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Sacred Trees 1
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and thereby producing, as it were, a " New birtli of the
Body." In 18S3, when staying with some Danish friends at
their country house, situated some ten or twelve miles from
Roeskilde, one day during our drive we passed through some
extensive woods. At one point an old beech tree was shown
us, one branch of which, at a height of about a foot from the
ground, formed a perfect bow ;
higher
up again it was united
to the main trunk of the tree. It had most probably been
operated upon when quite young, by a portion of the trunk
being split and held open by wedges. Our hosts informed
us that, to their certain knowledge, up to within eight years
previously parents who had sick children were in the habit of
coming there from considerable distances in order to pass
their little ones through this hole, believing that thereby their
maladies would be cured. The ceremony was not complete,
however, till they had torn a strip of cloth from the child's
dress and tied it to this branch of the tree, in the belief that
when this decayed or was borne away by the wind the little
sufferer would be healed :
showing
thereby one use of the
rag bush. Our friends added, that occasionally many such
streamers misfht be seen hangfiuCT on this tree at one time.
Gilbert White of Selborne says that, in his time, there
stood at that place " A row of pollard ashes which by the
long seams and cicatrices down their sides, manifestly show
that in former times they had been cleft asunder. These trees,
when young, were severed and held open by wedges, whilst
sick children stripped naked were passed through the aper-
tures, under the persuasion that by such a process the poor
babies would be cured. As soon as the operation was over,
the tree in the suffering part was plastered over with loam
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