Volume 2

Flowers and flower lore / by the Rev. Hilderic Friend ; with illustrations, index, and notes.

  • Friend, Hilderic, 1852-
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Flowers and flower lore / by the Rev. Hilderic Friend ; with illustrations, index, and notes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/362 page 373
    BRAMBLE CURES. Let us now turn for a moment to another class of ideas associating plants and trees with various diseases. In Devonshire we sometimes hear of people who are affected with boils, black- heads, or pinsoles, as they are frequently called, creep on all fours through or under, a Bramble three times from east to west. The Bramble must be of peculiar growth ; it must form an arch, having roots at both ends, and if the two ends should be found on land belonging to two different persons, so much the better. Perhaps a bramble may be found growing in a hedge belonging to Mr. Jones, and having the ends of its branch rooted in Mr. Smith’s field; if this can be done, good luck will follow, for the boils will soon die away after the ceremony has been duly gone through. Drayton tells us that a Bramble “ which at both ends was rooted deep,” was in magic much availing; and in Sussex children are still sometimes cured by being passed nine times through at sunrise on nine successive mornings. This reminds us of the well-known method of curing certain complaints bypassing the sufferer through a split tree. In all Saxon countries during the Middle Ages, a hole formed by two branches of a tree growing together was \ esteemed to be full of virtue for the cure of persons afflicted with various complaints. Such trees have been visited by people for miles around in the hope of obtaining relief. I have seen a tree in Devonshire which has been purposely split for the purpose of working cures on children suffering from certain complaints. Mr. Pengelly tells us of a case which he himself investigated four or five years ago, in which a little girl had been put through an Ash tree. Her parents were intelligent, respectable people, but when it was found that the infant was afflicted, they secured the services of an old man living near Dartmouth, who went into a plantation and selected a tree. In order that it might bt successful, a maiden tree was chosen, one which had grown up by itself without being either planted or transplanted, and had never
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