Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/81

 Rh Cramp seems to be prevalent, as amulets for its cure are to be heard of everywhere. The digging feet of moles, Fig. 4 (Plate I.), are looked on as the most efficacious charms, perhaps because the cramped appearance of the curved foot has led to the application to it of the doctrine that "like cures like." The moles' feet are either carried loose in the pocket, or put into a little silk bag and hung round the neck next the skin. Fig. 5 (Plate I.) shows another favourite cramp charm, in the form of "cramp nuts," which are small woody concretions found upon the trunks of both beech and ash trees. The particular tree preferred as a source of the "cramp nuts" varies according to the locality, but I was not able to ascertain any reason for the preference. The nuts shown were obtained from an ash tree. The "cramp nuts" are either carried loose in the pocket or tied up in little pieces of rag and fastened to the bedstead of the sufferer from cramp. I may note here that near Whitstable the name "cramp stone " is given to the fossil shark's teeth, with a limy concretion near the base, which are there found in the beds of London Clay and looked on as amulets against cramp.

I was informed by Mr. Alfred J. Collyer, of Peppering, that some years ago a villager near Burpham had some pigs which sickened owing to their having been "overlooked." Upon the death of one of these pigs, the owner took out its heart, stuck nails and pins into it, and roasted it before the fire, having first shut up securely all the doors and windows. This brought about such misfortunes to the person with the evil eye that the local charmer intervened to remove the spell, but afterwards the pigs flourished.

The recording of numbers by means of notches on tally sticks is still practised by a few shepherds of the old school, and I obtained specimens of flock tallies and lamb tallies. These are cut either on squared lengths of wood about half an inch wide and eight or nine inches long, or on natural round sticks of about the same size and with the bark left on.

In the lamb tallies used for recording the number of lambs born in the lambing season, an ordinary notch denotes doubles or twins (the normal birth), a short notch or dot a single birth,