May morning to look into a spring that runs to the east, when the face of one's destined husband or wife will appear. If, however, the one trying the charm is to die unmarried, a coffin instead of a face will be seen.
The idea of sunwise movement often appears in folk medicine. Before the days of massage, in rubbing for rheumatic or other pains in Concord, Mass., it was thought best to rub from left to right—i. e., dextrally. A central Maine cure for ringworm is to rub in a sunwise direction about the diseased spot with a finger moistened with saliva. A Pennsylvania-German prescription says that a corn, wen, or other excrescence may be removed by rubbing "with the moon" if by night, and "with the sun" if by day. It is thought that the sun or moon, as the case may be, will draw away all pain and enlargement. Alabama negroes believe that a "conjurer" can rub away a "rising" (boil) by coming to your bedside about daybreak, before you have spoken to any one, and rubbing the inflamed surface for nine successive mornings. A reputed cure for biliousness among the negroes of the Eastern Shore of Maryland is to bore three holes in a tree, around which the patient is to walk three times as he repeats: "Go away, bilious. Go away, bilious."[1]
It will be noticed that in several of these cures, as well as in some of the charms already cited, no rule is given as to the direction to be followed in movement; but it is quite possible that the original description was more explicit, and it is almost certain that in every instance a sunwise course would now be followed.
A remedy for a "curb" in a horse, in northern Ohio, is to rub the curb with a bone at the going down of the sun. This smacks of the doctrine of signatures, as well as of sun lore. In the same region, some years ago there lived a Pennsylvania-German small farmer. He was somewhat known in the neighborhood as a charm doctor, and children who had been burned sometimes went to him tp have him "blow the fire out," and strangely enough, as I know by personal experience, the pain would disappear as he with his breath blew upon the smarting spot, meantime softly mumbling to himself. This man's cure for what is popularly known as the sweeny in horses was to rub "with the sun" every third morning until there was relief.
An Alabama superstition is that if the head of one dying be turned to the east his death will be easier. The subject of orientation as applied to the position of the dead, both before and after
- ↑ In the province of Moray, in Scotland, hectic and consumptive diseases were thought to be cured by putting parings of the nails of the fingers and toes of the patient in a rag cut from his clothes, and then waving this parcel thrice round his head, crying, "Deas soil."—Shaw, History of the Province of Moray, quoted in Brand's Popular Antiquities, iii, 286.
