away of that which had stayed so long, doth yet stick with me.”[1] But to return to our North-country school-boys. Others cut an apple in two, rub the wart with each part, tie the apple together, and bury it, confident that as the apple decays the warts will disappear. This, too, is done in Devonshire, where they also take a wheat-stalk with as many knots as there are warts on the hand to be dealt with, name over the stalk the person afflicted, and then bury it. As it decays the warts will disappear.
My informant, a clergyman from Devonshire, pleads guilty to having used this charm himself, and by means of it cured his brother of some stubborn warts. He adds: “Gypsies charm away warts. I have known an instance of their curing them in this way. I know, too, a curious case of the kind, substantiated by the master and boys of Marlborough Grammar School. A boy had his hands covered with warts, which disfigured them most unpleasantly. As the lad passed the window of an old woman in the town who dabbled a little in charms and spells, she looked out and called to him to count his warts. He did so, and told her the exact number. ‘By such a day,’ she said, naming a day within the fortnight, ‘they shall all be gone.’ She shut the window and the boy passed on, but by the day indicated every one of the warts, which had troubled him for years, was gone.” Modern Greeks and Armenians, however, deem it unlucky to count warts, and say that if counted they increase in number.
The vicar of Stamfordham, in Northumberland, tells me of an old man in that village who charmed away that obstinate complaint the ringworm. His patients were obliged to come to him before sunrise, when he used to take some earth from his garden and rub the part affected while repeating certain words not recorded. The secret of this charm might be communicated by a man to a woman or vice versâ, but if man told it to man or woman to woman the spell would be broken.
Several cures for whooping-cough are practised in this village, and doubtless in the whole neighbourhood: such as putting a
- ↑ Natural History, cent. x. 997.
