The Land Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures, and Fancies from TransylvaniaGerard, E. (Emily)
History
The Land Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures, and Fancies from Transylvania
Gerard, E. (Emily)
Transylvania (Romania) -- Description and travel
1. To cover up the patient during his shivering-fit with nine articles
of clothing, each of a different color and material.
2. To go into an inn or public-house, and after having drunk a glass
of wine go out again without breaking silence or paying, but leaving
behind some article of clothing which is of greater value than the wine
taken.
3. Drinking in turn out of nine different wells.
4. To go into the garden when no one is looking, shake a young tree,
and return to the house without glancing back. The fever will then have
passed into the tree.
5. Any article of clothing purposely dropped on the ground will
convey the fever to whoever finds it. This method is, however, to
be distrusted, we are told by village authorities, for the finder
may avert the spell by thrice spitting on the article in question.
According to Saxon notions, you can apparently never go wrong in
spitting on each and every occasion, this being a prime recipe for
averting evil of all sorts. “When in doubt, play trumps,” we are told
in the rules for whist; and in the same way the Saxon would seem to
say, “When in doubt, spit.”
6. A spoonful of mortar taken from three different corner houses in
the village, and, dissolved in vinegar, given to the patient to drink
before the paroxysm.
7. If it be a child that is suffering from the fever, it may be rolled
at sunrise over the grave-mounds in the church-yard, particular
formulas being murmured the while.
8. The first three corn-ears seen in spring will, if gathered and
eaten, keep off the ague during that whole year.
9. Take a kreuzer (farthing), an egg, and a handful of salt, and with
these walk backward to the nearest cross-way, without looking back or
breaking silence, and laying them down at the place where the roads
join, speak the following words: “When these three things return to me,
then may likewise the fever come back.”
10. Or else go to a stream or river, and throw something into it over
the shoulder without looking back.
The intermittent fever recurring on every third day is here called the
_schweins-fieber_ (swine-fever), and for recovery it is recommended to
eat with the pigs out of their trough, and to lie down on the threshold
of the pigsty, where the swine may walk over the prostrate body.
To shake off drowsiness, it is advised to swallow some drops of the
water which falls back from the horses’ mouths when they drink at the
trough.
A person afflicted with warts can take as many dried peas as there are
warts, and, standing before the fire, count backward, thus: “Five,
four, three, two, one, none,” and with the last word throw all the peas
on to the glowing embers, running away quickly, so as not to hear the
crackling sound of the bursting peas, which would counteract the spell.
Another method is to lay a piece of bacon on the top of a hedge or
paling, saying these words:
“This meat I give to the crow,
That away the warts may go.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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