# Folk-Lore Record/Volume 1/Wart and Wen Cures

WART AND WEN CURES.
By James Hardy.
"Cure warts and corns with application Of med'cines to th' imagination."
HILDREN are wont to amuse each other by reckoning up their warts, and from their amount forecasting their future position in society; for each wart is "a sheep;" and some have so many, that their flocks will to a certainty attain patriarchal increase. Sometimes the warts depart spontaneously, and then they have to communicate that they have sold their stock. But more frequently they are not reluctant to part with them, and they would sacrifice all the wealth that they are promised to be rid of the ugly excrescences. The methods that they adopt are various; but none of them, I dare say, are aware how antiquated and of what wide prevalence some of those practices are. I have sometimes amused myself in jotting down these wart charms, and have afterwards gone in quest of their origin to the old writers; by which means I found that the old and the new often blend together, and that people in these matters are still acting as people in like circumstances did some eighteen hundred years ago. Of this we shall have several instances, while proceeding to recount the different supposed cures that have come under notice. ​1. Steal a piece of raw meat, rub the warts with it, hide it under a stone, tell no one; visit it each day, and repeat the rubbing; as it rots so will the warts decay (Berwickshire, Durham, Cornwall, Northampton). Steal a piece of meat, rub the warts with it, throw it away, and as it rots so will the warts (Northumberland, Suffolk). Steal a piece of meat from a butcher's shop, rub it over the wart in secret, and throw it over a wall over your left shoulder (Devonshire. Choice Notes, p. 253). The Tatler, No. 21, tells us of the butcher's daughter who "once buried a piece of beef in the ground as a known receipt to cure warts on her hands," and on this account was indicted for sorcery, because "she was seen to dig holes in the ground, to mutter some conjuring words, and bury pieces of flesh, after the usual manner of witches." "Steal a piece of meat from a butcher's stall, or his basket, and, after having well rubbed the parts affected with the stolen morsel, bury it under a gateway at four lane ends, or, in a case of emergency, in any secluded place. All this must be done so secretly as to escape detection; and, as the portion of meat decays, the warts will disappear (Lancashire and Yorkshire. Choice Notes, p. 250). "The taking away of warts by rubbing them with somewhat that is put to waste and consume is a common experiment," which Lord Bacon saw no reason to discommend. "And I doe apprehend it the rather because of mine own experience. I had from my childhood a wart upon one of my fingers. Afterwards, when I was about sixteen years old, being then in Paris, there grew upon both my hands a number of warts (at least an hundred) in a month's space. The English ambassador's lady, who was a woman far from superstition, told me one day she would help me away with my warts. Whereupon she got a peece of lard with the skin on, and rubbed the warts all over with the fat side; and amongst the rest the wart which I had had from my childhood. Then shee nailed the peece of lard, with the fat towards the sunne, upon a poast of her chamber window, which was to the south. The successe was, that within five weeks' space all the warts went ​quite away, and that wart which I had so long endured for company." (Sylva Sylvarum, p. 216. London, 1651.)
It has heen remarked that most of these wart-charms are of the nature of a sacrifice, the waits being transferred to a substitute.
2. Take a black snail or slug, rub the warts with it, and then suspend it upon a thorn; as the snail melts away, so will the warts (Berwickshire, Northumberland, Durham, Lancashire, Hants, Devonshire). "This must be done nine nights successively, at the end of which time the wart will completely disappear. For, as the snail, exposed to such cruel treatment, will gradually wither away, so it is believe the wart, being impregnated with its matter, will slowly do the same" (Sternberg's Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire, p. 166). To pierce the mollusc with a pin as many times as you have warts in number is a variation of this in Gloucestershire. (Notes and Queries, 4th S. xi. p. 501.) A Berwickshire shepherd had a wart on his nose, and being advised to get a white snail, which he was to kill after rubbing the wart with it, he did so and the wart disappeared. In this, and other prescriptions that appear superstitious, the snail may have been designed to act as a dissolvent. This appears from a specific given by Schröder (History of Animals as they are used in Physik and Chirurgery, p. 34. London, 1659). "The liquor of snails," i.e., those with shells. "Take red snails, cut and mix them with equall weight of common salt, and put them into Hippocrates his sleeve, that in a cellar they may fall into liquor: which is good to anoint gowty and pained parts, and to root out warts, being first pared with a penknife." Pliny (Hist. Nat. lib. xxx. c. 4), for the swelling of the uvula, says, anoint it with the juice drawn by a needle from a snail which is suspended in the smoke. This cruel operation must have been to get the liquor fresh.
