Similar attempts to shift the burden of disease and sin from one’s self to another person, or to an animal or thing, have been common in ancient and modern Europe. Grave writers of antiquity recommended that, if a man be stung by a scorpion, he should sit upon an ass with his face to the tail, or whisper in the ear of the ass, “A scorpion has stung me”; in either case, they thought, the pain would be transferred from the man to the ass.(453) A Roman cure for fever was to pare the patient’s nails, and stick the parings with wax upon a neighbour’s door before sunrise; the fever then passed from the sick man to his neighbour.(454) Similar devices must have been practised by the Greeks; for in laying down laws for his ideal state, Plato thinks it too much to expect that men should not be alarmed at finding certain wax figures adhering to their doors or to the tombstones of their parents, or lying at cross-roads.(455) In modern Europe there is no end to such devices. Thus the Orkney Islanders will wash a sick person and then throw the water down at a gateway, in the belief that the sickness will leave the patient and be transferred to the first person who passes through the gate.(456) A Bavarian cure for the fever is to write upon a piece of paper, “Fever, stay away, I am not at home,” and to put the paper in some person’s pocket. The latter then catches the fever and the patient is rid of it.(457) Another cure is for the patient to stick a twig of the elder-tree in the ground without speaking. The fever then adheres to the twig, and whoever pulls up the twig will catch the disease.(458) To get rid of warts, take a string and make as many knots in it as you have warts. Then lay the string under a stone. Whoever treads upon the stone will get the warts, and you will be rid of them.(459) Gout may be transferred from a man to a tree thus. Pare the nails of the sufferer’s fingers and clip some hairs from his legs. Bore a hole in an oak, stuff the nails and hair in the hole, stop up the hole again, and smear it with cow’s dung. If, for three months afterwards, the patient is free of gout, then the oak has it in his stead.(460) A Flemish cure for the ague is to go early in the morning to an old willow, tie three knots in one of its branches, say, “Good-morrow, Old One, I give thee the cold, good-morrow, Old One,” then turn and run away without looking round.(461) A cure current in Sunderland for a cough is to shave the patient’s head and hang the hair on a bush. When the birds carry the hair to their nests, they will carry the cough with it. A Northamptonshire and Devonshire cure is to put a hair of the patient’s head between two slices of buttered bread and give it to a dog. The dog will get the cough and the patient will lose it.(462) In the Greek island of Carpathus the priest ties a red thread round the neck of a sick person. Next morning the friends of the patient remove the thread and go out to the hillside, where