Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/207

 Rh Death.

When a corpse is in a house, the clocks should be stopped and looking-glasses turned. If a cat or dog cross a corpse when it is laid out, the animal must be killed.

The water, towel, soap, etc., used for washing a dead body are always thrown at the foot of some bush, and pushed in beneath it, so that they may rot away and not be used.

It is considered unlucky for a person to die on feathers. When, therefore, one is dying, he is lifted off on to a small straw bed. This after death used to be taken up to the top of a hill and set on fire (apparently at night); and the neighbours would then know that a death had taken place. A funeral is always taken by the longest possible road to the graveyard.

Cures &c.

For a pain in the back.—Take the butt of a candle used at a wake, light it, and pass it three times round you.

For epilepsy.—Take a crooked sixpence, a harrow-pin, a shirt (or shift), a hank of yarn; cut a little from the top of each finger and thumb, and the tops of the hair, and bury the whole under the spot where the sufferer fell; and he will never be afflicted again.

For ringworm.—Immediately a child is born, if a worm be placed in its hand it will have the power to cure ringworm. (This applies to any child; it is only the seventh son who can cure evil). In the cure for ringworm, a cake is made, unknown to the person afflicted, and given him to eat in three bites. A plaster is also made of hen's excrement, the bark of ash (?) and tobacco; and the cure must be done on Monday or Thursday.

To prevent fever from spreading.—All the fires on the townland, and the two adjoining (one on each side), would be put out. Then the men of the three townlands would come to one house, and get two large blocks of wood.