In Scotland "they hope to preserve the milk of their cows, and their wives from miscarriage, by tying threads about them."[702]
Brand gives a remedy for epilepsy: "If, in the month of October, a little before the full moon, you pluck a twig of the elder, and cut the cane that is betwixt two of its knees, or knots, in nine pieces, and these pieces, being bound in a piece of linnen, be in a thread so hung about the neck that they touch the spoon of the heart, or the sword-formed cartilage."[703]
Black says:[704] "To cure warts a common remedy is to tie as many knots on a hair as there are warts and throw the hair away. Six knots of elderwood are used in a Yorkshire incantation to ascertain if beasts are dying from witchcraft. Marcellus commended for sore eyes that a man should tie as many knots in unwrought flax as there are letters in his name, pronouncing each letter as he worked; this he was to tie round his neck. In the Orkneys, the blue thread was used for an evil purpose because such a colour savored of Popery and priests; in the northern counties it was used because a remembrance of its once preeminent value still survived in the minds of those who wore it, unconsciously, though still actively, influencing their thoughts. In perhaps the same way we respect the virtue of red threads, because, as Conway puts it, 'red is sacred in one direction as symbolising the blood of Christ.'"[705]
"To cure ague [Hampshire, England] string nine or eleven snails on a thread, the patient saying, as each is threaded, 'Here I leave my ague.' When all are threaded they should be frizzled over a fire, and as the snails disappear so will the ague."[706]
Dr. Joseph Lanzoni scoffed at the idea that a red-silk thread could avail in erysipelas; "Neque filum sericum chermisinum parti affectæ circumligatum erysipelata fugat." The word "chermesinum" is not given in Ainsworth's Latin-English Dictionary, but it so closely resembles the Spanish "carmesi" that I have made bold to render it as "red" or "scarlet."[707]
"Red thread is symbolical of lightning," and is consequently laid on churns in Ireland "to prevent the milk from being bewitched and yielding no butter." "In Aberdeenshire it is a common practice with the housewife to tie a piece of red worsted thread round the cows' tails before turning them out for the first time in the season to grass. It secured the cattle from the evil-eye, elf-shots, and other dangers."[708] "It [blue] is the sky color and the Druid's sacred colour."[709] "In 1635, a man in the Orkney Islands was, we are led to believe, utterly ruined by nine knots cast on a blue thread and given to his sister."
"In a curious old book, 12mo., 1554, entitled A Short Description of Antichrist, is this passage: 'I note all their Popishe traditions of confirmacion of yonge children with oynting of oyle and creame, and with a ragge knitte about the necke of the younge babe.'"[710]
A New England charm for an obstinate ague. "The patient in this case is to take a string made of woolen yarn, of three colors, and to go by himself to an apple-tree; there he is to tie his left hand loosely with the right to the tree by the tri-colored string, then to slip his hand out of the knot and run into the house without looking behind him."[711]
The dust "in which a hawk has bathed itself, tied up in a linen cloth with a red string, and attached to the body,"[712] was one of the remedies for fevers. Another cure for fever: "Some inclose a caterpillar in a piece of linen, with a thread passed three times round it, and tie as many knots, repeating at each knot why it is that the patient performs that operation."[713]
"To prevent nose-bleeding people are told to this day to wear a skein of scarlet silk thread round the neck, tied with nine knots down the front; if the patient is a man, the silk being put on and the knots tied by a woman; and if the patient is a woman, then these good services being rendered by a man."[714]