Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/258

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236 Correspondence.

Another. Write these characters in a piece of Parchment, and wear them about you, and they are these following ^

A bracadabra

A b r a c a d a b 7-

A b r a c a d a b

A b r a c a d a

A b r a c a d

A b r a c a

A b r a c

A b r a

A b r

A b

A

Or else take all the Nailes paring of the Toes and Fingers of any Man or JVoman, lying Sick of an Intermittent Feaver, and to mix or incorporate them with JVax, so as the Party in the doing hereof do say these words, / am about a Remedy for the Tertian, Quoti- dian, or Quartaine Ague, according as the Patient is troubled with the one or other of these Feavers, which done and said, to stick up the JVax upon the Door of another Man or IVomans House that is not Sick at all, and that before the Sun be Risen, which no doubt will cure the Sick Person, and set the Ague or Feaver upon the well Person."^

[Here, pp. 13-5, follows a Table of "Planetary Hours," with explanations " to enable any Person whatsoever, tho of never so mean a Capacity, provided he can but Read, and know what a Clock it is, may know when to gather an Herb in the right Plane- tary hour for every day in the year, that Herbs are fit to be gathered, pointing directly to the true time."

If space is available, extracts from pp. 16-31 will appear in the next number of Folk-lore^

A. R. Wright.

^A similar charm is given by F. Grose, A Provincial Glossary (ed. iSii), p. 118.

  • Cf. W. G. Black, op, cit., p. 41, according to which a sickness is trans-

ferred to the first healthy person passing through a gate or stile on which a charm or curse is left.