3. When a pig is killed, wash your hands in the blood, and the warts will go away (Berwickshire, Galloway). "A young pig being killed with a knife, having his blood put upon that part of the body of any one which is troubled with warts, being as yet hot come from him, will presently dry them; Bad being after washed will quite expel them away." (Topsel's History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, ​p. 532. London, 1658; apparently from Marcellus.) Lovell, in his History of Animals, &c, p. 118, Oxford, 1661, says of swine, from Pliny, "The warm blood kills warts." This appears to be another old medical prescription dying out as a charm. A pig's blood, however, in early times, was used to expiate murder. When Jason and Medea, guilty of the death of Absyrtus, Medea's brother, fled to Circe, she immediately ordered a sucking-pig to be brought, and, having cut the throat of it, rubbed the hands of the two criminals with the blood The fresh blood of some other animal was equally efficacious as that of a pig to remove warts; thus, that of a mouse, according to Galen, or the mouse itself, on the authority of Marcellus, Rhazes the Arabian, and Albertus Magnus; and a dormouse had the like property. (Lovell, ubi. sup. 93, 94, 45.) The mouse's blood is originally from Pliny. (Hist. Nat. lib. xxx. c. 9.)
4. Rub the wart with eel's blood. The Rev. J. F. Bigge finds this at Stamfordham. (Tyneside Naturalists' Club's Trans. v. p. 89.) Lovell, from Jonston, says the head of an eel helps warts (Hist. Animals, p. 199); but the full account is in Schroder (ubi. sup., p. 111). il They say that the head of an eel cures warts, if the bloudy head wherewith the warts are touched be buryed in the earth, that it may putritie." "Take an eel and cut its head off, anoint the parts where the warts are situated with the blood, and bury the head deep in the earth. As the head rots, so will the warts disappear." (The Physicians of Myddvai, p. 337.) Pliny (lib. xxx. c. 9) says that the head or blood of a lizard heals warts, and that the blood of a tortoise (whose head was cut off with a knife of bronze, the blood being received into a clean platter) removes wens and warts (lib. xxxii. c. 4).
5. Tie a horse-hair round them, and strangle them. This common procedure is sanctioned by Avicenna, an Arabian physician of the twelfth century. "A horse-hair tyed about warts killeth them, causing a privation of aliment." (Lovell, ubi sup. p. 79.)
6. Puff breath on the warts nine times when the moon is at the ​full, and the warts will depart (Durham). Sir Thomas Browne (Vulgar and Common Errors, p. 272, 1646) refers "unto Christian considerations what naturall effects can reasonably be expected, when for warts we rub our hands before the moone." We shall find something of this in Pliny, for of this encyclopædiac author Sir T. Browne's opinion is not far wrong, that "there is scarce a popular errour passant in our dayes which is not either directly expressed or deductively contained in his work." Sir Kenelm Digby, in his Discourse on the Power of Sympathy, remarks, "One would think it were a folly that one should offer to wash his hands in a well-polished silver bason, wherein there is not a drop of water; yet this may be done by the reflection of the moonbeams only, which will afford it a competent humidity to do it; but they who have tried it, have found their hands, after they are wiped, to be much moister than usually; but this is an infallible way to take away warts from the hands, if it be often used."
