COMMON AILMENTS.
Charm-remedies--For Ague--Bleeding of the
Nose--Burns--Cramp--Epilepsy--Fits--Gout--Headache, &c.
At the present day, in spite of the "march of intellect," there is
still a widespread belief in the prevention and cure of the common
ailments of life by certain remedies, which take the form of charms
and amulets, or are preserved in those countless quaint recipes
which, from time immemorial, have been handed down from parent to
child. Indeed, thousands of our population place far greater faith
in their domestic treatment of disease than in the skill of medical
science, one of the chief requirements being that the patient should
submit to the treatment recommended for his recovery with a full and
earnest belief that a cure will be effected. Hence, however eccentric
the remedy for some complaint may be, we occasionally find not only
the ignorant but even educated classes scrupulously obeying the
directions enjoined on them, although these are often by no means
easy of accomplishment. Therefore, as most of the ordinary ailments
of every-day life have what are popularly termed in folk-medicine
their "charm-remedies," we shall give a brief account of some of
these remedies in the present chapter, arranging the diseases they
are supposed to cure in alphabetical order.
_Ague._--No complaint, perhaps, has offered more opportunities for
the employment of charms than this one, owing in a great measure to
an old superstition that it is not amenable to medical treatment.
Thus, innumerable remedies have been suggested for its cure, many
of which embody the strangest superstitious fancies. According to a
popular notion, fright is a good cure, and by way of illustration
we may quote the case of a gentleman, afflicted by this disease in
an aggravated form, who entertained a great fear of rats. On one
occasion he was accidentally confined in a room with one of these
unwelcome visitors, and the intruder jumped upon him. The intensity
of his alarm is said to have driven out the ague, and to have
completely cured him. An amusing anecdote is also told of a poor
woman who had suffered from this unenviable complaint for a long
time. Her husband having heard of persons being cured by fright, one
day came to her with a very long face, and informed her that her
favourite pig was dead. Her first impulse was to rush to the scene of
the catastrophe, where she found to her great relief that piggy was
alive and well. The fright, however, had done its work, and from that
day forth she never had a touch of ague, although she resided in the
same locality. A Sussex remedy prescribes "seven sage leaves to be
eaten by the patient fasting seven mornings running;" and in Suffolk
the patient is advised to take a handful of salt, and to bury it in
the ground, the idea being that as the salt dissolves so he will lose
his ague. A Devonshire piece of folk-lore tells us that a person
suffering from ague may easily give it to his neighbour by burying
under his threshold a bag containing the parings of a dead man's
nails, and some of the hairs of his head. Some people wear a leaf of
tansy in their shoes, and others consider pills made of a spider's
web equally efficacious, one pill being taken before breakfast for
three successive mornings.
_Bleeding of the Nose._--A key, on account of the coldness of the
metal of which it is composed, is often placed on the person's back;
and hence the term "key-cold" has become proverbial, an allusion to
which we find in _King Richard III._ (Act i., sc. 2), where Lady
Anne, speaking of the corpse of King Henry VI., exclaims:--
"Poor key-cold figure of a holy king."
A Norfolk remedy consists in wearing a skein of scarlet silk round
the neck, tied with nine knots in the front. If the patient is a
male, the silk should be put on and the knots tied by a female, and
_vice versâ_. In some places a toad is killed by transfixing it with
some sharp-pointed instrument, after which it is enclosed in a little
bag and suspended round the neck.
_Burn or Scald._--According to a deep-rooted notion among our rural
population, the most efficacious cure for a scald or burn is to be
found in certain word-charms, mostly of a religious character. One
example runs as follows:--
"There came two angels from the north,
One was Fire, and one was Frost.
Out Fire: in Frost,
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."
Many of our peasantry, instead of consulting a doctor in the case of
a severe burn, often resort to some old woman supposed to possess the
gift of healing. A person of this description formerly resided in a
village in Suffolk. When consulted she prepared a kind of ointment,
which she placed on the part affected, and after making the sign of
the cross, repeated the following formula three times:--
"There were two angels came from the north,
One brought fire, the other brought frost;
Come out fire, go in frost,
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."
This, as the reader will see, is in substance the same as the one
quoted above, and is a fair sample of those used in other localities.
