Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/194

Rh contrasts with the wild spirit of those of the North, founded as the latter so often are on the border forays and raids of former times. None which I have collected are direct enough in their bearing on the New Forest to warrant quotation, and I must content myself with this general expression.

To pass on to other matters, let us notice some of the superstitions of the New Forest. No one is now so superstitious, because no one is so ignorant as the West-Saxon. One of the commonest remedies for consumption in the Forest is the "lungs of oak," a lichen (Sticta pulmonaria) which grows rather plentifully on the oak trees; and it is no unfrequent occurrence for a poor person to ask at a chemist's shop for a "pennyworth of lungs of oak." So, too, for weak eyes, "brighten," another lichen, is recommended. I do not know, however, that we must find so much fault in this matter, as the lichens were not very long ago favourite prescriptions with even medical men.

Again, another remedy for various diseases used to be the scrapings from Sir John Chydioke's alabaster figure, in the Priory Church of Christchurch, which has, in consequence, been sadly injured. A specific, however, for consumption is still to kill a jay and place it in the embers till calcined, when it is 176