Note 100 — Chapter IV · THE WORSHIP OF THE SAINTED DEAD.

Recently at an execution in Bombay, the hangman was observed to carefully secure the rope, and particularly that part of it which had encircled the neck of the culprit. He stated that he could sell every quarter inch of it, as it averted evil spirits and ghosts, and even prevented death from hanging. This idea accounts for the respect paid throughout Europe to the mandrake, which is supposed to be generated from the droppings of the brain of a thief on the gallows. In Cornwall a wen or strumous swelling can be cured by touching it with the hand of a man who has been publicly hanged.100 According to the same principle, barren women in India bathe underneath a person who has been hanged, and women of the middle classes try to obtain a piece of the wood of the gallows for the same object.