_Cramp._--Of the many charms resorted to for the cure of this painful
disorder, a common one consists in wearing about the person the
patella or knee-cap of a sheep or lamb, which is known in some places
as the "cramp-bone." This is worn as near the skin as possible, and
at night is laid under the pillow. In many counties finger-rings made
from the screws or handles of coffins are still considered excellent
preservatives, and in Lancashire it is prevented by either placing
the shoes at bed-time with the toes just peeping from beneath the
coverlet, or by carrying brimstone about with one during the day.
Some, again, wear a tortoise-shell ring, while others have equal
faith in tying the garter round the left leg below the knee. In days
gone by a celebrated cure for this complaint was the "cramp-ring,"
allusions to which we find in many of our old authors. Its supposed
virtue was conferred by solemn consecration on Good Friday.
_Epilepsy._--The remedies for this terrible disorder are extremely
curious, and in most cases vary in different localities. One,
however, very popular charm is a ring made from a piece of silver
money collected at the offertory. A correspondent of Chambers's "Book
of Days" tells us that when he was a boy a person "came to his father
(a clergyman) and asked for a 'sacramental shilling,' _i.e._, one
out of the alms collected at the Holy Communion, to be made into a
ring and worn as a cure for epilepsy." In the North of England "a
sacramental piece," as it is usually called, is the sovereign remedy
for this complaint. Thirty pence are to be begged of thirty poor
widows. They are then to be carried to the church minister, for which
he is to give the applicant a half-crown piece from the communion
alms. After being "walked with nine times up and down the church
aisle," the piece is then to have a hole drilled in it, and to be
hung round the neck by a ribbon. It has been suggested that these
widows' pence may have some reference to the widow's mite which was
so estimable in the eyes of Christ. According to one notion, persons
afflicted with epileptic fits are supposed to be bewitched, and the
following extraordinary remedy is sometimes resorted to for their
cure. A quart bottle is filled with pins, and placed in front of
the fire until the pins are red-hot. As soon as this takes place it
is supposed they will prick the heart of the witch, who to avoid
the pain caused by the red-hot pins will release her victim from
the suffering she has imposed upon him. This mode of disenchantment
seems to have been of common occurrence; and sometimes, when old
houses are under repair, bottles full of pins are found secreted in
out-of-the-way places. Another remedy is for the patient to creep,
head foremost, down three pair of stairs, three times a day, for
three successive days. Sir Thomas Brown, too, discourses of the
virtues of mistletoe in this complaint; and Sir John Colbach, writing
in the year 1720, strongly recommends it as a medicine, adding that
this beautiful plant must have been designed by the Almighty "for
further and more noble purposes than barely to feed thrushes, or to
be hung up superstitiously in houses to drive away evil spirits."
_Erysipelas._--This distemper has been popularly called "St.
Anthony's Fire," from the legend that it was miraculously checked
by that saint when raging in many parts of Europe in the eleventh
century. An amulet formerly worn to ward it off was made of the elder
on which the sun had never shone. "If," says an old writer, "the
piece between the two knots be hung about the patient's neck, it is
much commended. Some cut it in little pieces, and sew it in a knot in
a piece of a man's shirt." A remedy in use among the lower orders,
and extending as far as the Highlands, is to cut off one half of
the ear of a cat, and to let the blood drop on the part affected--a
practice which is evidently a survival of the primitive notion that a
living sacrifice appeased the wrath of God.
_Fits._--Numerous indeed have been the charms invented for those
suffering from this malady, and in many cases they are "marvellously
mystical withal." Thus that little animal the mole has been in
request, as the following mystic prescription will show. A gentleman
residing in 1865, on the border ground of Norfolk and Suffolk, was
one day asked by a neighbour to catch a live mole, as "her darter's
little gal was subject to fits, and she had been told that if she got
a live mole, cut the tip of his nose off, and let nine drops bleed on
to a lump of sugar, and gave that to the child, 'twas a sartin cure."
Here again we have the same notion of a sacrifice, one which, it may
be noticed, underlies many of the charms of this kind. A Devonshire
remedy is to go into a church at midnight and to walk three times
round the Communion table, while many single women wear a silver
ring on the wedding-ring finger, made out of sixpences which have
been begged from six young bachelors.
