Domestic folk-loreThiselton-Dyer, T. F. (Thomas Firminger)
History
Domestic folk-lore
Thiselton-Dyer, T. F. (Thomas Firminger)
Folklore; Superstition
_Epilepsy._--The remedies for this terrible disorder are extremely
curious, and in most cases vary in different localities. One,
however, very popular charm is a ring made from a piece of silver
money collected at the offertory. A correspondent of Chambers's "Book
of Days" tells us that when he was a boy a person "came to his father
(a clergyman) and asked for a 'sacramental shilling,' _i.e._, one
out of the alms collected at the Holy Communion, to be made into a
ring and worn as a cure for epilepsy." In the North of England "a
sacramental piece," as it is usually called, is the sovereign remedy
for this complaint. Thirty pence are to be begged of thirty poor
widows. They are then to be carried to the church minister, for which
he is to give the applicant a half-crown piece from the communion
alms. After being "walked with nine times up and down the church
aisle," the piece is then to have a hole drilled in it, and to be
hung round the neck by a ribbon. It has been suggested that these
widows' pence may have some reference to the widow's mite which was
so estimable in the eyes of Christ. According to one notion, persons
afflicted with epileptic fits are supposed to be bewitched, and the
following extraordinary remedy is sometimes resorted to for their
cure. A quart bottle is filled with pins, and placed in front of
the fire until the pins are red-hot. As soon as this takes place it
is supposed they will prick the heart of the witch, who to avoid
the pain caused by the red-hot pins will release her victim from
the suffering she has imposed upon him. This mode of disenchantment
seems to have been of common occurrence; and sometimes, when old
houses are under repair, bottles full of pins are found secreted in
out-of-the-way places. Another remedy is for the patient to creep,
head foremost, down three pair of stairs, three times a day, for
three successive days. Sir Thomas Brown, too, discourses of the
virtues of mistletoe in this complaint; and Sir John Colbach, writing
in the year 1720, strongly recommends it as a medicine, adding that
this beautiful plant must have been designed by the Almighty "for
further and more noble purposes than barely to feed thrushes, or to
be hung up superstitiously in houses to drive away evil spirits."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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