Cattle.—Reginald Scot relates that an old woman who cured the diseases of cattle, and who always required a penny and a loaf for her services, used these lines for the purpose:
My loaf in my lap,
My penny in my purse;
Thou art never the better,
And I am never the worse.
The same writer gives a curious anecdote of a priest who, on one occasion, went out a-nights with his companions, and stole all the eels from a miller's weir. The poor miller made his complaint to the same priest, who desired him to be quiet, for he would so denounce the thief and his confederates by bell, book, and candle, they should have small joy of their fish. Accordingly, on the following Sunday, during the service, he pronounced the following sentences to the congregation:
All you that have stol'n the miller's eels,
Laudate Dominum de cælis;
And all they that have consented thereto,
Benedicamus Domino.
"So," says he, "there is sauce for your eels, my masters!"
"An old woman came into an house at a time whenas the maid was churning of butter, and having laboured long, and could not make her butter come, the old woman told the maid what was wont to be done when she was a maid, and also in her mother's young time, that if it happened their butter would not come readily, they used a charm to be said over it whilst yet it was in beating, and it would come straightways, and that was this:
Come, butter, come,
Come, butter, come;
Peter stands at the gate,
Waiting for a buttered cake;
Come, butter, come!
This, said the old woman, being said three times, will make your butter come, for it was taught my mother by a learned churchman in Queen Marie's days; whenas churchmen had more cunning, and could teach people many a trick that our ministers now-a-days know not."—Ady's Candle in the Dark, 1656, p. 59.
"There be twenty several ways," says Scot, 1584, "to make your butter come, which for brevity I omit, as to bind your churn with a rope, to thrust therein a red-hot spit, &c.; but your best remedy and surest way is to look well to your dairy-maid or wife, that she neither eat up the cream, nor sell away your butter."
Effusion of Blood.—From Worcestershire.