_Gout._--The periodical attacks of this disease have from the
earliest times been subjected to the influence of charms,
blackberries being considered by the Greeks a good specific. Culpeper
has bequeathed to us a curious remedy. He says, "Take an owl, pull
off her feathers, and pull out her guts; salt her well for a week,
then put her into a pot, and stop it close, and put her into an oven,
that so she may be brought into a mummy, which, being beat into
powder and mixed with boar's grease, is an excellent remedy for gout,
anointing the grieved place by the fire." The germander speedwell
has been esteemed highly efficacious, and the Emperor Charles V. is
reported to have derived benefit from it.
_Headache._--Cures to alleviate this tiresome pain are numberless.
Mrs. Latham mentions what is considered by the Sussex peasantry a
sure way of avoiding it in the spring, a piece of superstition we
have already noticed: "No hair, either cut or combed from the head,
must be thrown carelessly away, lest some bird should find it and
carry it off, in which case the person's head would ache during all
the time that the bird was busy working the spoil into its nest. 'I
knew how it would be,' exclaimed a servant, 'when I saw that bird fly
away with a bit of my hair that blew out of the window this morning
when I was dressing; I knew I should have a clapping headache,
and so I have.'" In some counties the common corn-poppy is called
"headache," from the cephalalgic tendency of the scent.
_Hydrophobia._--From the most remote period no disease, perhaps,
has possessed such a curious history, or been invested with so
many superstitions as hydrophobia, and the countless remedies
suggested for its cure form an important chapter in folk-medicine.
In tracing back its history, we find that it was not only regarded
by our ancestors with the same horror as now-a-days, but that every
conceivable device was resorted to for removing its fatal effects.
Thus, Pliny relates the case of a Roman soldier who was cured by the
dog-rose, a remedy said to have been revealed to the man's mother
in a dream. Among sundry other remedies he enumerates the hair of a
man's head, goose-grease, fuller's earth, colewort, fish-brine, &c.,
as applications to the wounds. The favourite cure of Dioscorides was
hellebore, and Galen's principal one was the river-crab. Sucking
the wound seems also to have been considered efficacious. Passing
on to modern times, the extraordinary remedies still employed are a
convincing proof of the extent to which superstition occasionally
reaches. The list, indeed, is not an inviting one, consisting amongst
other things of the liver of a male goat, the tail of a shrew-mouse,
the brain and comb of a cock, the worm under the tongue of a mad
dog, horse-dung, pounded ants, and cuckoo soup. It may seem, too,
incredible to us that less than a century ago the suffocation of
the wretched victim was not unfrequently resorted to, and instances
of this barbarous practice may be found in the periodical literature
of bygone years. Thus, in _The Dublin Chronicle_ (28th October,
1798), the following circumstances are recorded:--"A fine boy, aged
fourteen, was bitten by a lady's lap-dog near Dublin. In about two
hours the youth was seized with convulsive fits, and shortly after
with hydrophobia; and, notwithstanding every assistance, his friends
were obliged to smother him between two feather beds." In the year
1712, four persons were tried at York Assizes for smothering a boy,
who had been bitten by a mad dog, on a similar plea as that uttered
by Othello:--
"I that am cruel am yet merciful:
I would not have thee linger in thy pain."
As recently as the year 1867 this mode of death was put into
execution in the town of Greenfield, Michigan. A little girl having
been seized with hydrophobia, a consultation was held by the
physicians, and as soon as it had been decided by them that she could
not recover, her parents put an end to her sufferings by smothering
her to death. The folk-lore of this disease is most extensive, and as
our space is limited we cannot do better than recommend our readers
to consult Mr. Dolan's capital volume on "Rabies, or Hydrophobia,"
which contains an excellent description of the antiquity and history
of this cruel complaint, and of superstitions which surround it.
_Hysteria._--This disorder, which assumes so many deceptive forms,
was formerly known as "the mother," or "hysterica passio," an
allusion to which occurs in _King Lear_ (Act ii., sc. 4), where
Shakespeare represents the king as saying,
"O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!
_Hysterica passio!_ down, thou climbing sorrow,
Thy element's below!"
Some of the charms used for its cure are much the same as those
employed in cases of epilepsy, a favourite one being the wearing of a
ring made of a certain number of silver pieces obtained from persons
of the opposite sex.
