Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/558

 248 the patient with the fumes of burning herbs. This smoking with herbs is found also in the ancient Babylonian ritual. In an incantation against fever we find the instruction:

Instances of smoking with herbs.—"Have a great quern stone baken or heated and laid under the man and have wall wort and brooklime and mugwort gathered and laid upon the stone and under it and apply cold water and make the steam reek up on the man as hot as he can endure it" Lacnunga (48); cf. also Tobit VI. 7; Leech Book III. 62. "Against elf disease put gledes in a glede pan and lay the worts on and reek the man with the worts before nine in the morning and at night and sing a litany, etc." Of Smearwort (aristolichia clematitis) we read in the Herbarium Apuleius: "If any child be vexed take thou the same wort and smoke him with this then thou wilt render it gladder." Again, "Take the same wort and dry it. Smoke the sick therewith; it puts to flight devil sickness." See also Leech Book II. 59. It is noteworthy that not only human beings but cattle and swine were to be smoked with the fumes of herbs. In Lacnunga 79, for sick cattle we find: "Take the wort put it upon gledes and fenner and hassuck and cotton and incense. Burn all together on the side on which the wound is. Make it reek upon the cattle. Make five crosses of hassuck grass, set them on four sides of the cattle and one in the middle. Sing about the cattle Benediciam, etc., and the Benedicite and some litanies and the Paternoster. Sprinkle holy water upon them, burn about them incense and cotton and let some one set a value