Note 2 — Chapter XIV

Andrew Lang writes in a chapter on the divining rod in Custom and Myth:

"The great authority for the modern history of the divining rod is a work published by M. Chevreul in Paris in 1854. M. Chevreul, probably with truth, regarded the wand as much on a par with the turning tables which, in 1854, attracted a good deal of attention.... M. Chevreul could find no earlier book on the twig than the Testament du Frere, Basile Valentin, a holy man who flourished (the twig) about 1413, but whose treatise is possibly apocryphal. According to Basile Valentin, the twig was regarded with awe by ignorant laboring men, which is still true."