middle of the night of the thirteenth day, should proceed to the corner of two streets, take off his garlic necklet, and, flinging it behind him, run home without turning round to see what has become of it.  Similarly, six knots of elderwood are employed “in a Yorkshire incantation to ascertain if beasts are dying from witchcraft.” [20] In Thuringia, on the extraction of a tooth, the person must eat three daisies to be henceforth free from toothache.  In Cornwall [21] bramble leaves are made use of in cases of scalds and inflammatory diseases.  Nine leaves are moistened with spring-water, and “these are applied to the burned or diseased parts.”  While this is being done, for every bramble leaf the following charm is repeated three times:—­

  “There came three angels out of the east,
  One brought fire and two brought frost;
  Out fire and in frost,
  In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

Of the thousand and one plants used in popular folk-medicine we can but give a few illustrations, so numerous are these old cures for the ills to which flesh is heir.  Thus, for deafness, the juice of onion has been long recommended, and for chilblains, a Derbyshire cure is to thrash them with holly, while in some places the juice of the leek mixed with cream is held in repute.  To exterminate warts a host of plants have been recommended; the juice of the dandelion being in favour in the Midland counties, whereas in the North, one has but to hang a snail on a thorn, and as the poor creature wastes away the warts will disappear.  In Leicestershire the ash is employed, and in many places the elder is considered efficacious.  Another old remedy is to prick the wart with a gooseberry thorn passed through a wedding-ring; and according to a Cornish belief, the first blackberry seen will banish warts.  Watercress laid against warts was formerly said to drive them away.  A rustic specific for whooping-cough in Hampshire is to drink new milk out of a cup made of the variegated holly; while in Sussex the excrescence found on the briar, and popularly known as “robin red-breast’s cushion,” is in demand.  In consumption and diseases of the lungs, St. Fabian’s nettle, the crocus, the betony, and horehound, have long been in request, and sea-southern-wood or mugwort, occasionally corrupted into “muggons,” was once a favourite prescription in Scotland.  A charming girl, whom consumption had brought to the brink of the grave, was lamented by her lover, whereupon a good-natured mermaid sang to him:—­

  “Wad ye let the bonnie May die in your hand,
  And the mugwort flowering i’ the land?”