Brighouse & Rastrick Gazette. — 1879-03-29 (Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England)

SOME POPULAR CURES. From All The Year Round. A diligent reader of the newspapers might cull therefrom, in the course of a year or two, instances of still prevalent superstitions enough to fill a bulky volume. 'Many persons are of opinion, that gross superstitions—such as are to be met with in more uncivilised countries—are no longer existent in our own favoured land ; and the result of a collection, such as the one suggested, would therefore surprise them not a little.. The survival of a belief  in witchcraft, as revealed in the trial for murder at the Warwick assizes in 1874 of an agricultural labourer, who struck an old woman a reputed witch, with a pitchfork, in order, by drawing blood, to free himself from her witchery. would probably be regarded by them as something exceptional, like the preservation of a fly in amber. That that case, however, was not an exceptional one was shown by the facts brought to light in another similar criminal prosecution in the same county, in the course of which it was show t that the whole neighbourhood. in which the assault took place, was permeated with a most degrading belief in witchcraft. These are but individual instances which have come to the surface, and gained publicity through the criminal courts. Those only who have trod the by-ways of English life know to what an extent a belief in witchcraft and other superstitions obtains, not merely in out-of-the-way country places, and among the illiterate, but in towns, and among the reputedly educated. Indeed, the writer's experience would lead him to the conclusion that there exists more abject superstition among town populations, where the means of enlightment are the greatest than in rural districts. He, himself, has met with more cases of belief in witchcraft and other foolish superstitions in towns, than in villages; although he has had equal chances of gaining information in each. He once heard a man, born and bred in London, and a Cockney to the backbone, describe a witches' sabbath he had attended, and the ceremony gone through in order to raise the princeof darkness. This person, though by no means an unread man, was not ashamed of avowing his belief in the black art. Many stupid superstitions are privately cherished by apparently educated and intelligent people, who yet are ashamed openly to acknowledge them. Take, for instance, the belief in the evil eye, which, doubtless, most people who know anything about it, imagined is confined to less favoured lands than ours. The writer is not able to say whether the superstition is believed in throughout England, hut he has been informed, on good authority, that it is very prevalefit in the southern counties, and he knows that it has many believers in London. A lady of his acquaintance, both intelligent and tolerably well educated, constantly wears a charm against the evil eye. It is somewhat in the shape of a pair of horns, or of the finger and thumb somewhat apart, and is a sure preventive of harm—so she says. Another of his lady acquaintances, one who has seen the world, and one who has more than ordinary " nous" in the general affairs of life, always protects her children from against evil influences, and the ills to which childhood is subject. by hanging a necklace of cloves about their necks. He had previously heard of amber necklets being considered prophylactic against witchcraft and other dread influences, but never before of cloves being similarly potent. But this is mild fooling in comparison with the various forms of charm and spell against diseases and other ills still used in different parts of the country. Everyone has probably heard that a certain cure for a sty on the eye is to rub it with a wedding-ring, care being taken to rub all one way; but all may not know that an equally good remedy is to stroke the part with a tom-cat's tail I The ring specific is not a new notion, as reference is made to it in Beaumont and Fletcher's Mad Lovers:  I have a sty here, Chilax.