close by. It is given in a skull—St. Teilo's skull—which Teilo Professor Rhys is unable to decide.[1]
This instance, in all likelihood, does not stand alone. I have, indeed, heard that a skull is similarly used at one of the Irish holy-wells, but the name of the spring has escaped my memory. Among the "remèdes extérieurs" condemned by Thiers in his Traité des Superstitions, 1777, vol. i., p. 339, he mentions that of drinking spring-water by night from the head "d'un homme mort ou brulé," to free oneself from epilepsy, and also refers to the allied practice of making pills from the head of one who has been hanged, to cure the bites of a mad dog. Among the Nootkas of British Columbia, it maybe added, the inside scrapings of a human skull prevent too rapid family increase.[2] This opinion, however, seems to be founded on the feeling that the dead matter, and the force attaching to it, will prove antagonistic to its opposite, and therefore exercise adverse influence on the development of new life. The would-be mother in France used to walk under the gallows to acquire aid from the still-lingering vital essences of the trépassé. The Nootka woman acts from the opposite point of view. For her the skull has lost all connection with life and life-giving qualities, and its powers are the powers of death.
The oil-exuding bones of saints were relics of great value in European Christendom during the middle-ages, and they are still treasured by the religious communities which are fortunate enough to posess them. A writer in the Atlantic Monthly lxxiv, pp. 480-493, gives an account of the miraculous, chrism-dripping skulls still preserved at Kieff, and describes how a Russian pilgrim visiting that holy city knelt, crossed himself devoutly, and received from a priest the sign of the cross on his brow, administered with a soft small brush dipped in the oil from a skull.
- ↑ Bye-Gones, vol. iii., p. 24; Folk-Lore, vol. iv., p. 75.
- ↑ H. H. Bancroft, The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America, 1875, vol. i., p. 204.