_Jaundice._--Many of the remedies recommended for this complaint are
not of a very agreeable kind, as, for instance, the following one
mentioned by a correspondent of _Notes and Queries_, first, as having
been resorted to in a Dorsetshire parish, where the patient was
ordered to eat nine lice on a piece of bread and butter. One popular
charm in days gone by, and certainly not of a very refined character,
was known as the cure by transplantation, and consisted in burying in
a dunghill an odd number of cakes made of ashes and other ingredients.
_Lameness._--Sleeping on stones, on a particular night, is an old
method of curing lameness practised in Cornwall.
_Lumbago._--In Dundee it is customary to wear round the loins as a
cure for lumbago a hank of yarn which has been charmed by a wise
woman, and girls may be seen with single threads of the same round
the head as an infallible specific for tic-douloureux.
_Measles._--In the quarterly return of the marriages, births, and
deaths registered in the provinces, &c., in Ireland, published in
October, 1878, we find the following extraordinary cure for measles,
administered with what results will be seen:--"Sixty-three cases
of measles appear on the medical relief register for past quarter,
but this does not represent a third of those affected, the medical
officers being only called in when the usual amount of local nostrums
had been tried without effect. Every case seen suffered from violent
diarrhoea, caused by the administration of a noxious compound called
_crooke_. This consists of a mixture of porter, sulphur, and the
excrement of the sheep collected in the fields. Every unfortunate
child that showed any symptom of measles was compelled to drink large
quantities of this mixture. All ordinary remedies failed to stop the
diarrhoea thus produced, in many cases the children nearly dying from
exhaustion." Repulsive as this piece of folk-medicine is, yet it
is only one of a most extensive class of the same kind, many being
most revolting. It is difficult to conceive how either ignorance
or superstition could tolerate any practice of so senseless and
indelicate a nature.
_Paralysis._--One of the popular charms for this disease is the same
as that used in the case of epilepsy, namely, a silver ring made from
money solicited from a certain number of persons. Cowslips, too,
have been esteemed highly efficacious, and have on this account been
termed "Herbæ Paralysis" by medical writers. For the same reason they
are called "Palsyworts" in many country places.
_Rheumatism._--Professors of the healing art have advised the
sufferer to carry about in his pocket the right fore-foot of a
female hare, while others consider a potato equally efficacious. A
Cornish cure is to crawl under a bramble which has formed a second
root in the ground, or to drink water in which a thunder-stone has
been boiled. There is, also, a strong belief that a _galvanic ring_,
as it is called, worn on the finger will serve as an excellent
preservative. "A large number of persons," says Mr. Glyde in his
"Norfolk Garland," "may be seen with a clumsy-looking silver ring,
which has a piece of copper let into the inside, and this, though in
constant contact throughout, is supposed (aided by the moisture of
the hand) to keep up a gentle but continual galvanic current, and so
alleviate rheumatism." A Sussex remedy is to place the bellows in
the sufferer's chair that he may lean against them, and so have his
rheumatism charmed away.
_Spasms._--The belief in the curative powers of the form of the cross
still holds its sway in the popular mind, and in the case of spasms,
or that painful state of the feet in which they are said "to sleep,"
it is used under an impression that it allays the pain.
_Small-pox._--The curative properties attributed to some colours is
illustrated by the treatment formerly employed in cases of small-pox.
Thus, red bed-coverings were thought to bring the pustules to the
surface of the body, and the patient was recommended to look at red
substances. Purple dye, pomegranate seeds, or other red ingredients
were dissolved in his drink, with the idea that as red is the colour
of the blood, so disorders of the blood system should be treated by
red. The renowned English physician, John of Gaddesden, introduced
the practice into this country, and tried its efficacy on one of the
sons of King Edward I., adding to his report, "et est bona cura."
Fried mice are considered in some counties a good specific for this
complaint, it being thought necessary by some that they should be
fried alive.
_Sprain._--Many of the charms practised in an accident of this kind
are of a semi-religious character, and of a not very reverent form.
Thus, to cure a sprain, a thread called the "wresting-thread" is
tied round the injured part, after which the following formula is
repeated:--
"Our Saviour rade,
His fore-foot slade,
Our Saviour lighted down;
Sinew to sinew--joint to joint,
Blood to blood, and bone to bone,
Mend thou in God's name."
This incantation, which, it has been suggested, may have originated
in some legend of Christ's life, is frequently mentioned in the witch
trials of the early part of the seventeenth century.