7. Count the number of warts, wrap in a bit of paper a stone for each, cast the parcel over the shoulder; whoever gets it, to him the warts will adhere (Durham, Westmoreland). Or put the pebbles' in a bag and throw it away (Northumberland). Toss the bag over the left shoulder (Lancashire). Throw the paper packet down at some cross road (Choice Notes, p. 252). Rub them with a cinder, and this, tied up in paper and dropped where four roads meet, will transfer the warts to the finder (Yorkshire. Ibid. p. 189). A variety of hard objects do as well as stones. The observation originates, at least is first recorded, in Pliny. (Hist. Nat. lib. xxii. c. 25.) The passage is thus rendered in Langham's Garden of Health, p. 473, London, 1579: "In the new of the moone, take for every wart a pease, and touch the warts therewith, and binde tbem in a cloute, and caste it behinde thee." The original formula still exists in Buckinghamshire, with a trifling modification. "Touch each wart with a separate green pea, each pea being wrapped in paper by itself and buried; the wart will vanish as the pea decays." (Choice Notes, p. 251.) The nodules of grain will do as well as peas (North of Scotland). "Count most carefully the number of warts; take a corre​sponding number of nodules or knots from the stalks of any of the cerealia (wheat, oats, barley), wrap these in a cloth, and deposit the packet in the earth; all the steps of the operation being done secretly. As the nodules decay, the warts will disappear. Some think it necessary that each wart should be touched by a separate nodule." (Choice Notes, p. 249.) The following was told me by an Irishman: Find a straw with nine knees, and cut the knots that form the joints of every one of them (if there are any more knots throw them away); then bury the knots in a midden or dung-heap; as the joints rot, so will the warts (Donegal). Nine pieces of elder cut from between two knots or knees furnished a good amulet for the epilepsy. (Blochwich's Anatomie of the Elder, p. 52.) It is to be remarked that the Romans had a god named Nodinus, who presided over the knots of the stalks of corn; hence they may have been accounted sacred. With regard to warts, however, nodosities of any sort may be employed. "Make as many knots in a hair as there are are warts, throw it away, a cure follows" (Northumberland). Do the same with a piece of twine; "Touch each wart with the corresponding knot, and bury the twine in a moist place, saying at the same time, 'There is none to redeem it but thee.'" (Manchester. Choice Notes, p. 250.)
8. A mysterious vagrant marks the number of warts in his hat, and retires from the neighbourhood, and neither he nor the warts are heard tell of more (Cornwall). This appears to be a perversion of the Levitical scape-goat.
9. Warts disappear in less than a fortnight after being well rubbed with a bean-swad, and the swad thrown away. (Yorkshire, &c. Choice Notes, pp. 164, 252). This charm occurs also as a rhyme,
"As this bean-shell rots away, So my warts shall soon decay."
The white in the interior of bean-swads is an effectual cure (Northumberland). This appears to be a degraded medical recipe, which is still in vogue. "Country people sometimes make use of the juice of the leaves of beans to take away warts." (Meyrick's Herbal, p. 3, Birmingham, 1802.) Poultices of the flowers of beans are still applied to ​reduce hard swellings (Hall's Tour through Ireland, ii. p. 22). The swads and other parts of the bean were formerly used as a cosmetic. "With this object," says Langham, "doe off the huskes of beanes, and steepe them in vinegar or wine." The water of bean-blossoms made the skin fair (pp. 62, 63). And funny old Bulleyne notifies of bean-meal:—"This meal do cleanse the face of women, wasshed therewith, tempered in cold milke at night: straine it through a clothe xx. times, and let it drie on; and in the mornyng, with a hard linen clothe softly, wette in colde water and milke, strike or wype the face therewith, and kepe them from the Sonne: like good huswives, spinnyng a thred of small thrift untill night for their labor." (Bulleyne's Booke of Simples, fol. xxix. London, 1562.)
