Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 248, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 October 1918 — FIRMLY BELIEVE IN CHARMS [ARTICLE]

FIRMLY BELIEVE IN CHARMS

Impossible to Bhake Faith of Inhabitant# of Some Parte of Rural England. Superstition dies hard, and In the out-of-the-way rural districts of England the people still have a firm belief in herbs and charms as a core fox their various Ills. In Cheshire, perhaps, such superstitions are most numerous, and a native will tell you that hedgehogs are useful in the cure of epilepsy, that ointment should never be applied with the first finger, as that one is venomous, and that a child’s nails should never be cut during the first year of its life, or it will grow up light fingered. Most curious, however, are the cures recommended for whooping cough. A lock of hair Should be cut frop the sufferer’s head, and pot into a bole bored in the bark of a mountain ash, after which the hole should be closed. The whoop will vanish In three days under this treatment. ? Many strange cores are suggested for ague. In Lincolnshire, for instance, the method is very elaborate. The sufferer should get up at sunrise on the first day. of the month, making sure his pockets are empty, take a carving knife that he has bought and used himself, plunge It into an ant hill, and twist the knife as many times as he has had fits. Then, lying fiat on {he face, with head pointing to the son, he should breathe as many times as he has suffered into the hole in the ant hill, and then return home, speaking no word until he has broken his fast.