_Sty._--To prevent or cure this disorder, known in some places as
"west," it is customary on the first sight of the new moon to seize
a black cat by the tail, and after pulling from it one hair, to rub
the tip nine times over the pustule. As this charm, however, is
often attended with sundry severe scratches, a gold ring has been
substituted, and is said to be equally beneficial. This superstition
is alluded to by Beaumont and Fletcher, in the _Mad Lovers_ (Act v.,
sc. 4):--
"----I have a sty here, Chilax.
_Chil._ I have no gold to cure it, not a penny."
Earrings are considered a good remedy for sore eyes; and in districts
where the teasle is grown for use in the manufacture of broadcloth, a
preservative against them is found in the water which collects in the
hollow cups of that plant. Pure rain-water is reported to be another
infallible remedy. This must be carefully collected in a clean open
vessel during the month of June, and if preserved in a bottle will,
it is said, remain pure for any length of time.
_Thrush._--There is a popular notion that a person must have this
complaint once in his life, either at his birth or death. Norfolk
nurses prefer to see it in babies, on the plea that it is healthy,
and makes them feed more freely; but if it appears in a sick adult
person he is generally given over as past recovery. Some of the
remedies for this disease are curious, as, for instance, a Cornish
one, which recommends the child to be taken fasting on three
consecutive mornings, "to have its mouth blown into" by a posthumous
child. In Devonshire the parent is advised to take three rushes from
any running stream, and to pass them separately through the mouth of
the infant. Afterwards the rushes should be thrown into the stream
again, and as the current bears them away, so will the thrush, it
is said, depart from the child. Should this prove ineffectual, the
parent is recommended to capture the nearest duck that can be found,
and to place its beak, wide open, within the mouth of the sufferer.
As the child inhales the cold breath of the duck, the disease, we are
told, will gradually disappear. A further charm consists in reading
the eighth Psalm over the child's head three times every day on three
days in the week for three successive weeks.
_Toothache._--This common ailment, which produces so much discomfort,
unfortunately rarely meets with a degree of sympathy proportionate
to the agony it occasions, but has nevertheless been honoured with
an extensive folk-lore; and the quaint remedies that superstitious
fancy has suggested for its cure would occupy a small volume if
treated with anything like fulness. Selecting some of the best known,
we may mention one which, in point of efficacy, is considered by many
as unsurpassed, namely, a tooth taken from the mouth of a corpse,
and worn round the neck as an amulet. Occasionally a double-nut is
carried in the pocket for the same purpose. There is a belief, too,
that the possession of a Bible or a Prayer Book, with the following
legend written in it, is an effectual charm:--"All glory, all glory,
all glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was walking in the Garden
of Gethsemane, He saw Peter weeping. He called him unto Him, and
said, 'Peter, why weepest thou?' Peter answered and said, 'Lord,
I am grievously tormented with pain--the pain of my tooth.' Our
Lord answered and said, 'If thou wilt believe in Me, and My words
abide with thee, thou shalt never feel any more pain in thy tooth.'
Peter said, 'Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.' In the
name, &c., God grant M. N. ease from the pain in his tooth." These
charm formulas, which constitute an important element in folk-lore
literature, are still extensively used in this country to arrest or
cure some bodily disease; and they are interesting as being in most
cases modified forms of those used by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors.
_Typhus Fever._--Even for so dangerous a disease as typhus fever,
our peasantry do not hesitate to practise their own remedies. One
consists in applying the skirt of a sheep to the soles of the feet,
and keeping it there for several hours, under a notion that this will
draw away the fever from the head. Some years ago a clergyman in
Norfolk, whilst visiting a poor man suffering from this complaint,
found that his wife had placed the spleen of a cow on the soles of
his feet, having been assured that it was an efficacious remedy.
There is another story that the rector of a Norfolk parish was
solicited for the loan of the church plate to lay on the stomach of
a child, which was much swelled from some mesenteric disease, this
being held to be an excellent remedy in such cases.
_Warts._--These have been regarded as prognostications of good or
bad luck according to their position on the body, those on the
right hand foreboding riches, whereas one on the face is believed
to indicate troubles of various kinds. It would be difficult to
enumerate the many methods that have been adopted to charm or drive
them away, most persons disliking these ugly little excrescences, and
willingly resorting to any means, however eccentric, to lose them.
