4. Cutting or paring the nails of the hands or feet on a Friday or Sunday, is very unlucky.
5. If a person's left ear burn, or feel hot, somebody is praising the party; if the right ear burn, then it is a sure sign that some one is speaking evil of the person.
6. Children are frequently cautioned by their parents not to walk backwards when going an errand; it is a sure sign that they will be unfortunate in their objects.
7. Witchcraft, and the belief in its reality, is not yet exploded in many of the rural districts. The writer is acquainted with parties who place full credence in persons possessing the power to bewitch cows, sheep, horses, and even those persons to whom the witch has an antipathy. One respectable farmer assured me that his horse was
bewitched into the stable through a loophole twelve inches by three; the fact he said was beyond doubt, for he had locked the stable-door himself when the horse was in the field, and had kept the key in his pocket. Soon after this, however, a party of farmers went through a process known by the name of "burning the witch out," or "killing the witch," as some express it; the person suspected soon died, and the neighbourhood became free from his evil doings.
8. A horse-shoe is still nailed behind many doors to counteract the effects of witchcraft: a hagstone with a hole through, tied to the key of the stable-door, protects the horses, and, if hung up at the bed's head, the farmer also.
9. A hot iron put into the cream during the process of churning, expels the witch from the churn; and dough in preparation for the baker is protected by being marked with the figure of a cross.
10. Warts are cured by being rubbed over with a black snail, but the snail must afterwards be impaled upon a hawthorn. If a bag containing as many small pebbles as a person has warts, be tossed over the left shoulder, it will transfer the warts to whoever is unfortunate enough to pick up the bag.
11. If black snails are seized by the horn and tossed over the left shoulder, the process will insure good luck to the person who performs it.
12. Profuse bleeding is said to be instantly stopped by certain persons who pretend to possess the secret of a certain form of words which immediately act as a charm.