for toothache is to take an elder twig, put it into the mouth, then stick it in the wall, saying, “Depart thou evil spirit!” As appears by Hans Andersen’s stories, it is thought in Denmark that there dwells in the elder-tree a being called Hyldemoer, or elder-mother, who avenges all injury done to the tree: hence it is not advisable to have moveables of elderwood. The elder-mother once pulled a baby by the legs, and molested it till it was taken out of an elderwood cradle. Danish peasants will not cut this tree without asking permission thus, “Hyldemoer, Hyldemoer, permit me to cut thy branches.”[1] In Lower Saxony, the formula is as follows, to be repeated three times, with bended knees and folded hands:—
Lady Elder,
Give me some of thy wood,
Then will I give thee some of mine,
When it grows in the forest.[2]
But to return to Willie Dawson. All his powers, such as they were, failed to help him in the battle of life, for, from being a farmer at Quaker’s Grove, near Stokesley, he sank into poverty, and ended his days in very reduced circumstances in South Durham. I have received another account of his magical incantations from a correspondent, who himself witnessed them when a boy. The object of them was to restore to health a young man said to be bewitched. A fire was made by midnight, as before, and the doors and windows closed. Clippings from every finger and toe-nail of the patient, with hair from each temple and the crown of his head, were stuffed into the throat of a pigeon which had previously been placed between the patient’s feet, and there had died at once, thus attesting the witchery from which he was suffering. The bird’s bill was riveted with three pins, and then the wise man thrust a pin into its breast, to reach the heart, everybody else in the room in turn following his example. An opening was then made in the fire, and the pigeon dropped into it. The Wise-man began to read aloud Psalms from the
