Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/279

 Collectanea. 2 5 1

For scrofula the patient is directed to take the root of the vervain with all its rootlets so that none should remain, hang it [part of the root] round his neck with a ribbon, burn the remainder of the root, and hang the leaf up the chimney, and as the leaf dried so would the disease dry up.

For surdite [deafness]. A piece of a clove of garlic dipped in honey and tied with a thread and put into ye ears at night and draw it away next morning.

For mad folke. Let ye patient drinke ye juyce of Satory and keep him close from light, ayre, and much company.

How to make a gouseberry custurd. Take a posnet and put in a little rose water, put in gouseberryes as many as you thinke fitt, then put them into the posnet and boyle them till they be boyled to peaces, then take them up and beate to yealkes of eggs and put them into ye gouseberryes, then put it into a platten, and then put sippetts into the platten but you must first of all sweeten it very well.

John i.e B.\s.

Quebec Folklore Notes, IV.

The Devil in Quebec. — Satanic activity is quite noticeable in this province, to judge by L. B.'s accounts. He occasionally gets possession of someone even to-day, wlien the large number of churches has curtailed his former activities. In such cases the victim, if not rescued within nine days, is lost forever. Two generations ago he was much more formidable. Various doubt- fully moral occupations, such as dancing,^ seem to give him an opening, to judge by the following stories : —

A girl was forbidden by her mother to go to a certain dance. She insisted however, and declared she would go if she had to take the Devil for partner. On the night of the dance, as she

^ Dancing is rather decidedly frowned upon by the Church in some parts of Quebec. For example, in St. Augustin, near the capital, it is absolutely forbidden. See University Magazine (Morang & Co., Toronto), Feb., 1913, p. 72.