Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/308

282 omissions in human character, voids unfilled by virtues, in fact.

A member of the Roman Catholic communion tells me that the hand of Margaret Clitheroe, a martyr executed in 1586 or 1587 for refusing to plead when accused of harbouring priests, is preserved as a precious relic in the Convent of the Blessed Virgin at York. It is believed to cure maladies of the throat. Some years ago, as my informant heard from a priest between 1887 and 1890, the hand was taken to London to touch the throat of a priest who was dangerously ill, but it proved ineffectual. The sick man died.

One of the hands of Father Arrowsmith, who suffered death for his religious convictions in 1628, is still kept with veneration at the Catholic Church of Ashton in Makerfield, and is visited by many devout persons, it having the reputation of working miracles, "some of which have been carefully examined and attested."

Were a detailed description obtainable of the annual secret sacrifice of a man who dies for Christ—which still prevails in a village in the Abruzzi —it is probable that striking exemplifications of the persistence of rites connected with the veneration of human flesh and blood would be given to the world. Such a description seems unattainable, however. The grimmer usages of heathen superstition owe their survival in pseudo-Christian form to the inviolate silence of the devotees, who reveal the mysteries of their faith to none but the initiated. Regarding the possibility of cures worked by touch, or by a draught of blood, I may add that a physiologist of experience informs me that he believes goitre may possibly be influenced by suggestion, especially if the faith-cure adopted causes nervous shock. Such shock modifies the nervous and vascular system favourably or unfavourably, according to circumstances, and the application of the hand of an executed criminal might be as effective as the application of