Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/184

162 is mentioned a very singular specific, which it seems was formerly held in high repute in that city. The remnants of every medicine bottle in the house, the more the better, were poured together, well shaken, and a spoonful of the mixture administered to a patient, of whatever nature his complaint might be. This strange remedy, it appears, was called “Dean and Chapter.”

Passing by, for the present, different modes of cure for persons who have been bewitched, we will turn to the diseases of animals, for local superstition does not deem these beneath their notice. A gentleman farmer in the West Riding of Yorkshire, having some cattle affected by the foul or fellen (my informant, the Rev. George Ornsby, forgets which), and having heard that an old man in the neighbourhood, who had long practised farriery, was famous for curing the disease, went to consult him. The case was duly laid before the old man, who replied, with the utmost gravity, that he had cured “a many,” and that, as he had given up practice, he did not mind if he told him his secret. His directions were few and simple; the owner of the horse was to go at midnight into his orchard and grave a turf at the foot of the largest apple-tree therein, and then hang it carefully on the topmost bough of the tree, all in silence and alone. If this was duly performed, as the turf muddered away so would the disease gradually leave the animal. The old farrier added that he had never known this mode of cure to fail.

This remedy is also mentioned in the late Mr. Denham’s Folk-Lore of the North of England, with one addition—the turf cut must be one on which the beast has trodden with its diseased foot. Many people, he says, use no other remedy for the foul, looking upon this as an infallible cure.

Another tale from Northumberland must be given in the very words in which I received it from the Rev. J. F. Bigge, only premising that a poor woman had a cow, and that the cow was taken ill. The woman described its recovery as follows: “I was advised, ye ken, to gan to the minister, ye ken, and I thought he might do something for her, ye ken; so a gaes to the minister, ye ken, and a sees him about her. ‘Well, Sir,’ says I, ‘the coo’s bad; cuddn’t ye come and make a prayer o’er her like?’