Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/203

 Rh the last degree, dough and pin were then burnt in a fire of hazel and ash. The cure failed, as any one acquainted with the disease might have forecast."

Besides those remedies already mentioned for curing cattle, you may employ these:—"Take some blood from the sick animal by wounding him; let the blood fall on some straw carefully held to the place; not a drop must be lost; burn the straw, when the ill-wisher will be irresistibly drawn to the spot; then by violence you can compel him to take off the spell." Or, "Bleed one animal to death to save the whole herd."

A local newspaper, in 1883 (Cornishman), gives the following:—"Superstitions die hard.— A horse died the other day on a farm in the neighbourhood of St. Ives. Its carcase was dragged on a Sunday away up to the granite rock basins and weather-worn bosses of Trecroben hill, and there burnt, in order to drive away the evil spell, or ill-wishing, which afflicted the farm where the animal belonged." I, a few years since, saw a dying cat taken out of a house, on a mat, by two servants, that it might not die inside and bring ill-luck. In 1865 a farmer in Portreath sacrificed a calf, by burning, for the purpose of removing a disease which had long followed his horses and cows. And in another case a farmer burnt a living lamb, to save, as he said, "his flock from spells which had been cast on them."—Robert Hunt.

The Cornishman, in another paragraph, says:—"Our Summercourt (East Cornwall) correspondent witnessed an amusing affair on Thursday morning (April, 1883). Seemg a crowd in the street, he asked the reason, and found that a young lady was about to perform the feat of throwing a pig's nose over a house for good luck! This is how it was done. The lady took the nose of a pig, that was killed the day before, in her right hand; stood with her back to the house, and threw the nose over her head, and over the house, into the back garden. Had she failed in the attempt her luck was supposed to be bad." "Whet your knife on Sunday, you'll skin on Monday," is a very old Perran rhythm and St. Hilary (West Cornwall) superstition, so that, however blunt your knife may be, you must use it as it is, lest by sharpening it you bring ill-luck on the farmer, and he lose a sheep or