she would do it. A subsequent number of the Magazine records the woman's being condemned to be hanged, but explains that "great interest was making to get her sentence commuted, the fact proceeding from conjugal affection." "Hide some Dazy-roots under your Pillow, and hang your Shoes out of the Window," is the admonition given in the comedy entitled The Mock-Marriage (1696), by way of a love charm to cause one to dream of his love. Andrews (in his Continuation of Henry's History) maintains the incredibility of the asseverations contained in Bothwell's will to the effect that "as he had from his youth addicted himself much to the art of Enchantment at Paris and elsewhere, he had bewitched the Queen (Mary) to fall in love with him." In The Comical Pilgrim's Pilgrimage into Ireland (1723) we read: "They often use Philtres." "The Spark that's resolved to sacrifice his youth and vigour on a Damsel, whose coyness will not accept of his Love-Oblations, he threads a Needle with the Hair of her Head, and then running it thro' the most fleshy part of a dead Man, as the brawn of the Arms, Thigh, or the Calf of the Leg, the Charm has that virtue in it, as to make her run mad for him whom she so lately slighted." The following is found in Herrick's Hesperides A Charme, or an Allay, for Love. "If so be a Toad be laid In a Sheep-skin newly flaid, And that ty'd to Man, 'twill sever Him and his affections ever." RURAL CHARMS. Sir Thomas Browne, in his Quincunx Artificially Considered, mentions a rural charm against dodder, tetter, and strangling weeds; which consisted in placing a chalked tile at the four corners and one in the middle of the fields, "which, though ridiculous in the intention, was rational in the contrivance, and a good way to diffuse the magic through all parts of the area." The following rural charms occur in Herrick's Hesperides— "This I'le tell ye by the way, Crosse your Dow, and your dispatch Will be better for your Batch." "In the Morning when ye rise, Wash your Hands and cleanse your Eyes. "If ye feare to be affrighted, When ye are (by chance) benighted: Carrie nothing but a Crust: For that holie piece of Bread Charmes the danger and the dread." Some older charms, however, are to be found in Bale's Interlude concerning the Laws of Nature, Moses, and Christ (1562), wherein Idolatry says "With blessynges of Saynt Germayne I wyll me so determyne That neyther Fox nor Vermyne Take me a Napkyn folte No better thynge can be: Are wholsom for the Pyppe: Whom nowe I over hyppe." The Athenian Oracle preserves the following rural charm to stop bleeding at the nose, and all other hæmorrhages "In the blood of Adam Sin was taken, In the blood of Christ it was all to shaken, And by the same blood I do the charge, That the blood of ( *) run no longer at large." Writes Ady in his Candle in the Dark (1655): "It appeareth still among common silly country people, how they had learned Charms by tradition from Popish times, for curing Cattle, Men, Women, and Children; for churning of Butter, for baking their Bread, and many other occasions; one or two whereof I will rehearse only, for brevity. An old Woman in Essex, who was living in my time, she had lived also in Queen Marie's time, had learned thence many Popish Charms, Naming the christian and sirname of the party. one whereof was this; every Night when she lay down to sleep she charmed her Bed, saying— Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Bless the bed that I lie on :' and this would she repeat three times, reposing great confidence therein, because (she said) she had been taught it, when she was a young maid, by the Church-men of those times." Again "Another old Woman came into an House at a time when as the maid was churning of Butter, and having laboured long and could not make her Butter come, the old Woman told the Maid what was wont to be done when she was a maid, and also in her mother's young time, that if it happened their Butter would not come readily, they used a Charm to be said over it, whilst yet it was in beating, and it would come straightways, and that was this— 'Come Butter, come, This, said the old Woman, being said three times, will make your Butter come, for it was taught my mother by a learned Church man in Queen Marie's Days, when as Churchmen had more cunning, and could teach people many a trick, that our Ministers now a days know not." In Whimzies, Braithwaite's description of a balladmonger proceeds: "His Ballads, cashiered the City, must now ride poast for the Country: where they are no lesse admired than a Gyant in a Pageant: till at last they grow so common there too, as every poore Milk-maid can chant and chirpe it under her Cow, which she useth as an harmlesst Charme to make her let downe her Milk." A slunk or abortive calf, buried in the highway over which cattle frequently pass, Grose tells us, will greatly prevent that misfortune happening to cows; and he represents it as commonly practised in Suffolk. In his Art of Simpling, Coles gives it as a tradition that if a handful of arsmart be put under the saddle, upon a tired horse's back,* it will make him travel fresh and lustily. "If a Footman take Mugwort and put into his Shoes in the morning, he may goe forty miles before noon, and not be weary. The Seed of Fleabane strewed between the Sheets causeth Chastity. If one that hath eaten Comin doe but breath on a painted Face, the Colour will vanish away straight. The seeds of Docks tyed to the left arme of a Woman do helpe Barrennesse. All kinde of Docks have this property, that what Flesh, or Meat, is sod therewith, though it be never so old, hard, or tough, it will become tender and meet to be eaten. Calamint will recover stinking meat, if it be laid