Now these are mere charms and are perfectly useless; they are superstitious usages, that should not be encouraged or even sanctioned. But it is quite another matter with the herbal remedies. Many of these are really useful, and a great deal more safe to take than the strong metallic poisons administered by the faculty. What an amount of mercury, in the form of blue pill, has been given to the generation now passing away! Was not grey powder much the same? Are doctors not still somewhat prone to administer calomel? I have no doubt that many of the herbs collected and used by the old women were really effective and curative agents. One of the plants on which greatest faith is placed is the elder. We still make elder-flower water as a cosmetic, and elder-berry wine as a febrifuge. Old John Evelyn says, "If the medicinal prospectus of the leaves, bark, berries, etc., were thoroughly known, I cannot tell what our countryman could ail for which he might not find a remedy from every hedge, either for sickness or wound." The borage was used for cheering depressed spirits, and we take it now in the cool tankard, with wine and lemon and sugar, not perhaps knowing why. But Bacon says that thus mixed "it will make a sovereign drink for melancholy persons." My own experience confirms this. Good cider cup or champagne cup is sovereign against low spirits; this is due, of course, to the borage. Where herbs are used, there is probably something valuable in their properties. The experience of many generations has gone to prove it. A workman who suffered greatly from abscesses cured himself entirely by the use of the roots of the teasel which he asked the writer of this book to be allowed to dig up in his orchard. But it is quite other with the little insects that infest the teasel head, and which are eaten to cure intermittent fevers, or enclosed in a goose quill, sealed up and worn round the neck as a preservative against ague. A real charm is where the words are used without the medicine, and what good it can do is merely the effect on the imagination. That words alone may sometimes cure, the following story will show. A poor woman came to the parson of the parish with the request--"Please, pass'n! my ou'd sow be took cruel bad. I wish now you'd be so good as to come and say a prayer over her." "A prayer! Goodness preserve us! I cannot come and pray over a pig--a pig, my dear Sally--that is not possible." "Her be cruel bad, groaning and won't eat her meat. If her dies, pass'n--whativer shall we do i' the winter wi'out bacon sides, and ham. Oh dear! Do y' now, pass'n, come and say a prayer over my ou'd sow." "I really--really must not degrade my sacred office. Sally! indeed I must not." "Oh, pass'n! do y' now!" and the good creature began to sob. The parson was a tender-hearted man, and tears were too much for him. He agreed to go to the cottage, see the pig, and do what he could.