As in the case of so many other charms, most of those used also for
this complaint are of the nature of a sacrifice, the warts being
transferred to a substitute. Thus, the person is recommended to count
his warts, to wrap in a piece of paper a pebble for each, and then
to throw the parcel away, in the hope that its unfortunate finder
will get them. Another remedy is to open the warts to the quick, and
to rub them with the juice of a sour apple, which should afterwards
be buried, and as it decomposes the warts will die away. Some rub
the wart with eels' blood, and others believe in the efficacy of the
ashen tree. After picking each wart with a pin, they stick it into
the bark, and repeat this rhyme:--
"Ashen tree, ashen tree,
Pray buy these warts of me."
An Irish servant's formula is to pass his hand over the warts, making
the sign of the cross, at the same time bidding them, in God's name,
depart and trouble him no more. He then gives some one a slip of
paper, on which is written "Jesus Christ, that died upon the cross,
put my warts away," to drop by the roadside. It is thought that as it
perishes, so, too, will the warts vanish. Another plan is to steal
a piece of raw meat, rub the warts with it, and throw it away, a
charm mentioned by Southey in "The Doctor." Other remedies are the
juice of ants, spiders' webs, pigs' blood, while tying a horse-hair
round each wart is considered efficacious. Another method is to blow
on the warts nine times when the moon is full; and in some places
boys take a new pin, cross the warts with it nine times, and cast it
over the left shoulder. These, then, are some of the principal cures
for warts, most of them, as we have already said, belonging to the
category of vicarious charms, which have at all times been one of
the favourite resources of poor mortals in their difficulties--such
charms being sacrifices made on the principle so widely adopted--_Qui
facit per alium facit per se_.
_Wen._--The same notion of vicariousness enters into the cures
recommended for wens, one of the most efficacious being the touch
of a dead man's hand. And Grose informs us how, in days gone by,
children were brought by their nurses to be stroked with the
hands of dead criminals, even whilst they were hanging on the
gallows. In Northamptonshire numbers of sufferers were in the
habit of congregating round the gallows, in order to receive "the
dead-stroke," the notion being that as the hand of the man mouldered
away, so the wen would by degrees decrease. In Gloucestershire an
ornamental necklace made of plaited hair from a horse's tail is
thought to be a good remedy.
_Whooping-Cough._--This common enemy of childhood has,
from time immemorial, afforded ample opportunity to the
superstitiously-inclined to devise sundry charms for its cure, of
which the following are a few:--Passing the patient three times under
the belly and three times over the back of a donkey; or let the
parent of the afflicted child catch a spider, and hold it over the
head of the child, repeating three times:--
"Spider, as you waste away,
Whooping-cough no longer stay."
The spider must then be hung up in a bag over the mantlepiece, and
when it has dried up the cough will have disappeared. There is a
notion in Cheshire that this complaint can be cured by holding a toad
or frog for a few moments with its head within the child's mouth,
whereas in Norfolk the patient is advised either to drink some milk
which a ferret has lapped, or to allow himself to be dragged three
times round a gooseberry bush or bramble, and then three times again
after three days' interval. In Sussex the excrescence often found
on the briar-rose, and known as the "Robin Redbreast's Cushion," is
worn as an amulet; and in Suffolk, if several children in a family
are taken ill, some of the hair of the oldest child is cut into small
pieces, put into some milk, and the mixture given to its brothers and
sisters to drink. Some, again, procure hair from the dark cross on
the back of a donkey, and having placed it in a bag, hang it round
the child's neck. A Scotch remedy is to place a piece of red flannel
round the patient's neck; the virtue residing, says Mr. Napier,
not in the flannel but in the red colour, red having been a colour
symbolical of triumph and victory over all enemies.
As may be seen, therefore, from the extensive use of charm-remedies
in household medicine, the physician's province has been assailed
by the widespread belief in such imaginary remedies. Indeed, those
who believe in the prevention and cure of disease by supernatural
means are far more numerous than one would imagine, having their
representatives even among the higher classes. However much we may
ridicule the superstitious notions of our rural peasantry, or speak
with compassion of the African negro who carries about him some
amulet as a preservative against disease or as a safeguard against
any danger that may befall him, yet we must admit that there is in
England also a disposition to retain, with more or less veneration,
those old-world notions which in the time of our forefathers
constituted, as it were, so many articles of faith.