Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/212

 204 from drowned man's, hand. The belief in the efficacy of a dead hand in curing diseases in Cornwall is marvellous. I, in a short paper read at an antiquarian meeting, gave this instance, related to me by a medical man about ten years ago (now dead). A day or two after a number of other cases in proof of my statement appeared, to my surprise, in our local papers, which, as well as my own, I will transcribe. "Once I attended a poor woman's child for an obstinate case of sore eyes. One day when leaving the house the mother said to me, 'Is there nothing more, doctor, I can do for my little girl?' I, jokingly, answered, 'Nothing, unless you care to stroke them with a dead man's hand.' About a week after I met the woman in the streets, who stopped me, and said, 'My child's eyes are getting better at last, doctor.' I expressed myself pleased that the ointment I had given her was doing good. To my astonishment, she replied, 'Oh, it is not that, we never used it, we took your advice about the dead man's hand.' Until she recalled it to my memory, I had quite forgotten my foolish speech." "I am one of those who can bear testimony to the fact of a cure having been effected by the means above-named. I was born with a disfigurement on my upper lip. My mother felt a great anxiety about this, so my nurse proposed that a dead man's hand should be passed seven times over my lip. I was taken to the house of one Robin Gendall, Causeway-head, Penzance, who at that time was lying dead, and his hand was passed over my lip in the manner named. By slow degrees my friends had the satisfaction of seeing that the charm had taken effect."—Octogenarian.

"I may add my testimony to Miss Courtney's remarks as to the belief in Cornwall in the virtue of the touch of a diseased part by a dead man's hand. A case came under my knowledge at Penzance of a child who had from birth a peculiar tuberous formation at the junction of the nose with the forehead, which the medical men would not cut for fear of severing veins. The child was taken by her mother to a friend's house, in which were lying the remains of a young man who had just died from consumption. The deceased's hand was passed over the malformation seven times, and it soon began to grow smaller and smaller." "I have myself seen the child since Miss Courtney read her paper (November, 1881), and, though