10. Lord Bacon remarks, "They say the like is done by rubbing of warts with a green elder stick, and then burying the stick to rot in muck." (Sylva Sylvarum, p. 216.) There is given in Langham's Garden of Health, p. 217, a still older charm connected with this witch-defying shrub. "Wartes to avoide—Put three droppes of the blood of a warte into an eldren leafe, and burie it in the earth, and the wartes will vanish away: or put three small stones into a leafe, and lay it in the way, and hee that taketh it up shall have the wartes." Warts are charmed away by crossing them with elder-sticks (Sternberg's Dialect, &c., p 168) Elder-sticks notched with a nick for every wart, each wart being touched with the notch that represents it, are still buried secretly by village-charmers and old wives in English villages. (See Choice Notes, pp. 250, 252, 253; also Works of the Hon. Robert Boyle, vol vi. p. 168.) Old wives have had a monopoly of this branch of medical practice since the days of Lucian. They get no remuneration till the warts disappear.
"Here we behold what doctors ought to be, Their practice what, and what should be their fee, Taught by old women, let them learn their part!"
11. The stagnant water contained in the natural hollows of rocks or stones is an excellent remedy for warts (Berwickshire, and other parts of Scotland). This is "verter" water; a name also applied to the water of healing, or "verter" wells—i.e., wells possessed of virtue. Thus also the water collected in the natural cup, between the connate leaves of the teasel, is represented by Pliny (lib. xxvii. c. 9) to cure warts. "Some use to lay the water that is in the leves about the stalk, upon warts." (W. Turner, A.D. 1551.) It is still employed as a cosmetic according to Willich. Thus, again, Pliny (lib. xxiv. c. 8) says, "Warts are destroyed by the water that gathers in the concavities of the black poplar tree." It is more likely that this practice is derived from some pristine idea of the sanctity of the liquid in these excavations, than from a perversion of Christian symbols. In Somersetshire, however, water from the font is reckoned good for ague and rheumatism. In ancient Wales also patients were advised to wash the warts with the water from a font in which the seventh son of the same man and wife is baptized. (The Physicians of Myddvai, p. 456.) Water found in the coffin attributed to the "Maid of Meldon," at Newminster Abbey, was a specific in removing warts. (Hodgson's History of Northumberland.)
12. If a corpse is passing who was no near relative or "sib," get a stone, and throw it in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost after the corpse; and, while you mention the name and surname of the deceased, say you "force your warts on him;" as the dead body decays, so will the warts. My informant, when a boy, had cured himself by so doing (Donegal). In the South of Ireland, when ​a funeral is passing by, they rub the warts, and say three times, "May these warts and this corpse pass away, and never more return;" sometimes adding, "in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." (Choice Notes, p. 251.) An Irish servant's formula is to pass his hand over the warts, making the sign of the cross, at the same time bidding them in God's name depart and trouble him no more. He then gives a paper, on which is written, "Jesus Christe that died upon the cross put my warts away," to be dropped by the roadside in God's name. As it wasted so would the warts.—(Notes and Queries, 4th 8. xii. p. 469).
13. Beware not to let blood from a wart fall upon the hand, otherwise it will be as productive of young warts as the dragon's teeth of old were of fighting men. In the North of Ireland, they say a wart will rise for every drop of blood, and there is some truth in the observation.
14. The patient is taken to an ash-tree, and a pin is stuck first into the bark, then withdrawn, and a wart is transfixed with it till he feels pain, and then again the pin is pushed into the tree. Every wart thus treated perishes, and the pins remain their monuments. (Leicester. Choice Notes, p. 252.) Here, again, we recognise the substitutionary principle. The pins are devoted, like those left in the "wishing" or sanative well, as an index of expected or actual benefit. This charm is embodied in a saying,
"Ashen tree, ashen tree, Pray buy these warts of me."
