“Near to Button Oak, in the Forest of Bewdley, grows a thorn in the form of an arch, one end in the county of Salop, the other in Stafford. This is visited by numbers in order to make their children pass under it for the cure of the whooping-cough.”—Notes and Queries, IV. Series, III. 216.
Divining Rod.
The following extract from a work published in London in 1815, but which is now very rarely to be met with, gives so good an account of the manner in which springs of water are believed in these islands to be discovered by means of the divining rod, that we have no hesitation in copying it at length.
The work bears the following title: “General View of the Agriculture and Present State of the Islands of Normandy subject to the Crown of Great Britain, drawn up for the consideration of the Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement,” by Thomas Quayle, Esq.
Oratory Window, Anneville.
The passage in question will be found at p. 31. Baguette Divinatoire.—“The opinion still prevails in Jersey, of a power, possessed by certain individuals, of discovering by means of a rod of hazel or of some few trees, in what spot springs of water may be found. A respectable farmer in the parish of St. Sauveur is persuaded that he is endowed with this faculty, of which he says he discovered himself to be possessed in consequence of observing and imitating the ceremonies employed for a similar purpose by an emigrant priest. The farmer, on repeating these himself, found them equally efficacious, and afterwards received from the priest instructions for his exercise of the water-finding art.
“He first removes from his person every particle of metal. A slender rod of hazel, terminating in two twigs, the whole about ten inches in length, is taken into both hands, one holding each twig. The forked point of the rod, and palms of the hands, as closed, are turned upwards. The operator then walks forward, with his eye directed on the forked end of the rod. When he approaches a spot where a spring is concealed, the elevated point of the rod begins to wave and bend downwards; at the spot itself it becomes inverted.