Note 150.1 — Chapter X · WITCHCRAFT: PHILTRES—PREVENTIVE AND REMEDIAL LEECHCRAFT.

In the light of examples like these we must interpret many prescriptions which have been hastily put down as cases of transplantation, or have been turned by the folk themselves into transplantation formulæ. For instance, a Gipsy remedy for fever bids the sufferer go before sunrise to a little tree, scratch his left little finger, and smear the blood on the tree, saying: “Go away, fever; go away, pain; go away into the tree, whence thou hast come; thither go thou, fever!”150.1 No specific tree is indicated; and there can be little doubt that the original words of this ban have been forgotten, and meaningless rhymes substituted—so far at least as the words “Go away into the tree whence thou hast come,” which rhyme in the original with the two previous lines. So also, in Dr. Colerus’ collection of remedies from the Mark of Brandenburg, we find that, to cure the toothache, a splinter must be taken from a willow, and the teeth pricked with it until they bleed; the blood must be allowed to drip upon the splinter, which must be then cunningly put back into the tree, covered with the bark and plastered with mud, that it may grow together again. This prescription is still current in various parts of Germany and among some of the non-German populations of Eastern Prussia. In Pomerania it appears with the addition that the performance must be in silence, and the variation that the tree must be one struck by lightning.150.2 If it were simply intended to transplant the toothache into the tree, there would be no need to be careful about the healing of the wound. But here, as in the cases of children passed through split trees, it is of importance to the recovery and after-life of the patient that the tree recover and be allowed to flourish. Moreover, a lightning-struck tree would, in heathen times, have been sacred; and the requirement of silence confirms its sacred character. The object of the ceremony, therefore, is not a transplantation of the disease, but a healing union of the diseased tooth with the tree. In the province of Liège it is sufficient to touch the tooth with the splinter.151.1 The rite there appears to be in decay, for the real intention to incorporate in the tree blood from the tooth and surrounding gums is manifest from a variation current at least as early as the seventeenth century, when it is mentioned in England by John Aubrey. It consists in scarifying the gum with an iron nail, and burying the nail in the tree.151.2 And Sir Kenelm Digby gravely prescribes it, directing the nail to be driven up to the head into a wooden beam, which of course is a makeshift for a tree.151.3 Kuhn, reporting the same practice from the Mark, says expressly that the tooth must be bored with the nail until the blood comes, the nail must then be driven into the north side of an oak where the sun does not shine, and then so long as the tree stands the patient will have no more toothache.151.4 About Liège the nail is, according to one prescription, to be drawn from a coffin. According to another it must be a new nail and must be driven into the first tree you come to.151.5 At Pforzheim, when a tooth is drawn, it is to be nailed into a young tree, and the bark drawn over it; if the tree be cut down the toothache will return.151.6 At Agnethlen, in Transylvania, the sufferer bores a hole in a tree, chews with the aching tooth a piece of bread, swallows half and spits the rest into the tree, saying: “Tree, I give thee half of what I have; take away all my pain, and convey it down into the earth!”152.1 The consumption of half the bread by the patient is conclusive against transplantation. And with this we may compare a recipe against the rickets in use in Schleswig-Holstein. The sick child is rubbed over with a handful of oats, and the oats are then sown in a secret place; as they grow the rickets disappear.152.2