“On line 160, Reinerstein’s and Retz’s edition of Lucian’s ‘Dea Syra,’ 4vo, vol. iii. p. 654, you will find human dung mentioned as a medicine or charm, and urine some lines lower.”—(Personal letter from Prof. W. Robertson Smith, dated Christ College, Cambridge, England, August 11, 1888.)
One of the most curious features about Grimm’s “Teutonic Mythology” (Stallybrass’ translation, London, 1882), is the absence of any mention of the use of human or animal ordure or urine in any manner, either medicinally or religiously, or to baffle witchcraft. He may have issued a supplement, in which all this may have been corrected; but if he did not, then his work is most singularly defective.
Mr. Sylvester Baxter states that in a recent conversation with Mr. Frank H. Cushing, near Tempe, Arizona, he learned that in Mr. Cushing’s youth, people in Central and Western New York were still using charms against witchcraft, and that Mr. Cushing was personally acquainted with a family which had prepared a decoction, one of whose ingredients was human urine; this as a preventive of witchcraft. The locality referred to was about eighteen miles from Rochester, N. Y.
“Spitting into recently voided urine prevents one from getting ‘warrle’ on his eyes.” (Mrs. Fanny D. Bergen, Cambridge, Mass.) This remedy goes back to Pliny.
“To unbewitch the bewitched, you must spit in the pot where you have made water.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” vol. iii. p. 263, art. “Saliva,” quoting from Reginald Scot’s “Discoverie.”)
“Several fetid and stinking matters, such as old urine, are excellent means for keeping away all kinds of evil-intentioned spirits and ghosts.”—(Rink, “Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo,” Edinburgh, 1875, pp. 50, 452.)
“The Manxmen still place a vessel full of water outside their doors at night, to enable the fairies (who, they say, were the first inhabitants of their island,) to wash themselves, and prevent them from doing harm.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.” vol. ii. p. 494, art. “Fairy Mythology.”)
It is certainly singular to find here a trace of the custom noted as existing among the Laplanders and the people of Siberia, who placed tubs of urine for the same purpose, urine being used in ordinary ablutions.
In England, there was a superstition that the woman who made water upon nettles would be “peevish for a whole day.”—(Brand, “Pop. Ant.,” vol. iii. p. 359, art. “Divination by Flowers.”)
Fosbroke (“Encyclopædia of Antiquities,” vol. ii.) says that this proverb is ancient. “Nettles were in ancient times regarded as an aphrodisiac.”