POOR OLD TREE!

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21224, 2 July 1932, Page 6 (Supplement)

POOR OLD TREE!

A FRIEND TOLD ME.

PASSING ON SICKNESS. Recently a friend told me that a fine fir-tree which had stood for several years in front of his house, and of which ho was very fond, had died of an unknown disease, writes a London correspondent. " Perhaps," I said jokingly. " some member of your family passed tho sickness on to it."

As ho seemed greatly puzzled and a little annoyed, I had to explain that when I mado iay foolish remark I had in' my mind the quaint notions of certain past and present peoples—who have believed that illnesses and bad luck could be handed on to trees.

In Greece and Italy, for example, it used to be the custom to fasten a thread overnight round a person who was ill. Next morning this was hung on a tree and it was thought that tho sickness went with it and entered into the trunk and branches. Sometimes, in France, the victim of a malady was himself tied to a tree. When he was set free, the fastenings were left on it, for tho same reason.

In certain parts of the world one may see old trees into which hosts of nails have been driven. To hammer a nail into a trunk was once thought to be an excellent remedy for toothache. Tying tho branches together was supposed to cure certain other ailments.