Note 224.3 — Chapter XI · SACRED WELLS AND TREES.

Again. Athenian women who for the first time became pregnant used to hang up their girdles in the temple of Artemis. So the Spanish women tied their girdles or shoe-latchets about one of the church-bells, and struck the bell thrice.224.3 In the French department of Côtes-du-Nord, to cure a certain childish disease the infant’s cap is placed at the foot of the statue of St. Méen in the church of Plaine-Haute.224.4 Among the French superstitions enumerated by Thiers is that of passing a child afflicted with Saint Giles’ sickness through his father’s shirt, and carrying the shirt afterwards—not the child—to Saint Giles’ altar, as a means of cure.224.5 European settlers in Virginia and Pennsylvania measure a child for a disease called “the Go-backs” with a yarn string; and having by this means diagnosed the disease they hang the string on the hinge of a gate in the premises of the infant’s parents, believing that the disease will die away with the decay of the string.224.6 They have no local shrines.