The ash-tree (Yggdrasill) was the sacred tree of the ancient Scandinavians; in the county of Durham, a bunch of ash-keys carried in the hand preserves the bearer from witchcraft; and the herd-boys in the district of Buchan prefer a stick of ash to any other wood. It was anciently planted near villages and onsteads, it is said, in consequence of legislative enactment. Analogous to this charm, a nail driven into an oak-tree is reported to cure toothache. (Pettigrew's Medical Superstitions, p. 64.) The prescription, which is very curious, may be found in the Welsh book, The Physicians of Myddvai, p 454. ​15. The wart is to be anointed with the milk or juice of some acrid plant. The milk of the spurges is best known. Euphorbia helioscopia (sun-spurge, or "littlegood") was called wartwort as early as the days of Turner, 1562. It is mentioned by both Dioscorides and Pliny. A variety of other plants lay claim to different degrees of credit or antiquity: as, for example, the milk or juice of sow-thistle (Lord Bacon, Parkinson); the wild poppy, argemone (Gerard, Parkinson, Lobel); the greater celandine (Rondcletius, Lobel, Parkinson, Culpepper); mullein (Matthiolus, Langham); marigold (Langham); rue (Parkinson, Culpepper); the fig-tree (Dioscorides, Pliny, &c); and many others that might be quoted did they illustrate any popular practice. Of woodbine, Langham (p. 681) says, "Stampe the leaves, and apply them to wartes six times, to destroy them." The same writer says of the sap of the vine, p. 526:—"Warts or knobs.—Burne the wood, and gather the water or sap thereof at the ende, and rub them therewith." This is from Dioscorides (lib. v. c. i). Do not boys perform this experiment still, with the moisture issuing from a piece of green or damp wood placed in the fire? The wart-herb (Verrucaria herba) of the ancients was the lesser turnsole (Heliotropium supinum), which grows in the South of Europe. The British flora supplies us with wart cresses (Coronopus Ruellii). The English name is not older than Parkinson, and was translated by him from one of its appellations a little antecedent to his time, Nasturtium verrucarium, which which was also called Verrucaria at Paris, according to Dodonæus. From the seed-husks of this herb bearing a fancied resemblance to warts, by the doctrine of signatures, it was applied to extirpate them, being thought by "some good to take awaye wartes by a specificall propertie of the seede." I shall only refer to one other class of plants, the crowfoots or buttercups. A correspondent of the Cottage Gardener, 1852, says:—"There is a very useful property belonging to the Ranunculus arvensis, or common crowfoot, which I do not think is generally known. On breaking the stalk of the growing plant in two, a drop of milky juice will be observed to hang on the upper part of the stem; if this is allowed to drop on the wart, so that it be well saturated with the juice, in about three or four dressings the wart will ​die, and may be picked off with the fingers. It is the most certain remedy I ever saw, as I have seen people whose hands were covered with them cured in a few weeks. I have also removed them by the above means from the teats of cows, where they are sometimes very troublesome, and prevent them from standing quietly to be milked." But this property of crowfoots is in all the Herbals. Thus Gerard, p. 963: the leaves or roots of crowfoots stamped "are laid upon cragged wartes, corrupt nailes, and such like excrescences, to cause them to fall away." This again is traceable to Pliny. In lib. xxvi. c. 14, the Batrachii radix (root of crowfoot) is a taker away of warts.
16. Spiders' webs. "Some chirurgeons there be that cure warts in this manner: they take a spider's web, rolling the same up on a round heap like a ball, and laying it upon the wart; they then set fire on it, and so burn it to ashes, and by this way and order the warts are eradicated, that they never after grow again." (Topsel's History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, pp. 789 and 1073; originally taken from Moufeti Insectorum Theatrum, p. 237. London, 1634.)
17. The juice of ants. "Reckon how many warts you have, and take so many ants, and bind them up in a thin cloth with a snail, and bring all to ashes, and mingle them with vinegar. Take off the head of a small ant, and bruise the body between your fingers, and anoint with it any imposthumated tumour, and it will presently sink down." (Nonus. Topsel, p. 1080, from Moufet.) This is a combination of the modern formic and acetic acid, with some grains of ancient superstition.
