Remedial Mice and Spiders It seems that among remedies the
mouse takes a very high place in local practice. It was held (in Huntingdonshire, as I wrote last week) to be a cure for' measles. Apparently, it is also appreciated in Westmorland as a cure fOr • a less common malady, and was used by their hosts for evacuees during the war. Perhaps, as in the case -of the remedial mouse, other counties can claim the use of a spider, prisoned in a nutshell, which is one of the rural remedies I have met, though ..I forget for what malady it was sovereign. A potato is still often carried in the pocket as a potent absorbent of rheumatic pains. Cuthbert Bede, that grand collector of folklore, found in a village near Peterborough that a few hairs, cut from the cross on a donkey's shoulder and worn in a small bag round the neck, was a common cure for the same malady. Warts, of course, are cured by all manner of passes and incantations, but for myself I have found the most general belief to be the efficacy of the white juice of the Greater Celandine. It is odd that Mi. Tebbutt (a very active member of the Archaeological Society of Cambridge and Hunts) writes of the Lesser Celandine in this connection. Is he, I wonder, quite sure of his " Lesser "? Did not- the designer of the plaque for Wordsworth's memorial confuse the two, though one is a buttercup, the other a poppy?
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