SAXON SUPERSTITION: REMEDIES, WITCHES, WEATHER-MAKERS.

The superstitions afloat among Saxon peasants are of less poetical character than those en vogue with the Roumanians; there is more of the quack and less of the romantic element here to be found, and the invisible spiritual world plays less part in their beliefs, which oftenest relate to household matters, such as the well-being of cattle and poultry, the cure of diseases, and the success of harvest and vintage.

Innumerable are the recipes for curing the ague, or frīr as it is termed in Saxon dialect. So, for instance:

1. To cover up the patient during his shivering-fit with nine articles of clothing, each of a different color and material.

2. To go into an inn or public-house, and after having drunk a glass of wine go out again without breaking silence or paying, but leaving behind some article of clothing which is of greater value than the wine taken.

3. Drinking in turn out of nine different wells.

4. To go into the garden when no one is looking, shake a young tree, and return to the house without glancing back. The fever will then have passed into the tree.

5. Any article of clothing purposely dropped on the ground will convey the fever to whoever finds it. This method is, however, to be distrusted, we are told by village authorities, for the finder may avert the spell by thrice spitting on the article in question. According to Saxon notions, you can apparently never go wrong in spitting on each and every occasion, this being a prime recipe for averting evil of all sorts. “When in doubt, play trumps,” we are told in the rules for whist; and in the same way the Saxon would seem to say, “When in doubt, spit.”
 
6. A spoonful of mortar taken from three different corner houses in the village, and, dissolved in vinegar, given to the patient to drink before the paroxysm.

7. If it be a child that is suffering from the fever, it may be rolled at sunrise over the grave-mounds in the church-yard, particular formulas being murmured the while.

8. The first three corn-ears seen in spring will, if gathered and eaten, keep off the ague during that whole year.

9. Take a kreuzer (farthing), an egg, and a handful of salt, and with these walk backward to the nearest cross-way, without looking back or breaking silence, and laying them down at the place where the roads join, speak the following words: “When these three things return to me, then may likewise the fever come back.”

10. Or else go to a stream or river, and throw something into it over the shoulder without looking back.

The intermittent fever recurring on every third day is here called the schweins-fieber (swine-fever), and for recovery it is recommended to eat with the pigs out of their trough, and to lie down on the threshold of the pigsty, where the swine may walk over the prostrate body.

To shake off drowsiness, it is advised to swallow some drops of the water which falls back from the horses’ mouths when they drink at the trough.

A person afflicted with warts can take as many dried peas as there are warts, and, standing before the fire, count backward, thus: “Five, four, three, two, one, none,” and with the last word throw all the peas on to the glowing embers, running away quickly, so as not to hear the crackling sound of the bursting peas, which would counteract the spell.

Another method is to lay a piece of bacon on the top of a hedge or paling, saying these words:
“This meat I give to the crow,
That away the warts may go.”

Rheumatism is cured by wearing a little bag filled with garlic and incense, or putting a knife under the pillow; and water taken from the spot where two ditches cross is good for sore eyes.

An approved love-charm is to take the two hind-legs of a green tree-frog, bury these in an ant-hill till all the flesh is removed, then securely tie up the bones in a linen cloth. Whoever then touches this cloth will be at once seized with love for its owner.
 
Still more infallible is it to procure a piece of stocking or shoe-lace of the person you desire to captivate, boil it in water, and wear this token night and day against your heart. This recipe has passed into a proverb, for it is here said of any man known to be desperately in love, that “she must have secretly boiled his stockings.”

It is usually considered lucky to dream of pigs, except in some villages, where there is a prevalent belief that such a dream is prognostic of a death in the family.

To avert any illnesses which may occur to the pigs, it is still customary in some places for the swine-herd to dispense with his clothes the first time he drives out his pigs to pasture in spring. A newly elected Saxon pastor, regarding this practice as immoral, tried to prohibit it in his parish, but was sternly asked by the village Hann whether he were prepared to pay for all the pigs which would assuredly die that year in consequence of the omission.

The same absence of costume is recommended to women assisting a cow to calve for the first time.

When the cows are first driven to pasture in spring they should be made to step over a ploughshare placed across the threshold of the byre. Three new-laid eggs, deposited each at the junction of a different cross-road, will likewise bring luck to the herd.

If a swallow flies under a cow feeding in the meadow it is believed that the milk will turn bloody. In some villages the skin of a weasel is kept in every byre, with which to rub the udder when the milk is bloody.

The ancient belief that certain old village matrons have the power surreptitiously to purloin their neighbors’ milk is prevalent throughout Transylvania, as I have had occasion over and over again to learn. “They mostly do it out of revenge,” I was informed by a village oracle, to whom I owe much information on this and other subjects, “and are apt to molest those houses whose children have mocked at or played tricks upon them; but just leave them alone, and they are not likely to do you any harm.”

In former days, however, ............