Beckherius repeats the antidote for a love-philter of placing some of the woman’s ordure in the man’s shoe: “Si, in amantis calceum, stercus amatæ ponatur;” and he also cites the couplet from Ovid already quoted, p. 225.
“Secundines” were also employed to render abortive the effects of philters. (See Etmuller, “Opera Omnia,” Schroderi dilucidati Zoölogia, vol. ii. p. 265.) “In philtris curandis spiritus secundinæ vel pulvis secundinæ mirabilis facit.” This was of great use in epilepsy, but should be, if possible, “secundinam mulieris sanæ, si potest esse primiparæ et quæ filium enixa fuit.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 271.)
Against philters, as well as to counteract the efforts of witches attacking people just entering the married state, by such maleficent means as “ligatures,” and other obstacles, ordure was facile princeps as a remedy. Likewise, to break up a love affair, nothing was superior to the simple charm of placing some of the ordure of the person seeking to break away from love’s thraldom in the shoe of the one still faithful. It is within the bounds of possibility that this remedy would be found potential even in our own times, if faithfully applied. “Contra philtra, item pro ligatis et maleficiatis a mulieribus sequens Johannes Jacobus Weckerus ... pone de egestione seu alvi excremento ipsius mulieris mane in fotulari dextro maleficiati et statim cum ipse sentiet fœtorum solvitur maleficium.... Quod si in amantis calceum stercus amatæ posueris, ubi odorem senserit, solvitur amor,” etc. (several examples are given).—(“Chylologia,” p. 791.)
Mr. Chrisfield, of the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C., imparts a fact which dovetails in with the foregoing item in a very interesting manner. He says that, in his youth, which was passed on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, he learned that, among the more ignorant classes of that section it was a rule that when a father observed the growing affection of his son for some young girl, he should endeavor to obtain a little of her excrement, and make the youth wear it under the left arm-pit; if he remained constant in his devotion after being subjected to this test, the father felt that it would be useless to interpose objection to the nuptials.
There is a case mentioned in Scotland in which “aversion was inspired on the part of the female.” To remedy this “the man got a cake” (ingredients not mentioned) “to be put under his left arm, betwixt his shirt and his skin, observing silence, until the nuptial couch was sprinkled with water and the mystical cake withdrawn.”—(“Superstitions of Scotland,” Dalyell, p. 305.)
One might safely wager guineas to shillings that, in the above example the mystical cake was the legitimate descendant of one formerly compounded of very unsavory ingredients, and that the water with which the nuptial couch was to be sprinkled, had replaced a fluid closely related to the liquid employed by the Hottentots on such occasions.
“To procure the dissolving of bewitched and constrained love, the party bewitched must make a jakes (i. e. privy) of the lover’s shoe. And to enforce a man, how proper soever he be, to love an old hag, she gives unto him to eate (among other meates) her own dung.”—(Scot’s “Discoverie,” p. 62.)
This subject of “Nouer l’aiguillette” is referred to by Dulaure.—(“Traité des Dif. Cultes,” vol. ii. p. 288.)
“If a man makes water upon a dog’s urine, he will become disinclined to copulation, they say.”—(Pliny, lib. xxx. c. 49.)
“Beware thee that thou mie not where the hound mied; some men say that there a man’s body changeth so that he may not, when he cometh to bed with his wife, bed along with her.”—(De Med. de Quad. of Sextus Placitus, from “Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. i. p. 365.)