In Sonnenberg, if you
would rid yourself of gout you should go to a young fir-tree and tie
a knot in one of its twigs, saying, "God greet thee, noble fir. I
bring thee my gout. Here will I tie a knot and bind my gout into it.
In the name," etc.
Another way of transferring gout from a man to a tree is this. Pare
the nails of the sufferer's fingers and clip some hairs from his
legs. Bore a hole in an oak, stuff the nails and hair in the hole,
stop up the hole again, and smear it with cow's dung. If, for three
months thereafter, the patient is free of gout, you may be sure the
oak has it in his stead. In Cheshire if you would be rid of warts,
you have only to rub them with a piece of bacon, cut a slit in the
bark of an ash-tree, and slip the bacon under the bark. Soon the
warts will disappear from your hand, only however to reappear in the
shape of rough excrescences or knobs on the bark of the tree. At
Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire, there used to be certain oak-trees
which were long celebrated for the cure of ague. The transference of
the malady to the tree was simple but painful.
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