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Page 31
When any person was troubled with a morbid hunger accompanied with pain
in the stomach, it was believed that that affliction was caused by the
sufferer having swallowed some animal, which continued to live in the
stomach, and that when this was empty it knawed the stomach and produced
the pain felt. Several strange instances illustrative of the truth of
this theory were current in my native village. Let one case suffice. An
old soldier having on some long march been induced through extreme
thirst to drink from a ditch, had swallowed some animal. Years after he
was taken ill, and came home. His hunger for food was so great that he
could scarcely be satisfied, and notwithstanding the great quantities of
food which he consumed, he became thinner and thinner, and his hunger
was accompanied with great pain. Doctors could do him no good. At length
he met with a skilly old man, who told him that there was an animal in
his stomach, and advised him to procure a salt herring and eat it raw,
and on no account to take any drink, but go at once to the side of a
pool or burn and lie down there with his mouth open, and watch the
result. He had not lain long when he felt something moving within him,
and by and bye an ugly toad came out of his mouth, and made for the
water. Having drank its fill, it was returning to its old quarters, when
the old soldier rose and killed it. Many in the village had seen the
dead toad. After this the man recovered rapidly. Many other stories of
people swallowing _asks_ (newts), and other water animals which lived in
their stomachs, and produced serious diseases, were current in my young
days. This gave boys a great fear of stretching down and drinking from a
pool, or even a running stream.
CHAPTER VII.
_DIVINING._
There is another class of superstitions which have prevailed from ages
the most remote to the present day, although now they are dying out--at
least, they are not now employed to determine such important matters as
they once were. I refer to the practice of divining, or casting lots. In
early times such practices were regarded as a direct appeal to God. From
the Old and New Testaments we learn that these practices were resorted
to by the Jews; but in modern times, and among Western nations, the lot
was regarded as an appeal to the devil as much as to God. I have known
people object to the lot as a sinful practice; but, at the same time,
they were in the constant habit of directing their own course by such an
appeal, as, for instance, when they were about to travel on some
important business, they would fix that, if certain events happened,
they would regard such as a good omen from God, and would accordingly
undertake their journey; but if not, they would regard the
non-occurrence as an unfavourable omen, and defer their journey, in
submission, as they supposed, to the will of God. In modern times, the
practice of casting lots to determine legal or other important questions
has been abandoned by civilized nations; but the practice still exists
in less civilized communities, and is employed to determine such serious
matters as involve questions of life or death, and it still survives
among us in trivial matters, as games.
In my young days, a process of divining, allied to casting lots, was
resorted to by young women in order to discover a thief, or to ascertain
whether a young man who was courting one of them was in earnest, and
would in the future become that girl's husband. The process was called
the Bible and key trial, and the formula was as follows:--A key and
Bible were procured, the key being so much longer than the Bible that,
when placed between the leaves, the head and handle would project. If
the enquiry was about the good faith of a sweetheart, the key was placed
in Ruth i. 16, on the words, "Entreat me not to leave thee: where thou
goest I will go," etc. The Bible was then closed, and tied round with
tape. Two neutral persons, sitting opposite each other, held out the
forefingers of their right hands, and the person who was consulting the
oracle suspended the Bible between their two hands, resting the
projecting parts of the key on the outstretched forefingers. No one
spoke except the enquirer, and she, as she placed the key and Bible in
position, repeated slowly the whole passage, "Entreat me not to leave
thee," John or James, or whatever the name of the youth was, "for where
thou goest I will go," etc. If the key and Bible turned and fell off the
fingers, the answer was favourable; and generally by the time the whole
passage was repeated this was the result, provided the parties holding
up the key and Bible were firm and steady. For the detection of a thief,
the formula was the same, with only this difference, that the key was
put into the Bible at the fiftieth Psalm, and the enquirer named the
suspected thief, and then repeated the eighteenth verse of that Psalm,
"When thou sawest a thief then thou consentest with him," etc. If the
Bible turned round and fell, it was held to be proof that the person
named was the thief. This method of divining was not frequently
practised, not through want of faith in its efficacy, but through
superstitious terror, for the movement of the key was regarded as
evidence that some unseen dread power was present, and so overpowering
occasionally was the impression produced that the young woman who was
chief actor in the scene fainted. The parties holding the key and Bible
were generally old women, whose faith in the ordeal was perfect, and
who, removed by their age from the intenser sympathies of youth, could
therefore hold their hands with steadier nerve. It is only when firm
hands hold it that the turning takes place, for this phenomenon depends
upon the regular and steady pulsations in the fingers, and when held
steadily the ordeal never fails.
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