_Charming away the Hooping Cough._
An English lady, the wife of an officer, accompanied her husband to
Dublin not very long ago, when his regiment was ordered to that station.
She engaged an Irish girl as nurse-maid in her family; and, a short time
after her arrival, was astonished by an urgent request from this damsel,
to permit her to _charm_ little miss from _ever_ having the
hooping-cough, (then prevailing in Dublin). The lady inquired how this
_charming_ business was performed; and not long after had, in walking
through the streets, many times the pleasure of witnessing the process,
which is simply this:--An ass is brought before the door of a house,
into whose mouth a piece of bread is introduced; and the child being
passed three times over and under the animal's body, the charm is
completed; and of its efficacy in preventing the spread of a very
distressing, and sometimes fatal disorder, the lower class of Irish are
_certain_.
_The Legend of Hell Mary Hill._
Not many miles from Sheffield, as I was told by one who resided near the
place, there is a forest; and in an out-of-the-way part of it, a hill,
tolerably high, covered with wood, and vulgarly called Hell Mary Hill,
though probably this is a name corrupted from one more innocent or holy.
Near the top of it is a cave, containing, it is _said_, a chest of
money,--a great iron chest, _so_ full, that when the sun shines bright
upon it, the gold can be seen through the key-hole; but it has never yet
been stolen, because, in the first place, a huge black cat (and wherever
a black cat is there is mischief, you may be sure) guards the treasure,
which bristles up, and, fixing a _gashful_ gaze on the would-be
marauder, with fiery eyes, seems ready to devour him if he approach
within a dozen yards of the cave; and, secondly, whenever this creature
is off guard, (and it has occasionally been seen in a neighbouring
village,) and the treasure has been attempted to be withdrawn from its
tomb, no mortal rope has been able to sustain its weight, each that has
been tried invariably breaking when the coffer was at the very mouth of
the cave; which, being endowed with the gift of locomotion, has
immediately retrograded into its pristine situation! I have mentioned
this tradition, as it was told to me, because it is so curiously
coincident with the German superstition of treasure buried within the
Hartz mountains, guarded, and ever disappointing the cupidity of those
who would discover and possess themselves of it.
_Fairy Loaves._
Being lately in Norfolk, I discovered that the rustics belonging to the
part of it in which I was staying, particularly regarded a kind of
fossil-stone, which much resembled a sea-egg petrified, and was found
frequently in the flinty gravel of that county. They esteemed such
stones sacred to the elfin train, and termed them fairy loaves,
forbearing to touch them, lest misfortunes should come upon them for the
sacrilege. An old woman told me, that as she was trudging home one night
from her field-work, she took up one of these fossils, and was going to
carry it home with her; but was soon obliged to drop it, and take to her
heels as quick as might be, from hearing a wrathful voice exclaim,
though she saw nobody, "Give me my loaf! Give me back my loaf, I
say!"--_New London Literary Gazette_.
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