Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/213

 Rh the mark is still apparent, I am assured it is surely, if slowly, disappearing. A relation of mine also tells me that, like Miss Courtney, she was taken to the Penzance witch for the purpose of having a 'stye' removed from one of her eyes by charming."—Tramp.

I was told of many other cases—one by another surgeon; but it would be useless to repeat them. I will end with one I have taken from Notes and Queries, December, 1859:—

"A lady who was staying lately at Penzance attended a funeral, and noticed that whilst the clergyman was reading the burial service a woman forced her way through the pall-bearers to the edge of the grave. When he came to the passage, 'Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,' she dropped a white cloth upon the coffin, closed her eyes, and apparently said a prayer. On making inquiries as to the cause of this proceeding, this lady found that a superstition exists amongst the peasantry in that part that if a person with a sore be taken secretly to a corpse, the dead hand passed over the sore place, and the bandage afterwards be dropped upon the coffin during the reading of the burial service, a perfect cure will be the result. This woman had a child with a bad leg. and she had followed this superstition with a firm belief in_its efficacy. The peasants, also, to the present day wear charms, believing they will protect them from sickness and other evils. The wife of the clergyman of the parish was very charitable in attending the sick and dispensing medicines, and one day a woman brought her a child having sore eyes to have them charmed, having more faith in that remedy than in medicines. She was greatly surprised to find that medicines only were given to her."—E. K.

There is no virtue in the dead hand of a near relation. A curious old troth plight was formerly practised in Cornwall: The couple broke a wedding ring taken from the finger of a corpse, and each kept one half. The editor of a local paper (Cornishman) once obtained a piece of rope, with which a man was hanged, for a poor woman who had walked fourteen miles to Bodmin in the hopes of getting it, that she might effect the cure of her sore eyes.

The Rev. S. Bundle writes that "a Cornish surgeon recommended a charmer as being more efficacious than himself in curing shingles.