'A charm to find who hath bewitched your cattle.
Put a pair of breeches upon the cow's head, and beat her out of the pasture
with a good cudgle upon a Friday, and she will run right to the witch's
door and strike thereat with her horns.'
(Reginald Scot. The Discovery of Witchcraft 1584)
'A sure medicine for toothache. The grey worms
breeding under wood or stones and having many feet, and when they be touched
they do cluster together like porkenpicks. These pierced through the bodkin
and put into the tooth that acheth allayeth the pain.'
(John Hollybush. The Homish Apothecary 1561)
'Take a new nail, make the gum bleed with it,
and then drive it into an oak. This did cure William Neal, a very stout
Gentlemen, when he was almost mad with the pain, and had a mind to have
pistolled himself.'
(John Aubrey Miscellanies 1695)
I wonder whether he would have tried the grey worms?
'Alder leaves gathered while the morning dew is
on them, and brought into a chamber troubled with fleas, will gather them
thereunto; which being suddenly cast out, will rid the chamber of these
troublesome bedfellows.'
(Culpeper Herbal 1653)
'The feet short and thick, signifieth a person
to be weak; slender and short, to be wicked; fleshy and hard, to be a blockhead.
The feet small and fair-formed, to be a fornicator ; much hairy, to be
lecherous and bold; naked of hair, to be weak of strength and courage;
the inner part of the sole, not hollow but filled with flesh, that they
make no hollowness in the step, to be beyond measure crafty and cunning.'
(The Shepherd's Prognostication 1729)
'To make pancakes so crisp that you may set them
upright. MAke a dozen or a score of them in a little frying pan, not bigger
than a saucer: and then boil them in LARD, and they will look as yellow
as gold, besides the taste.'
(The Newe Book of Cookerie 1615)
Sounds like my kind of dish.
'Cats were anciently revered as Emblems of the
Moon, and among the Egyptians had stately Temples erected to their
honour. It is said that in whatever House a Cat died, all the Family shaved
their Eye-brows.'
(Brand Observations of Popular Antiquities 1813)
'Within these last seven years, the Minister has
been twice interrupted in administering Baptism to a female child
before the male child, who was baptized immediately after. When the service
was over, he was gravely told he had done very wrong: for, as the female
child was first baptized, she would on her coming to the years of discretion,
most certainly have a strong beard, and the boy would have none.'
(Old Statistical Account, South Ronaldsay, Orkney,
1795)
'Arise Evans had a fungous Nose and said, it was
revealed to him, that the King's hand would cure him. At the first coming
of Charles II into St. James Park he kissed the King's hand and RUBBED
his Nose with it: which disturbed the King, but cured him.'
(John Aubrey Miscellanies 1695)
I supposed after that, the king started wearing gloves. Thick disposable ones too.
'It is found by Experience that when one keeps
a Hare alive and feedeth him, till he have occasion to eat him, if he tells
him before he kills him, that he will do so, the hare will thereupon be
found dead , having killed himself.'
(John Aubrey Remains of Gentilism 1688)
'For the green-sickness, or for a love-sick maid.
Take earth-worms, open them, wash them clean, dry them in oven and beat
them to powder . Give thereof two spoonsfulls in white wine in the morning.
(Fairfax Household Book, 17th/18th century)
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