Indian Antiquary Vol 24

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 64

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MARCH, 1895.
common in England and Scotland.65 A horse-shoe keeps off spirits and witches, according to the couplet :-"Straw laid across her path, the witch retards. The horse-shoe nailed, each household guards."66 In England (about 1612) it was considered lucky for a man to find a piece of iron.67 In North-West Scotland, gold and silver cured the effects of the evil eye. In England, it is bad luck to make a present of a knife, and in North England, unless a nominal price is given, no one should take a present of a knife, for a "knife severs love." Pins are used in England in many cares. To cure warts prick them with a pin and drive the pin into an ash tree. In England, a child afflicted with an eruption is cured by being rubbed with a balf sovereign, 71 and in Dumfrieshire the Locherby penny cnres cow-madness.73 In Northumberland pins are thrown into the wishing well at Wooler.73 On New Year's Eve you should have money in your pocket, 74 and it is unlucky to have no money in your pocket when you first hear the cuckoo.76
The belief that spirits fear iron and a ring is perhaps the origin of the sacredness of the key. In England a key was used in divination. A key is heated and laid on the back to cure lumbago, and is put down the back of the neck to stop bleeding at the nose. With the house-key and a frying pan fiends are scared and bees tempted to aligbt.77 After a death the hive is tapped thrice with a door key.78 In some parts of Scotland, when a bride and bridegroom enter their home, each carries a key - the husband a door key and the woman a banch of keys.79
In Wiltshire (1874) a labourer's wife asked a clergyman for a sacrament shilling to tie round her child's neck to cure fits. A "heart-grown," - that is, a fairy-witched, child in England is laid naked on the blacksmith's apvil. The blacksmith lifts his hammer as if to strike hot iron, but brings it down gently. Three taps of the bammer cure the child.81
Urine, -The next most important power over spirits is urine. Urino is & widely used medicine.93 From the ammonia it contains, urine is useful in two ways: in recovering from swooning, fainting, nervous and other seizures, and in staunching bleeding. Both of these properties shew power over spirits. In restoring consciousness the power over the oppressing evil spirit is evident, and in staunching blood urine drives away a spirit, in accordance with the early belief that wounds bleed because they are sucked by spirits.83 The use of cow's urine, as a purifier, is common among all higher class Hindus. It is the regular means of getting rid of the ceremonial imparity which a birth or a death in a family causes, 84 and it ought to be taken on certain festivals and highdays. The importance of cow's and bull's urime, as a purifier anong the Hindus and still more among the Persians, seems to shew that cow
* In London, in 1996, mont West End houses had a horse-shoo nailed in the threshold, because it laid ovil spirits. The practice was universal in Wales in 1812 (Leslie's Early Race of Scotland, p. 423). Horne-shoes were formerly (1600) out in the doors of British Christians, and they were fized in boats and ships to guard them against storms (op. cit. p. 424). Nelson had a horse-shoe nailed to the Victory'mast (Dyer's Folk. Lore, p. 113). The ends of the horse shoe ought to be turned up. Compare Reginald Scott on the cure by sympathy, -that is, treating the weapon, not the wound. If they stroke the sword up, the party feels no pain: if they draw the fingers down, the pain is intolerable. See Note 2, Reginald, in Scott', Lay. * Dyer's Folk-Lors, p. 112.
67 Brand's Popular Antiquities, Vol. III. p. 251. Mitchell's Highland Superstitions, p. 87. “ Henderson's Folk-Lore, p. 118. • Op. cit. p. 139. 11 Op. cit. p. 167.
19 Op. cit. pp. 163, 164.
15 Op. cit. p. 230. T# Op. cit. p. 72.
75 Dyer's Folk-Lore, p. 57. T6 Henderson's Folk-Lore, p. 238. 17 Dyer's Folk. Lors, p. 124, * Op. cit. p. 128.
* Henderson's Folk-Lore, p. 36. # Dyer's Folk Lore, p. 116.
n Henderson's Folk-Lore, p. 187. * In the Kônkan, near Bombay, no medioine is so largely used in child. diseases as is the urine of the cow (Information from Mr. P. B. Joahi). According to Pandit Narsinha (Nighanturoj, pp. 174, 175) pine kinds of urine Aro considered medicinal by Hindu physicians -the urine of a man, a cow, she buffaloe, a horse, an A8, she-goat, an ewe, an elephant and a camel. Human urine destroys worms and removes phlegm, wind, insanity and poison (Information from Mr. Nerdyan V. Parandhart). That urine stops bleeding, explains the Marathi test of disobliging man: "To kdplya karangli var munir nihi"; He will not even make water on out finger. For the many healing properties of urine in Roman Folk Medicine compare Pliny's Natural History, Book xxviii. Chap. 6.
* Tylor's Primitive Culture, Vol. II. p. 126.
# The idea of the ceremonial impurity which attaches to birth, monthly sickness, and death, seems to BAYO its root in the fact that those are the three times in life when the chances of spirit-possession are greatest. The point is natioed under "spirit times."