One of my strong memories of early childhood was the
appearance of a wart on the side of my left hand. I wasn’t very concerned,
although I was intrigued to know what it was. No information was forthcoming
and, as is usually the case with the skin eruptions caused by these viral
infections, it disappeared after a few weeks. However, that was not before my
parents had rubbed a piece of raw meat on the wart and then buried the meat in
the front garden. We were a church-going and Christian family and, as there is no
reference to cures for warts in The Bible, my parents tried the folk cure instead
of buying some proprietary product. I don’t think they believed it would work
and, as I was a rather serious child, it is likely that they rubbed the wart
with meat as a light-hearted way of preventing me from becoming anxious. But what
an odd superstition, or is it?
I turned to Steve Roud’s book The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland 1
to look up cures for warts and was surprised to see that there were 31 separate
entries. There
is just as rich a series of explanations for the appearance of warts on the hand,
the commonest of which being that they result from washing the hands in water that
has been used to boil eggs......
Here is a brief summary of the list of “wart
cures” in Roud’s book:
1. Wash
the wart with animal blood; that of pigs, moles, mice and cats being mentioned
2. Cut an apple in two, rub on the wart, tie both halves
together and bury the apple
3. Rub the wart with a broad bean pod (or dandelion) and
then bury it
4. Wash each wart with water from a blacksmith’s forge
5. Rub the wart with stolen bread and bury it
6. Get someone to buy the wart i.e. selling it to someone
causes its removal
7. Bury a celandine plant, dig it up after three days and squeeze
the plant juice on the wart
8. Place single grains of wheat (or barley) on each wart
then either bury them or collect them in a bag and leave on a road for others
to find
9. “Charm” by looking at the warts or at a picture of the
person with warts, usually accompanied by some words
10. Pick a cinder for each wart from the previous day’s
fire, place it (them) into a bag and throw it away
11. Count warts and tell a charmer (person with special
skills in “magic”) the number
12. Rub warts with sap from dandelions
13. Cut off the head of an eel, rub it on the wart(s) and bury
it
14. Cut notches in an elder stick (Sambucus sp.), one for each wart, and rub on the wart(s)
15. Rub the wart with “fasting saliva”, i.e. saliva from
someone who has not eaten for some time
16. Rub the wart(s) as a funeral procession passes by, to transfer
the warts to the corpse
17. Tie a hair (usually horsehair) around the wart
18. Rub a wetted match (the non-safety variety) on each wart
19. Rub the wart with meat, which has preferably been
stolen.
20. Wash the hands in moonlight or use earth gathered from
under the foot at the time of the New Moon
21. Touch the warts with a pin and either bury it or leave
it at a crossroads
22. Rub the wart with a raw potato and bury it
23. Prick a snail once for each wart and then rub it on the
wart(s), afterwards impaling it on a blackthorn bush
24. Wash the hands with washing soda [sodium carbonate]
25. Touch the wart with the sap of spurge plants (Euphorbia spp.)
26. Cut notches into a stick, one for each wart, then bury
the stick (see cure 14 above)
27. Touch each wart with a stone from a brook, tie the
stones into a bag and throw them away at a crossroads
28. Use straw, reeds or rushes to touch warts and either
bury them or throw them away
29. Touch each wart with a knot tied into a piece of string,
one for each wart, and throw the string away where it can decompose
30. Rub warts with a toad and then impale the toad on a thorn
bush
31. Bathe warts in water which has gathered after rain in a
hollow on a stone or tree stump
Further information on these cures is given in Gabrielle
Hatfield’s little book Warts: Summary of
Wart-cure Survey for the Folklore Society 2 that gives even
more examples than those presented by Roud. She also mentions cures of similar
kinds to those used in the British Isles from Greece, Slavic countries and
Belgium, so the folk cures were widely founded through Europe and beyond.
Common themes in all cures were rubbing with plants, animals
or their parts (often accompanied by burial, impaling or throwing away the item
used), rubbing with minerals or mineral solutions, and the buying, selling and
“charming” of warts. Here is a summary of the most popular recommended cures
recorded in the survey (with percentages by category and of the total responses
recorded):
Plants
Dandelions 15.7% of plants 4.4% of total
Greater celandines 8.2% of plants 2.3% of total
Spurge 6.7% of plants 1.9% of total
Others 50.0% of plants 14.0% of total
Animals (and animal parts)
Spit 10.2% of animals 3.4% of total
Tying with horse hair 9.6% of animals 3.1% of total
Tying with other threads 8.3% of animals 2.7% of total
Snail slime 7.7% of animals 2.5% of total
Minerals
Washing soda 24.1% of minerals 4.6% of total
Vinegar 13.2% of minerals 2.5% of total
Ink 7.7% of minerals 1.5% of total
Bleach 4.4% of minerals 0.8% of total
Others 50.5% of minerals 9.6% of total
Buying, selling and “charming”
Counting by another 13.5% of charming 2.7% of total
Wrapping stones in a bag 9.4% of charming 1.9% of total
Looking at the moon 6.3% of charming 1.3% of total
Others 56.3% of charming 11.3% of total
A close look at this Table (with apologies for the formatting) shows the treatment of my wart by
rubbing with meat is easily the commonest folk cure, followed by rubbing with broad
beans, washing soda and dandelions. Cures using products from Nature dominate,
with “charming” in all its forms only making up 20% of the total. “Charming”
is based solely on imagination and there is no basis for it having any effect
but, as warts on the hands may disappear almost as quickly as they arrive, it
is easy for some to believe in its role.
Some of the natural products used as cures
may contain anti-viral agents that hasten the removal of the wart and, as
Hatfield states: “If one is tempted to dismiss as fantastic many of these wart
cures, it has to be pointed out that at least some of them have been tried and
tested and found to work. To separate the ‘faith-healing’ aspect from the
physiologically active ingredients is a difficult if not an impossible task..
..The employment of ritual to accompany any healing method for any illness can
obviously be important; faith in any medicine, official or otherwise, is an
important part of the cure, and presumably evokes the body’s own healing
powers.”
The powers of human belief
shown by all the variants of cures we have discovered, or invented, for just one
ailment are impressive. Our powers of trial and error, of imagination, and of the use of
natural live and dead materials are almost endless. But where does imagination
end and reality begin? It’s a question which has a wide application - from wart
cures, through “alternative therapies” and into religious beliefs.
1 Steve Roud (2003) The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland.
London: Penguin Books.
2 Gabrielle Hatfield (1998) Warts: Summary of Wart-cure Survey for the Folklore Society.
London: The Folklore Society.
Image from:
No comments:
Post a Comment