cable to all the dewy-morning months. It was not only on the
brightness of the cheek that May dew was believed to have a marvellous
effect, but many physical ailments were amenable to its virtues. It is
related that the people about Launceston say that a child weak in the
back may be cured by being drawn through the wet grass thrice on the
mornings of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of May. Swellings in the neck are
similarly cured; but the dew in such cases should, if the patient is
a man, be sought on the grave of the last young woman buried, and if a
woman, on that of the last young man interred.

These May-day practices are not confined to England. The medicinal and
cosmetic properties of spring rain and May dew appear to have been at
one time universally credited. In fact, water, in whatever shape--dew,
rain, river--when associated with spring, was invested with a sort of
divine enchantment in the popular mind. The heavy dew which brightened
and refreshed the young and tender green of all growing things was
holy and hallowing. Running water shared in the same veneration.

In some parts of Russia, at the present day, the girls go into the
water up to the girdle on May-day, or, if the streams be still frozen,
they dance about a hole broken in the ice, and sing a welcome to the
"beautiful spring." The sick are carried down to the banks of a river
and sprinkled with water, which has received a healing power from the
new season. Cattle are driven afield at early dawn through the May
dew, and the young people roll about in it where it lies thickest.

Not many years ago a fisherman near Fort William purchased a set of
nets, to enable him to prosecute the herring fishing. He toiled all
night without catching any fish. Dispirited, he returned home in the
morning to his anxious wife, who was expecting to receive a heavy
haul. On learning her husband had been so unfortunate while their
neighbours had been successful, she suspected the nets were bewitched,
and therefore procured consecrated water wherewith to sprinkle them.
The experiment proved successful beyond expectation: every morning the
fisherman went to sea he returned with so many fish that his
circumstances were considerably improved.

Holy water is kept, in certain localities in the north, for sprinkling
on the sea to still the waves in case of a storm. Holy oil, we are
assured, is equally efficacious. We have seen a lady turning her chair
three times round, to secure luck