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 beam. He will never have toothache again, says this sage.

For warts the cures are innumerable. They are all more or less like this: Steal a piece of meat from a butcher's stall or basket, bury it secretly at a gateway where four lanes meet. As the meat decays the warts will die away. An apple cut into slices and rubbed on the warts and buried is equally efficacious. So is a snail which after being rubbed on the warts is impaled on a thorn and left to die.

A room hung with red cloth was esteemed in many countries to be effective against certain diseases, small-*pox especially. John of Gaddesden relates how he cured Edward II's son by this device. The prejudice in favour of red flannel which still exists, for tying a piece of it round sore throats is probably a remnant of the fancy that red was specially obnoxious to evil spirits. The Romans hung red coral round the necks of their infants to protect them from the evil eye. This practice, too, has come down to our day.

Among other charms and incantations quoted by Mr. Cockayne in his account of Saxon Leechdoms we find that for a baby's recovery "some would creep through a hole in the ground and stop it up behind them with thorns," "if cattle have a disease of the lungs, burn (something undeciphered) on midsummer's day; add holy water, and pour it into their mouths on midsummer's morrow; and sing over them: Ps. 51, Ps. 17, and the Athanasian Creed." "If anything has been stolen from you write a copy of the annexed diagram and put it into thy