Note 359 — Chapter XV · TAOISM, LOCAL DEITIES, TREE-WORSHIP

Quite an interesting chapter might be written about various beliefs connected with cross-roads. See, for example, the superstition referred to in Plato's Laws, quoted by Dr. Frazer in The Golden Bough (2nd ed.), vol. iii. p. 20; and the Bohemian prescription for fever: "Take an empty pot, go with it to a cross-road, throw it down, and run away. The first person who kicks against the pot will catch your fever and you will be cured." (Op. cit., p. 22.) Again, of the Dyaks we are told that they "fasten rags of their clothes on trees at cross-roads, fearing for their health if they neglect the custom." (Tylor's Primitive Culture (4th ed.), vol. ii. p. 223.) Still more remarkable is it to find a similar belief in England. "Lancashire wise men tell us, 'for warts, rub them with a cinder, and this, tied up in paper and dropped where four roads meet, will transfer the warts to whoever opens the parcel.'" (W. G. Black's Folk Medicine, p. 41. This author mentions the existence of the same superstition in Germany.)