Category: Superstitions

Popular superstitions are always worth recording ; they illustrate tradition, and exemplify manners. I do not remember to have ever seen mention of a notion which prevails in Berkshire, and, for aught I know, in other parts of England that a ring, made from a piece of silver collected at the communion, is a cure […]

Having just seen Mr. Carte’s “History of England,” I found the following remarkable story, which he has laboriously introduced by way of note to illustrate his history a thousand years preceding. Speaking of the unction of kings, and the gift of healing the scrophulous humour call’d the king’s evil, exercised by some European princes, anointed […]

Being twelfth-day, his majesty went to the chapel royal, with the usual solemnity, and offered gold, myrrh, and frankincense, in three purses, at the altar, according to ancient custom. Your anonymous correspondent, vol. H. p. 928, having said that he never heard of Lamb’s-wool, or Christmas-eve, and cannot guess the meaning, I am induced to […]

When a person, after drinking too much, finds himself disordered next morning, the advice is, to take a hair of the same dog, or of the old dog. Quaere, upon what ground this notion is taken up? Is it from an opinion, that poisonous animals carry their own antidote, as the exungia viperina is good […]

The following receipt is literally transcribed from “The most excellent and perfecte homishe Apothecarye, or homely Physick Book, translated out of the Almaine Speche into English, by John Holly-bush. Collen, 1561.” [See note 32] The credulity and superstition of the early practitioners of physic are so singular as scarcely to merit belief in the present […]

About twenty years since, I procured several curious MSS. from a mass of papers which had belonged to Mr. William Pickering, an apparitor of the Consistory Court, at Durham ; and among these was a neatly written folio book, with the title-page, ” EDWARD POTTER. ijs. iiijd. HERE BEGINNETH A Booke of Phisicke and Chirurgery, […]

The subject treated of in the following letter is so extraordinary, that it is to be wished gentlemen who live near mines would enquire into the matter, and inform us whether the idea of these invisible beings is general throughout the kingdom amongst labourers employed underground, or whether this superstitious opinion is confined only to […]

OBSERVATIONS ON THE PROPERTIES AND USE OF THE VIRGULA DIVINA. So early as Agricola the divining rod was in much request, and has obtained great credit for its discovering where to dig for metals and springs of water ; for some years past its reputation has been on the decline, but lately it has been […]

In Cornwall there are several wells which bear the name of some Patron Saint, who appears to have had a Chapel consecrated to him or her on the spot. This appears by the name of Chapel Saint attached by tradition to the spot. These Chapels were most probably mere Oratories ; but in the parish […]

The Rev. Mr. Brand, in his ingenious annotations on Bourne’s ” Popular Antiquities,” mentions a well at Benton, similar to the well near the foot of Rosberrye Toppinge, between the towns of Aten and Newton, co. York, and dedicated to St. Oswald. In the opinion of the neighbours St. Oswald’s well has a particular charm, […]