The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 09 of 12)Frazer, James George
Religion
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 09 of 12)
Frazer, James George
Magic; Mythology; Religion; Superstition
After that he offered sixpence and departed, leaving
the fowl in the church. If the bird died, the sickness was supposed to
have been transferred to it from the man or woman, who was now rid of the
disorder. As late as 1855 the old parish clerk of the village remembered
quite well to have seen the birds staggering about from the effects of the
fits which had been transferred to them.(174) In South Glamorgan and West
Pembrokeshire it is thought possible to get rid of warts by means of a
snail. You take a snail with a black shell, you rub it on each wart and
say,
“_Wart, wart, on the snail’s shell black,_
_Go away soon, and never come back._”
Then you put the snail on the branch of a tree or bramble and you nail it
down with as many thorns as you have warts. When the snail has rotted away
on the bough, your warts will have vanished. Another Welsh cure for warts
is to impale a frog on a stick and then to rub the warts on the creature.
The warts disappear as the frog expires.(175) In both these cases we may
assume that the warts are transferred from the human sufferer to the
suffering animal.
(M36) Often the sufferer seeks to shift his burden of sickness or ill-luck
to some inanimate object. In Athens there is a little chapel of St. John
the Baptist built against an ancient column. Fever patients resort
thither, and by attaching a waxed thread to the inner side of the column
believe that they transfer the fever from themselves to the pillar.(176)
In the Mark of Brandenburg they say that if you suffer from giddiness you
should strip yourself naked and run thrice round a flax-field after
sunset; in that way the flax will get the giddiness and you will be rid of
it.(177) Sometimes an attempt is made to transfer the mischief, whatever
it may be, to the moon. In Oldenburg a peasant related how he rid himself
of a bony excrescence by stroking it thrice crosswise in the name of the
Trinity, and then making a gesture as if he were seizing the deformity and
hurling it towards the moon. In the same part of Germany a cure for warts
is to stand in the light of a waxing moon so that you cannot see your own
shadow, then hold the disfigured hand towards the moon, and stroke it with
the other hand in the direction of the luminary. Some say that in doing
this you should pronounce these words, “Moon, free me from these
vermin.”(178)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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