In Somersetshire, and some other counties, the burning of an ashen fagot is a regular Christmas custom, and it is supposed that misfortune will certainly fall upon the house where it is not duly fulfilled. In the same county, there is held annually the "Ash Faggot Ball." The fagot is bound with three withes, which are severally chosen to represent them by the young people present--the first withe that breaks in the fire signifying that they who selected it will be the first to be married. It is said that these customs prevail extensively where the Arthurian legends are very strong, and that "it is probable that the association of the ash with Arthur grew out of its dedication to the gods of war, on account of toughness for weapons." While many of the surviving superstitions connected with the ash may probably be traced to Yggdrasill, it has been observed that though Yggdrasill was an ash, there is reason to think that, through the influence of traditions, other sacred trees blended with it. Thus while the ash bears no fruit, the Eddas describe the stars as the fruit of Yggdrasill. "This" says Mr. Conway, "with the fact that the serpent is coiled around its root, and the name Midgard, _i.e._, midst of the garden, suggest that the apple-tree of Eden, may have been grafted on the great ash." He also says there is a chapel at Coblentz where a tree is pictured with several of the distinctive symbols of Yggsdrasill, while on it the forbidden fruit is represented partly open, disclosing a death's head. The serpent is coiled round the tree's foot. When Christian ideas prevailed, and the Norse deities were transformed to witches, the ash was supposed to be their favourite tree. From it they plucked branches on which to ride through the air. In Oldenburg it is said the ash appears without its red buds on St. John's Day, because the witches eat them on the night before, on their way to the orgies of Walpurgisnacht. Froschmäuster along with Pliny records the ancient popular belief that a serpent will rather pass through fire in endeavouring to escape from an enclosed circle than go under the shade of or touch the bough of the ash. In connection with this, Dioscorides affirms that the juice of ash leaves, mixed with wine, is a cure for the bite of serpents. Another and a studiedly cruel superstition was that if a hole were bored in an ash tree and a live shrew mouse enclosed therein and left to perish, a few strokes with a branch of the tree thus prepared would cure lameness and cramp in cattle, afflictions supposed to have been brought on by the influence of the same little animal. In our first volume of Phallic Worship an interesting reference was made to certain curative properties supposed to be connected with the passing of a diseased or afflicted body through a cleft stick, twig, or tree.