that the days
when the forbears of these fishermen left "Merrie England" to seek a
living by the harvest of the sea, and finally settled on these rocky
shores, were those when witches and hobgoblins and charms and amulets
were accepted beliefs.

Nevertheless, to-day as a medical man one is startled to see a fox's
or wolf's head suspended by a cord from the centre, and to learn that
it will always twist the way from which the wind is going to blow. One
man had a barometer of this kind hanging from his roof, and explained
that the peculiar fact was due to the nature of the animals, which in
life always went to windward of others; but if you had a seal's head
similarly suspended, it would turn from the wind, owing to the timid
character of that creature. Moreover, it surprises one to be assured,
on the irrefutable and quite unquestioned authority of "old Aunt Anne
Sweetapple," that aged cats always become playful before a gale of
wind comes on.

"I never gets sea boils," one old chap told me the other day.

"How is that?" I asked.

"Oh! I always cuts my nails on a Monday, so I never has any."

There is a great belief in fairies on the coast. A man came to me once
to cure what he was determined to believe was a balsam on his baby's
nose. The birthmark to him resembled that tree. More than one had
given currency if not credence to the belief that the reason why the
bull's-eye was so hard to hit in one of our running deer rifle matches
was that we had previously charmed it. If a woman sees a hare without
cutting out and keeping a portion of the dress she is then wearing,
her child will be born with a hare-lip.

When stripping a patient for examination, I noticed that he removed
from his neck what appeared to be a very large scapular. I asked him
what it could be. It was a haddock's fin-bone--a charm against
rheumatism. The peculiarity of the fin consists in the fact that the
fish must be taken from the water and the fin cut out before the
animal touches anything whatever, especially the boat. Any one who has
seen a trawl hauled knows how difficult a task this would be, with the
jumping, squirming fish to cope with.

Protestant and Catholic alike often sew up bits of paper, with prayers
written on them, in little sacks that are worn around the neck as an
amulet; and green worsted tied around the wrist is reported to be a
never-failing cure for hemorrhage.

Every summer some twenty thousand fishermen travel "down Nor