QUEER CURES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13485, 11 May 1907, Page 5 (Supplement)

QUEER CURES.

; ."— ————*— ''■'', —" '..-.'■ All sorts of outlandish ideas and practices are found in active prevalence in the marshlands of the Weser, north of Bremerhaven, and in the Luneburg heath, a barren region between the Elbe and Aller, in Germany. In both of these, districts the touch of a corpse's hand is still regarded as curative of many, local ills. In the Wesermarsch the practice is. to steal secretly into the room where the dead person is laid out; and with the dead hand stroke the afflicted part. In the -Luneburg heath the application is especially used as a cure for warts and for cramps in the stomach. , Less gruesome is the remedy for hernia still applied in the marsh country. On i the night of St. John the Baptist's Day,. June 24, the patient must be dragged i through the split of a cleft ash tree. Three , men bearing the first name of John must ' perform the operation, and it must be con- ' ducted in dead silence. "' Some of the cures depend, on the con- ' trarj', upon verbal formulas. For hiccough ; the sufferer must cross a little wooden foot- : bridge over a streaman easy matter in the '■ marshlands, with their many drainage ' ditches. As he crosses he must repeat, the ' nursery rhyme: —■: ■ ':■ Hiccough and I went over the bridge. I I went on, Hiccough fell in the ditch. For eiysipelas a fire is lighted and a ! pinch of ashes from it is rubbed on the skin to the accompaniment of a saying to the ■ effect that the ashes and the sore went over the Red Sea together the ash came back, . but the sore never again. , , Numerous other sayings supposed to have the force of charms, usually when uttered . simultaneously with some action, are quoted. The Luneberger, for instance, who has , warts makes the sign of the cross on the warts while gazing at the crescent moon, : saying, " What I see, that I win; what I wish, that disappears." It rhymes in the German dialect. ; Sometimes the formula is not spoken. The Wesermarsch folk have a saying which they write on a slip of paper when anyone has fever; then they bum the paper. The Lunebergers have ho formula, but they write the name, year of birth, and birthplace of the sick person in a lonely place three nights running. Other remedies for fever consist in swallowing spiders or dust filed from a church bell. " ■■-■:' ':0- ■%?■:'.

When a tooth comes out the loser, must throw it backward over .his head. Hair combings must not be thrown out of the window, because the birds might get them and fly away with them. .In, that case the person who was separated from them would Speedily become bald.. . -