CHARMING DOCTORS.

Waikato Times, Volume 104, Issue 17574, 1 December 1928, Page 4

CHARMING DOCTORS.

SCME OLD CORNISH BELIEFS. The belief of some Cornish people in "friskies," or fairies, and of Manx people in enchanted and bewitched animals, was described at the congress of the Folk-Lore Society at Burlington House, London, recently (states an English paper). Miss 3. C. Spooner, who has walked miles over lonely moorland roads to collect fragments of Cornish folklore, said: "I have met a number of people who have seen friskies, and been friskie-lcd. The friskic usually appears as a lantern bobbing about in the dark, bewildering the unwary traveller. On a certain night, I have been told, friskies are seen on the lonely road from Camelford to Row Tor Moors, and'they still haunt Dogmere Pool. The looped tangles In the manes of the moor ponies arc still known as 'stirrups,' because they have been formed by the night-riding friskies.

"1 was told by a person who was at a farm near Five Lanes, seven miles from Launeeston, some years ago, when the housewife was attempting unsuccessfully to make butter, that she said, 'There's a friskie in the churn.' She muttered a charm over the churn, tho friskie went, and the butler came. "Charming still flourishes in Cornwall. It is practised in a non-com-mittal way, as one might sample a patent medicine, by the folk in general; and seriously by professional charmers In the presence of some of these one instinctively feels magic and mystery in the air." Among instances of charms quoted by Miss Spooner were: —For cattle ailments: "Might come from the sun, might come from the moon, might come from the ground, and unto the ground shall it return again, to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Amen." For a stye in the eye.—Stroke the eve from the nose out, with the tail of a" black cat, saying with a stroke to each line, "I poke thee, I don't poke poke thee, I poke the queff that s under the 'ee oh qualy way, oh qualyway. Miss Mona Douglas said that among the animals in which many Manx people believe are the "Moddey Dhoo a black dog which haunts Peel Castle and fairy dogs, usually white with red ears and feet, frequently seen running across fields in the evening, bhe added: The cat is considered a friend of the fairies. If a* cat is put-out of doors when the family , ™ft" J* 0 fairies let it in again during the nightSome people believe in a king ot ne cats which during the day lives the life'of an ordinary domesticated cat but at night roams in regal state and-•■iU-nowcrful. It is said to be luck} S se a fairy hunt dashing across So fields on a moonlight night I was seriously told by an old workman that he had plainly seen a fairy on his tiny steed in a field.