[222] See, for example, Kemble's work on the Anglo-Saxons, vol. i. p. 528, for various Teutonic medical superstitions and cures.
[223] A very intelligent patient from the North Highlands, to whom I happened lately to speak on this subject, has written out the following instances that have occurred within her own knowledge:—"Twenty years or more ago, in the parish of Nigg, Ross-shire, there was a lad of fifteen ill with epilepsy. To cure him, his friends first tried the charm of mole's blood. A plate was laid on the lad's head; the living mole was held over it by the tail, the head cut off, and the blood allowed to drop into the plate. Three moles were sacrificed one after the other, but without effect. Next they tried the effect of a bit of the skull of a suicide, and sent for this treasure a distance of from sixty to one hundred miles. This bit of the skull was scraped to dust into a cup of water, which the lad had to swallow, not knowing the contents. This I heard from a sister of the lad's. There was a 'strong-minded' old woman at Strathpeffer, Ross-shire whose daughter told me that the neighbours had come to condole with the mother after she had fallen down in a fit of some kind. They strongly advised her to bury a living cock in the very place where she had fallen, to prevent a return of the ailment. A woman in Sutherlandshire told me that she knew a young man, ill of consumption, who was made to drink his own blood after it had been drawn from his arm. This same woman was ill with a pain in her chest, which she could get nothing to relieve; so her father sent off for 'a knowing man,' who, when he saw the girl, repeated some words under his breath, then touched the floor and her shoulder three times alternately, and with alleged success."
[224] In the first chapter of Adamnan's work, the miracle is again alluded to as follows:—"He took a white stone (lapidem candidum) from the river's bed, and blessed it for the cure of certain diseases; and that stone, contrary to the law of nature, floats like an apple when placed in the water."
[225] For other instances of waters rendered medicinal by being brought in contact with saint's bones—such as St. Marnan's head, with St. Conval's chariot, etc. etc., see Dalyell's Superstitions of Scotland, p. 151, etc. Sibbald's Memoirs of the Edinburgh College of Physicians, p. 39.
[226] See Philosophical Transactions for the year 1713, p. 98. For instances of curing-stones in the Hebrides, see Martin's Western Isles, p. 134, 166, etc.
[227] I was lately told by the farmer at Nemphlar, in the neighbourhood of Lee, that in his younger days no byre was considered safe which had not a bottle of water from the Lee Penny suspended from its rafters. Even this remnant of superstition seems to have died out during the present generation.
[228] I state this on the high numismatic authority of my friend, Mr. Sim. Sir Walter Scott describes the coin as a groat of Edward I.
[229] Kemble's Anglo-Saxons, vol. i. p. 527, etc.
[230] See a case of this prohibition in the Ecclesiastical Records of the Presbytery of St. Andrews for September 1643. "It is manifest by experience," says Upton, "that the seventh male child by just order, never a girle or wench being borne betweene, doth heall only with touching, by a natural gift, the king's evil; which is a speciall gift of God, given to kings and queens, as daily experience doth witnesse." See Upton's Notable Things (1631), p. 28. Charles I. when he visited Scotland in 1633, in Holyrood Chapel, on St. John's day, "heallit 100 persons of the cruelles, or kingis eivell, yong and olde."—Dalyell's Superstitions, p. 62.
[231] See the "Charisma Basilicon" (1684) of John Browne, "Chirurgion to His Majesty," for a full and charming account of the whole process and ceremonies of the royal "touch," the prayers used on the occasion, and due proofs of the alleged wondrous effects of this "sanative gift, which hath (says Dr. Browne) for above 640 years been confirmed and continued in our English Princely line, wherein is not so much of their Majesty shown as of their Divinity," and which is only doubted by "Ill affected men and Dissenters."