Similar to which is the following:--
5. To sleep in a room with the whitethorn bloom in it during the month of
May, will surely be followed by some great misfortune.
6. _Cure for Fits._--If a young woman has fits, she applies to ten or a
dozen unmarried men (if the sufferer be a man, he applies to as many
maidens) and obtains from each of them a small piece of silver of any kind,
as a piece of a broken spoon, or ring, or brooch, buckle, and even
sometimes a small coin, and a penny; the twelve pieces of silver are taken
to a silversmith or other worker in metal, who forms therefrom a ring,
which is to be worn by the person afflicted. If any of the silver remains
after the ring is made, the workman has it as his perquisite; and the
twelve pennies also are intended as the wages for his work, and he must
charge no more.
In 1830 I went into a gunsmith's shop in the village where I then resided,
and seeing some fragments of silver in a saucer, I had the curiosity to
inquire about them, when I was informed that they were the remains of the
contributions for a ring for the above purpose which he had lately been
employed to make.
D.
_Bible and Key._--Mr. Stevens's note on divination (Vol. i. p. 413.)
reminds me of another use to which the bible and key are made subservient
by the rustics in this locality.
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