Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/561

 Rh "To preserve swine from sudden death hang the worts upon the four sides and upon the door." (Lacnunga 82.)

Counting-Old charms. These are curiously interesting and, moreover, survive to this day in children's games. In Lacnunga we find this counting-out charm: "Nine were Nodes sisters, then the nine came to be eight and the eight seven and the seven six . . . and the one none. This may be medicine for thee from churnel and from scrofula and from worm and from every mischief."

The above closely resembles a Cornish charm for a tetter:

Thus the verses are continued until tetter having "no brother" is ordered to be gone.

Narrative charms. One of the lengthiest is for use when cattle have been lost (Lacnunga 91), but undoubtedly the most curious is the one for warts in the Lacnunga 56. "A charm to be sung first into the left ear then into the right, then above the man's head, and then the charm to be hung on his neck." There is a certain rough lilt about the lines in the original:

"Here came entering

A spider wight

He had his hands upon his hams

He quoth that thou his hackney wert

Lay thee against his neck

They began to sail off the land

As soon as they off the land came, then began they to cool

Then came in a wild beast's sister