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that season is the equinox days and nights are of equal length. By the twelve
times that it makes its braying and crying it shows that night and day have twelve
hours in their circuit. The ass is grieved when he makes his cry that the night and
the day have equal length, for he likes better the length of the night than of the
day. One can only read such an extract as this with a feeling of utter wonder; in
the first place, how De Thaun could believe such a thing himself, and in the second
place, how he could expect anyone else to do so. The exact accuracy of the wild
ass as to the day of the month, and his twelvefold bray of regret as each recurring
year brings it round again, are triumphs of the imaginative faculty. We may
probably infer that when the twenty-ninth day of September has come round
again the balance is redressed, hope springs again, and the twelve brays this time
are of a peculiarly jubilant and sonorous character.
Asses hair was in the Middle Ages held to be a sterling remedy for ague, though
one must have been credulous indeed to try it. It is interesting more especially
perhaps as a foreshadowing of that doctrine of homoeopathy which deals with
the cure of like by like. Great healing powers are attributed to the hairs from the
cross on the donkey s back: hairs cut from it and suspended in a bag round a
child s neck were a potent influence in the prevention of fits and convulsions.
Another famous remedy was the cure of whooping cough by passing the sufferer
three times under the belly and three times over the back of a donkey. In Sussex
a standard remedy for the same distressing complaint was procured by cutting
some of the hair out of the cross, chopping it up finely, and spreading it on bread
and butter for the breakfast of the patient; while in Dorsetshire prevention was
rightly considered better than cure, and though the rustics may have doubted the
efficacy of vaccination as a remedy against small-pox, they had no hesitation
whatever in getting their children astride on the donkey s back as early as possible as
a preventative to their ever catching whooping cough. One meets with remedy
after remedy of the same general nature, and all owing their efficacy to some
mysterious connection between this particular complaint and donkey-hair, but
what this occult influence can be is wholly unknown to us.
The old herald, Legh, says of the ass  As he is not the wisest so is he the least
sumptuous, especially in his diet, for his feeding is on Thistles, Nettles, and Briers,
and therefore small birdes hate him, especially the Sparrowe is most enemie
unto him,  as they see him stolidly devouring the plants that they visit for their
own sustenance. The ancient author with ponderous humour finishes his account of
the ass by saying,  I could write much of this beast, but that it wolde be thought it
were to mine owne glorie.
The dog, the friend and companion of man, was said to see ghosts, and their
howling at untoward times portended death or conflagration or some such grave
event, and has, therefore, for many [centuries been held of evil omen, and no
doubt in remote country districts the feeling still remains. The cries were said to
be often in terror of sights invisible to man. Rabbi Menachem declares in his
exposition of the Pentateuch that  when the Angel of Death enters into a city the
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dogs do howl, 30 and he records an instance of a dog that fled in terror from before
the angel, and that someone kicked it back and it died, but whether from the
effects of a too vigorous kick, or from being thrust into the path of the destroying
angel, he does not venture to pronounce.
If a child has whooping cough some of its hair must be placed between slices
of bread and given to a dog. Should the dog cough, as he most probably will, it is
an indication that the disease has passed from the child to the dog. The same
idea may be seen in the old custom of giving some of the hair of anyone attacked
with scarlet fever to a donkey. Should the animal swallow it the disease was
supposed then and there to pass from the one ass to the other.
Coles, in his  Art of Simpling, says that  the herb called Hound s tongue will
tye the Tongues of Houndes, so that they shall not bark at you, if it be laid under
the bottom of your foot. A little hare s fur somewhere about the person was held
to be equally valuable, and no doubt it was. One authority hath it that a dog will
not bark if another dog s tongue be carried under the great toe, and the carrying
of a dog s heart in one s pocket is another capital idea to the same end.  The tai
of a young Wheezel put under your foot is also recommended, and if none of
these methods are available, the dog may be equally well silenced by giving him
a frog to eat, artfully secreted in a piece of meat.
During the Middle Ages it was held that the head of a mad dog pounded up
and drank in wine was a specific for jaundice. If, on the other hand, the head
was burnt and the powdered ashes put to a cancer, it was held a sure remedy,
and, naturally, on the homoeopathic principle of like to like, these ashes, if given
to a man who had been bitten by a rabid dog,  casteth out all the venom and the
foulness, and healeth the maddening bites. The liver of the dog was equally
efficacious. A gipsy preventative of hydrophobia was to take some hairs from the
dog that gave the bite, a very risky operation by the way, and fry them in oil,
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applying them with a little green rosemary to the wound. To eat churchyard grass31
was esteemed also a good thing in the case of anyone bitten by a rabid dog. So
lately as the year 1866 it came out at the inquest held on the body of a child that
had died of hydrophobia, that one of the relatives fished up out of the river the
dead body of the dog that had done the mischief, in order that its liver might be
cooked and eaten by the child. In spite of this the patient died.
It was held that if a cat were in a cart, a state of things that need rarely happen
one would imagine, the horses would soon tire if the wind blew from Pussy to
them, and that in like manner the steed would soon flag that was ridden by a man
who had any cat s fur in his dress, and that anyone swallowing the hair of a cat
would be subject to fainting fits. On the other hand, it was believed that nothing
was better as a cure for whitlow than to put the ailing finger for a quarter of an
hour each day into the ear of a cat. Anything that touches a cat s ear is received
with such marked disfavour that we imagine this remedy is simply unworkable,
as the cat would never be a consenting party. Three drops of blood from a cat s
tail were held to be a cure for epilepsy, while a sovereign remedy for those who
would preserve their sight was to burn the head of a black cat to ashes, and then [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]