Here the two little feet are struck lightly one against the other.
Several letters have lately appeared in the Western Morning News, giving different versions of the old rhymes—
“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Pray bless the bed that I ‘lay’ on,
Four corners to my bed,
Four angels there are spread,
Two ‘to’ foot and two ‘to’ head,
And six will carry me when I’m dead.”
Although attributed by the correspondents to Cornwall, I have always understood that they were known all over England.
Children with rickets were taken by their parents on the three first Sundays in May to be dipped at sunrise in one of the numerous Cornish holy wells, and then put to sleep in the sun, with sixpence under their heads. Small pieces torn from their clothes were left on the bushes to propitiate the pixies. For the same disease they were passed nine times through a Mên-an-tol (holed stone). A man stood on one side, and a woman on the other, of the stone. The child was passed with the sun from east to west, and from right to left; a boy from the woman to the man, a girl from the man to the woman. This order is always, in these charms, strictly observed. As lately as 1883, in the village of Sancred, West Cornwall, a little girl, suffering from whooping-cough, was passed from a man to a woman nine times under a donkey’s belly; a little boy standing the while at the donkey’s head feeding it with “cribs” of wheaten bread. My informant did not know if on this occasion any incantation was repeated. Another family, he tells me, some years back were in the same neighbourhood cured of the whooping-cough by donkey’s hair, which was dried on the baking iron of the open hearth, reduced to powder, and administered to them. There are very various ways of doing this, one is between thin slices of bread and butter. Some authorities say the latter ingredients must belong to a couple called John and Joan. Mr. Robert Hunt gives a charm which in a measure combines the two above-mentioned. “The child must be passed naked nine times over the back and under the belly of a female donkey. Three spoonfuls of milk drawn from the teats of the animal, three hairs cut from its back, and three from its belly, are to stand in the milk three hours, and to be given in three doses repeated on three mornings.” Mr. Hunt also says, “There were some doggerel lines connected with the ceremony which have escaped my memory, and I have endeavoured in vain to find anyone remembering them. They were to the effect that as Christ placed the cross on the ass’s back when he rode into Jerusalem and so rendered the animal holy, if the child touched where Jesus sat it should cough no more.” I will quote another of Mr. Hunt’s charms. “Gather nine spar-stones (quartz) from a running stream, taking care not to interrupt the free passage of the water in doing so. Then dip a quart of water from the stream, which must be taken in the direction in which the stream runs—by no means must the vessel be dipped against the stream. Then make the nine stones red-hot, and throw them into the quart of water. Bottle the prepared water, and give the afflicted child a wine-glass of this water for nine mornings.” Other remedies are to cross the child over running water nine times, or under a bramble bough bent into the ground (this latter and through a cleft ash are also tried for hernia). Some nurses take children, with whooping-cough, out for a walk, in hopes of meeting a man on a white or piebald horse. Should they be fortunate enough to do so, they ask the rider how they can cure the patient: his advice is always implicitly followed.