SEVENTH SONS.

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 66286, 5 October 1925, Page 7

SEVENTH SONS.

HAVE GREAT HEALING POWERS It might be imagined that science would, ere now, have given a definite quietus to strange beliefs in charms and other unworldly cures for disease. Yet that is far from being the case. Perhaps one of the most remarkable instances of the peculiar notions of a peasant people is the belief that the “seventh son of a seventh son” can cure “King’s evil,” so called from the fact that a Scottish king is said to have suffered from the malady. “King’s evil” is a tuberculous swelling of the glands of the neck, and the modern method of treatment is, of course, the use of the surgeon’s knife. The people of the Western Isles of Scotland, however, believe in a different method of “cure.” They seek out a man who is the seventh son of a father who, likewise, is a seventh son, there being the further stipulation that no daughter has been born in either family. Naturally, such a person is rarely met with, and perhaps the circumstances has engendered the belief that he possesses some unusual gift not bestowed upon less favoured mortals. FAMILY MUST BE WITHOUT DAUGHTERS It is a mistake to assume that a mere seventh son, in a family into which no daughters have been born; will suffice. He must, in fact, be the seventh son of a seventh son. Should a man conform to that condition, and lead an upright life, he is regarded as a potential healer of “king’s evil.” As his fame spreads, patients, in sad and sickly groups, travel longdistances to receive treatment from him. His methods are simple. Taking a basin of cold water, 'he dips his hands in it, and then solemnly proceeds to bathe the sufferer’s wounds. Each day for a week this operation is repeated, and then the afflicted person proceeds on the long- homeward trail, strong in the faith that at last a cure has been effected.

In cases where the patient is too ill to travel, a messenger is sent to the seventh son, who sends sealed bottles of the water he has “treated.”

Doctors, naturally, frown on such practices, and one can only conclude that if any cures are effected by the seventh son they must, indeed, be the outcome of faith. In the parish of North Uist, one of the most westerly of the Hebridean Isles, there is a well the waters of which for generations have enjoyed a reputation as a cure for toothache. Set in the midst of rock and heather, under a towering hill, on an isolated moor, the little well is the Mecca of, tourists who have heard of the healing virtues of its waters. SIMPLE WAY TO CURE TOOTHACHE There is, indeed, little in 'its appearance that is remarkable. Yet the well-worn stones leading to it provide mute, but unmistakeable, evidence of the passage thither for ages back of a suffering pilgrimage seeking relief. In that land there are no dentists, and, the damp climate it conducive to toothache. Consequently, there are many calls at the healing well even in these days. The patient drinks away, and deposits a silver coin in the well. The small offering is probably the relic of a pagan age, when men /and women were wont to^proffer gifts to propitiate the gods. Such beliefs appear strange to most of us, but they die hard in the midst of a simple and conservative people whose insularity and circumscribed lot prevents intercourse with the outer world.