Note 165.1 — Chapter X · WITCHCRAFT: PHILTRES—PREVENTIVE AND REMEDIAL LEECHCRAFT.

Be this as it may, remedies derived from the dead were, and still are, popular. The Saxons of the Seven Cities cure wens and scrofula by drawing a silken thread through a corpse’s hand and then binding it round the patient’s neck. They hold that a silken band out of a grave is a protection against epilepsy. Earth from a sucking infant’s grave is put upon the mother’s breast to dry up her milk. Gout is healed by rubbing a rag from a dead man’s clothes on the suffering parts and hanging it all night upon a tree. Against cramp, a string wherewith a corpse has been measured is worn on the body next to the skin. A drunkard’s craving for drink is stayed by giving him some of what he best loves, poured over a silver coin which has been placed in a corpse’s mouth. Diseases of the eyes are cured by going early on a fine Sunday morning in spring to a pious man’s grave, and washing the eyes in the dew that lies upon it. Herbs grown in the churchyard, and gathered on Good Friday when the bells are sounding for service, are good against every kind of sickness.165.1 Among the Poles and Masurs it is believed that to smell a flower growing in the churchyard causes permanent loss of the sense of smell.165.2 The Negro population of Barbados resorts to the touch of a dead hand for all swellings and chronic pains, and believes that to wash the eyes in rum which has been used to wash a corpse is to be safe from disease of the eyes for the future.165.3 In the Abruzzi the hand of a dead priest has potency against scrofulous tumours, and a certain remedy for headache is to rub the forehead and temples with the tears of a dying man.165.4 A prescription in Middle Silesia, against epilepsy and against toothache is a ring smithied from a coffin-nail found in a grave.165.5 In the Netherlands an aching tooth is rubbed with a bone from the churchyard; or, in the province of Namur, the sufferer goes to bite a cross erected on the wayside where a violent death has occurred.166.1 The bone, among the Masurs and generally in Prussia, is replaced by the index-finger of a corpse.166.2 In old French belief it should be a tooth, if possible the tooth of a man who has come to a violent end, as by hanging; and the best time for its application is on Holy Saturday when the bells are ringing. Other French prescriptions are: for fever, to hang round the neck a human bone taken from the graveyard, or the hem torn (not cut) from a winding-sheet; for colic or lapsus ani, to cut the hem from a winding-sheet, pass it under the loins and wear it as a girdle; for hydrophobia, pills made of the head of a man who has been hanged.166.3 In Silesia water left on tombstones will send freckles away. At Gernsbach, in the neighbourhood of Spire, to smear a goitre with the wick of a lamp that has burnt in a dying man’s room will heal it.166.4 To cure a Bosnian drunkard, extinguish in brandy one of the candles burning at the head of a corpse before the funeral, and give him the brandy to drink. Even a bit of the wick when the candle is put out in the ordinary course, given in brandy, will be sufficient; or indeed brandy bought with a coin which has been used to close the eyes of the dead.167.1 The last is doubtless a degenerate form of a superstition akin to that of the Transylvanian Saxons adduced just now. In the Lettish prescription the corpse’s mouth is to be washed out, and the water given to the tippler. After drinking it, we are told, he can never drink again, which is quite likely.167.2 The reasoning which has given rise to all these beliefs perhaps applies also to the tradition in Wales, Ireland and the Isle of Man that it is unlucky to disturb old burial-places and old churches, and utilise their materials. Professor Rhys relates an example in which a farmer in the Ronnag, a small valley near South Barrule, in the Isle of Man, carted earth from an old burial-ground and used it to manure his fields. His cattle died, and every one attributed it to this cause. The farmer himself was convinced at last, and desisted from the desecration.167.3 A similar story is told of a cattle-dealer in the parish of Templepatrick, near Belfast, who attempted to use the soil of an ancient fort as a top-dressing for his land.167.4 We may compare with these instances a curious Manx curse: “May a stone of the church be found in the head of thy dwelling!”167.5 It would seem as if that which had been part of, or had become by contact united with, the dead, or had been part of the subject of a taboo, were still, notwithstanding severance, in indissoluble connection with the remainder, and thus capable of communicating its evil effects or of bringing into similar connection any other object. Too much stress, however, cannot be laid on this conjecture at present. The question needs further investigation.