“Hooping-cough being rather prevalent in Lochee at the present time, various cures are resorted to with the view of allaying the distress. Amongst these the old ‘fret’ of passing a child beneath the belly of a donkey has come in for a share of patronage. A few days ago, two children living with their parents in Camperdown Street, were infected with the malady. A hawker’s cart, with a donkey yoked to it, happening to pass, the mothers thought this an excellent opportunity to have their little ones relieved of their hacking cough. The donkey was accordingly stopped, the children were brought forth, and the ceremony began. The mothers, stationed at either side of the donkey, passed and repassed the little creatures underneath the animal’s belly, and with evident satisfaction appeared to think that a cure would in all probability be effected. Nor was this all; a piece of bread was next given to the donkey to eat, one of the women holding her apron beneath its mouth to catch the crumbs which might fall. These were given to the children to eat, so as to make the cure effectual. Whether these strange proceedings have resulted in banishing the dreaded cough or not, has not been ascertained, and probably never will be. A few years ago, the custom was quite common in this quarter, but with the spread of education the people generally know better than to attempt to cure hooping-cough through the agency of a donkey.”
The North British Mail for 20th March 1883, among other superstitions in Tiree, says, “On the west side of the island there is a rock with a hole in it, through which children are passed when suffering from whooping-cough or other complaints.”
It is a common belief that if you wash your hands in water in which eggs have been boiled, warts will make their appearance; also, that the blood of a wart will cause other warts. Anyhow, if the warts be there, they can either be cured or charmed away. The writer once had a row of warts, thirteen in number, on his left arm. He was told by an aged dame, who sat on a three-legged stool before her cottage door, smoking a short black pipe, to take thirteen bad peas, throw them over his left shoulder, never heeding where they went, all the while repeating some incantation, which has been forgotten.
Cures are effected by rubbing the warts with something, which is afterwards allowed to decay. Some rub the warts with a grey snail or slug, and then impale the poor creature on a thorn; others steal a bit of beef, not so much as Taffy made off with, rub the beef on the warts, and then bury the beef. Lord Bacon, in his Natural History, says:—“I had from my childhood a wart upon one of my fingers; afterwards, when I was about sixteen years old, being then at Paris, there grew upon both my hands a number of warts, at the least an hundred in a month’s space. The English Ambassador’s lady, who was a woman far from superstitious, told me one day she would help me away with my warts: whereupon she got a piece of lard with the skin on, and rubbed the warts all over with the fat side; and among the rest, the wart which I had from my childhood; then she nailed the piece of lard, with the fat towards the sun, upon a post of her chamber window, which was to the south. The success was, that within five weeks’ space all the warts went quite away; and that wart which I had so long endured, for company.... They say the like is done by the rubbing of warts with a green elder stick, and then burying the stick to rot in muck.”
In Withal’s Dictionary (1608) there is the following couplet:—
“The bone of a haire’s foot closed in a ring,
Will drive away the cramp whenas it doth wing,”
but Pepys, who tells us the whole of his experience, with comments thereon, used a hare’s foot as a charm for colic. He says:—(20 Jan. 1664-5) “Homeward, in my way buying a hare and taking it home, which arose upon my discourse to-day with Mr. Batten in Westminster Hall, who showed me my mistake, that my hare’s foot hath not the joynt in it, and assures me he never had the cholique since he carried it about him; and it is a strange thing how fancy works, for I no sooner handled his foot but I became very well, and so continue.”
(22nd.) “Now mighty well, and truly I can but impute it to my fresh hare’s foot.”
(March 26) “Now I am at a loss to know whether it be my hare’s foot which is my preservation; for I never had a fit of collique since I wore it, or whether it be my taking a pill of turpentine every morning.”
The following newspaper cutting from the Boston Herald, 7th February, 1837, is worth preserving:—