Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/112

 104 is taken home, and the pot placed over the fire, and nine balls of oakum, of about the size of hazel-nuts, and nine pieces of straw, with knots on them, thrown into the water. A dish is then placed on the patient's head, a needle thrown into it, the boiling-water poured into the dish, and the empty pot placed into it, bottom upwards, amidst words as the following: "White sun, red sun, green sun, blue sun, yellow sun, black sun! Blind sun! get out of this person's head, or the great sun will overtake you on the road!" These words have to be repeated nine times, and then the Lord's Prayer said. Thereupon the water is made boiling hot again, and the whole performance gone through nine times, the whole process occupying thus more than half of the day. Finally, the patient's head is washed in the water, and the water that remains is thrown into the stream—in the direction of the flow—so that the current may carry off the disease. The patient then has to get up every day before sunrise until he is recovered.

In the case of a person suffering from hot-fever, a cure known as "calling out the disease" is applied. Some person belonging to the patient has to strip quite naked, of an evening, and, wrapped into a bed-sheet, stand outside the gate, where he has to drop the sheet, and call out in a loud voice, "Let the whole village hear it; let it be heard! My son (or brother, father, &c.) is writhing with hot-fever. Whoever hears me, may he catch the disease!" This has to be repeated three times. The calling-out may also be done standing under a flue or under the hood of a hearth.

I may also mention a few kinds of the lower class of charms, such as, for instance, protecting the cow's milk against wicked women or witches by fumigating the barn, or placing garlic and "Satan-shot grass" over the door or into a hole in the threshold, or by keeping a horse-shoe constantly in the fire, or by placing on one of the beams a piece of dough made with woman's milk and seven different kinds of spice mixed into it. Weasels are kept off by placing a distaff in the barn, &c.