In Shetland the following words are used to heal a burn:—
Here come I to cure a burnt sore,
If the dead knew what the living endure
The burnt sore would burn no more.
The Sussex charm for the same purpose is different and can only be used with good effect on Sunday evening. Mrs. Latham informs me that a poor person of that county who was severely scalded peremptorily refused to see a doctor or try any remedy till Sunday evening came round. She then sent for an old woman who “bowed her head over the wound, crossed two of her fingers over it, and after repeating some words to herself huffed or breathed quickly on it.” The words were as follows:
There came two angels from the north,
One was Fire and one was Frost.
Out Fire, in Frost,
In the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
In the same village dwelt an ancient dame who kept a small day-school, and was also a celebrated compounder of ointments, a collector of simples, and charmer of wounds caused by thorns. She boasted of the numbers who came to her with bad wounds begging her “to say her blessing over them, and a power of people had she cured with it in the course of her life.” She had received the charm when a young girl from an old shepherd who lodged with her mother. It ran thus:
Our Saviour Christ was of a virgin born,
And He was crowned with a thorn.
I hope it may not rage or swell,
I trust in God it may do well.
She had inherited from her mother a charm for the bite of a viper, and one for the cure of giddiness in cattle, but had lost them in charming horses. The former she much regretted, it had done “such a power of good.” She had tried it once on a lad who had been stung by a viper coiled up in a bird’s nest into
