Here Pope says:—"Sure these are good lines. They are not mine." Of other passages which please him, he occasionally says,—"This is good sense." And on one occasion, where Spence had objected, he says candidly:—"This is bad, indeed,"—"and this."
At p. 50. Spence writes:—"There's a passage which I remember I was mightily pleased with formerly in reading Cervantes, without seeing any reason for it at that time; tho' I now imagine that which took me in it comes under this view. Speaking of Don Quixote, the first time that adventurer came in sight of the ocean, he expresses his sentiments on this occasion in the following manner:—'He saw the sea, which he had never seen before, and thought it much bigger than the river at Salamanca.'" On this occasion Pope suggests,—"Dr. Swift's fable to Ph——s, of the two asses and Socrates."
S.W. SINGER.
April 8. 1850.
FOLK LORE.
Charm for the Toothache.—The charm which one of your correspondents has proved to be in use in the south-eastern counties of England, and another has shown to be practised at Kilkenny, was also known more than thirty years ago in the north of Scotland. At that time I was a school-boy at Aberdeen, and a sufferer—probably it was in March or April, with an easterly wind—from toothache. A worthy Scotchwoman told me, that the way to be cured of my toothache was to find a charm for it in the Bible. I averred, as your correspondent the curate did, that I could not find any such charm. My adviser then repeated to me the charm, which I wrote down from her dictation. Kind soul! she could not write herself. It was pretty nearly in the words which your correspondent has sent you. According to my recollection, it ran thus:—"Peter sat upon a stone, weeping. And the Lord said unto him, 'Peter, why weepest thou?' And he answered, and said, 'Lord, my tooth acheth.' And the Lord said unto him, 'Arise, Peter, thy teeth shall ache no more.'" "Now," continued my instructress, "if you gang home and put yon bit screen into your Bible, you'll never be able to say again that you canna find a charm agin the toothache i' the Bible." This was her version of the matter, and I have no doubt it was the orthodox one; for, although one of the most benevolent old souls I ever knew, she was also one of the most ignorant and superstitious. I kept the written paper, not in my Bible, but in an old pocket-book for many years, but it has disappeared.
JOHN BRUCE.
Easter Eggs (No. 16. p. 244.).—Breakfasting on Easter Monday, some years ago, at the George Inn at Ilminster, in the county of Somerset, in the palmy days of the Quicksilver Mail, when the table continued to be spread for coach travellers at that time from four in the morning till ten at night, we were presented with eggs stained in the boiling with a variety of colours: a practice which Brande records as being in use in his time in the North of England, and among the modern Greeks.
S.S.S.