Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/124

116 of the Holy Spirit. It is, moreover, a Hindoo and a Mahomedan custom to lay a dying man on the ground. Cf. also Gregor's Folk-Lore of North-East of Scotland, p. 206; Mr. W. G. Black in Folk-Lore Record, vol. iv. p. 94, quotes some curious feather-charms, and their use around dishes and bowls set for the wandering dead to drink from, amongst the Pueblo people in New Mexico, which seem to have some connection with the subject.]

"Comfrey is a capital cure, but I don't know what for, or in what form—a salve, I think. But you must mind to use the red-flowered sort for men, the white for women."

[In Black's Folk-Medicine, pp. 108, et seq. will be found a great deal of curious information pointing to a very wide-spread superstition as to the use of red colours in sickness. Heucherus et Fabricias, De Vegetalibus Magicis, Wittenberg, 1700, is quoted to show that red flowers were given for disorders of the blood, and yellow for those of the liver. When the son of Edward II. was sick of small-pox, the bed-furniture, John of Gaddesden directed, should be red. The Emperor Francis I. when suffering from the same disease was rolled up in a scarlet cloth. So in Japan, when the children of the royal house were attacked by small-pox, the beds and walls were covered with red and the attendants clothed in scarlet. At the present day in China red cloth is worn in the pockets. Red is used liberally at the death of a New Zealand chief. In the West of Scotland red flannel is employed to ward off whooping-cough: and in Wales when the corpse-candles burn white the doomed person is a woman, but if the flame be red it is a man.]

"Fairies come down the chimney and do a deal of harm if you don't stop them. The way to keep them out is to hang a bullock's heart in the chimney."

[The use of the heart of animals and birds is a curious sub-division of witchcraft; and, to quote Henderson alone, in the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties will be found incantations connected with the hearts of pigeons, horses, cows, hens, sheep, and pigs to counteract a witch, and of a hare to torment a faithless lover, &c.]