Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/324

298 in a Musulman madman who has been attending the services here regularly during Holy Week. He was brought here in chains, and is now said to be out of danger (danger for others, of course). It would seem that our "Panagia" here has some special virtue in curing madness—I dare say an old survival. At all events, her reputation is now established.

I venture under the above title to bring before the Society what I think may be a survival of some considerable interest to members.

About half-way between Canterbury and Margate, on the main road to the Isle of Thanet, there is an old farm-house known now as Westbere Court, but formerly known as Island Road Farm. In May, 1893, I was staying there for a few days, and when passing at dusk near a tree quite close to the back of the farm I noticed what appeared a very curious formation of branches in the forked branch of the tree. On my remarking upon it to the owner of the farm, he informed me that it was the skeleton of a sheep. On making further inquiries I ascertained that during the beginning of 1893 there had been a number of deaths amongst the sheep, and that the shepherd had taken the body of one and hung it in a tree. The shepherd stated that they often put dead sheep up in the trees—it had always been done. Another reason given for the practice was that it kept the smell of the decomposing sheep away from the farm-house!

This survival reminds us that Baring-Gould states that he has seen two horses and three calves hanging from a tree near Ditchling Beacon; and in a little book on the archæology of North Devon I read that, according to an inquisition, 35th Edward I., "Walter Barun holds certain lands and tenements in the village of Holicote of the King in capite, in consideration of the service of hanging on a certain forked tree (lignum furcatum) stags which die of the murrain in the King's forest of Exmoor, and also of the service of entertaining poor people passing thereover who are weakened by disease." There seems little doubt that this is the survival of some very ancient practice. The poor people "weak-