made application within these
few years for water in which this stone has been dipped. It is believed
that this stone cannot be lost. It is still in the possession of the
family of Lochart.

Ague, it was believed, could be cured by putting a spider into a goose
quill, sealing it up, and hanging it about the neck, so that it would be
near the stomach. This disease might also be cured by swallowing pills
made of a spider's web. One pill a morning for three successive mornings
before breakfast.

There were numerous cures for hooping-cough of a superstitious
character, practised extensively during the earlier years of this
century, and some are still recommended. The following are a few of
these. Pass the patient three times under the belly, and three times
over the back of a donkey. Split a sapling or a branch of the ash tree,
and hold the split open while the patient is passed three times through
the opening. Find a man riding on a piebald horse, and ask him what
should be given as a medicine, and whatever he prescribes will prove a
certain cure. "I recollect," says Jamieson, "a friend of mine that rode
a piebald horse, that he used to be pursued by people running after him
bawling,--

"Man wi' the piety horse,
What's gude for the kink host?"

He said he always told them to give the bairn plenty of sugar candy. Put
a piece of _red_ flannel round the neck of a child, and it will ward off
the hooping cough. The virtue lay not in the flannel, but in the red
colour. Red was a colour symbolical of triumph and victory over all
enemies. Find a hairy caterpillar, put it into a bag, and hang it round
the neck of the child. This will prove a cure. Take some of the child's
hair and put it between slices of bread and butter, and give it to a
dog; if in eating it, the dog cough, the child will be cured, and the
hooping cough transferred to the dog. A very common practice at the
present day is to take the patient into a place where there is a tainted
atmosphere, such as a byre or a stable, a gas work, or chemical work. I
have seen the gas blown on the child's face, so that it might breath
some of it, and be set a coughing. If during the process the child take
a _kink_, it is a good sign. This idea must, I think, be of modern
origin.

It was believed that if a present were given, especially if it were
given to a sweetheart, and then asked back again, the giver would have a
stye on the eye. Again, a stye on the eye was rem