18. Anoint the warts with spittle in the morning before eating anything. (Berwickshire, Northumberland.) For the remedial properties of "fasting spittle," I must refer to Pliny, Hist. Nat. lib. xxviii. c. 4, and elsewhere; J. B. Porta, Magiæ Naturalis, lib. i. c. 10, p. 38, Lyons, 1561; Levinius Lemnius de Occultis Naturæ Miraculis, lib. ii. c. 44, p. 249. Frankfort, 1611; Brand's Popular Antiquities, iii. p. 141; Peltigrew's Medical Superstitions, p. 74, &c.
19. Open the warts to the quick, or till they bleed, and nib them ​well with the juice of a sour apple; then bury the apple, and when it decomposes the warts will be obliged to follow its example (Northumberland). My informant ate the remains of the fruit that he operated with, and thought he had done a clever thing, for he cured his warts, enjoyed the bit of apple, and like a good boy conscientiously eschewed witchcraft. Cut the apple in two, rub the wart with each section, tie the apple together, and bury it (Devonshire). Old writers don't tell us that apples eradicate warts, but more than one says that " the ointment of apples softens and supples the roughnesse of the skin, and heals the chaps of the lips, hands, face, and other parts; also it whitens and smoothes the skin, when sunburnt and rough with the north wind" (Lovell's Herball, p. 18, Oxford, 1665); while another equally trustworthy, but nearly a century older, avers that the blooms distilled "in balneo Mariæ" are famous for a "red nose." All very pleasing properties these, and with them we conclude our remarks on charms for warts.
20. In regard to wens I have only one incident of recent occurrence to illustrate. A fisherman's child, in one of the villages on the Berwickshire coast, was not long since taken by its parents to some distance, to have a growth or wen on its head stroked by the dead hand of its grandmother. "Straiking with a dead man's hand" is a cure for warts in Galloway. (Mactaggart's Gallovidian Encyclopedia, p. 462.) To this responds what Sir Thomas Browne terms committing of "any maculated part unto the touch of the dead." Grose says, that "a dead man's hand is supposed to have the quality of dispelling tumours, such as wens, or swelled glands, by striking with it, nine times, the place affected. It seems as if the hand of a person dying a violent death was deemed peculiarly efficacious; as it very frequently happens that nurses bring children to be stroked with the hands of executed criminals, even whilst they are hanging on the gallows." "In Northamptonshire," says Sternberg; "many persons are still living who in their younger days have undergone the ceremony, always, they say, attended with complete success. On execution days at Northampton, numbers of sufferers used to congregate round the gallows, in order to receive the 'dead-stroke,' as it is termed. At the ​last execution which took place in that town, a very few only were operated upon, not so much in consequence of decrease of faith, as from the higher fee demanded by the hangman." We have it explained to us from Oxfordshire, that the swelling decreases as the hand of the man moulders away (Choice Notes, p. 258); which again exemplifies the prevalent notion of vicariousness, from which at first so many of these charms had obtained credibility. In Gloucestershire an ornamental necklace is sometimes made of hair plaited together, taken from a horse's tail—some say that it must be taken from the tail of a grey stallion. (Notes and Queries, 5th S. i. p. 204.)
* ↑ Only six numbers of the Border Magazine were published, namely, the monthly parts from July to December, 1863, and they are now entirely out of print.
* ↑ There had been a supposed virtue in stolen things. Baptista Porta says that the ancients believed that rue throve best when it had been stolen to plant. (Magiæ Naturalis fol. 25, Lugduni, 1561.)
* ↑ Another operation, showing the efficacy of the sacred number nine, is for boys to take a new pin, cross the warts with it nine times, and cast it over the left shoulder. (Henderson's Folk-Lore, p. 109).
* ↑ Gipsies in Devonshire also charm away warts; of which there is an instance in W. Henderson's Folk-lore of the Northern Counties, &c., p. 109.
* ↑ A Highlander told me that at Iona there is a hollow or basin in a stone which had held holy water. If a stranger was at evening to empty this into the sea, on returning next morning he would find the reservoir again filled. I expect that he would find it salt also.