Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/365

Rh tells us how this patriarch among Richmond trees, with a traditional history going back more than 300 years, has found it possible to renew its life by its own natural well-directed effort; while on the left hand, or folklore side, that renewed life has preserved that most interesting part of the trunk where the all-but-forgotten ritual is known to have been performed in the last half of the present century. The interest, I think, is much enhanced by the fact that the tree grows within an afternoon's walk from London. In such a position we are not likely to find another such relic of the past.

The young or sapling ash is the tree usually known as the one employed in folk-belief for the cure of infantine ailments, the shrew ash being potent for the cure of cattle, horses, sheep, &c. Possibly, if we knew more about them, there were as many modifications, or shall I say sects, among English Christian believers in the power of the ash as there are among Burmese Buddhist believers in the power of the nats. However that may be, the mothers who brought their children to the Richmond tree appear to have recognised curative powers in the combination of animal, vegetable, and sun-worship, more or less widely connected with ash-trees in general, and here evoked through the mediation of a "shrew-mother," "priestess," or "witch." The general question I am not discussing. I shall leave that to those more competent to deal with the subject.

That any definite remembrance of the old ritual contained in these notes has been preserved we owe, so far as I am aware, to the circumstance that Professor Owen, then in the zenith of his fame, took up his residence at Sheen Lodge in 1852. The Shrew Ash directly opposite his windows soon became an object of interest to him. Added to this, the Pro-