folded paper, sealed with red wax, containing these words: ‘I charge all witches and ghosts to depart from this house, in the great name of Jehovah and Alpha and Omega.’ A well-known plan for working mischief, practised by malevolent persons, was to make a small figure in wax, and then pierce it with innumerable pins. This was supposed to give the victim severe stabbing pains in the limbs. To reverse this injury the victim might hang in his chimney a bullock’s heart stuck with pins (Dev.). In the Somerset County Museum at Taunton may be seen pigs’ hearts full of pins. If a pig died owing to the overlooking of some malignant witch, it seems to have been a custom to take its heart, pierce it with as many pins and thorns as it would hold, and then hang it in the chimney, in the belief that as the pig’s heart dried up and withered, so would that of the evil person who had bewitched the pig. I remember, hardly more than twenty years ago, being told of a man then living near Banbury, who earned a livelihood by making little images to be stuck with pins for witchcraft purposes. To crook the thumb (n.Cy.), that is, to double the thumb within the hand, is a charm against witchcraft; so also is the use of the expression: It’s Wednesday all the world over (Sc.). A bunch of ash-keys carried in the hand, or the left stocking worn wrong-side out, were supposed to be good safeguards against the power of witchcraft, but the favourite charms were horseshoes, silver, spittle, and the sign of the cross. A witch who had turned herself into a hare, for instance, could only be hit by a crooked sixpence, or a silver bullet. In some districts it was customary to put a silver coin, or a silver spoon into the churn when the butter would not come. A newly-calved cow was formerly milked for the first time after calving over a crossie-croon shilling (Bnff.) to protect her from the evil eye, a talisman which would seem to combine the efficacy both of silver and of the sign of the cross. Many old brewers used to make with the finger the sign of the cross on the surface of the malt in process of fermentation; and the same sign is still made on the top of the dough in the kneading-tub, though the origin of the custom may be unknown to those who continue it in practice. Herrick has put this charm into rhyme in his Hesperides:
This I’ll tell ye by the way,
Maidens, when ye leavens lay,
Cross your dough, and your dispatch
Will be better for your batch.