immediately relieve the pains which a beast suffers from the running of a shrew-mouse over the part affected; for it is supposed that a shrew-mouse is of so baneful and deleterious a nature, that wherever it creeps over a beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, the suffering animal is afflicted with cruel anguish, and threatened with the loss of the use of the limb.[1] Against this accident, to which they were continually liable, our provident forefathers always kept a shrew-ash at hand, which, when once medicated, would maintain its virtue for ever. A shrew-ash was made thus:—Into the body of the tree a deep hole was bored with an auger, and a poor devoted shrew-mouse was thrust in alive, and plugged in, no doubt, with several quaint incantations long since forgotten. As the ceremonies necessary for such a consecration are no longer understood, all succession is at an end, and no such tree is known to subsist in the manor, or hundred.
As to that on the Plestor
"The late Vicar stubb'd and burnt it,"
when he was way-warden, regardless of the remonstrances of the bystanders, who interceded in vain for its preservation, urging its power and efficacy, and alleging that it had been
'Religione patrum multos servata per annos.'
LETTER XXIX.
Dear Sir,—In heavy fogs, on elevated situations especially, trees are perfect alembics; and no one that has not attended to such matters can imagine how much water one tree will distil in a night's time, by condensing the vapour, which trickles down the
- ↑ "When a horse in the fields happened to be suddenly seized with anything like a numbness in his legs, he was immediately judged by the old persons to be either planet-struck, or shrew-struck. The mode of cure which they prescribed, and which they considered in all cases infallible, was to drag the animal through a piece of bramble that grew at both ends."—Bingley.