amongst it whilst it is raw. The often smelling to Basil breedeth a Scorpion in the Brain. Lupton quotes Mizaldus in support of the statement, "Mousear, any manner of way ministered to Horses, brings this help unto them, that they cannot be hurt, whiles the Smith is shooing of them, therfore it is called of many Herba Clavorum, the Herb of Nails.' The root of Male-Piony dryed, tied to the Neck, doth help the Incubus, which we call the Mare. If Maids will take wilde Tansey, and lay it to soake in Butter-milke nine dayes, and wash their Faces therewith, it will make them look very faire." Coles enlarges on the theme in his Adam in Eden "It is said, yea and believed by many, that Moonwort will open the Locks wherewith Dwelling-houses are made fast, if it be put into the Key-hole; as also that it will loosen the Locks, Fetters, and Shoes from those Horses' feet that goe on the places where it groweth; and of this opinion was Master Culpeper, who, though he railed against superstition in others, yet had enough of it himselfe, as may appear by his story of the Earl of Essex his Horses, which being drawn up in a body, many of them lost their Shoos upon White Downe in Devonshire, neer Tiverton, because Moonwort grows upon Heaths." Turner in his British Physician (1687) is confident that, though moonwort "be the Moon's Herb, yet it is neither Smith, Farrier, nor Picklock;" and Wither in the Introduction to his Abuses Stript and Whipt (1622) writes "There is an Herb, some say, whose vertue's such It in the pasture, only with a touch, Among Tree superstitions may be ranked the reflection recorded by Armstrong in his History of Minorca: "The Vine excepted, the Minorquins never prune a Tree, thinking it irreligious in some degree to presume to direct its growth; and if you express your wonder that they forbear this useful practice, and inform them of the advantages that attend it in other countries, their answer is ever ready: God knows best how a Tree should grow." Rue was hung about the neck, as an amulet against witchcraft, in Aristotle's time. The passage in Hamlet will be familiar to the reader: "There's Rue for you, and here's some for me. We may call it Herb of Grace on Sundays." Rue was called herb of grace by the country-people, and probably for the reason assigned by Warburton, that it was used on Sundays by the Romanists in their exorcisms. Thunder superstitions have been in part considered under the head of omens; yet the charms and superstitious preservatives against thunder remain to be mentioned. From a passage in Greene's Penelope's Web (1601) it would seem that wearing a bay leaf was a charm against thunder: "He which weareth the Bay-leafe is priviledged from the prejudice of Thunder.” So in Webster's White Devil (1612) Cornelia says "Reach the Bays: I'll tie a Garland here about his Head, 'Twill keep my Boy from Lightning." In A Strange Metamorphosis of Man (1634) the bay-tree, it is observed, is “priviledged by Nature that even Thunder and Lightning are here even taxed of partiality, and will not touch him for respect's sake, as a sacred thing." To the same effect is the simile cited from some old English poet in Bodenham's Belvedere (1600)— "As Thunder nor fierce Lightning harmes the Bay, So no extremitie hath power on Fame." In Jonsonus Virbius, the elegy upon Ben Jonson by Henry King (subsequently Bishop of Chichester), an elegant compliment is paid to the memory of the poet, in allusion to the superstitious idea of laurel being a defensative against thunder "I see that Wreath, which doth the wearer arme So also we read in Diogenes in his Singularitie (1591): “You beare the Feather of a Phoenix in your bosome against all Wethers and Thunders, Laurell to escape Lightning, &c." The practice, popular in Kent and Herefordshire, of putting a cold iron bar upon the barrels with a view to preventing the souring of beer by thunder, has already been adverted to. Tiberius, writes Leigh in his Observations on the first twelve Cæsars (1647), "feared Thunder exceedingly; and when the Aire of Weather was anything troubled, he ever carried a Chaplet or Wreath of Lawrell about his Neck, because that (as Pliny reporteth) is never blasted with Lightning;" and Augustus "was so much afraid of Thunder and Lightning that he ever carried about with him for a preservative remedy a Seale's skinne;" or, as a note suggests, "of a Sea-Calfe, which, as Plinie writeth, checketh all Lightnings." Hill's Natural and Artificial Conclusions (1670) provides what is termed a natural means for protecting one's house from thunder and lightning. "An ancient author recited (among divers other experi ments of Nature which he had found out) that if the herb Housleek, or Syngreen, do grow on the House-top, the same House is never stricken with Lightning or Thunder." It may be explained here that it is still common, in many parts of England, to plant this herb upon the tops of cottages; and Sir Thomas Browne mentions it (in his Quincunx) as a reputed defensative in almost the same words with Hill According to Arnot's Edinburgh, the elders of the Scottish Church in 1594 exerted their utmost influence to abolish an irrational custom among the husbandmen, which not unreasonably gave great offence The farmers were apt to leave a portion of their land untilled and uncropped year after year; and this spot, which was supposed to be dedicated to Satan, was styled " the Good Man's Croft," that is to say, the landlord's acre. Some pagan ceremony probably had given ris to so strange a superstition; which it is easy to see was designed as a charm or peace-offering in behalf of the fertility of the rest of the land. Professor Playfair, in a letter to the author dated St Andrews, 26 |