Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/169

Rh not daring to utter it for fear of breaking the spell. Some such superstition has doubtless prevailed, more or less, at some period through the length and breadth of England. My kind contributor, Mrs. Lambert, has forwarded to me the following extract from a curious old journal and account-book, kept by a Lincolnshire gentleman, the uncle of her grandfather, in the year 1754:—

Very different is the treatment of epilepsy in the North of Scotland, as made known to us by Dr. Mitchell, in his deeply interesting paper on the Superstitions of the North-west Highlands and Islands of Scotland. For a cure of this disease, he informs us that a literal downright sacrifice to a nameless but secretly acknowledged power is practised there: “On the spot where the epileptic first falls, a black cock is buried alive, along with a lock of the patient’s hair and some parings of his nails. I have seen at least three epileptic idiots for whom this is said to have