On this account is there not room for the conjecture that St. Rhadegund is the original St. Uncumber, and that the custom of offering oats at Poules, when a wife was weary of her husband, is traceable to the story of the French queen, who died in 587.
C. H.
St. Catharine's Hall, Cambridge.
"Similia similibus curantur."—The list proposed by Mr. James Buckman (Vol. iii., p. 320.) of "old wives' remedies," based on the above principle, would, I imagine, be of endless length; but the following extract from the Herbal of Sir John Hill, M.D., "Fellow of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Bordeaux," published in 1789, will show at how late a period such notions have been entertained by men of education and even scientific attainment:—
"It is to be observed that nature seems to have set her stamp upon several herbs, which have the virtue to stop bleedings; this [cranesbill] and the tutsan, the two best remedies the fields afford for outward and inward bleedings, become all over as red as blood at a certain season."
Seleucus.
Cure of large Neck.—I send you two remedies in use here for the cure of a common complaint, called "large neck." Perhaps they may be worthy of a place in your "Folk Lore."
A common snake, held by its head and tail, is slowly drawn, by some one standing by, nine times across the front part of the neck of the person affected, the reptile being allowed, after every third time, to crawl about for a while. Afterwards the snake is put alive into a bottle, which is corked tightly and then buried in the ground. The tradition is, that as the snake decays the swelling vanishes.
The second mode of treatment is just the same as the above, with the exception of the snake's doom. In this case it is killed, and its skin, sewn in a piece of silk, is worn round the diseased neck. By degrees the swelling in this case also disappears.
Rovert.