Note 184.1 — Chapter X · WITCHCRAFT: PHILTRES—PREVENTIVE AND REMEDIAL LEECHCRAFT.

In Belgium, halfway between Braine l’Alleud and the wood of Le Foriet, two hollow, and therefore doubtless very ancient, roads cross one another. Two aged pine-trees are planted at the top of the bank at one of the corners; and formerly there stood between them a cross, which has disappeared for some thirty years. It was a very ancient custom to bury in the pines, and even in the cross, pins or nails, in order to obtain the cure of persons attacked by fevers of various kinds. The pins and nails thus employed must have been previously in contact with the patient or his clothes. If any one took out one of these pins or nails from the pines or the cross, and carried it home, it was believed that the disease would certainly have been communicated to some member of his family. The custom is said to have fallen out of use. Yet M. Schepers, who visited the place in September 1891, and to whose article on the subject in Wallonia, a periodical published at Liège, I am indebted for these particulars, found not only rusty nails in the pines, but also pins quite recently planted. He was told that it was equally customary to roll round the pines, or the arms of the cross, some band of cloth or other stuff which had touched the sufferer. As soon as the nail or pin had been driven in, or the ribbon fastened, the operator used to run away as hard as he could. The spot was called À l’crwe Saint Zè, St. Etto’s Cross, or Aux deux Sapins, The two Pine-trees. Saint Etto, it seems, was an Irish missionary to these parts in the seventh century.184.1 Nor is this by any means the only instance in Belgium. Two old lime-trees on either side of a Calvary, near the convent of Soleilmont at Gilly, in Hainaut, are covered with nails; and a similar tree is found behind a chapel between Trazegnies and Chapelle-lez-Herlaimont in the same province. At Chastrés, near Walcourt, a chapel of Our Lady is shown with pins thrown in through the interstices of the gate by devotees on reciting their prayers. Numbers of pins have also been taken from the beds of the Meuse and the Sambre at ancient fords, though whether they were put into the water for any superstitious purpose is uncertain.184.2