ead any fault or ill-feeling they had in life
held as a grudge again the dead.

"In some spots it is a common thing for the wake wail to be sung over the
boddy each night it be in the house as also for a rushlight to be kept
alight from sunset to sunrise and for the death watchers for to tend the
dead throw the night owther in the same room or in one so held that those
watching could see the corpse, and they due at this day deggle the quilt
and floor with rue water.

"It be always most carefull seen to that no four-footed thing come nigh
hand, for it would be a despert ill thing if such by any mishap did run
just across or loup over the corpse.

"There be always a great arval feast after the funeral to which all
friends are bidden."

The remedies of this period were not greatly superior to those of the
seventeenth century if one may judge from the gruesome concoction the
details of which were given to Calvert by William Ness of Kirby Moorside.

"For the certain cure of a cancer take a pound of brown honey when the
bees be sad from a death in ye house, which you shall take from the hive
just turned of midnight at the full of the moon. This you shall set by for
seven days when on that day you shall add to it the following all being
ready prepared afore. One ounce of powdered crabs clawes well searced,
seven oyster shells well burnt in a covered stone or hard clay pot, using
only the white part thereof. One dozen snails and shells dried while they
do powder with gently rubbing and the powder of dried earth worms from the
churchyard when the moon be on the increase but overcast, which you will
gather by lanthorn which you must be sure not to let go out while you be
yet within the gate or there virtue be gone from them. All these make into
a fine powder and well searce, this been ready melt the honey till it
simmer then add three ounces each of brown wax, rossin, and grease of a
fat pigg, and when all be come at the boil divide your powders to seven
heaps and add one at a time. Do not shake your paper on which the powder
hath been put but fold it carefully and hurry it at some grave as there be
among what be left some dust of ye wormes which have fed upon ye dead. So
boil it till all be well mixed and then let cool and if it be too stiff
add swine grease till it work easy. When you would use it warm a little in
a silver spoon and annoint the sore holding a hot iron over till it be
nearly all soaked in, then sprinkle but