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1 20 Symbolism of the East and West
and carefully swathed up. If the part coalesced and soldered
together, as usually fell out when the feat was performed
with any adroitness at all, the infant was cured, but where
it still continued to gape, it was supposed that the method
used would prove ineffectual." " We have," he goes on to
say, " several persons now living in the village, who, in their
childhood, were believed to have been healed by this super-
stitious ceremony, derived, perhaps, from our Saxon ancestors,
who practised it before their conversion to Christianity." It
is said that a similar custom is still in vogue as regards the
ash tree in some of the southern counties of England, and that
there also children suffering from whooping-cough are made
to pass through the loop, formed by a bramble which has
taken root at both ends.
In his Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England, Mr
Henderson cites a custom in use at St Helen's Well, near
Thorp Arch, in Yorkshire, where " the offering was a scrap of
cloth fastened to an adjoining thorn, which presented a strange
appearance under its bundle of rags."
In Ireland, also, trees situated near holy wells are
adorned in the same manner. Close to the churchyard of
Durrow, a village about three miles and a half from Tulla-
more, is a grove of horse chestnut trees, and beneath these a
holy well. On a branch near the well there are numerous
rags hung up by superstitious people, in the belief that a rag
moistened with this blessed water, wound round a sore, and
when removed hung on the tree, will take away the sore.
At the Pattern (or feast) at this village, the priest, we were
told, explains to the people all about the holy well and the
blessed tree. The well is covered over with a stone arch,