eception which enables wooden tripods to write
and tables to tip and hazel-twigs to twist upside-down, without the
conscious intervention of the performer. It was this kind of faith, no
doubt, which caused the discomfiture of Jacques Aymar on his visit to
Paris, [25] and which has in late years prevented persons from obtaining
the handsome prize offered by the French Academy for the first authentic
case of clairvoyance.

But our village friend, though perhaps constructively right in his
philosophizing, was certainly very defective in his acquaintance with
the time-honoured art of rhabdomancy. Had he extended his inquiries so
as to cover the field of Indo-European tradition, he would have learned
that the mountain-ash, the mistletoe, the white and black thorn, the
Hindu asvattha, and several other woods, are quite as efficient as the
hazel for the purpose of detecting water in times of drought; and in due
course of time he would have perceived that the divining-rod itself
is but one among a large class of things to which popular belief has
ascribed, along with other talismanic properties, the power of opening
the ground or cleaving rocks, in order to reveal hidden treasures.
Leaving him in peace, then, with his bit of forked hazel, to seek for
cooling springs in some future thirsty season, let us endeavour to
elucidate the origin of this curious superstition.

The detection of subterranean water is by no means the only use to
which the divining-rod has been put. Among the ancient Frisians it was
regularly used for the detection of criminals; and the reputation of
Jacques Aymar was won by his discovery of the perpetrator of a horrible
murder at Lyons. Throughout Europe it has been used from time immemorial
by miners for ascertaining the position of veins of metal; and in the
days when talents were wrapped in napkins and buried in the field,
instead of being exposed to the risks of financial speculation, the
divining-rod was employed by persons covetous of their neighbours'
wealth. If Boulatruelle had lived in the sixteenth century, he would
have taken a forked stick of hazel when he went to search for the buried
treasures of Jean Valjean. It has also been applied to the cure of
disease, and has been kept in households, like a wizard's charm, to
insure general good-fortune and immunity from disaster.

As we follow the conception further into the elf-land of popular
tradition, we come upon a rod which not only points out