there be no improvement in the child after the treatment with herbs, then
the witch-women sometimes resorts to terrible measures to test the fairy
nature of the sufferer.
A child who was suspected of being a change because he was wasted
and thin and always restless and fretful was ordered by the witch-woman to
be placed for three nights on a shovel outside the door from sunset to
sunrise, during which he was given foxglove to chew, and cold water was
flung over him to banish the fire-devil. The screams of the child at night was
frightful, calling on his mother to come and take him in; but the fairy doctor
told the mother not to fear; the fairies were certainly tormenting him, but by
the third night their power would cease, and the child, would be quite
restored. However, on the third night the poor little child lay dead.
OMENS AND SUPERSTITIONS
AUGURIES and prophecies of coming fate may also be obtained from
the flight of birds, the motion of the winds, from sneezing, dreams, lots, and
the signs from a verse of the Psalter or Gospels. The peasantry attach great
importance to the first verses of St. John's Gospel, and maintain that when
the cock crows in the morning he is repeating these verses (from the 1st to
the 14th), and if we understood the language of animals and birds, we could
often hear them quoting these same verses.
A charm against sickness is an amulet worn round the neck, enclosing a
piece of paper, on which is written the first three verses of St. John's Gospel.
OMENS THAT FOREBODE EVIL
To meet woman with red hair, or a woman with a red petticoat, the first
thing in the morning.
To kill the robin redbreast.To pass a churn and not give a helping hand.To meet a funeral and not go back three steps with it.To have a hare cross your path before sunrise.To take away a lighted sod on May days or churning days; for fire is the
most sacred of all things, and you take away the blessing from the house
along with it.