Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/500

 476 Collectanea.

and trouble you nae mair, but bury the penny deep, an' dinna let on where you put it."

An old woman told me that her grandmother, who was bent double with rheumatic pains, was visited by a still more ancient crone, a " poor traveller looking for her bit " \i.e. a beggar]. "You are ill afflicted, poor crathur," said she, "but there's cures to be got, an' if you'll be said by me you'll get frogs' spawn out o' the dykes, an' ye'U put it in a crock, an' a slate on the top of it, an' bury it in the garden. At the end o' three months lift the crock, an' rub the pains wi' what ye'U find in it." "What did she find in it?" "The finest water. Miss. I heerd my grandmother sayin' that they persevered rubbing wi' the water till the bent old woman was as souple as you or me. Aye, it's allowed that the frogs' spawn is a gran' cure for the pains." '"

Stye chartn. — The Donegal man who gave me the wart charms added, — "Did you ever have a stye on your eye, Miss? The nine pins can cure it. Just point a pin at your sore eye nine times. You needna be touching with the pin, — but do as I bid you, — point nine times, an' then throw the pin into the graveyard." "^

Toothache charms. — The following gruesome charm horrified an English tourist who was lingering in a country churchyard during a funeral. Amongst the mourners was a young man with a swollen cheek and looking extremely dejected. Presently the supposed mourner took up a skull lying upon a heap of dry mould and crumbled bones thrown up in digging the grave. He raised the skull to his lips, and with his own teeth extracted from it a tooth. He then threw the skull carelessly away, and wrapped the tooth in paper and put it into his pocket. Many eyes were fixed upon the young man, but no face expressed the least surprise.

"Can you tell me why he did that?" asked the Englishman of an old man who had stood next him during the ceremony.

" Surely, sir. Thon poor boy was very bad wi' the toothache, an' it's allowed to be a cure if you draw a tooth from a skull wi' yer ain teeth. He'll sew thon tooth in his clothes, an' wear it as long as he lives."

° Cf. Black, op. cit., p. 63.

^ Cf. Black, op. cit., p. 173, (Donegal, a goosel)erry ihorn being pointed at the stye nine times).