Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/521

 Corresp07idence. 497

Water, 5//. Stir them altogether a good while in a Mortar, then power the mixture into a Viol, which when you use it seperate by inclination ; Note, when taken Inwardly "oSS. or qi. may be taken at any time in Knot-grass Water."

The pamphlet ends with an " Avertisement " that "/« Cam- amile-street at the Sarazens Head Inn near Bishops Gate, are Sold most Excellent and well aproved Pills y^r Six Pence the Dose, which Cures" innumerable diseases, and that ^^ Also, such as are desirous may be Resolved in all Laivful Quest io 71s depending on that Noble Art of Astrology, at the above meiitioned place."

A. R. Wright.

I send you an extract from Burton's Anatomy of Melaticholy which will serve as an illustration to page 231 of the June number of Folk-Lore. I have verified the references to Diosco- rides, Matthiolus, and Aldrovandus. My quotation is from the two-volume 8vo edition of 181 3, but it holds good for any of the two-volume editions of the nineteenth century :

" Being in the country in the vacation time not many years since, at Lindly in Leicestershire, my fathers house, I first observed this amulet of a spider in a nut-shell lapped in silke, etc., so applied for an ague by my mother : whom although I knew ta have excellent skill in chirurgery, sore eyes, aches, &c., and such experimentall medicines, as all the country where she dwelt can witness, to have done many famous and good cures upon divers poor folks, that were otherwise destitute of help — yet, among all other experiments, this, methought, was most absurd and ridicu- lous : I could see no warrant for it. Quid ara?iece ctim febre ? For what antipathy ? till at length, rambling amongst authors (as often I do), I found this very medicine in Dioscorides, approved by Matthiolus, repeated by Aldrovandus, cap. de Araned, lib. de insectis, I began to have a better opinion of it, and to give more credit to amulets, when I saw it in some parties answer to experience " (Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 2, Sec. 5,. Mem. I, Subs. 5 (vol. ii., p. 134, ed. 18 13)).

W. Aldis Wright.